Hey Lady Your Web Site's a Dinosaur

(In case you are wondering - I'm the dinosaur playing dead).

I am in love with a man named Jason Rosenberg. Not the kind of love that they write novels about but the love you feel when someone who is really smart and good at what he does helps you figure out what you need to do in business.

In this case, it's how to make my web site look like it's a 2010 instead of a 2008 creation. The online world has gone from the equivalent of the stone age to the iron age in 2.5 years. And my web site, which was designed then, is a pathetic example of what others should be doing.

Translation: If you do what I do and tell others how to market and communicate and your web site doesn't reflect all of your knowledge - why should they hire you?

To be clear, I know my site is way behind the times. A colleague put up an RSS feed to one of my blogs and links to Twitter and LinkedIn for me. He's not a designer and it doesn't look very good. But at least now it says I'm active in the social media world. SEO - Well that's another story.

Jason, who has a company called Neurofury, and helps people figure out what they need to do, offered me an hour's worth of advice from the goodness of his heart. That's why it is love. Between Jason and the designer who works with him, I am spending 1/6 of what a web site developer I work with told me she would charge to design and put up a site. And it's definitely not a case of you get what you pay for. The sites the developer designs may be SEO friendly, but they all look exactly the same.

Here's some of what Jason told me to do:

Use Word Press - It's a free web-based software that will support my site, blogs, Twitter Feed, etc. Even the Web Site for Dummies people can figure out how to use it. Which is the speed at which my brain works when it comes to technology.

SEO - I cannot compete with the big guys. Had already figured out that Google Ad Words is meaningless with the site I have now - my traffic doubled but off of a very small base. He is going to help with organic searching, which means that people who search and are looking for firms like mine, will have better chance of finding us. That's fine for now.

Copyright Old - When you go to my site it says Copyright 2008. Why don't I just up a banner headline that says she has not fixed this site in a long time? Instead, we'll just take it down for now.

Dynamic Site Map - Every site that wants to be found should have a map. Not that hard to do either.

Put up Your Press Releases - Many of them have big company names in them that will search well. It's great to have new content frequently. And I can use their brands to get more traffic to my site.

One Way Links are Fine - Everyone tells you the best links are when other sites link to yours. But you linking to other sites is good too. And that I can do easily.

Thank you Jason. There's more and we're getting started next month. Stay tuned for the new site announcement and what I learned redoing it.

You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me – Expert Marketing Sites Not so Expert

This is the first in a series of articles on marketing web sites and their customer service and marketing. This site is called MarketingProfs.com. I already know it will be two parts.

I started getting the MarketingProfs newsletter “Get to the Point – B2B Marketing,” a little over a week ago. It was free and I was curious. The positioning of the site is great – Marketing Professors – or those smarter about marketing than everyone else are sharing what they know. Cool.

I developed, wrote, reported and edited a marketing newsletter for five years. I wrote about marketing and advertising for Business Week, The New York Times and other publications. I thought I had seen every possible angle. There were a couple of new ones – of course about social media.

The first couple of issues the cover stories of the newsletter were pretty good. I thought this is refreshing – and a couple of issues I actually learned something. Then the articles changed about three days ago – they became your standard web crap, drivel with a marginal headline – one point I already knew and a lot of other ideas I didn’t even bother reading. The About.com of marketing.

So I went on the MarketingProfs web site. I still like this idea so I go to a section called Sponsored Links. Maybe I should advertise? So I fill out a form – I make an ad – well it’s actually two lines but they call it an ad. Then the site asks for $140 for 20,000 impressions and there’s a 7 in there somewhere. I don’t get what this means.

So I call the toll free number and ask what the Sponsored Links are, where they go, what 20,000 impressions means. I get customer service and someone who puts me on hold for 11 minutes and then tells me his supervisor will call me back. Three hours later I have a toll free number that I think is them in my phone – I call back and it’s her, the supervisor. She didn’t leave a message and says something about getting interrupted by another call as she dialed. Right.

I ask about the content. I learn that the free content is not “premium content,” which of course you have to pay for. I do not ask the price and she does not offer one. I ask her if all of their content is for sale? She says something bright and chipper that kind of answers yes.

I get off the phone and figure out that the first content I got for the newsletter must be better and then they started sending the free crap. This probably makes people go to the web site and learn more. Or maybe it just makes me cancel or stop reading it.

So I ask her about the Sponsored Links and she says she can’t help me either but she can find someone who can. I ask if the Sponsored Links are for the web site. She says they are for the newsletters.

An hour later I get a call from an advertising sales rep. He says the sponsored links are self explanatory and he doesn’t sell them. When I persist, he says he’ll walk through the web site with me. He does not know where the Sponsored Links are on the home page. I show them to him. I remind him that he is an advertising sales rep - as nicely as I can while wanting to scream. His dog starts barking in the background.

I ask him the same questions about impressions, reach, etc. and he is impatient and tries to get me off the phone. I picture the dog, big, with a lot of matted hair, barking at the door wanting to be walked or maybe tackling a child or robber.

He sends me a media kit which has no information about sponsored links in it and asks me to send a list of questions and he’ll get me answers. I haven’t done this yet.

Stay tuned for Part II of Learn to Practice What You Preach.