4. February 2012 by Frank Goad.

A friend of mine is the manager of a local retail establishment. He’s a very smart man with a distinguished if not unusual career. He’s amazed me at times with words of wisdom that make any thought process stop dead in its tracks and listen He’s also very frustrated because the owners don’t seem very anxious to make the place a best in its class establishment. It’s sad because, if they would just step out of the way and give him the reins, they would make so much more money.

Most folks can run a retail business. It requires some attention to detail, some organizational skills and some ability to deal with the public. Notice that I used “some” a lot, and that’s because if you’re in a good location with reasonable traffic, you can keep the doors open and lights on without being a primo manager.

My wish for him is that a distant relative would die and leave him the money to buy the place. He’s got drive, intelligence and is champing at the bit to really turn a profit, make it a busy place and build a real brand. If he could buy it, there’s no doubt it would see 30% sales gains in the first six months. Yet, the owners treat it kind of like a hobby business. They’re not too particular about the little things and seem more determined to get pocket change from the place. They seem to have overlooked Frank’s Business Rule #1: When it comes to how the public views you, everything matters.

Posted in Frank Goad, Frank Communications, FrankyGee3, blogs, blogging, delight, Branding, "The Frankifesto", Frank, business plan, business, building business, Marketing | Print | No Comments »

4. February 2012 by Frank Goad.

I’ve been working with a client on an Internet advertising proposal. They sent me a note and said, “We have a new client that works on websites and seo’s (sic). I am sure you understand.” I do, but not sure they do and I wonder, do you? Let me explain it a bit so that you can make more money from your site.

First let me say: SEO is NOT advertising - not even close. SEO, or search engine optimization, is important - no doubt about that. It’s function is to make your website attractive to the “crawlers” (also called “robots” or “spiders”) that the search engines like Google send out daily to examine every website they can find. Crawlers send bits of programming code back to the search engine that details the content of the sites they find, yours included.

If you sell blue handled shelf stretchers and someone enters “shelf stretchers” in a search box and hits Enter, the search engine’s servers kick into gear. They look through their lists of data to find every website with those two words in their keywords and page’s text. If they enter “red handled shelf stretcher,” you’re now pushed down the list because you sell blue ones. The more times they see those words in your web, the higher your “relevancy” ranking. This is where SEO comes in. By entering the right keywords, you get picked more in the lists of sites the search engines display.

If keywords were the only thing Google and others use to rank websites, then SEO might be enough. The fact is it’s only one small part of the relevancy formula. One big thing that makes a difference is … money. Despite how democratic the web might seem, filthy lucre is the biggest determining factor, and that’s where advertising comes in. Higher rankings mean you get closer to the Holy Grail of being first in non-paid advertising.

Postscript:  From when I first posted this, they are now out of business. Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. In the end, a balanced approach across all types of media (if they apply) still gives the best results; also, hire a pro (and, yes, I am a pro).

Posted in Google, Social Media, Yahoo, YouTube, blogging, blogs, FrankyGee3, Frank Goad, Frank, Advertising, The Long Tail, business, Frank Communications, building business, Marketing | Print | No Comments »

3. February 2012 by Frank Goad.

That title sounds oh, so very scintillating, doesn’t it? It comes under the heading of, “Made you look.” What is the secret? You don’t have to be Hemmingway or Ayn Rand to be a good blogger. Surprise!! The most unlikely folks have created popular blogs that have enhanced their career and expanded their world.

The secret to blogging is to: A. Go with your strengths, and; B. Write only as much as it takes. One of the things that making a living entails for me is writing, and it comes naturally. I love to play with words, ideas, a clever turn of phrase, but, to many, that’s like walking with glass shards in their shoes.

I had a manager at Lexmark by the name of Ellen Fernandez. She was a great manager: Smart, organized, able to grasp goals and make things happen. Best of all, she is a wonderful person who believes that everyone has greatness in them and working for her was a joy. One day she said, “I’m betting I could lock you in a room with instructions to write all day, and you’d be very happy.” I agreed. She said, “That would be a day of torture for me. Ask me to spend the day analyzing spreadsheets and I’d love it. I see patterns in the numbers and trends many people miss.” Nevertheless, she was a good writer and her memos were clean, to the point and well structured.

My point is, you don’t have to create a masterpiece to share quality information. Writing is like anything else: The more you do it, the more proficient you become. You exercise the language part of the brain and it gets stronger. As the saying goes, “Begun is half done.”

If you believe you are good at what you do, and it’s something you like, then share your knowledge. Someone might live a better life after learning something you shared in a blog. Don’t worry if it’s blue ribbon prose because, if your information is accurate and understandable, people will be very forgiving. Be as brief as possible, use pictures and illustrations if you have them and, if grammar is a problem, get some help. There are plenty of services online that will critique your blog and help you eliminate any errors.

Besides sharing information, blogs also help you build a body of work that can become a reference for you and others. As time goes by, you’ll see a pattern develop and it can help you think more deeply about your career and profession. So, now the secret is out, and you have something new to share.

Please subscribe to this blog - it’s easy. Scroll down the left side of the page, at the bottom of the lists, there’s a box titled, “Meta.” Click where it says, “Entries,” and it’ll open a window to choose how you want to receive notices (email, etc.). Thanks!!!!!

Also, please Like my Facebook page: Frank Communications Lexington

Oh, yes, there are my other pages on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Quora. There are more, but that’s enough.

Also, there are videos on my YouTube channel, Franky Gee Lex, or at Business Lexington’s Channel, Smiley Pete TV, where I’ve got about 35 or so videos, many with folks I’ve interviewed.

Posted in Social Media, FrankyGee3, Google, blogs, blogging, Frank Goad, Frank Communications, building business, The Long Tail, writing, creativity, search, Frank | Print | No Comments »

26. August 2009 by Frank Goad.

Cryptic title, I know. What I mean is, the things I see on my computer - the electrons - make me reflect on my corporeal being - the atoms. Facebook has really messed with my mind many times. For instance, folks I’ve not seen in twenty or thirty years from my little hometown are now talking to me on Facebook. I see their pictures and they’re not the ones I knew back then. Logically, what would you expect? High school was a long, long time ago.

On the other hand, the realization of the amount of time that’s passed smacks me around a bit. High school reunions just wash over you and you get a lot of it out of the way in one “fell swoop.” Facebook is a steady diet of, “Oh, man, has it been that long?”

To anyone under thirty-five or forty, this is probably fairly meaningless. It occurred to me that history teachers probably have a hard time because it’s not easy to get someone to appreciate other folk’s history when you don’t have one of your own. When your own is still being written, the ever-lengthening scope of it tends to skew how you record it.

It doesn’t stop the melancholy, though, and that’s just life. While that’s easy to say, the emotions color everything. Being fairly ambitious, my tombstone will not read, “Nice guy, but unmotivated”, so I think about my legacy. What example will I leave my children? Probably that of a workaholic but, in many respects, that’s a man’s world to me.

All that aside, there’s still the fact that I’m deep into middle age and the re-connections make me think harder about what being my age really means. Things are more finite now. My life is good, but there’s a gravity and a lightness that coincide. I can glimpse the end and the beginning, see all the good that’s passed and imagine that which is coming. The age old questions - What have I done with my life? How will I get by when I’m old? Etc. - bear down but, being pretty optimistic, I always assume that I’ll bull my way through it all. Still, there’s a little nagging doubt and ’round and ’round we go. That’s life, though, and it’s a far better thing than the alternative.

Posted in Intelligence, blogs, blogging, FrankyGee3, Frank Goad, "The Frankifesto", creativity, Frank Communications, Frank | Print | No Comments »