Andy Wibbels

Last week we talked about how your content is like a net. You cast it out into the internet muck and search engines help you nab the right meaty prospects. This week I want to introduce a concept I call the keyword cloud and how to use it to come up with post titles, product names and other bits of netting that can reel in prospects and customers. Veterans of my Keywords Essentials class will experience some deja vu. Veterans of my Keywords Essentials class will experience some deja vu.

Take a five second consideration of all of the internet searches you have done in the last week. If you are a Google user go to http://www.google.com/history/ so see a complete history of all of your searches (and to seriously freak yourself out). Click on Trends and you'll see other stats. I've searched for 15,553 things in the past year:

Each one of these searches says a little bit about me. A little bit about who I am, what I'm looking for, what I might purchase, what worries me, what excites me, what captivates me... You can read my mind to find out exactly what I'm thinking about at any given time. Search histories have even been used in courts for murder trials (i.e. 'undetectable poinsons', or 'neck snap break').

Now what if we could direct this process to our future customers?

Nobody Knows Who You Are

To best understand this approach to keywords and search engine strategy, it is important to keep in mind that most people have no idea who you are. They may have problems that you can solve or a burning need for your services, but they have no idea that you are an expert in such things. So when faced with that big search box what do they type in?

People Search for What They Know Already

We muddle through this life, don't we? Often we don't know exactly how to articulate what we are looking for so we'll get as close to what we want as possible using language and concepts we already know.

Since your prospects don't know who you are, they are doing the same thing. They don't know that you are an expert in dog grooming but they are looking for the best dog shampoo. They don't know that you are a relationships expert but they are looking for how to sharing child custody with a jerk (shout out to Heidi!). They search using words and terms and concepts that they already know.

What Orbits Your Niche?

Out of all of the possible things I could type into a search engine to find you - assuming I don't know your name or business - which ones would be orbiting you and your niche? I might type in a book title or a famous celebrity that has talked about the issues I'm facing - issues that you can help solve. I search for what I already know that is close to what I'm looking for, what I'm trying to solve or what I'm trying to do. I call this the keyword cloud:

At the center is your topic or niche or focus, around it are all the peripheral things orbiting your topic - the books, people, places, events, etc. that are connected to the topic - and to you.

Here's some sample tactics:

1. Blog the top books in your niche. Write reviews. Interview the author. Interview experts. Interview skeptics. Create a study guide.
2. Blog the top associations in your niche. Write up their upcoming events. Their most visible experts (or outcasts). Blog from the events. Post pictures of the events. Write up the events you'll be attending - interview the presenters after, before or during the event. Write up a guide to the city where the conference is held. Write about the challenge the association or industry is facing.

The elements in the keyword cloud above are just a small list of the taxonomy you can use.

Go to your local bookstore and go to the section that matches your niche. Stare at the bookcase and notice what words, ideas and authors pop out at you. Grab a magazine your niche subscribes to - what words pop out on that?

So we've talked about niches, lifestyles, why we buy, why we go online and the three buttons. But what motivates us to actually go online in pursuit of more control over our lives?

The Four Types of Internet Marketing

Last week we talked about Why We Go Online which revolved around Entertainment (changing your emotional state), Utility (how-to's, news and reviews) and Community (sharing). This is all part of all the 'stuff' that happens before someone clicks the Search button or goes looking for solutions to their urgent problems or celebrations of their deepest passions. After they view search results, a customer comes into your orbit and you convince them to become a part of your prospect pool.

There are dozens of formats and channels available to you as an internet marketer. The point of all of these channels is to direct someone into your subscription list - to get them to join your list so you can begin to cultivate those contacts into becoming customers.

Just like search engines. Your marketing and content is like a giant net you hold in your teeth and you throw it out into the muck hoping to grab the right critters.

But first we have to talk about shrimping.

Meaty Treats in the Nasty Muck

When I was a kid our yearly vacation was a week at Pawley's Island, South Carolina a slightly shabby island of private homes. They only rented to families and we would join a couple other families for a week of reading, eating, sand and sun. One of the dads worked at the Ford plant in Louisville and would snag some truck tire innertubes for us to sit in as we bobbed along in the ocean (we lashed them all together with rope). My dad would also go shrimping with a big cast net. It was a big circular plastic net with weights on the outside ring and a rope in the middle. You fling the net out into the marsh and it opens up into a disc shape. Then the weights drag it down into the water and mud to get the shrimp (you had to grip part of it with your teeth and hope you timed the throw correctly and not lose an incisor). Then, as you pull the net out it closes around your catch, bringing a dozen or so shrimp for dinner.

The tastiest shrimp can be found in the nastiest muck.

As an internet marketer, your content is your net. The murky water and muck is the internet with all the people in the world searching for whatever is motivating them to go online. Tossing your net is your attempt to grab the right shrimp - the right meaty nuggets that might become your prospects.

Your blog posts, articles, postcards, radio interviews, brochures - all of this content is optimized to build your list of prospects.

For now, take the whole search engine optimization piece out of the puzzle. I'm focusing on the tactics we use to get people in front of (and hopefully clicking) your Subscribe button.

Your tactics can be graphed along two axes:

1. Our horizontal (x) axis is mode: Is this content strategy online or offline?
2. Our vertical (y) axis is cost: How much does this content cost to deploy? Is it free or is there a fee involved?

Here's our matrix (mixing it up - no Venn this week):

Before you continue reading just take 10 seconds to come up with at least one content strategy you already use in each of these four areas:

1. What is one free, online tactic you use in your internet marketing?
2. What is one free, offline tactic you use in your internet marketing?
3. What is one paid, online tactic you use in your internet marketing?
4. What is one paid, offline tactic you use in your internet marketing?

Now let's take in some detail:

Free, Online Marketing Tactics

Our first quadrant (quadrant #1 for you Covey freaks) is free, online marketing tactics.

This is probably where you'll spend the most time experimenting. Online tactics are usually easier to get started, quicker to measure and quicker to discontinue. Here's several of them:

• Email signature
• Discussion forum signature
• Blog posts
• Email newsletter
• RSS feed
• Podcast
• Blog directories
• Podcast directories
• RSS directories
• Article directories
• Social bookmarking sites
• Social networking sites
• Newsletter ad exchange
• Comments on other blogs
• Viral video
• Local-focused sites and directories
• Search-engine friendly HTML
• Webcast seminars
• Instant messaging and Skype profiles
• Viral PDFs
• Contest sponsorship
• Blog carnivals
• Organic search traffic
• Link exchange
• Group blogging project
• Guest posting on other blogs
• Joint-venture referrals

Free, Offline Marketing Tactics

Sometimes you'll actually leave the house and use offline tactics - but there's still some free ones:

• Speaking engagements
• Newspaper article
• Column in newspaper or magazine
• Networking events
• TV appearance
• Radio appearance
• Organizing or volunteering at events
• Teleseminars

Paid, Online Marketing Tactics

Third, we have free, offline marketing tactics.

Just like the free online tactics, the paid ones allow you to deploy and measure quickly and usually test out in small batches with less cost outlay:

• Pay-per-click (AdWords)
• Social network ads (Facebook ads)
• Ads on other blogs
• Ads on other sites
• Placement in another's ezine
• Affiliate/referral program
• Paid placement on a site
• Paid link exchange
• Blog sponsorship
• Press release
• Podcast sponsorship
• RSS advertising

Paid, Offline Marketing Tactics

Finally, we have fee-based, paid offline marketing tactics.

I feel these are the more 'thoughtful' tactics to use when you've road-tested the other tactics and have the resources to go all out.

• Postcards
• Radio ad
• Television ad
• Infommercial
• Print newsletter
• Magazine ad
• Newspaper ad
• Pay-to-play speaking engagement
• Sales staff
• Business cards
• Professional associations
• Events and seminars
• Telemarketing

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this very well - it is a bit half-baked right now so I need your help articulating it.

What I'm trying to express is that all the content you put out in the world - whether it is offline or online, in person or in print or on the radio - all of this content ideally is focused on bringing more prospects into your orbit. The right prospects. Not a shotgun of crap traffic. All of these prospects are being targeted to your Subscribe button. After that is the courtship where we begin to cultivate and acclimate them to our expertise, products and services so when they have a problem we can solve, they come to us first to solve it - that's the Buy button.

Another way to think of this is an ever-flowing stream of searches and requests and queries like a cool mountain creek. Can you divert the right amount of flow your way and channel it correctly?

What am I missing? Tell me right now:

A niche is made of two parts:

Part 1: A group of people with a set of urgent problems or common passions. Not just everyday run-of-the-mill problems because people are more likely to click the Buy button when they know you are going to help them ease urgent discomfort. I keep 'common passions' in there because people who aren't desperate for solutions might buy things that fit their super-active lifestyle revolving around Jeeps or home-schooling or body modification. Common passions are tied to possibility while urgent problems are tied to fear of a tragic future.

Part 2 : A niche is a group of people that is actually a group - a findable, reachable, 'talk-to'-able group. They must be reachable either online or offline, through conferences or newsletters or magazines. If they don't 'hang out' somewhere at sometime you don't have a niche. You have a whole bunch of people that have a common problem but don't identify or communicate together.

Why to Direct Your Efforts to a Niche

If we take our Time-Money-Sex Venn from last week and apply it to why you might use a niche in your marketing efforts we get:

Time: Focusing on a niche saves times because you are only talking to a small set of people. You have simplified your message and efforts and products to a specific group that will be more likely to vibrate with what you are saying. You don't aim for speaking engagements at conferences everywhere - just the right places where these people hang out. You don't read every online forum you can find, but the specific ones where your folks are likely to be commiserating and celebrating.

Money: Your marketing efforts are more affordable because you are constraining who you are are reaching. You are laser-focused instead of a shotgun splat. Because you make products and services for a specific group of people they are willing to pay more for information tailored especially for them.

Visibility: It is easier to build credibility with a smaller group of people than trying to break out into the mainstream too quickly. Small fish, big pond. This is how I built my profile as a blogging expert. I started off working with business and life coaches, helping them understand blogs and their impact to business. Since this community is relatively small and also connected by discussion forums and lists it was easier to build a brand as 'the blog guy' than trying to attack the greater market at large.

How to Send Andy into a Blind Rage

Few things drive me quicker to a Wibbels fit (video) than when I ask someone their niche and they give an answer that isn't a niche but an entire demographic.

Here is a little scene using my favorite example. I'm talking to an entrepreneur who we'll call Wit:

Andy: What kind of customers do you work with?

Wit: Women in transition.

Andy: So what kind of women?

Wit: Oh ya know, professional women.

Andy: Any certain industry?

Wit: No, everybody. Oh and moms.

Andy: What kind of transition?

Wit: A new job, a new child, kids going off to school, death of a parent, newly divorced.

Andy: Any specific one?

Wit: Not really. Whatever challenges women face so they can step more fully into their [insert post-pagan Gaia-esque women who run with wolves from Venus who are just not that in to you metaphor here].

Usually by this time my heart rate has quickened and I'm trying to do Dr. Glassman's trigger exercise to keep from getting a little irrational.

Emotional Cripples with PDFs

Women in transition is half the planet.

1. Women make up roughly half the human population of the planet.
2. Everybody is in transition all the time. Stasis is an illusion and you're just ignoring a Niagra.

So basically when you say you create products and services for 'women in transition' (or as I like to call them, WITs) you are really just indecisive and haven't done your homework and are probably pretty surprised you haven't had Oprah-magnitude success. You're just an emotional cripple with PDFs.

Yes, if you are running a business local to a city or county you have constrained your pool of prospects considerably, but I'm talking more in the realm of the internet where just because you can market to everybody doesn't mean you should. Let's look at some real niches:

Passaportes Fotografias

Each morning on my walk to Six Apart down Folsom to 4th, I pass the Mexican consulate and there are usually about 3 dozen men, women and children waiting in line for the offices to open at 9. Just as you pass the building you see a sign on the sidewalk that says 'Pasaportes Fotografias' (might be vice versa).

There, a young guy has a white background anchored to the outside wall of the building, a camera and tripod, a small table with a clipboard and a little fence for crowd control. Genius.

A defined audience and he is right there where they are to help them solve one very specific urgent problem.

I was going to take a picture but didn't want him to think I was some kind of Minuteman.

Speaking of bigots:

Aryan Outfitters

Mother Jones did a photo essay on a woman who specializes in creating the uniforms and white robes for America's sweethearts, the Ku Klux Klan.

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

Sure it isn't a particularly pleasant niche - but the practical matter is racists need someone to make their uniforms (you don't think a man with the rank of Exalted Cyclops is going to reduce himself to sewing do you?). Mrs. Ruth has found a group with a common problem: they need uniforms for their racist country club - a community unto itself. Even racists need a durable hem.

Common (though misplaced) passions, urgent problems (Oh dear what ever shall I wear to the cross-burning potluck?), reachable and findable.

And if for some reason the Obama presidency suddenly makes trips to the KKK Mart obsolete, Mrs. Ruth could flip to another niche that needs constant uniform creation and maintenance and upgades: Girl Scouts.

Burqini

This is my favorite example of niche.

Hijab is the Muslim code of dress recommended by the Qur'an. Depending on your heritage, sect or family tradition, women (and men) adhere to various levels of modesty. Many Muslim women see their choice to wear a head-covering or other combinations of required garments as a connection to their past, their God, their family and as a way of re-claiming the burqa or hijab head-scarf for themselves.

But what if you want to go swimming? Previously, the traditional clothing sidelined many moms on the beach, unable to play in the water with their kids. Even more far-fetched: what if you wanted to be a lifeguard? On Cronulla Beach in Sydney, the first class of Muslim lifeguards joined the rest of the team sporting a new swimsuit:

Among them were a number of women wearing a newly designed head-to-toe swimsuit, dubbed the burqini. The two-piece outfit - featuring leggings, a loose top and a head covering - enables them to carry out their tasks while conforming to the Islamic dress code. Mecca Laa Laa, 20, one of the newly graduated lifeguards, said it would give Australian Muslim women the freedom to enjoy the beach while fulfilling their religious obligations. "The point is to get women active in the water, to encourage them to participate in sporting activities ... and wearing the burqini allows them to do that," she said.

And the Burqini has taken the world by storm as Muslim moms and girls reclaim the ocean and the swimming pool as a place for them as well.

See the niche? A findable, reachable group of people with a common passion and an urgent problem! How much is marketing about finding the how we can have it both ways?

Going to the site for the burqini there is a whole page of testimonials that illustrate how the business owners are completely tapped into what their customers want:

I went inside the pool with two of my kids! It was such a nice feeling to be able to actually be inside the water FULLY - not half of the body, or the feet, only. Alhamdulillah! Didn't have that chance for a long long long time. The last time I had a full dip inside the water was during my primary school years I think. I have nearly forgotten how it feels. And you know how I felt on that day, wearing aheda's swimsuit? I felt FREEDOM! I can be in the water without any feeling of self-conscious[ness]. A real freedom for me. [emphasis mine]

Yes, from my Roman Catholic upbringing in the United States this seems a bit silly: playing games with scripture so you can do what you want but still adhere to the rules (but we cherry-pick Leviticus to our own ends, don't we?). I get the same giggles watching an Orthodox Jewish friend navigate Shabbat without touching electronic devices and wondering why would God want to deny you the convenience of technology (flipside: the focused meditation brings closer awareness to divinity, etc). Inconvenience as meditation is present in so many of the world's religions (and fish on Fridays is still no analog to hanging on a cross).

What are three urgent problems your niche is facing? Be specific! Not just 'they are sad' but what specifically they might want to do to change their lives (freedom, control, power, etc)?

What are three common passions that bring your niche together? Be specific! Not just 'food folks and fun' but gunning their Harleys and peeling off into the night.

What are three online hangouts for your niche? Forums, lists, blog comments, chat rooms.

What are three offline hangouts for your niche? Conferences, trade assocations, magazines, cruises, cafes.

What makes sense in this essay? What doesn't? What am I missing? What typo is driving you batty? Tell me right now:

While I was taking a break from the newsletter and blog, I'd done a lot of reconsideration of the massive hairwad that is internet marketing and doing business online.

When I was a young one, my family had gone to the symphony with my grandparents. During the intermission, my grandmother leaned over and asked me what instrument I liked most, who I wanted to be in symphony. I considered the strings, the woodwinds, the brass and the percussion and instead pointed at the conductor.

The Right to Tinker

Later on, when I was directing plays, I learned how much I enjoyed conducting things around me. My slogan was Directing isn't telling people what to do but showing them where they can go. The same attraction came out with theatre theory courses (favorites: Brecht, Artaud and Peter Brook a close third). We were studying complete worldviews on how to make art (last week we'd looked at how lifestyle = worldview). If you're an MBTI-fanatic, this would be my N side coming out - the iNtuitive preference that delights in seeing the past-present-future of a process from micro-to-macro levels (INFJ/paranoiac if you were wondering with Taurus sign and Soul Type 7).

I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination. Mostly I just change a line of PHP code, reload it and see if it blows up. If it breaks, I change it back and refresh and then research some more. If it works, I try something else. I like to tinker. I think you learn about a topic by seeing it in action - in execution - in process.

And that is why I like looking at software frameworks:

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