Thanks for visiting! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed.

Just a quick FYI, I will be out of the office Friday July 3 until Monday July 13. Thankfully this is the last trip scheduled until the fall (following trips to Atlanta, Richmond, Sea Island, Hawaii, Rochester, NY and Boulder, CO).

As if you weren’t jealous enough, the upcoming trip starts with two nights of camping in Traverse City, MI where we will visit the National Cherry Festival, among other things. From there, my wife and I are headed to the Upper Peninsula (the “UP”) for a week. She is going to be working at the Baycliff Camp as part of her residency program and I am going backpacking on Isle Royale for 4 days.

View Larger Map

My email access will be very limited all week and nonexistent when I’m on the island. See you when I get back…if the wolves don’t get me first!

I have a confession to make. I’ve been unfaithful. Before you call my wife (and her attorney), I’m not talking about my marital status…which is great, by the way.

Google and I have had a long-term relationship that has rarely been challenged. I’ve used it for nearly everything: web searches, email, calendars, blogging, photo sharing, advertising, website enhancements, research, and about a million other tasks critical to my personal and professional lives (I try to keep them separate and balanced).

But lately I’ve been visiting another site for my basic web search needs. Okay, a few other sites. And you know what? I like it! I recently changed my browser’s default search engine from Google to Yahoo!, simply to get another perspective on “relevance.” Who knows? I might try Ask or MSN Live Live Search next week.

You see, I’ve had Google set as the default in Firefox’s search bar for as long as I can remember. Years. Possibly nearly a decade. It’s been so easy just to query the world’s “database of intentions” without having to type in yet another URL.

It’s Okay to Cheat

Switching search engines periodically will expose you to new search tools, new definitions of relevance, and different types of search results.

Pay attentions and you might discover some actionable intelligence about your competitors’ search marketing strategies.

Try it, you might like it. Just don’t tell Google.

I recently discovered that The Collegian, the University of Richmond’s student-run newspaper, is online and published in a very cool WordPress theme. So, naturally, I subscribed to the RSS feed and love reminscing about the “good ole’ days”.

A recent post caught my eye called “25 Things I Learned at UR“. Although similar to the “My 25 Things” Facebook meme that I dislike, I clicked over and settled in for a quick jaunt down memory lane.

I started off nodding and smiling at the first few items, such as:

1. Walking around campus and asking every acquaintance about their general well being. This instinctual habit throws off my friends from home, who don’t quite know how to respond: “Er…I’m okay, I guess. Thanks for asking.”

and…

7. Looking forward to the beginning of every semester to check out the new batch of exchange students.

After that it started going downhill.

8. Every moment is a Facebook moment.

Facebook wasn’t around when I was in school, and I didn’t graduate that long ago (Class of ‘03). Okay, starting to feel a little old.

12. Learning fratty lingo: bro out, freshman skeeza, care, etc.

Hmmm…not sure but I can probably guess.

I could go on, but I don’t want to give away too many sordid details about my college experience (my parents read this, and they still think they paid for a late night study sessions and weekend cultural activities).

After all, it was years ago and thankfully Facebook had not yet been invented to document every single detail of our transgressions. So I have that going for me, which is nice. Sorry college kids, your exploits are captured, documented, tagged, shared, and waiting to be dug up several years from now when you run for office or apply for a job.

Rules:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. Made you look.

2. Don’t you have anything better to do?

3. What’s with the sudden fascination with intimate details of people’s lives?

4. Would you ever ask somebody about these details of their life if you were talking to them in person?

5. What about if they could track who was reading their “25 things” note?

6. Did you know I can track who reads my “25 things note”?

7. Did you know Facebook changed their Terms of Service recently and now they FOREVER OWN the rights to every bit of information, photos, “25 things”, and comment you ever make on here? http://consumerist.com/5150175/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever

8. I consider most of you “friends” or “acquaintances”, but only a handful of you could write my “25 things about me” note for me. You know who you are, and you know exactly what would be in it.

9. I don’t dislike this trend, just think it’s a little voyeuristic and impersonal.

10. If you want to know more about a person, why don’t you call them more often or grab a coffee or a beer?

11. I vowed not to write my “25 things note” and I still don’t think this counts.

12. Some of you may take this personally. Don’t. Social media changes the way people communicate, but it doesn’t replace personal relationships developed over long periods of time and/or shared experiences.

13. – 24. I’ve got nothing else to go here, but if you want to catch up sometime over a coffee or beer, I’ll be happy to chat.

25. #6 is a lie. I can’t tell who reads this. But would it change things if I could?

Differentiating a commodity is difficult, just ask anybody that sells gas, rice, or copper. These products are relatively undifferentiated and therefore can’t be sold at a premium. A supplier must bend to the will of the market and price their products properly or risk being undercut by another supplier selling the same product at a lower price. These price wars benefit the consumer but hurt the suppliers.

What if you are a supplier in an increasingly commoditized market such as Search Engine Optimization consulting? How do you differentiate your services from your competitors without straying too far from the “mainstream” SEO consulting business?

Unique Selling Propositions

Vast fortunes can be made based on a proprietor’s ability to develop and promote a Unique Selling Proposition (USP, also called a Unique Value Proposition or Unique Selling Point) for their product or service. A USP is critical because it conveys a unique benefit to the consumer.

Unique: radically distinctive and without equal

Benefit: something that aids or promotes well-being

If you sell pizza and can demonstrate that YOUR company delivers pizza faster than anybody else, you can persuade a lot of customers to buy from you simply based on the fact that they will get it sooner. Although your pizza may be exactly like your competitors’, your faster delivery time is the unique benefit.

Goats On The Roof

Want a practical example? Imagine you own and operate a small country store in small town in rural Georgia. Thousands of travelers drive through your town each week on their way to and from a nearby recreational lake and they have a half dozen country stores to choose from in your town alone. How do you differentiate your business and get more than a 1/6th share of the customers and revenue?

Simple, you put goats on your roof. Build them an intricate series of bridges, houses, and ways for visitors to feed them.

Goats On The Roof

The Goats

This is an actual country store in Tiger, GA named Goats On The Roof.

The Results

Drive through Tiger, GA (Google Map) on any given weekend and you will see that almost everybody stops at Goats On The Roof simply to feed the goats and marvel at the novelty of the idea. My hunch is that not many people would care to stop if it were simply Goats In A Field or even a Goats In A Petting Zoo. You can bet this attraction has resulted in significantly more business for the proprietors and a better shopping experience for the customers.

The Lessons for SEO Consultants

You may notice a lot of competition in your town or across the country for the consulting services you provide. This is validation that SEO works and that companies are deriving enough value from it to invest and recommend it as part of a larger marketing strategy to other businesses.

What are you doing to differentiate yourself from the other SEO consultants or firms in your town? Livestock might not be the answer in our industry, but perhaps you can position yourself as the “go-to” person for reputation management crises, local search marketing, or mobile search optimization.

Can you offer anything different? Faster turn-around times? Better and more useful reporting? On-site training and knowledge transfer for your clients’ marketing teams?

By developing and promoting your USP, you are able to differentiate yourself from seemingly similar businesses. This will lead to greater visibility and for your services, and most likely improve your client acquisition and retention efforts.