I started doing this blog as an outlet for sharing my experiences, best practices, and things I’ve learned working in the field of electronic communications and digital strategy. The one thing that I didn’t realize, each time I sat down to write a post, was just how much my education in and feelings on leadership would play in the creation of the posts, particularly with regard to publically taking a position in my personal life that might have direct repercussions to my professional life.

One such item that I’ve come to terms with is my belief in marketing as a way of developing long-term awareness rather than a tool for short-term business growth. Some folks might consider this two sides of the same coin, but I don’t. For those people focused on short-term metrics and the bottom-line it’s difficult to imagine that marketing *only* creates an awareness. However, this makes me think of an old adage: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Some marketers prefer the alternative ending: You can lead a horse to water, and when marketed well, the horse will drink, and drink, and drink. I don’t believe this.

I believe marketing creates awareness. If the universe wants what you’re marketing then awareness will reel those folks in. If the product or service provides lasting value then the product/service will retain them.

Too often marketing or the creation of awarness around a product/service is viewed in the short-term. Without immediate results the marketing is considered a failure, and with great short-term conversion and sales the marketing is considered a success. This makes pretty flimsy criteria for determing success or failure, but to many folks things are just that black and white; for these folks, sadly, reality doesn’t coincide.

Marketing needs to stay focused on the long-term. Creating awarness, opening and changing people’s minds is an extremely slow process. I would argue that there’s no shortcut, and it’s something that an organization must take their time with.

Site Pro News is a great resource, and one that I look at daily. Late last week, I came across a great story on linking and SEO, two things that confuse a lot of folks. So in an attempt to provide value to readers of this blog, as a digital concierge, of sorts, I wanted to add a link to this site. The story is called Links 101 – Puritans, The Puerile & The Pragmatic by Ben Kemp, who also maintains his own blog called The SEO Guy, and as far as I can tell, this is the most brief and definitive discussion on the place of links and SEO I’ve come across. I’ve wanted to take the time to discuss these same things, but when I read Ben’s article, I decided why should I reinvent the wheel, I’ll just repost this article. I highly recommend that anybody interested in linking and SEO, or for those just confused by the whole things, read this story.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as author Robert Pirsig put it, had little to do with Zen Buddhism, and in the early 1970s, when the book was published that might have been true. However, in the nearly four decades that have passed a new definition of Zen emerged. While Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a discussion of what quality means, the sub-text of the book pointed at a non-controlling, and mindful approach to life and the universe where things were allowed to unfold without resistance. This is what makes me think of the title for this post, Zen and the Art of Web Strategy.

In my mind, the egalitarian nature of the Web and Web strategy has always been closely linked to Zen. With the Web, like Zen, anybody can get started any time. The barriers, if any, are few, so everyone has an equal opportunity to become a Zen or Web master. The Web, like Zen, encourages openness, because sharing isn’t a means to an end, it is the end itself, and that’s what has always driven the Web. The Web, like Zen, is allusive; when you think you’ve got it, either the next great business idea or the riddle of the universe, that’s precisely the problem and serves to illustrate that you don’t.

This is an unorthodox perspective when viewed from the traditional business paradigm because it seems as though everything is out of control, and just out of reach. To some extent it is, but that’s what makes the strategy fun, challenging, and quite a bit like a Zen koan.

I’ll use the concept of viral marketing to illustrate this point. Viral marketing is a relatively new spin on a concept that’s surely as old as time itself. Marketing 101 would say that anything that gets passed on by word-of-mouth, through email forwarding, or other comparable means of person-to-person dissemination qualifies as having gone “viral”. Viral marketing, on the other hand, is the attempt by marketers to manufacture this kind of response through the use of a variety of media, media platforms and sometimes unethical means. Sometimes it works, but mostly it’s hard to replicate.

Case in point, with regard to the Grateful Dead; it was unprecedented, and nobody could have ever foreseen that thousands of people would be trading tapes of Grateful Dead shows. In the earliest of times, we’re talking about badly reproduced and noisy recordings that were nothing more than an allusion to the music being played; nevertheless, it took off. Eventually, many live shows were put up for sale and Grateful Dead tape traders have become Web file traders who use the Web rather than the outmoded media of tape, and surely that will evolve into something else, but nobody could have bet on that, nobody!

Another great example is YouTube. One of the things that has gotten YouTube off the ground is the proliferation of clumsy and silly videos, some well-intentioned, some not so much that have made their way around the Web. YouTube has created something special and greatly diminished the barriers for getting video (and yourself) on the Web. With the amount of video that has been posted to YouTube it makes sense that some of these have taken off and gone “viral”, whether it is because of foolishness, incredibility or just because of the hilarity factor; and with 10-65,000 videos per day being posted it only increases the likelihood that something is going to go “viral”. YouTube has grown because of these “viral” videos being passed around. However, YouTube’s growth (and probably existence) would have been doubtful if it wasn’t totally open; YouTube’s parent company, Google, really, really get this.

In the examples above neither could have happened if left to traditional business paradigm means. And, anybody who you have believed that they could would have been laughed out of the room. However, in an open environment that fosters quality, and is willing to be patient, and let things unfold, naturally, anything can happen… frequently nothing happens, but while nothing is happening something is growing out of the stillness… Truly, this is Zen and the art of Web strategy… I’ll be talking about this more…

This is part 1 of an on-going, but not particularly linear, series on SEO.

The world of Web is steeped in jargon that leaves many entry-level common folk scratching their head first in wonder, then awe, and then irritation. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one such term. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about SEO; you want folks to find your site, you need to get listed it in search engines, because that’s where people go to comb through the mass of data that is the Web. However, the problem begins when you get people gaming the system.

Case in point: A few months back I took an interest in doing some freelance music journalism on the Web. I did this in the last couple years of college (1999 – 2002ish). At the time I found that the Web was a burgeoning source of information that generally paid — bonus and bonus. So I decided that I would look into this again to exercise my writing skills and make some cash on the side. I have to tell you I was blown away to see that along with various writing requirements, you had to be versed in SEO content writing. Huh? What’s that? Of course I knew what that meant, but I was a little shocked to see that as a requirement for freelance music writers. I did a little research and found that there was a new breed of Web writer, SEO content writers (click here for a link to a quick Google search where I plugged in “SEO content writers”).

Back in the innocent days of my previous web content sojourn there was just writing, and if the site had a good presence, and the content was good, it would get picked up by search engines… that was also kind of the beginning of the Google search revolution… A different time to be sure, but this illustrated a significant change… Web content had grown up into a real and valuable thing, and this was an eye-opener for me.

So where am I going with this? Basically, in my professional life I can appreciate how one might like to fast-track their Google rankings with slick SEO styled content, but at the end of the day, that will only get people to your site, it won’t make them continue to come back. There’s no shortcut. If you want a site that brings people back time and again, there’s only tried and true way, and that’s to deliver valuable content on a continuous basis. This won’t only get people to your site; it will get people sharing the value that they’ve found on your site, which in turn could make your site more valuable than you ever imagined. More on SEO to come…