Seth Godin says that marketing is all about promises.  Brutal honesty, authenticity and ethics are critical as well.

“If you must overpomise to get the sale, don’t do it.” says Godin. 

I have turned down four requests for new work today.  They were all “meatballs.” I could not keep the promises that the requesters wanted because the ideas were horrible or there was a swarm of well-funded competition all over them.   If I would have started these projects, I would have been lying.  I would have been breaking a promise (implied) that I could make it work.

A great website cannot save a poor/ordinary/boring product or idea.
And great SEO/SEM cannot save a poorly done website.

You cannot thrive online imitating an entrenched, well-done competitor.  You must be different and tell a better story about better stuff.  You must introduce scarcity and value.  If you can’t, you’re in the wrong business.

Admit it.  Quit, Fail, whatever… and move on to a new idea.  They are out there - millions of them. 

From an article on Final Call:

Two dolls sit on the table, one Black, and One White. Every feature other than race is identical. The reassuring female voice asks the preschool-aged Black Girl a question “Can you show me the doll that looks bad?” She chose the Black doll over a White one that is identical in every respect except complexion. “And why does that look bad?” “Because she’s Black,” the little girl answers emphatically. “And why is this the nice doll?” the voice continues. “Because she’s White.” “And can you give me the doll that looks like you?” The little girl hesitates for a split second before handing over the Black doll that she has just designated as the uglier one.

New research has been released lately.

The Pew Research Center finds that 67% of black men and 74% of black women think rap music is a bad influence on black America. In fact, 59% of black men and 63% of black women think the whole hip-hop industry from fashion to attitude is detrimental to African-American progress in the US.

The proportion of young black people in the 18-29 age group who condemn the current media images of black people is 31 percent — higher than the 25 percent of blacks between the ages of 30-49, and the 17 percent of blacks in the 50-64 age group with similar disdain for black images in the media.

Similarly, when asked if the portrayal of black people on television and in the movies is harmful, it is young black people who agree most. More than half of 18- to 29-year-old African Americans agree that black people are presented in a negative way in popular media. 50% of black people ages 34-49 agree. White and Hispanic Americans agree, too. The Pew poll finds 64% of whites and 59% of Hispanics agree on the damaging impact of hip hop (including the one writing this blog post.

The full report from Pew is here.

While hardly as sophisticated as the testing that Malcolm Gladwell refers to in “Blink” the results are more than troubling. Many think that this comes from subtle cultural clues, such as microaggressions.

But one must be careful about these surveys, as well as experiments like the one with the little girl. Since they had to explain much during the survey, did they answer with their hearts? Did she?

Since the little girl anticipated being asked “why” did she automatically go for the answer that would be easiest to explain (in terms of forming an explanation, not in explaining society.)
This scrutiny of such results is frequently discussed by Gladwell. If you’ve not read “Blink” you simply must.

Gladwell on Oprah: “Those kinds of snap decisions that make up so much discrimination or … our thoughts and feelings, they’re a product of the worlds we live in,” Malcolm says. “And if you live in a world, as we do, where you … turn on the television and you see a TV show and the crack dealer’s always a black guy and the judge is always a white person … those images start to matter. They start to change the way the software in your head works. And that’s regardless of what race you are.

One of my clients has drawn my attention back to the split-second racial stereotype issues in recent weeks. The maker of the Eithidolls has an African Doll perfectly suited for African American Girls and other races too! Everything about it is in support of African micro-industry, fair trade, and authenticity. The story of Makeda, Queen of Sheba is inspiring and perfect bedtime material. It won’t change the world alone, but it’s nice to see a positive step. If my girls weren’t bursting at the seams with such toys I’d definitely have one here.

I worry that lots of people, especially white people, avoid the truly extraordinary products if they must explain their purchases to others.  If you buy a black doll for a white girl, you must explain yourself to many in our culture.   That should not be.

I came across these links related to this Topic. I hope you enjoy them.

Kwanzaa Kidz
Offers African centered childrens products and online games that educate and entertain.

A Caramel Kids eStore
A Caramel Kids eStore is one of the best multicultural e-Stores for African American,.

Dolls Like Me: Multicultural Dolls
Toy store featuring African American, Asian, Biracial, and Latino dolls and puppets.

Street Legends Ink
Hip-Hop Store specializing in High Quality Urban Comics and collectible toys.

Black Toys and Games
Find websites that showcase Black - African - Ethnic Toys and Games.

Queens of Africa Project
The Queens of Africa Project

Tyrone Geter
Dolls by one of the curators of Ponder Gallery at Benedict College, the fourth large HBCU (Historical Black Colleges and Universities) in the United States

The African Queen
Photos of an amazing African Queen Doll

Kwanzaa
A Great Page of Information

Kwanzaa - A Celebration of African Culture
All About The Holiday

Jasmyne Cannick
A Powerful, Well-Written Blog that digs into issues that are dividing us. Lots of thoughtful commentary. Allow some time to go through her posts.

Kwanzaa on Second Life

eShopAfrica
African Fair Trade

PLEASE DIGG THIS STORY

We are all busy, but most of us love blogs. Finding, filtering, and selecting blogs is something that must be done by hand. because it requires that we personally evaluate an author’s efforts and give them enough time to show their stuff. It’s my blog audition, borne from necessity.

At one point I had 1400 blogs in Google Reader, haphazardly picked. Even with nicely developed folders, filters, and so on, I found myself wasting far too much time. So one day I got fed up. I did the equivalent of “touch bloglist.opml” and started over.

And, what evolved afterward was a very simple and effective method for narrowing down the thousands of blogs without impacting your daily flow.

(more…)

What would you pay to be totally unburdened from spam? I mean totally.

$10/day?

$10/week?

$10/month?

Would you be willing to tighten laws on email commerce? Do you think that Trusted Sender programs are going to help?

I wonder if the blur between “hidden” SPAM filters, such as those offered by ISPs causes people to hold off on genuinely good spam filtering (yes, that you buy) because they think they “already have a filter” and are just resigning themselves to cleaning the crap out of their in-box each day?

I honestly don’t get it. This issue is having a huge, direct impact on our economy and yet nobody is taking serious action on it. If it weren’t for spamstopshere, I would be put out of business by SPAM.

Since my blog has a mix of SEM and non SEM posts, and I still want to post the Sphinn plug in button on them, I did a quick mod that only shows the “Sphinn It” button in the case where you’ve put the tag “Sphinn” in your Wordpress 2.3+ tags list. Feedback welcome. Bold text is new code.

function io_sphinn_it_filter($content)
{
global $wpdb;

$sphinnfound=false;

$targettag = “Sphinn”;
$posttags = get_the_tags();
if ($posttags) {
foreach($posttags as $tag) {
if ($sphinnfound=stristr($tag->name,$targettag)){
break;
}
}
}

if ($sphinnfound){

// generate $sphinn_it_html based on …
echo ‘<script type=”text/javascript”>submit_url = \”.get_permalink().’\';</script>’;
echo ‘<div align=”right”>’;
echo ‘<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://sphinn.com/evb/button.php”></script>’;
echo ‘</div>’;
// new content will be added after each post
$content = $content . $io_sphinn_it_html ;
return $content;
}
return($content);
}

If you have an improvement, feel free to shoot ‘em over.

Remember, you have to put “Sphinn” in your post Tags before the button will display.

As some of you know I work with Franchises quite a bit in my SEO/SEM work. These organizations offer something unique to the market. But it’s not easy thanks of some nasty dynamics. While some franchise buyers realize they’re actually buying a model and should retain consistency, many others think that they’re only buying “guidelines” they should be able to color at will.

I’m proposing a system for improving the quality, fairness, and understanding during due diligence as it relates to business model franchises. Essentially, a way for buyers to know who they’re dealing with as they do research.

Let’s take a real-world scenario involving two franchisees who are about to become the target of a due-diligence routine:

Franchisee 1 follows the business model. The operations manuals are well worn and they give the franchise model benefit of the doubt, especially in the early days of their location. But most of the time they pull through it (”the dip“) and if the model is a good one, begin to succeed as designed. They think of the franchise model as “rules” to be followed to the letter.

Franchisee 2 uses their own ideas. They try to run it the way they’d run a business started from scratch. They aimlessly try different things and frustration builds. Their operations manual is covered with dust. They start to lose money, and 90% of the time they blame the franchise. They think of the franchise model only as “guidelines.”

Potential Franchisee 3 comes along, and wants to do due diligence by way of calling or visiting other locations. They begin calling franchise locations. By Murphy’s Law, they call Franchisee 2, and get an earful of how “bad” the franchise is. This can undermine thousands of dollars in marketing effort, many hours of salesperson time, and is how many franchises bleed to death. But also it may put a stop to what would have become a very profitable venture for #3.

I have a simple idea to level the playing field and would love feedback. (more…)

I found this on JonathanFields.com, and it resonated.

Some people thrive on the energy of a constant battle. On how badly they can take those around them. Not me. It kills me. And, at least for me, I discovered there is a much better way to launch and grow your small business or reinvigorate your career.

One that leaves you feeling incredibly jazzed about the work you do and the impact you have on your clients, your community and your staff. One that cultivates an atmosphere of gratitude, loyalty, honesty and an organizational work-ethic capable of driving productivity and profitability like never before.

One that positions you as a leader, a philanthropist, a visionary, a mentor and massive-success story, rather than a bastard-boss or back-stabbing colleague who rules over an apathetic, disloyal, thieving workforce who’d be just as happy to see you crash and burn as they’d be watching you succeed.

One that builds your business not with a bullied client-base always in search of someone else to give them a better deal, but upon the relationships cultivated with a consistent, devoted client-base that will often even pay a bit more for the pleasure of continuing to work with you.

Not bad at all….

To all the restaurants offering free Wi-Fi, I say THANK YOU. I love it. Panera Bread led the pack, and more are offering it. But for those of us who are popping in for a quick lunch by ourselves, laptop in tow, what if we need to leave the table for a few minutes - to get a refill, grab our food, or pee?

My laptop is valuable to me mostly due to MY TIME spent installing all that damn stuff (and of course $1400 worth of Dell.) And while I can lock the data as I go, I have a hard time locking the machine itself. And while I don’t carry any huge chunks of personal information on there, it would be nice to snap it on the table. So, how about adding some little security hooks on your tables I can loop my laptop cable through real quick?

It might someday prevent the hassle of having my machine stolen, or worse:

26.5 million U.S. veterans was on a laptop taken from the home of a U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs employee.
330k Social Security numbers of American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
243,000 Hotels.com customers were compromised in a laptop theft
13,000 D.C. employees info was let free when a laptop belonging ING U.S. Financial Services was stolen.
A laptop containing debit card information and Social Security numbers of 65,000 persons was stolen from YMCA’s administrative offices.
A Boeing employee’s laptop was grabbed at an airport, compromising 3,600 employees SS#s, addresses and phone numbers.

And I’ll bet at least one of these people just went out to pee for a second.

I always look forward to Seth Godin’s posts, and I’m glad to learn today a new book is coming out (I’ve always been impressed with how quickly his audiobooks follow, too.) The latest is called Meatball Mondae, and you should check it out.
Today, he addresses one of the issues facing many people who spend time in Internet Marketing, at least those who have really done it well. By “well” I don’t mean those who’ve made the “a-list” blogrolls. I mean those who have been able to change the bottom line for clients directly by helping them discover, streamline, or invent approaches to using new media.

I have been trying to develop a questionnaire for new clients that will help me discover their current attitudes about Web Marketing as well as establish expectations. This is not easy. There is a delicate balance between asking the good questions and sounding uninterested in working with them. “The other guys aren’t making us answer these questions.” should be a disqualifying comment, but there is that issue of paying the mortgage, but I’m getting there. My dream is to get to the point where people say “I’m totally impressed that you’re taking the time.”

So to Seth’s point, make sure you realize that the only way to benefit from today’s latest New Media revolution is through full integration within your organization, not by hiring someone to doll it out in sugary snacks in the breakroom.

My question remains… to work together, where can I plug in? Where can I connect with the wiring of your organization and look for places we can apply changes so you can fully take advantage of what’s going on out there. Or do you still consider me a Computer Jockey - someone to pull wires or fix your email? I need to know.

Personal PS: I’ve been blogging a little more than usual because I’ve been a bit bed-ridden these days and it keeps my mind off of it. Hopefully there’s still some good stuff coming out. To my clients, thank you for your patience.