Cameron Olthuis

To Seth Godin’s question.

Is marketing the art of tricking people into buying stuff they don’t need?

Or is it about spreading ideas that people fall in love with?

Since he doesn’t allow comments on his blog I’ll answer here.

It depends on a number of variables. The product, the marketer, the consumer, the market, the demand, and so on and so forth. To be honest it’s really too broad of a question for one right or wrong answer.

I think it really boils down to the marketer and the product or brand he’s marketing. Is he passionate about said product? Does he believe in the product? Would he actually use or purchase the product for himself? Does this product solve a problem?

All these questions would need to be answered before one could give a complete answer to the question.

There’s some products that no one would buy if they weren’t tricked into it first. I can’t help but think of MLM products for this example. These are the same products that just happen to be the stuff no one would ever fall in love with, which is obviously why the marketer has to resort to tricks.

I truely believe a really good marketer can do both, and do both very successfully. But I think a marketer who’s passionate about marketing would much rather take a job spreading ideas that people fall in love with. It’s easier, more fun, and a lot more gratifying.

Marketing for long term success that creates a powerful products/brands means spreading ideas that people fall in love with. I don’t think you can have a lasting product/brand if you can’t get people to fall in love first. But not all products are supposed to be around for long.

So Seth, the answer is both.

Marketing, Branding

I’ve tried explaining what RSS (feeds) is and I can tell you it’s no easy task. So thanks to Paul Stamatiou for pointing us to The unified feed theory which explains RSS in a way that’s simple and easy to understand, even if you are computer illerate.

A “feed” is a way of syndicating almost any type of content (be it articles, essays, plain or rich text, images, audio, or video) in a simple and portable way. Feeds are generally used to distribute frequently updated content, such as news and notifications. An example of this would be CNNs feeds, which provide headline feeds on various topics to keep their readers up-to-date with news.

Many people who have many Web sites they visit regularly, use feeds to be notified of these updates rather than visiting hundreds of Web sites each day.

I think it’s important to simply exactly what RSS means for the masses, especially if it’s going to play a major role in the future of the web. Thanks to Colin for making it easy.

Paul also has a great tutorial on Getting Started with RSS. He’ll walk you through what RSS is, why you should use it, and how to get started using it.

If you aren’t already using RSS I suggest you read these articles and get yourself started. Then come back and grab my feed.

RSS

I could write a whole blog entry on my predictions for the coming year. But I won’t. Most of my predictions have already been spoken for anyways so there’s no point. But I do have one that I feel passionate enough about that I’d like to share…

In 2006 the term SEO is all but dead!

User experience is in!

To long have we gotten away with tricking the search engines into thinking generic seo’d sites should rank best. You now have to prove yourself to the users first. Give them a reason to love you and you give the search engines a reason to love you. Don’t optimize or build anything for the search engines, optimize and build for the potential users, do this and do it better than anyone else and you’ll quickly find yourself ranked among the best.

It’s about providing the best possible solutions to your target demographic, aka the user, aka the customer. If and when you do this the search engines will follow.

Sure there will always be little things you can do behind the scenes to help with your rankings, but it won’t be enough, the main objective is going to be, and always will be the user experience.

Dare we coin a new phrase “UEO - User Experience Optimization”? Is the industry even ready yet? After all, the term SEO is just starting to become familiar to the mainstream. Maybe we just a need a better description.

You know, this really isn’t even that hard of a prediction, we’ve seen this coming for years. The signs are everywhere. If we have one thing to look forward to in 2006, it’s that our SERPs won’t be filled with junk anymore. However, I hope we all have something a little more exiting to look forward to.

If the major search engine players want to remain the “major players” they’re going to have to start giving the better results that we want. They already know this, and they’re going to do anything and everything possible to make it happen. In fact, they’re already well on the way.

With all the shakeups, updates, algo changes, and information we’ve got right from the search engines this year it’s common sense, they want to give better search results.

Did I just put myself out of a job with this post? No I don’t think so. There’ll always be a need for good search engine rankings, it’s just that now they’re coming about in a different way. Besides, I’ve been focusing more on the user experience for awhile now, SEO is just to small a piece of the bigger pie.

SEO, User Experience

If you’ve ever thought of launching an online company but thought there was just to much competition or someone else beat you to your idea don’t let that stop you. There’s always room for one more if you can do it better than those that have come before before you.

Take BubbleShare for example. They’re a brand new photo sharing application that’s really going to make some noise in an already overcrowded industry.

Why? Because they’re better than anything out there!

They don’t necessarily have the most features (most of which are useless anyways) but they’re easier to use and the user interface is second to none. It’s clean and very simple to navigate, and sometimes simple is all it takes, what’s the saying, “less is more”.

You can share your pictures without all the distractions. I’d prefer that they didn’t have the Google ads but hey, they’ve got to earn money somehow and I’m all for that. They don’t even require that you sign up for an account, can’t beat that.

I’ve just recently tried using Flickr, a photo sharing application that’s way overhyped and I’m not happy. Sure it’s the cool new “web 2.0″ company but the user interface is awful, it’s cluttered and it’s not easy to use. All I want in a photo sharing web site is a place that I can share my pictures with friends and family without all the distractions. Don’t get me wrong, Flickr does have it’s good point, but they’re more on a photo searching level then a photo sharing one.

My only complaint now is that I have to take the time to upload all my photos again.

Now they key phrase here is “do it better”. There’s no room for those who can’t outdo the ones that come before them. To be a player you have to do it better which means you either…

1) Build a better a product/brand.
2) Have a better user friendly interface.
3) Implement a more effective marketing strategy.
4) Create more content.

or…

5) Beat your competition on pricing.

Good luck!

UX Magazine launched it’s beta site the other day and I have to say they’ve missed the point. For a magazine that’s about user experience they sure haven’t done a very good job with the home page.

So what’s the problem? The layout!

The design is very well done, unique, and one of the best I’ve seen. The concept is great. But the user experience suffers with the layout.

The layout on the homepage is confusing, it’s hard to tell what’s what. What articles do I want to read? What category do they belong in? Where should I go next to find the information I’m looking for?

My advice. Just click one of the three buttons up top. Design, Tech, or Strategy. The rest of the layout is simple.

Thanks to Mike for pointing me to BlinkList, a fairly new social bookmarking engine similar to Del.icio.us which I gave a short tutorial on the other day.

I first heard of BlinkList a couple months ago from a TechCrunch review. I took a quick glance and decided I was happy with Del.icio.us and that was that.

Mike, I have to say you have amazing timing. Shortly after you commented on the tutorial Del.icio.us experienced a power failure, the next day they had even more problems which caused some serious down time. During this time I had the opportunity to really get familiar with BlinkList when I might have not otherwise done so.

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Ok, so you’ve spent a lot of effort building a web site and even more effort getting people to come to your site. Now what? Because none of this matters if you can’t actually get these people to use your product.

You only get one chance with a potential user you so you better make it count. If they don’t immediately have interest in your brand and what you’re selling then you’ve lost your chance. It’s like fishing, once the fish nibbles on your bait you have to set the hook before you catch it. If you wait to long the fish will move on.

In a recent post, Most Home Pages Really Do Suck, I mentioned that the first thing your homepage must tell me is; “who you are, what your site does, and how I use it.” This is like the nibble, and the set is actually keeping them around after you’ve told them what you’re about.

So once you get a potential user to “nibble on your bait” how do you set the hook? You need to effectively sell the potential user on your service, because if you don’t your competition will. You always need to be one step ahead of your competition, don’t play catch up.

Here’s 5 6 things that will help you keep visitors coming back again and again.

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