Ok, so Kevin said we ought to make up alternate words for Terri Clark’s song “Dirty Girl”.

So we gave it a shot.

Nerdy Girl

Brain cells chewin’ on the error message
Throwin’ tech words everywhere
I’m beside you helpin’ with the guesses
Runnin’ my fingers through your hair

And you know, there’s nothin’ like it in the world
When we’re out there in front of the Dell and I’m a nerdy girl

I like it when we get cleaned up on Monday
Snuggling up with strings of code in Perl
Well when we’re coding and it’s just a fun day
You know, I love it when I get to be your nerdy girl
Nerdy girl

You’ll be workin’ on that brand new program
Smoke almost pourin’ out your ears
I’ll come sneakin’ up and whisper real low
“You’ve got a semi-colon missing here”

And you know, there’s nothin’ like it in the world
When we’re troubleshooting code and I’m a nerdy girl

I like it when we get cleaned up on Monday
Snuggling up with strings of code in Perl
Well when we’re coding and it’s just a fun day
You know, I love it when I get to be your nerdy girl

And you know, there’s nothin’ like it in the world
It might be php or trying out some Rails
But when you whisper geek and send me tech emails
I’ll be your nerdy girl

I like it when we get cleaned up on Monday
Snuggling up with strings of code in Perl
Well when we’re coding and it’s just a fun day
You know, I love it when I get to be your nerdy
Get to be your nerdy girl, nerdy girl
I get to be your nerdy girl

Local search is being used increasingly by people in larger metro areas, and as a result, search engines are now emphasizing it in search results. For many businesses, this is an opportunity. For others, it is not only NOT an advantage, it ends up being a problem. Local search doesn’t benefit all businesses.

If you have a local physical location that you want to draw people to, or if you want to attract people near where you are located, local search is helpful, and there are ways you can capitalize on the trend. You can work location keywords into your title and description tags (careful, no more than two per page), and you can put a single location list on each page in your site (put it in the same location on each page, near the bottom, no more than 10 locations, and make it people friendly). This can help bring you the people who are most likely to buy and trust you.

On the other hand, for many businesses, it isn’t helpful at all. This can be for a range of reasons, and our business is a good example. We market nationwide. There are a few towns near us that we market into, but there are limits to listings that mean it won’t help us at all.

Local search engines and local search results often have limits to them.

• First, they ONLY allow you to put in your actual business location. So even if I am doing events in other cities, and need local advertising, it does not help me, because my business address is in Wyoming, and that is what they judge your location by. You cannot be located one place, and promoting into another.
• Next, they only show results in a 50 mile radius. Well, we are in Medicine Bow, but we serve several Wyoming towns – Laramie is 60 miles away, Rawlins is 60 miles away, Saratoga is 60 miles away, Casper is 95 miles, and Cheyenne is 105 miles. No good at all!

And some locations may not have a high enough population to make it worth promoting local. An SEO pro once tried to do some optimization with one of our sites, and recommended using Wyoming in all of our key site tags. Apparently she did not do the research ahead, but made some erroneous assumptions. In any other state, that might work. In Wyoming it does not.

• Wyoming has a population of only 800,000 and some odd. The WHOLE STATE! And the number of searches per day for Wyoming Web Design is pathetically small – not even into double digits, and that with inflated reporting methods! So Wyoming isn’t worth going after in the first place!
• Other companies across the US also make the same erroneous assumption that the SEO pro did. They assume it is a state like any other and worth going after, so they optimize for it along with all the other states. That means you have thousands of companies wrangling over three interested people per day, and you can’t even RANK for Wyoming Web Design related terms. Bloated competition, and nearly non-existent market base. Bad combination.

So optimization for local search is a big strike out for us on all counts. It does provide a good example of not just one or two reasons for not using local search optimization, but just about EVERY reason not to use it though!

• The thing is, there are a LOT of small, rural businesses with similar issues to what we have. No customer base at all within 50 miles of them, and a need to market out further.
• There are a LOT of businesses with a national focus to whom local optimization is a waste of time.
• There are a LOT of mobile businesses that do local presentations or local events, which need local marketing, but who cannot access it, and for whom the current setup is totally useless.

When optimizing a website, don’t overlook Local if it is an asset. But don’t think it is useful for every site either – putting local info in on a site that won’t benefit from it will actually HURT them, not help them.

Life was good. Her husband had a fine job, she worked a little from home, and her kids were well, and progressing through the normal milestones of childhood and school. She experienced the normal ups and downs of confidence associated with juggling a busy life. But it was good, and she felt fairly competent in her life, and sure of her ability to cope.

Then one day, she found a green dragon in her kitchen, blocking the way to the sink, where a load of dirty dishes awaited. She managed to get around it, after struggling with it for a bit, but it tormented and teased her as she worked. It dropped dishes, got in the way, and generally slowed her work. The next day, it was still there. And the next, and the next.

Several days later, a purple dragon appeared in the livingroom. It took up residence in the middle of the room, and harassed her as she vacuumed, and folded laundry.

Soon, an orange dragon appeared in the diningroom, and a blue one in front of the kitchen stove. A red one appeared in the bathroom, where it made taking a shower very difficult. A yellow dragon parked itself in her car, requiring a struggle to drive anywhere. And then a black dragon appeared at the foot of the bed, to challenge her each morning as it came time to rise.

No one else seemed to see the dragons. They were hers, alone, to battle, and they were everywhere. They got in the way when she helped her kids with schoolwork, when she tried to get out of the house to volunteer. They made everything she did very hard, and often made it impossible to complete the tasks she set out to accomplish.

At first, the dragons were a challenge, and she kept on going. She faced each with a determination to NOT let them conquer her, and to get things done in spite of them. But as they appeared, day after day, and as new dragons joined the old dragons, she found she just could not fight all of them, all the time – there simply was not enough of her to do it all. Sometimes the dragon at the stove was so troublesome that she just asked the kids or her husband to make sandwiches instead of cooking dinner for them. She often left the laundry in the basket beside the couch, because it was simply too difficult to complete the task. The floor went un-vacuumed, and the broom stayed under guard by a pink dragon in the hall closet. Some days, it seemed that the battle to just get out of bed was all she could handle – everywhere she moved, a dragon was in the way, and nothing else seemed to get done.

At night, she would go to bed, reviewing the day, feeling like a failure, because nothing had been done that seemed to matter. She had spent the day battling dragons, and had not accomplished any of her appointed responsibilities.

One day, a friend came to visit. She looked at the floor, and at the laundry, and at the dishes in the kitchen, and at the bread and peanut butter on the diningroom table where the kids had left it after eating lunch.

“How are you… Really?” she asked, looking at the weary woman’s face.

“Oh… ok.” she sighed. “I just wish there were more hours in the day.”

“You look tired.”

“I feel like I am not getting anything done that I should be doing!” once she started, it was hard to stop.  “My house is a mess, my kids are fixing their own meals most of the time, and it is hard to just get out of bed! And I just can’t get anything done, I just feel so incompetent! I’m not DOING anything!”

“Yes, you are doing something. You’re battling dragons.” the friend said.

She looked startled. “Can you see them too?”

“No, but I’ve had my own battles with dragons, so I know what they do. And I know what someone looks like when they are fighting them.” the friend replied.

“I thought I was the only one. I thought I was going crazy, or that I had done something bad to deserve them!” the woman said.

“Oh, most people have dragons at some point. And most women beat themselves up when those dragons get in the way and they can’t do everything they think they should.” her friend said gently, “There are some people who haven’t battled dragons yet, who will make you feel guilty, but many people have been where you are, and they really do understand.

“Dragons come in a lot of forms, and pretty much everybody fights them at some point or another. You know Julie?” the friend asked. The woman nodded in response, as her friend went on, “Her daughter has a heart condition. She has battled dragons from the day her daughter was diagnosed. And Tracy?” again the woman nodded, “Her mother moved in with her, and cannot feed or dress herself anymore. A lot of dragons came with that one. Kendra has Lupus, and fights some of the biggest dragons I’ve ever heard of. Angela has a mental illness, which stays fairly well controlled, but comes with an assortment of particularly nasty dragons. Nancy’s husband is out of work – so she and her husband both have dragons to fight. Elaine’s son has a rare chromosomal disorder, so their whole family fights dragons because of it.”

“I didn’t realize!” the woman exclaimed. “I got so busy worrying about my dragons that I didn’t even see that other people might have similar challenges.”

“Oh yes.” her friend replied, “It is hard to see when you are fighting dragons, that other people are probably doing the same. But it is also hard to give yourself credit for fighting them. You feel tired every day, and you feel like you didn’t get anything done. But you DID. You fought dragons all day, and you STILL got up, took a shower, and made sure your kids were dressed and fed and safe.”

“But I didn’t cook anything, and I didn’t get much cleaning done.” she protested.

“If you are going to survive with dragons, you have to give yourself credit for what you DID do. You are surviving. That is a great thing, and takes a lot of energy when there are dragons that try to stop everything you do. You are surviving and still making a difference in the world – you may be sure that God certainly gives us credit for our accomplishments, even when it seems to only be battling dragons.” her friend assured her. “The dragons usually go away after a while. Some people have to live with them longer than others, but for most people, they will eventually go away. They may come back later in a different way though. When there are dragons, we get by, and do what we can. We get up each morning, and pick the most important thing to do. We try as hard as we can to do that thing. Sometimes it takes all day, or it is all we have the energy for. Sometimes we can’t even get that one thing done. But we keep trying. That is what makes a person a great survivor. NOBODY sails through challenges in life while doing everything they used to do. You just can’t do that and cope too!”

“I suppose you are right.” she admitted.

“When you can’t get things done, you are not doing nothing.” her friend said firmly. “You are battling dragons. And you are winning.”

If a client makes money this week from their website, I get a thank you, and raving compliments. If a client site slumps and doesn’t earn, I take the blame for providing them with a lousy website. That is the drawback of being a web professional – good, or bad, we get the credit or blame.

Problem with that is that we can only influence some things. A client just re-hired us to rework some on-page copy, and some title and description tags. Two years ago, she came to me with a site that had just tanked in Google. We went through and recommended some very simple changes. Two weeks later, she was at the top of Google again, where she stayed. I can’t really say that what we did even had any effect. It is possible that Google would have put her back anyway. But we got the credit, and more work because of it.

Early on in the web game, I realized that we could not just build a site and walk away. That if we did not continue to do some hand holding and to be there to help with traffic issues, not just design and technical issues, that we’d lose clients long term. So we started to figure out how to offer that stuff long term. Our client sites work much better when they know they can come to us for stats analysis and marketing suggestions any time. And we might as well throw in some simple stuff with our maintenance fee, because the fact is, if we don’t, we get the blame when the site fails to earn, and we lose clients in droves, and have a harder time getting more, as opposed to when they WORK, and clients recommend new clients.

So I realize there are some things that I SHOULD take the blame for, and many things I can influence.

I do find it amusing though, when things just happen, over which I did not actually have control, and I get the compliments or complaints.

I have long told my clients, “You are your biggest asset in your business, and in marketing.” I believe that the strengths of an individual point naturally to marketing methods and messages. When you maximize those, marketing is both easier and more effective. When you work against them, things become hard, and less successful.

A client of ours recently married. Her new last name was one that she felt uncomfortable in – she did not care for it, felt it was not necessarily a good image for her business. She had pondered and reached deep into herself to come up with a business name and imagery. She felt that what she had suited that vision.

She hired a marketing coach to help her to generate some clients. The first thing he told her is that she needed to rename her business, to her last name. He felt it was unusual enough to be memorable and that she should capitalize on it. He also told her to revise her business images, and totally rebuild it. She came back to me and asked me my opinion.

I disagreed with the marketing pro. It had nothing to do with his expertise, but with HER. He may have known how to get clients for himself, but he did not know her, and he did not seem to want to. I reminded her that she disliked her last name, but she loved her business name and felt it reflected a part of herself. That her business name was what she felt inspired to call it. I did not feel that she would be able to confidently go out there and promote her business if it was gutted of the very vision she had felt so strongly that she needed to promote. Her business name and imagery was wrapped up in who she is, and in the purpose of what she does. I felt if she removed those things, that she would be decapitating her business vision, and would remove her own ability to even do it any more. I also felt that in the event that it did work, it might bring clients to her that were not the ones she wanted to be working with.

My gut feeling about the marketing pro was that he was uncomfortable with who she was. That he wanted to remake her into a clone of himself, because that was the only success path he could envision. He did not understand that there are many ways to market, and many ways to succeed, and he simply could not get far enough outside himself to see who she really was, or to perceive any part of her as a strength, nor to be able to counsel her on how to USE her inborn strengths. He said that her site was wrong for the entire market she was aiming for – but the market was very diverse, and the messages were only wrong for the segment HE preferred. It was less a matter of it being wrong for the market than it was of his lack of ability to even SEE that portion of the market. She did not want the same customers he did, and he could see no value in any other.

I feel that when we create a business vision that is part of who we are, that it will naturally attract people whom we will be able to help, whereas when we use marketing methods that are not in line with our beliefs and personality, we are likely to end up with customers or clients that are a poor fit, even if we do manage to get any. Being who we are and stretching within that, is the best tool we have.

It doesn’t mean we don’t have to learn marketing skills. We do. But we learn skills and methods that are in harmony with our personality. When we stretch, we don’t go outside who we are, we simply extend our strengths. Over time, we become a new person, but it is a magnification of the best in us, not being rebuilt in someone else’s image.

You do have to step outside your comfort zone. But you still do it by being yourself. You don’t do it by trying to be someone else. The Lord has blessed us each with strengths, and expects us to use them. In order to use them successfully in business, you have to identify them, and then magnify them in ways that help you in reaching your goals. When you look at your business vision, and your marketing plans, make sure they are things you feel good about. If they make you feel a bit slimy, they are NOT right for you!

When getting help with marketing, the first thing any marketing coach, or consultant should do, is get to know you, and to get to know your business vision. If they don’t seem to be “getting” that, then they are not going to be able to help you market successfully, because they won’t know who you are trying to reach, and they won’t understand what really differentiates your business, because 90% of the uniqueness of your business IS you, and your unique way of doing what you do. Good marketing assistance is personal, and personalized. It isn’t a “system”, and it isn’t about making you into them. It is about drawing out what is best in you, and using that as your marketing strength.

Check out our new Cottage Industry Consulting and Development services at CottageIndustrialRevolution.com for personalized help in learning more effective marketing skills for YOUR business.