One of my friends emailed me to say they were pitching for a piece of consulting work. They were tendering social media while the competing agency was offering an SEO solution.
Consider this for a moment.
The question for the potential client has come down to two opposing offers. Social or SEO.
What sequence of events caused the client to be in a situation of choosing between tactics. Why one or the other? How do you even decide that choice?
Really the answer should be “all of the above”, but in truth it should be about the real goals and challenges of the organisation rather than like choosing between takeout menus!
- What is the overall strategy?
- Which problem are we solving?
- What do we need to achieve?
- Are there tactics that are already in place or need integrating with?
When I hear SEO versus social media it always seems to be a “we need more traffic/visibility”. And when I hear that it is usually a deeper issue rather than just visitor count.
If you are ever confronted with a “we need some of that social, or maybe SEO” type question then you need to drill down why. Then keep asking why until you get to the real core issue.
Want more customers? Build a real lead generation engine, don’t start picking tactics from a menu.
I fall for this “holiday” every year. I don’t know why. I think I’m relatively intelligent. I mean, I don’t know how to make coffee and sushi does confuse me but I do know how to figure out the circumference of a circle, which aids me in my hula hooping skills. I can also discuss in length the economic impact of HIV/AIDS on Sub-Saharan Africa. However, every April 1st I fall for something stupid. This year is no different.
I’m embarrassed to say that it took me half an hour of using “Topeka” to realize that it was another one of Google’s infamous April Fool’s Day pranks.
I woke like every other day. I checked my email on my iPhone first. I responded to them from my phone, while still half asleep.
Then I turned on CNN to hear the latest news, another example of my intelligence. Then I turned on my computer. I expected to see the multi-colored Google logo that greets me every morning, but this time it read TOPEKA instead.
So I checked out the Google blog. They wrote of their desire to honor the town of Topeka, Kansas who so boldly decided to rename their town Google last month. It all seemed a bit insane but reasonable. I mean, it was on their official blog, so it had to be true.
Now before all of you judge me too harshly, I want you to cut me some slack. I was still kind of tired, ergo I wasn’t at full capacity. (See I just correctly used ergo in a sentence. Who does that? Smart people, that’s who.)
Since no one I knew had emailed me about the changes, I thought that I must be the first person to notice. I know, I know, another example of my stupidity. So I started to tell people on Gchat, or I guess it would have to be Tchat now. It didn’t take long for someone to tell me that I was a moron. That’s what you can always count on friends for: honest feedback.
Someone in cyber world please back me up. Tell me about an April Fool’s Day prank you fell for. I can’t be the only dupe in the world.

