Tag: conversation | OBannons Leap

Posts Tagged ‘conversation’

Are You Building Links, Traffic or Relationships?

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

I’ve written a lot here over the past couple years about links and web traffic, but I haven’t written much about relationship building–and I haven’t done much of that here with this blog either.

That’s sort of been intentional. I started this blog several years back just to offer any helpful tips or insights that I could to others, but didn’t want it to become a major project that might take up lots of my time. I knew I had some thoughts worth sharing, I appreciated those people who shared their thoughts when I was starting out many years ago, so I saw this blog as just a way to give back what I had received.

But something I’ve come to see is that while I believe (hope) I’ve been helpful to folks here, I’ve wasted a lot of opportunity to get to know and even learn from you in return–not to mention the friendships that could have been made.

I know you are good people, and even those who may be just starting out have ideas and perspectives I’d honestly like to hear from.

The things that we so-called web workers do; developing resources, marketing and promoting, building revenue streams or spreading awareness for everything from our products to our brands to the social causes we care about… we always become better at it with the more insight we have on how other people think, how they are motivated and what they want.

And I’ve been blowing it by not asking you more often to share your thoughts with me. By learning more about you I would also have been learning more about where I needed to focus.

So here’s our chance to correct all of that. I’ve opened this blog wide up for engagement and interaction. Nothing is required to place a comment other than hitting the button, if you have a Facebook or Gmail account you can join the community with a single click.

My hope is that every single one of you will use some or all of these features to join the conversation. Just say “hello”, tell me about your day, your web site, your business, your life or even your pet rock. I want to know about it.

And most importantly, tell me how I can help you going forward. What do you need or want to know more about right now? Programming, SEO, Article Marketing or whatever.

I’ve been doing these things for a long time, some like article marketing long before that’s what it was called and I was posting my “pieces” on Usenet groups, so I have the experiences and skills to share, just tell me which areas are most important to you.

So, now that I’ve extended my hand in friendship, what say you?

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Technorati Tags: conversation, discussion

Tags: conversation, discussion
Posted in Traffic | 5 Comments »

From With to At to With

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

I’ve created a new category just for this posting, though I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts to add later, called “People”–because people are it!

If I’m seeming abstract please indulge me for a moment and I promise to make myself clear.

In 1992 when I built my first website there was 1 goal, to show it to people. That hasn’t really changed much over the years, but how to do it has. Back then there was basically 1 way to show your web site to people, by talking with folks and telling them in conversations that it was there.

There were no search engines to care about (a few laughable-at-the-time directory attempts did exist) and online advertising was coveted but had yet to become organized into anything usable.

If you wanted visitors to your web site you had to talk with people either in person, or online in various chatting formats (BBS, chat rooms, irc and etc.) and say “hey, check out my web site”.

Then businesses became serious about advertising online (popups were born) and hired lots of Geeks out of the chat rooms to create elaborate systems for driving traffic with paid advertising, because business folk were far too important, I mean busy, to actually talk to people when they could just throw money around instead to get visitors to their sites.

And some of those chatting Geeks who weren’t offered corporate jobs took it upon themselves to create their own systems and models for driving traffic, this way they could cash in on the big bucks but not have to wear the suit coats and ties every day–and pseudo-search Pay Per Click was hatched; which ultimately led to what we know now as search engines.

It was all about who could control the message. If you controlled the message you controlled the traffic, and money (over technology) was able to control the message in those early years.

Fast forward to today and guess what, paying for traffic through popups, pop-unders, banners, Pay Per Click and search engines–by paying for search engines I of-course mean paying crazy amounts to experts who do things most of us can’t comprehend and they can’t (or won’t) explain to get our pages listed highly in the “natural” search results–well, this whole system is peeling away bit by bit because people don’t like being talked at and told what to like/do/look at/think/etc, and that’s what those systems do.

They impose their desired outcome on the individual rather than assist the individual in finding the best path for their unique needs.

Then along came that dubious Web 2.0

And suddenly people had choices, freedom like they’d never known to share, converse, analyze and rate…

And where does that bring us? Back to talking with one another again.

People, and conversations are what’s driving the web. Just like in the start, only with more bells and whistles; and this time I don’t think they’ll let that control go…

Not convinced that conversation drives the web? Have a look at the numbers in this slideshow presentation I recently saw: