Tag: Boston Website Management

Beware of self proclaimed SEO and Social Media expertsMarch 1st, 2012

It seems like every day I get an email from a new social media or SEO expert guaranteeing to make my company the Angelina Jolie’s leg of the new media world. (hey if you watched the Oscars then you would get that joke :)).

The reason is simple, anyone can call themselves an expert. Here is some advice,  follow a few simple steps.

1. Check and see if their email comes from an actual domain. Or do the emails come from ?    If so I delete their emails.  If they truly were experts they would show you their own SEO and Social Media success and not hide behind an anonymous email account.
2. If they do have a website, do the following
1. Check out their Google rankings for SEO, chances are they aren’t in the top 100 for “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization”.  Go no further. Delete email
2. For Social Media check out their twitter and facebook following.  If they call themselves a social media expert and have 75 followers, go no further. If they have a stale twitter or facebook account, go no further.  As the expression goes, “Physician heal thyself”. In other words, if it was easy, they would do for themselves what they are promising you!
3. Look for black hat SEO tricks.  If they are cheating to get good google rankings, then delete their emails. Temporary success will lead to de-listing in the index. You don’t want any part of that.

Bottom Line:  Craft a good social media strategy, with a reputable company, and give it a chance to work. Combine innovation and automation and you will succeed.  The same goes for SEO, it isn’t easy but you can make continuous improvements and eventually get where you need to be.  Feel free to contact me at any point for assistance. I  have had good success for my clients and can help you as well through one of our management plans, all of which include free social media management.

Steve Jobs and the back of the cabinet mentalityDecember 25th, 2011

I am only one chapter into the Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson and I am already fascinated and learning things I didn’t know. You always wonder what drives a perfectionist.   Early in the book Jobs was talking about his adopted father (I won’t use that term again as this man was his father, the biological thing is overrated) and how when they needed something for the house, he would build anything and everything.  He was building a cabinet and imparted on his son, that the back of the cabinet should look as good and built as well as the rest.  Stop into any home improvement store and you will see the back of the cabinet is made of crap wood, and even cardboard.  Job’s dad was insistent and even their fence was made so that the parts you couldn’t see were made as well as the parts you see and looks as good.  When Jobs showed Isaacson the fence was still standing a half a century later, you could start to see why Jobs was so bent on only delivering products which were as good as that fence.

It is funny, as a developer, I was taught by such a perfectionist.  Your code must pass rigid validation, and work on every browser. I spent many painful day early in my career making sure pages displayed ok in Netscape 4x browsers and later Netscape 6.  I remember developers wanting to forget those browsers.   But, to me this was my “back of the cabinet” and to this day we are rigid at RooSites making sure our sites display in a wide range of browsers and of course the iPad.

As I read more I am sure I will have more comments on the book. You have to admire Jobs for allowing the author to let it all fly, good and bad. Jobs was human and there was a lot of negatives as do we all. But intensely fascinating and lessons for us all seem to ooze out of the book.