Reading Time: 2 minIn any kind of marketing it’s essential to know who your real customers are, but it’s sometimes a little trickier than it might seem. As I shared earlier this year, the people that we build websites for aren’t the ones that we’re actually building them for. When we build a site for a client, we’re […]
Content
Wasting your efforts on marketing
Reading Time: 2 minSolid marketing can do wonderful things for your business, but it can be easy to get distracted and waste your time. Similar to my recent post “Can you speed it up?“, people can often do things in marketing that have the opposite of the intended effect. In the book “Trying Not To Try“, the author […]
SEO hasn’t ever really changed
Reading Time: 2 minIf you’ve ever done work on your website to improve your search engine optimization (SEO), and you’ve done it in a legit way, the techniques really haven’t changed much over the years. Google’s Danny Sullivan recently tweeted (via SE Roundtable) that very thing with two comments. First, he simply said: “Our good advice then remains […]
“Make it darker” is not an acceptable form of feedback
Reading Time: 2 minFeedback can be a wonderful thing, as I’ve shared many times on here (like “Feedback is a gift“), but only if it’s the right kind of feedback. If someone says “I like it“, that’s not very helpful, because our clients are not the people that we build websites for. Their liking it or not is […]
AI won’t take over this blog
Reading Time: < 1 minWhile AI is already writing a ton of the content that you come across on the internet, that won’t ever be the case on here. That’s not because AI isn’t good enough or useful, but it goes against what I’m trying to accomplish. Recently, Blair Enns shared the following on Twitter: AI is only eating […]
It’s about time to remove the gates
Reading Time: 2 min“Gated content” on websites has historically been a great way to build an email list. I’m sure you’ve done it — there’s a great PDF that interests you like “10 ways to prepare your lawn for the fall”, and it’s free if you just give over your email address. Generally speaking, it’s a win-win situation; […]
You are advertising to a moving parade
Reading Time: < 1 minAdvertising tycoon David Ogilvy had many tremendous ideas when it came to advertising, but one of his big ones was to stick with what works. In his mind, companies switched from one marketing tactic to another far before the first one had run dry. If you’re sick and tired of the ads that you’re running, […]
Writing a summary is 100x more valuable than reading one
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve recently started listening to David Senra’s “Founders” podcast, and it’s fantastic! Every week he reads a biography of someone interesting and then shares his insights from the book in a ~60 minute podcast. While I’m enjoying listening to it, and I’ll continue to do so, I can’t help think one thing — David is […]
Visit your notes more often, not less
Reading Time: < 1 minThere are a lot of tools out there to help automate your note-taking. For example, a recent episode of Tech Talk Y’all shared the Omnivore app, which can automatically move highlights from your Kindle into Obsidian. It’s really slick, but I think it takes things the wrong direction for me. My notes are intended to […]
The clarity of an idea is based on the person receiving it
Reading Time: 2 minWhen sharing ideas and strategies with others, I try to be very clear. This takes two forms: First, it’s not magic. It irritates me when people tell me they have someone “doing SEO” for their site, but they have no idea what they’re doing. We strive to be clear and transparent with what we do, […]