Author: Rich Garling

Successful results-driven experience in IT program/project management, focusing on collaborating with multiple businesses and IT workstreams to define detailed business process requirements into workable enterprise software solutions for retail, finance, pharmaceutical, and inventory processes. A successful proven track record in leading cross-functional international teams of project managers while managing expectations and delivering projects of greater than $10M within stakeholder expectations. Provided an in-depth knowledge of SDLC using Agile and Waterfall project management methodologies (Scrum Master (SMC)), MS IT Management/Project Management (AMU)), and a talent for developing business requirements delivering workable technology solutions. Rich holds a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Science in Information Technology/Project Management from American Military University. He is currently a Project Manager III for Bradford Hammacher Group in Niles, IL/

Things to Keep in Mind When Doing Keyword Research to Attract Customers

Many people can create a long list of the top keywords manually But the question is: are these the right keywords for your business? You have to choose carefully the terms you are going to use to attract customers and to describe your business to them so they buy. Remember, you only have one shot at this, best to get it right the first time.

Keywords are those words that you want to use in your content that your targeted market uses to find you in a Google search. You want to choose the terms which rank well but have a low competitor rate in the search engines because these are the terms that buyers use. General terms attract tire kickers, specific targeted terms attract buyers.

Many small businesses cannot compete in the world of high competition general search terms for a variety of reasons including being new to the Internet, little time to develop needed content to create links back to their website to name a few. Thus, it is very important to do your research carefully so that the keywords you choose to use in your website and other web content will actually produce the desired result.

You can come up with a list of possible words to use using a number of free keyword suggestion tools available on the internet. You can choose to use one keyword or multiple word keywords and you can get traffic from these words, but these are the expensive highly competitive keywords that will require much time and work to produce results.

Long tail keyword phrases are those terms I spoke of earlier which can effectively target your buying customers. Research will show you that prospects will likely type in these multiple word phrases giving you more and better chances of getting quality ready to buy customers to your site. These people have spent time looking for you and are interested in what you do.

The question is: Are you ready to tell them why you and not the other guy?

There are 4 things you need to do that will make your keyword research more:

First: Find out the needs of your prospective customers. This information will make your online marketing campaign successful.

Know what you’re about. Define your company, its products/services and find those keywords that are suitable to your mission.

From your list of keyword phrases select those that you think are the most fitting and effective words. Only then will your targeting efforts become more specific.

Consider your competition when doing your keyword research competition. Your ability to compete will also depend on what keywords you used in comparison to your competitors.

Keep in mind that driving traffic to your website using SEO keyword research is only part of the process. Getting traffic to your website is only part of the battle. Upon arriving you have to convince. More on that later.

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Musings

Playing around with a Uniden Bearcat BC 100XLT scanner that my girlfriend found sitting amongst a bunch of electronic junk that I keep in a plastic tub. It’s mostly there in case I need something because you never know when you’ll need it.

Anyway, she decides to see if it works. She thinks back to the days when she would leave the scanner on hoping to be able to catch some action going on with the police department. It brought a smile to her face. She looks so pretty when she smiles like that.

My dad and mom used to sit in the living room listening to their scanner. They had a little tabletop model. Dad would come into the room and sit down in his chair first thing in the morning. By this time in his life he was well into his forced retirement due to his failing health. Dad had emphysema and was on oxygen 24 hours a day. He would turn the scanner on and start to listen. If it squelched you would hear an audible “shhhhush” because he thought something big was going to happen. He wanted us kids, who were bustling around the house trying to get ready to go to our jobs, to be quite so he wouldn’t miss anything important. 99% of the time it would just end up being that single squelch and then dead air. But that didn’t matter because there was always that possibility it would be something big. He would remember the time this happened or that happened…and he would bend your ear if you let him.

So, back to the Uniden BC 100XLT Scanner radio. I’m waiting for the owners manual to download. We have ATT DSL line here. When I lived in my townhouse I had Comcast cable. What I liked about cable was it was a much bigger wire and so it was much faster, it could handle a boat load of data. ATT’s puny little telephone wire can’t handle butkus. I’ve been trying to download the pdf manual I found online and for some strange reason it is taking forever to open this file online. Once it does I will save it to my hard drive. But until then I am writing this post.

What I need to find out is how do I get the battery cover off so I can replace the battery. There’s this arrow on the left side pointing to the left. I get the idea that I should push on it so it will slide to the left. Guess what? It doesn’t slide. The closest I’ve come to removing the cover is to pry open the very bottom. This doesn’t remove the cover because it is pinching the top into the main casing of the scanner. I can pry it up, but I cannot pry it off. I see the battery pack. It’s 3 AA’s shrink wrapped together. I used to sell these way back in the 1980’s and 90’s for cordless telephones.

Well, the manual finally downloaded and I saved it to the hard drive. It’s useless. Doesn’t say a word about the battery. Oh well, delete it. I’ll have to look at my list of vendors and see if any of them either have worked on this model or they know someone who has.

Billboards

Passing by a big billboard along the roadside I noticed how simple it was…It simply said that the company name and that it’s burger was number 1 on the market. It made me instantly aware that billboards exist only to reinforce brand recognition and is mostly for well known brands. If your product/company is new the last place you should be spending your marketing dollars is on a billboard. Billboards use the scatter gun approach in which they hope to hit something, in this case drivers going by, that would be interested in what they’re selling. Reinforcing brand is perfect for larger well known products such as Coca Cola, but not so for the newest widget on the market.

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About Dad

I’ve been thinking about my dad here lately. He passed away when he was 62. Died in his sleep. When I go I hope I do the same. It seems a rather pleasant way to die. Go to sleep and never wake up again.

Mom died after 3 days of suffering a debilitating stroke. She and Richard Nixon got the same type of stroke on the same day. They tried to save his life, mom just suffered. She did a lot of babbling in mostly incoherent mish mash of words. A lot of names, some I knew, most I didn’t.

On the 3rd day the doctors felt she was real close to passing and they asked us if we wanted to perform any life saving procedures. Mom had written out a DNR and a living will. She had given my little sister, Judy, power of attorney should she become incapacitated. You know, even with that DNR and the living will stating that no heroic measures were to be taken, the doctors still asked her what they wanted us to do. Judy then asked me to decide. I went with her wishes. Mom really hated Richard Nixon.

Anyway, back to dad. I think that when he died he really didn’t need to go. I mean, his health was bad, but not bad enough for that to be the reason he died. I think he made a conscious decision that he no longer wished to be a burden on his family. For him, he could no longer be the man of the house. He could no longer provide for his family. He was no longer of use and couldn’t do what was expected of him as a man, a father and a husband.

You see, he came from a world where the roles were defined. There was no gray area, even though he was surrounded by it. As a man, a father, a husband, he was expected to do his duty. He was the provider of the family. You just did it, no questions asked.

At the time of his death he had been on oxygen for 6 years, unable to work and provide for his family. He was getting social security and I think he got a small pension.For him, he had become what he apparently dreaded the most: a burden on his children.

We kids didn’t mind taking care of him. After all, he had raised us kids. Powdered our butts, picked us up when we fell, disciplined us…well, ok, he didn’t. But that is a story for another day. But he never saw it that way. And so he went peacefully.

My dad delivered newspapers from the time he was 13 years old up to his retirement at 56.

Well, time for bed. From time to time I will muse some more on thoughts about my dad.

Basics on Blogging

Made the following presentation to the 3×2 Networking Group this morning on the basics of blogging.

Many customers, friends and family ask me all the time for advice on how to get started in blogging. While I could go on and on about everything one could do to successfully blog, it could prove to be overwhelming. So to make it easy, I will start out with some basic information and add to it from time to time.

Decide what you’re going to blog about. Keep in mind that there are literally 100s of millions of bloggers worldwide. If you’re going to attract the right readers you best know what you’re talking about and be passionate about it.
To host or not to host – You need to decide if you’re going to sign for a freebie blogging site such as blogspot or blogger.com or if you want to set up an independent blog on a web server where you pay for the hosting services. I pay to have this blog hosted. It cost around $6-$7/year. With a freebie site you have to be prepared for two things: one, you don’t own your domain name. Your domain becomes something like this “blogtitle.blogger.com”. Should you decide at some point you want to strike out on your own, you will lose all the content you spent perhaps years building up. And you have to let your audience know where you went. Second, you have to put up with their ads. Frre doesn’t really mean free.
Host your own – Offers more flexibility because you “own” the turf. You can monetize the site (topic for another time), your content is your own and your audience stays with you (so long as your good). It costs money, but its money well spent.

The best software when hosting your own blog is WordPress in my humble opinion. The hosting company I use set up my site with the software already installed. When inside the admin part of the site I can set my theme and a variety of other configurations. I will discuss these at a future blog post.

Watch for more tips and tricks to help you get started. Mike and I also conduct seminars through the Illinois Small Business Development Center at McHenry County College.

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Gave Blood

For the first time in over ten years I gave blood. It was a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty uneventful, but I felt good afterwards. It’s nice to know that I may be helping someone with my pint of blood.

So I wondered where my blood might prove useful and I ran into this site at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where the Department of Hemetology and Oncology stated the following:

“According to Dr. Diamond, the hematology and oncology department is second only to the cardiothoracic surgery department in the use of blood products for patients. Infusions of red blood cells, platelets and plasma are vital to the care of our patients.

During chemotherapy the bone marrow is suppressed and unable to make new red blood cells that carry oxygen, white blood cells that fight infection, and platelets that allow clotting to occur. Red blood cell and platelet transfusions are essential as they help the child to feel better faster, receive higher doses of chemo that cure cancer, undergo surgeries for tumor resections, and prevent treatment and disease complications that could be devastating.

For the child with sickle cell disease, red blood cell transfusions are used to “dilute” the sickle shaped hemoglobin during a crisis event, to prevent strokes by transfusing on a regular basis and for support during surgical care.

It is safe to say that transfusion support with platelets and red blood cells are essential to providing care to children with hematologic and cancer diagnoses.”

As I read that last sentence I stopped wondering why it was important to give blood. Please give

Reasons Why A Blog Doesn’t Work

I was setting down to begin writing a new topic for this blog site and was pondering why it doesn’t work as well as I would like for it to work. I know I’m not the greatest writer in the world, but I’m certain I’m not the worst either.

Then I started to wonder if I’m the only blog writer out there wondering why their blog isn’t working. Not likely: after all, I’m not the only person in the world who likes spaghetti.

So I thought about it for awhile and I came up with the following reasons and hopefully you will find these insightful enough to help you. Also, I’m sure I’m not the only one to come up with these same reasons:

It’s not all about me – I have come to the realization that most readers of a blog could care less about the person writing the blog. Face it people, the most important person to the reader of your blog is…the reader. He couldn’t care less about you. Is what you’re writing going to solve his problem a fill his needs? That is what is important.
Quit trying to sell something to your readers – I’m certainly guilty of that one. From now on I’m cutting back on the ad space.
You don’t cite other sources – When it comes to an article where you did a good deal of research and the ideas belong to someone else (are there any original thoughts anymore?), give credit where credit is do. I read a lot of different sources for my material, but the thoughts on what they wrote are my own.
Your writing is BORING – You need to spice it up, make it interesting and make it relevant. Come on, I know you have something to say. Spit it out and quit trying to be fancy. Be you cuz there ain’t no one like you and everyone wants to see that person, not some fool you’re pretending to be.
You’re not making it easy to share– Put an RSS feed on your site. Add a Follow me on Twitter button, Post to Facebook button, a Like button. Anything you can think of to let folks share easily. I know with WordPress there are plugins that allow your readers to share your content. I use WP-Social-Bookmarking which adds on links to all the major Social Media sites.
You’re not letting others talk – You need to engage people in a conversation. That may mean having to go where they’re at since they are coming here. Go to other similar blogs and comment on what they wrote. This allows folks to get to know you and what you’re all about. It may make them stop by for a visit now and then.
As number 6 said: Give them a reason to return. And they will if you’re not boring, you engage your readers, make it easy to share you and you’re providing useful information.

Hopeful this proves to be somewhat helpful. If anyone out there has some other thoughts please share them with us so that others may learn too.

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