Amy Middleton Loves New York

I’m sitting in the quiet, spacious living room of a San Diego farm house. I hear the cars pass by on the street. I hear the sound of roosters and crickets. I hear the mysterious noises of a rodent scurrying about. I hate that sound. But that’s what you get, I’m repeatedly told, when you live on a farm.

And guess what? I’ll take it!

With every day that I live in this gracious home of abundant plant and animal life, I become more convinced I don’t want to live anywhere else. Not for now, at least. Home ownership was a means to an end: the doorway to building a chicken coop and digging up the lawn to grow vegetables. But on this property where no grass grows, I have found all that I thought would make me happy. And so far, it does. And until I find the man who will build me a cob house, I’m more than content living here. Rent is affordable, roommates are fascinating, and there are nine chickens, several pullets, and many more chicks less than 100 feet from where I sit.

A few years ago I was at work and having intense chocolate cravings. After a while I realized my status message just happened to read: “Count Choculitis.” I changed it to something banana-related and had no problems the rest of the day (I had bananas with me). I’m that easily influenced.

Or maybe I should say, I’m that easily tempted by something already inline with my values. I’m not so willing to change my values by the power of suggestion; a thousand steak ads would not get me to consider abandoning my vegetarian ways. Maybe this is why most of us think we are immune to the effects of advertising–we don’t pay explicit attention to it and are unwilling to change our minds, values, or behavior to conform to ad messages.

I was disturbed to realize yesterday that even if advertising doesn’t change my values, it changes my perception of what society finds acceptable. For instance, because of ads that hawk them, I believe that most parents think it’s ok to give their kids ridiculous wrongly colored squirty fruit gusher processed snacks. I’ve never EVER talked to parents of grade school children about this, I just assume, based on the existence of the product and its advertising budget, that the message is accepted in our culture.

So if this personal discovery is at all reflective of how other people feel–if we collectively assume things about our culture based on the ads we see–then we really have to divorce ourselves from society in order to stand a chance of being immune to advertising’s influence. This whole time I’ve been thinking advertising doesn’t really change me, but it turns out it changes what I think about you, which is a more powerful influence than this Marketing Communications major had ever given thought to.

2 things:

1. People keep watching my cover letter slideshare! Yay! I realize that it’s not the most pretty or entertaining thing to watch, but somehow it’s at almost 700 views right now, which gives me confidence in the content (no one’s watching it for my slick use of a powerpoint template, that’s for sure). I decided if it hits 1,000 views, I’ll use it as a building block for a more engaging youtube video. More work for me, but who can resist the siren song of rediscovering the Flash learning curve?

2. Great article from 37signals on why a cover letter trumps a resume. Read it, then check out the killer cover letter submitted by their new hire Jason Zimdars. I weep.

I needed this.

Years ago I met an aspiring musician who didn’t listen to music because he wanted his sound to be unique. I can think of few better ways to guarantee mediocrity than to refuse to be inspired or participate in the conversation.

If you were to ask a struggling director whose films she most admired, and she shrugged and said she didn’t really watch movies, how successful would you predict she’ll be in her career? How about a web designer who doesn’t pay attention to web, or a journalist who is uninterested in current events? With many careers (especially in the arts), it’s easy to see that success requires personal investment.

I am surprised at how many people I talk to who are vaguely piecing together career paths around general interest, but not passion. They are unaware of what peers and pioneers are doing in their industry. They are not tuned in to the conversation, aren’t even fluent in the language of their craft, and somehow believe that nothing more is required of them for success.

I don’t mean to be rehashing Lisa Barone’s snarky explanation that it’s not the economy, it’s you (although I do agree with her on several points). Let me say, though, that THE WORLD DOES NOT OWE YOU A JOB. Even my mom can see the value of staying current in her industry, and her employment aspirations are rather old school. (Mom, if you read this, no disrespect.)

If there were ever a time to take personal inventory and build your own brand equity, it’s now. Who inspires you, and what are you doing to emulate them? Who do you read? (Mom, what does Jim Rothenberg have to say this week?) How do you get new information? How conversant are you in your field? How are you contributing to the conversation? What are you doing to be relevant?

I am honestly optimistic about the potential to contribute and find work, even in the current economy. Personal investment and passion are not just employment value-adds, they are the foundation for success. Don’t be afraid of inspiration. You can’t be inspiring if you’ve never been inspired.

I put together this project to help out some of my friends who are getting frustrated writing cover letters. I’m clearly not a power point pro, but I hope the content can be of use:

things i’d do if i had 3 months of no school, no work, no mobility:

get addicted to one tv show and watch every episode online (probably “Lost” since it comes so highly recommended).
learn to awesomely play 3 new beatles songs.
learn to crochenit! yeah!
take a picture every day of something i look at every day and post it and blog about it.
research sustainable living and green building methods.
take an online class in something i found interesting.
ask aaron brown for book recommendations and read 2.
come up with at least one design for cafepress.
send a nice email or facebook wall post to someone new every day.
learn a new skill via youtube.
explore 43things for ideas and goals.
be inspired every day by something someone has created or expressed.
re-read a favorite book from elementary school.
re-read a favorite book from college.
fill a notebook with drawings and ideas.
write a vivid account of a favorite bike ride.
save someone’s soul.

Search Engine Optimization is a complicated process; algorithms are constantly changing, and there are very few universally accepted rules. Those employed in the industry use nebulous terms and concepts when they are talking with clients to try to add credibility to their work (because if I don’t understand you, I’m left to conclude that you are smarter than me). Meanwhile, clients want to buy into the hype and insist that they get “first page results” because someone told them that if you are on page 2, you are invisible to your customers.

A few years ago we had a client trying to break into online. They manufactured disinfectant and cleaning products which they sold to hospitals. They had a bad website, no way to order online, and they wanted to rank #1 in organic searches for words like “HIV” and “clean.” Setting expectations becomes a big part of client relations in situations like this, and there are some consultants out there who would “guarantee” they can do it. Others would cite the “google sandbox” and say that results won’t be seen for about six months, that anyone who says otherwise is lying and just wants your money, and that you just need to trust and be patient and you’ll start climbing the ranks eventually as they slowly and organically “tweak” your site.

“The Long Tail” has become one of the favorite buzzwords in the industry because it captures the benefits of being specific. To quote Wikipedia, ‘the Long Tail is a potential market and.. the distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often enable businesses to tap into that market successfully.’ There are all sorts of tools to help you “discover” this potential market by using KEI and various link packages so you can “dominate” the results pages. The process is boxed up and sold as technology, which is again the essence of the problem.

What does it mean to dominate a results page? Wouldn’t it be that if people run a query for your product, they will find you towards the top of the list (maybe even in the coveted #1 spot)? Natural search is not the place for you to be #1 on the term “amazing,” unless you sell amazing as a noun, or you blog about “amazing” things. Businesses wanting to tap into the powers of the internet don’t think about this though (‘yes, but, if someone searches for amazing and sees us in the first position, that is incredible branding!’). They define the audience they want to reach as anyone who types a term loosely related to their company, and then they try to find ways to beat the “competition.”

I want to take a very simple, real life illustration to explain what happens in natural search, and what most people aren’t thinking about in their clamor to get all that web traffic. My example is the very site you are reading. The term is Margaret Merrill Toscano. Now, two things to note here.

1. My blog is not very popular as far as search engines are concerned. Even if I had hundreds of friends who daily checked my site, that would be a drop in the bucket compared to thousands of commercial and personal sites out there attracting a much larger audience.

2. My blog is not about Margaret Merrill Toscano. I mentioned her name last week- once- in a post about a PBS documentary. As far as I know, there are no inbound links to this site using her name. There are certainly no page titles, headings, or even <strong>’ed terms that include her name.

Given these two facts, I was surprised last week to look at my site stats and discover that three people had arrived at this site through a search engine query for Ms. Toscano. As of this posting, Google returns 29,700 results for Margaret Merrill Toscano. Crankybabicult.com is result #8.

If I sold articles by Ms. Toscano, I would be pretty pleased. People looking to find her articles would see my site, and I would work to optimize so that I came up even higher in the rankings by expanding my library and possibly writing more about her. It wouldn’t matter that my site is not ranked among the top 100,000 on the internet or that it has a low page rank. I would be effectively reaching the people who were looking for the products I sold.

What if I didn’t understand SEO though? Here’s what would happen. I would say, “so few people have heard of Margaret Merrill Toscano. We get such little traffic on that term. We need to increase our online exposure. Let’s optimize, instead, for the word ‘person,’ because she is a person, and that is a much broader term that probably gets a lot more searches. It is bad for business if we are satisfied with only appearing when someone is actively seeking our niche market. We need to advertise, and we’ll start with anyone who is looking for a person!”

Now, arguably my site is sometimes about various persons. But optimizing for that term would be such a bad idea. I would need to go back and rewrite all my posts to say “person” when I mean “Jordan” or “Jo” or “David.” That would make my site much less relevant than it already is. And people who are trying to find information on any of these persons would never find my site in their searches. Not to mention I would then need to try to “beat out” every other site that talks about a person.

I talk to people a lot about matters of the search engine, and I do my best to explain the importance of being specific and relevant. Of course searchers sometimes don’t know how to identify what they are looking for, and the very process of search has its flaws. I love it anyway. I love the potential the internet has to connect seekers with what they are seeking. In my opinion, the only role optimization should have in this process is to make it easier to find what is being sought. That doesn’t take six months, link packages, boxes, or bags. It takes clear, specific writing above anything else.

If you are a business, write about what you sell. If no one wants what you sell, that’s a problem that optimization won’t help you with. If people are looking for what you sell but don’t realize it (your product is the solution to their problem), then make sure you are writing about the problem as well. Contrary to the claims of certain direct marketing testimonials, the internet is not a cash machine that awards millions of dollars to whoever is in the top position for any given keyword. Most likely, you make money when consumers buy your products. Your goal in search engines is just to help them find you so they can buy from you. If you understand that and are okay with that, you and anyone who is working with you to accomplish that will do very well.

(Note: upon reading this over, I can hear in my head valid criticism insisting that location is key, that there is a reason companies are named AAAA, and that the difference between position #2 and #5 can be hundreds of thousands of dollars in some markets. To which I say: absolutely. If you are #5 for a highly-competitive keyword and know that sales would be improved by moving up three spots, you should definitely optimize on that keyword. That is a clear, quantifiable, (hopefully) achievable goal. But arbitrarily choosing popular keywords to optimize on for the sake of traffic, even if this worked, would not generate more sales.)

A man holding a large book titled “Learn English” sits down next to me on the subway tonight. There is something endearing about people who are making the effort to learn your language. I look over at the page he has open, which contains a series of exercises involving the present progressive. It’s one of those “Follow the model” things where you conjugate the verb according to the sample sentence. Thing is, for some reason the example includes the “to be” verb as a contraction prior to the blank line. It was:

“We’re _______ to the store” (go). This was filled out as “going” which is easy enough. But the next one was

“She ________ a dress” (buy). According to the construction of the example, the correct word would be “buying,” right? Go is to going as buy is to buying.

Proper use of “to be” in English is fairly difficult to learn. Why exacerbate the problem by using illustrations with inconsistent construction? Every single one of this man’s answers on the page was incorrect, because he correctly followed a poor model. It’s not your fault, subway guy. They doing a bad job of teaching.

Clearing off the counter involved finding a temporary home for a lot of found household objects; the cup with pens and scissors, the mail addressed to former residents, the gadgets and gizmos lacking clear intended uses. In the rearrangement process I decided the candy bowl might be a good container for the razor blade, and we were subsequently entertained by the reactions of our guests. Most accused us of being “THAT” house they were warned about as trick-or-treaters.

Less amusing was the reaction of a father of four who had brought his young family over to visit. Note to self: “Oh, there are little kids here, how about we take the razor blade out of the candy bowl” is an important action item, but probably does not need to be announced to the group.