WordPress Security MUSTS.
Learn all about WordPress Security with The SmartAss Marketer podcast series, hosted by Tom Jelneck.
Listen to my most recent podcast all about Wordpress Security and what you need to be doing NOW to secure your Wordpress site and be sure to subscribe to The SmartAss Marketer Podcast in iTunes.
Learn About Local SEO
Learn about Local SEO and your business from SEO expert and host of the SmartAss Marketer podcast series Tom Jelneck
Local SEO and your business on The SmartAss Marketer Podcast Series
The Buddy Gift.
Both of my children make me very proud. Yes, I'm one of those dads. My kids aren't perfect, sometimes they drive me nuts, sometimes they fight, sometimes they do kid stuff that can get under my skin. But they are damn GOOD kids.
My oldest loves soccer. She lives it, eats it, sleeps it and as a side effect, so does the rest of the entire Jelneck clan. We have soccer balls all over the house, we have soccer socks mixed in with damn near every article of clothing in the house, there are shin guards, water bottles, uniforms and pretty much any article that you can purchase from either the Orlando City Lions or The Orlando Pride all over our house.
Orlando Pride Star Alex Morgan gives back to fans.
So while my oldest is a bit obsessed with soccer, she's also obsessed with making people smile. Case in point, at her school, she is a big 'buddy' to a kindergartner. They hang together, go to church together, she helps her buddy with her reading, she's basically a mentor to her buddy. Her buddy adores her. She looks up to my oldest Malia as if she could do no wrong. Well, Malia's buddy also loves soccer. She is obsessed with the Orlando Pride and in particular, Alex Morgan. Malia decided that she was going to make her buddy smile and smile and smile, by getting as many autographs from the Orlando Pride as she could. She accomplished that. She had a poster of Alex Morgan, had Alex sign it personally and she obtained roughly 8 other Orlando Pride autographs after the home games, at an exhibition, anywhere she could, she got those signatures. I had no idea what she was up to, I thought she was simply obsessed as a raving fan, but she wanted all of those signatures for her buddy and not for herself.
As the school year came to a close, Malia couldn't wait to give. She couldn't wait to present this poster to her buddy. My wife had to slow her down, Malia was so excited to give, but we had to make her wait. Finally, the day came. We got the poster framed and Malia presented it to her buddy at school. The smiles on both of them were priceless beyond belief. This act of pure gift warms my heart. It helps me know that I'm raising a good kid. It helps me know that I'm raising a human being who truly cares about the smiles of others.
Malia gets some hang time with Alex Morgan
How can we give like Malia? Give to your customers. Put them first. Make it a goal to see them smile. Make it a goal to feed them the stuff that they are looking for. Make it a priority to serve with a smile. Make it a mission to serve the local community as a business. Make it a mission to do the right thing when it counts, when it matters, when there aren't dollars on the line. Make it a point to be a human. I realize business is business, but does it always have to be about your bottom line? I think not.
Social Media Strategy : Stop Selling. Start Leading.
“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”
So, This Happened...
Had a great meeting the other day with a prospect. A super nice guy, a guy very charged up about his business, a guy who LOVES business and has a real passion for the work that he is doing. He's got some challenges. He needs marketing. He called me. After a lively meeting, I agreed to put some thought into his challenges and come back with a proposal. Along the way, I had a few questions regarding his product, his marketing reach and most importantly, his digital marketing budget.
I received a few messages back and forth and when pushed for the monthly digital marketing budget, he finally wrote back and said: I guess around $450.00 a month.
Keep in mind, his business is probably doing about $1 million in annual revenue. He shared with me that several other companies just haven't been able to cut the digital marketing mustard and move his marketing needle. I found out why with that simple $450.00 number. Folks, $450.00 won't move any needles, especially not proportionately to a growing 1 million dollar business. Digital Marketing isn't 'cheap' just because it's on the internet.
Then, This Happened...
After I shared my thoughts on his budget, I see a few social media posts from him after the exchange. He decided to do it himself. Why not right? How hard can it be? Just hop on the Net, create a twitter account and Bob's your uncle, instant success. I start watching, he starts 'selling.' Every tweet, every linkedin PULSE article is about why you should buy his stuff. Buy today, All prices drastically reduced, you need to buy, buy, buy, buy. The digital marketing / social media trainwreck. After an onslaught of sales driven tweets, someone finally shut him down and called him out on it.
Folks, business owners, marketing managers, product managers, Social media is NOT for selling. In fact, trying to sell constantly on social media can have a huge adverse impact on your reputation. People don't want to be sold to today and they certainly don't want to be sold to on their social media channels.
Start building your tribe and lead
As marketing master Seth Godin points out in his book Tribes, Social Media is all about building a tribe. A tribe that wants to be led by you. A tribe that is hungry for your expertise, your wisdom, your leadership. A tribe will talk about you, share what you share, follow your business and ultimately, buy from you because you've earned their trust. It's simple permission based marketing. Once I trust you and give you permission, we can talk about how your products and services can enhance my life / business / home, etc..
Be a leader today and start building your tribe on social media, stop selling, start building trust. You'll be amazed at how much more effective your marketing efforts will be.
Need some help building a solid digital marketing / social media content strategy? Give me a call today at 407-830-4550. I can help you build a solid plan of attack and help you build your social media tribe. You can also click the shiny button below. Thanks for reading and sharing! Tom.
Join My Tribe
#MarketingFail : Don't Hire An IT Guy To Do Your Marketing
Ever hear the expression set it and forget it? I think lots of folks think that SEO, Digital Marketing and Content Marketing are all technical. Some technician wearing a pocket protector sits behind a terminal and tweaks, makes some adjustments to your website and BAM, instant success. When I’m out speaking to organizations I often ask what they think an SEO guy or girl looks like and 9 times out of 10, they describe that tech geek.
Digital Marketing is ever evolving. It demands a strategy. It demands attention, it demands change and oftentimes, needs to rapidly be adjusted in order to work. Companies that rely on that tech geek to drive traffic to their website are failing. Why? Here’s a few reasons:
1.) The corporate web site sucks.
It doesn’t matter how much traffic you through at a bad website, it still won’t convert.
2.) Mismatch.
If you’re trying to get your tech geek to get you ranked under search terms that don’t make any sense to your consumers, when they land on your website, they are going to bounce straight off, because the search doesn’t match what they (the consumers) are after.
3.) Social Media Automation.
Scheduling a bunch of social media posts that are all about selling your products and services is a great way to fail at Digital Marketing. People on the Internet are NOT looking to be sold to. They will un-follow your business / brand quicker then crap through a goose if they feel like you’re trying to sell to them.
4.) BORING, automated content written for search engines and NOT humans.
This is probably one of the most common infractions on the web today. Search engines crave content, so do people. It is often VERY tempting to hire an off-shore company to create content in order to hyper-inflate your SEO. This MAY work for a bit, but as soon as one of your customers / prospects / website visitors reads this jumbled up nonsense, they hit the back button and move on to your competitor. Crappy content can do more harm to your brand then anything.
5.) PPC / SEM FAILS.
Believe it or not, running a successful pay per click or Gooogle Adwords campaign is NOT easy. I actually think that Google has done a disservice to small businesses by offering them the $50.00 coupons that they send out to new businesses. Business owners, hungry for their own piece of the Google real estate jump in, create a campaign and flip the switch. They often BURN through all of their money within 8 hours with oftentimes, ZERO leads, sales, results, etc.. There are many nuances of running a successful PPC campaign that experienced Digital Marketers know.
It’s like this.
The web changes daily. You need not only a strategy to reach your core demographic, you need a partner who understands how to execute, analyze, re-adjust and tweak constantly. If your digital marketing strategy isn’t changing frequently, odds are you’re doing it wrong.
My Latest Media Appearances
Stay Connected With Me VIA Twitter
Enough To Be Dangerous...
Do you know your profession inside and out? Do you live it, eat it, drink it, breathe it daily? Can you hold your own with a room full of peers because you know your “stuff” so well? Yes. The answer is yes. You, my friend are an expert. Experts know the ins and outs, experts have walked the walk and bitten the dust a few times. Experts know how to get it done without blinking an eye. Then there’s Mike.
Mike knows a little bit about everything. He dabbles here, he dabbles there. He tells you how it should be because he read that article once about the thing with the widget and the flux capacitor. He gets news alerts in his inbox about widgets and trusts everything. Heck, he’s even listened to a podcast or two about a thing or two and NOW he knows. Yes my fellow experts, Mike is real, and Mike is here to tell you how you should skin the cat, how you should roll, how you should focus on this or not focus on this. Mike has never actually done what you do, but gosh darnit, he read that article on LinkedIn and has a friend on Twitter who agrees most of the time.
The Mike’s of the world distract the experts of the world. The Mike’s of the world become the CEO’s “consultant” and throw everything off course so that they can simply keep their gig. The Mike’s of the world can ultimately end up single-handily throwing an entire company off course just because of a shiny object.
Knowing enough to be dangerous is a huge danger. Learning by doing, learning by experience, learning by the ole’ school of hard knocks is what makes an expert an expert. A never ending quest for learning coupled with a never-ending zest for finding a better, newer and more relevant way of doing this is what makes YOU an expert. Learning to trust your gut is challenging, but will ultimately insulate you from the many Mike’s of the world.
In my world, there are millions of Mike’s. They know how to do SEO better because their cousin Joey once got a site ranked in Bing by altering some code. They think Social Media isn’t right for your business because it simply just doesn’t ROI, they think that content can be churned out quicker, faster and cheaper in India and simply don’t get why we’re creating it in the first place. The Mike’s of the world are fixated on one particular portion of marketing and never look at the big picture because they kind of sorta know something about that particular portion. The Mike’s of the Digital Marketing world are everywhere and news-flash, the Mike’s aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
How do you keep the Mike’s out? You don’t budge. You stay the course. You stay grounded. You challenge. If you’re not allowed to challenge, you get the hell away from Mike. The Internet has made it stupid simple to get to see what Mike is really about. Use it. Challenge him. Avoid him, take his advice ALWAYS with a grain of salt.
My Latest Media Appearances
Stay Connected
Don't Feed The Suckerfish
I love to help people. It’s a passion, it’s a part of who I am as an individual. It gives me great satisfaction to help a community along, to help a business along, to help a non-profit move the needle, it’s just a good feeling. UNTIL I meet a suckerfish.
Suckerfish will suck the life out of you. Suckerfish will show up un-announced, suckerfish will EXPECT your time, suckerfish will not thank you for the knowledge they have sucked out of your brain. Once they determine that you no longer will provide them with free work / information / knowledge, they will move on to another victim within either your organization or your industry and suck them dry as well and then proceed to complain / bash YOU for cutting them off.
How to spot a suckerfish:
– They pit you against other businesses.
– They never really accomplish anything of business worth.
– They break down and belittle others with zero remorse.
– They oftentimes talk out of their ass and don’t have a clue.
– They are very quick to judge others but never look at themselves.
Suckerfish can be found everywhere, sometimes consultants, sometimes competitors, sometimes members of an organization you are a part of, sometimes disguised as friends. Suckerfish will completely distract you. It’s imperative that you spot them quickly and cut them off from the source as rapidly as you can.
It all comes down to boundaries and valuing your own time, so here are some ways to bypass suckerfish all together:
– Never let people just pick your brain without billing them for the time or only giving them 15 minute increments, etc.
– Create boundaries and stick to them. Don’t answer their call every time, don’t answer every email. If you aren’t getting paid for this time, you’re simply losing money.
– Don’t accept dangled carrots. If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that someone would be connecting me with so and so, or that they will get business if I give them some time in exchange, I’d be a freaking millionaire. Dangled carrots NEVER work.
– Get a gatekeeper. Putting someone in front of you as a line of defense is amazing if you can afford it. Let them answer your phone calls / set your appointments, etc.. Hire a tough one. Suckerfish are good at getting past enemy lines.
If you feel called to help folks out, volunteer on a board (with your boundaries) or offer to mentor an MBA or graduate student at a local college, you’ll find this to be way more gratifying.
Thanks for reading and sharing.
@TomJelneck
My Latest Media Appearances
Stay Connected With Me On Twitter
Content Strategies To DISRUPT Your Marketplace.
When is the last time you purchased something because you read a snooze fest of a blog? When’s the last time you shared a boring infographic with all of your friends on social media? Perhaps you saw a non-compelling video on youtube and decided to embed it on your website to make it that much more boring. You get the point. Life’s too short to read, share or create digital nonsense.
How is that some blogs spread like a virus? Why do some infographics get talked about and shared across the digital world? How is it that a cat video is being talked about so much on Facebook and shared on cat loving walls all across the planet? That’s easy. They are remarkable. They are NOT like the others. They are DISRUPTIVE to the digital world.
So many companies come to me and my companies asking us to create a viral video for them. Make it go viral they’ll say. We want 2 million shares on this one… This stuff simply can’t be forced. Things get shared online because they stand out like a sore thumb. They stand out because someone did something REAL and captured it on film. They weren’t trying to make something go viral, they were simply being real. People like real. People on the Internet like to see real, and share real and celebrate real.
Take the recent rant by Fox 35 anchor John Brown regarding the Kardashians. He had a bit of a Kardashian meltdown on live TV. It was humorous, it was lively, it was real… and it got shared, and shared again, and televised, and featured on Mashable and talked about by hundreds of thousands of people. He was real.
So, how can your social media, website, SEO, content and digital marketing in general stand out? Be a DISRUPTER. Do something to take your marketplace off center. Do something that no one expects or sees coming. I’ve compiled a few content strategies that can help your business DISRUPT your particular marketplace.
1.) BE REAL.
I talked about this above, but being real is oftentimes very unexpected. Share real life stories in your blog content and how they relate to your customers, products or services. Don’t be afraid to show frustration, joy and other real emotions through your content. It’s imperative that you add a personality to your brand. The bottom line, your marketplace doesn’t expect your content to be real, make it that way and you’ll stand out and shine.
2.) BE THE EXPERT.
I’ve had the great fortune and have been blessed to be featured on Fox 35, CCTV, USA TODAY, CFNEWS13, NBC and more because I constantly present myself as an expert. The media wants experts. Your customers want to buy from experts. Your social media tribe wants to follow experts. As you create your blog, infographic, video, etc., do so with authority. Create as if you and your business are the LEADERS of your industry. We don’t all like to brag about ourselves and our accomplishments, but, I encourage you to make your expertise known.
3.) BE DIFFERENT.
If you aren’t be different online, why bother? Why post that snooze fest of a blog? Is that infographic you are posting of your ordering flowchart really going to take the Internet by storm? Create the unexpected. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of not playing it safe. Sometimes it’s simple doing something no one saw coming. Sometimes it’s as simple as creating a value add for your clients, a tool, a gizmo, a new report, a weekly tweet about the office dog, a story about that one time that your factory worker rescued a bird from the warehouse. Be different and stop talking about the same ole, same ole. Be that purple cow standing out from all of the NORMAL cows.
4.) ONE LAST THING.
Proceed with some type of boundaries. I’m not encouraging you to create anything that doesn’t represent your brand well. I’m not encouraging you to go out and be a jackass. I’m simply encouraging you to start creating stuff that no one in your industry would see coming. I’m encouraging you to build value by providing your prospects, clients, website visitors, social media followers with an expert insight that no one else is sharing. I’m encouraging you to INTERRUPT the current way that your industry is doing business. If you can’t be different, why bother at all?
Now, go forth and DISRUPT.
Thanks for reading and sharing.
@TomJelneck
My Latest Media Appearances
Stay Connected
It’s Not You, It’s Us. Oh Wait, No, It’s You.
Being in business for over 10 years has exposed my company to a wide variety of characters. I’ve meet amazing people. I’ve meet not-so-amazing people. I’ve meet people who would give you the shirt off of their back, I’ve met people who live to rip other people off. I’ve met people who tell the truth, I’ve met people who don’t have an honest bone in their body. Over the years I’ve learned MANY lessons. Lessons of humility, lessons of practicality and PLENTY of lessons about humanity.
I do consider myself a good judge of character but sometimes, I completely miss the call. I’ll see a prospect that I think we should pursue, their story checks out, their budget seems legit, they talk the right talk, they agree and shake their head when I try my darndest to manage expectations, I take on their project and within a month, I regret every second of it and EVERY dollar of it.
We recently took on a digital marketing job that was packaged just right. It looked right, the product looked right, the foundation was in place, but when I met the folks in our conference room, I could tell that something wasn’t quite right. I should have trusted that feeling. 2 months went by, after we went overboard explaining what to expect out of an SEO campaign and then they wanted to meet. No big deal, it will be an opportunity to show them the amazing results that our team has produced. Analytics were all way up over the last 3 months, search results were WAY up way quicker than expected, leads were up by 60% over the previous quarter, things were looking way up.
24 hours after that productive meeting, they fired us. The ex-client exclaimed how SEO just takes way too long. They noted that they received 0 leads, (totally incorrect.) They noted that their search results were not as expected (despite several number one rankings in 2 months). They noted that their son-in-law could do the job and will do it for free from here. This is always frustrating for my team. They truly put their hearts and souls into each client campaign. They all go the extra mile, they all take a loss personally. I feel partially responsible for that. I should have said no to their business from the beginning. I should have realized that they would bail as soon as they actually started to get rankings. This would probably explain why they had been through 4 SEO / Digital Marketing companies in a one year period. Lesson learned.
A wise man once told me, you can’t expect your business to grow if you never say no. In fact, I read an article just this week that illustrated how some of the world’s most successful CEO’s say no 78% of the time. Saying no means saying no to new business that just doesn’t feel right. Saying no means not letting customers work around your boundaries. Saying no means not dropping your pants on pricing just to get the business. Saying no can sometimes SUCK. But, it HAS to be said. It’s not easy. It’s not fun. It’s NEVER popular, but at the end of the day, it’s your organization. It’s your products and services that people need. It’s your business process, employees, your bottom line, your life. I should have listened to that wise man AND my gut with this particular client.
The bottom line, if you ever feel that the person / company you’re about to do business with is not above board, you owe it to yourself, to the integrity of your business, to the sanity of your employees and to the bottom line of your company to walk away. Practice saying no. Practice it often. You can still provide excellent customer service by creating boundaries. Could you lose clients? Sure. Will some clients expect a YES all of the time? Yes. The truth is, great clients will understand that you need boundaries, that you have a process, a system and a method to your operations. Those, my friends, are golden clients.
Follow Me
Outside Marketing Reality VS. Inside Reality
I was visiting an organization the other day and meeting with the executive director. It was the first time I had ever been to their office, so wasn’t really sure what to expect. We were going to discuss an ongoing content marketing strategy in order to help connect this nonprofit with their volunteers in some neato, cool ways. I loved their website, their executive director was passionate and very hospitable, so I was excited to visit.
Until… I walked in the door. I walked into a waiting room type area with multiple chairs. There was an unmanned receptionist desk, but their were signs of life on the desk, including a really moldy coffee cup and some crumbled up, presumably used kleenex. I waited a few moments and could see some cubicle dwellers in the wings. They were busy, doing their thing and none had even looked up to see me standing there. So 3 minutes has gone by and I finally did the throat clear thing, you know, to get someone’s attention and acknowledge that their was a new human being in the office. One gentleman in a bright sweater walked by, looked at me and turned his back on me to help a cubicle dweller. He was literally 5 feet away from. He saw me standing, saw me make eye contact and chose to do nothing. No head nod, no 1 minute signal, no nothing. Cold.
Finally, I decided to walk around the corner and flag someone down to get our meeting started. Hospitality Fail. I’ve been thinking about this awkward encounter a lot. This great online presence, this shiny website that is very welcoming, this organization that serves people in such a profound way and then within their organization, their people, their team have no sense of carrying that mission out internally. Maybe this was an isolated issue, maybe it was just a crazy busy day, but maybe, just maybe, the interior culture isn’t matching the outbound messaging.
How does your business address culture? Do you hold days of retreat and reflect upon the organizations’ mission? Do you hire only certain folks that seem to fit within? Do you send them daily quotes of inspiration and instill in them the mission of the organization? Do you let Mike with the Yellow sweater ignore guests? Do you let Sally behind the cubicle not acknowledge people walking in the door? Now granted, I’m just a consultant. But what if I was a new potential community partner or donor meeting to discuss a large gift? What if I was a volunteer who had just donated weeks of their time organizing the last fundraising event?
Our outside marketing needs to match our inside reality and vice versa. That rings true for businesses, for nonprofits, for churches, for city governments. The next chance you get, reflect upon how people perceive the good work that you do and how you’ve built a culture to bolster and build that up.
Thanks for reading and sharing.
@TomJelneck