Small business Internet Marketing is different.  I don’t think anyone really gets it, yet.  Well, I mean there are surely strategies that work today, but frankly I think we’re missing some major components for all of this to come together.

Take for example a customer review.  Sure, we have YELP for restaurant reviews.  We have Google Places that brings certain reviews into their platform.  We have social media and followers, friends and fans talking about it.  We have old school ‘word of mouth’.  Why aren’t their any software solutions that help a business manage their online reviews, encourage one easy interface to communicate with these audiences.  Business are set up to fail with dozens of destination sites.  How can a business fail when they are now required to listen to dozens of channels, rather than two for a hundred years, the telephone and belly-to-bell.

All of a sudden there are dozens of channels.  If you don’t have reviews, citations and a healthy online presence, 40% of Americans all of a sudden can’t find you if they happen to choose to look for you on their smartphone.

Sure, Google provides education webinars for their small business audience on their Small Business Blog.  They’ve sent places kits to 10′s of thousands of businesses.  They’re providing photo walk through.  They recognize the small business marketplace needs education.  It’s difficult for American small businesses to get online when they operate in the most dangerous knowledge quadrant, ignorance.

The problem, Google’s core – SEARCH and they core profit driver, PAID.

Of course they need to get paid.  Of course small businesses will benefit from paid channels.  It’s a good business model.  But let’s not forget what’s at the center of this engine, organic search.  I feel like Google’s middle management has lost touch with the essence and foundation of what made Google Google.  If Larry and Sergey we’re heading the helm of local, I think Google Places would look different.  Maybe with Larry at the helm now, this is changing.

You see I’m in this ugly world of SEO.  I’m not an SEO-er.  I don’t like SEO and I think SEO is all wrong.  I’m not here to manipulate what this wonderful company Google has created.  I believe Google wants to rank businesses based on the greatest metric and report card any business can be measured on.  It’s customers.  Period.

A business delivering a great product or service, for a fair price and has happy, returning customers…Google should feel honored that I used them to recommend such a fine establishment.  Isn’t this how it should work?  I should trust Google to recommend the best business for my needs, right?  Social metric in search make so much sense.  Hence why I’m not an SEO, I can’t influence the algorithm.

But I can influence people.  I’m a marketer.  I influence buying decisions.  This means increasing new customer count, increasing customer spend and increasing spending frequency.  It’s not all about getting a client, it’s also about keeping them and bringing them back.

This is marketing, isn’t it?

So why is Google not helping me help it’s customers?

Why is Baidu spending half a billion to do this?

Google is trying to create an industry themselves.  They are trying to provide education to business that they need to get online.  Free websites.  Tracking.  Analytics.  Paid.  Free.

Google’s education sucks, it’s so dry and provided by egineers focussing the products features, not business benefits.  They are egotistical towards their paid channels.  They care about PPC Express and Google Deals.  Try and talk to a Deals expert about Places.  I feel like they said “that’s free, if you can’t afford this, that’s free and good luck”.

Point is, the more consumers using Places, engaging with reviews and leaving references, trails and citations, the more engaged businesses becomes with these channels, the more tools are developed to help business manage these solutions and in essence, it’s natural that a good portion of these businesses will add paid channels to their marketing mix.  This means revenue for Google.

It’s like drug dealing.  Google is chasing all the end dealers.  Stop.  Go get their suppliers.  Train all these corrupt SEOs.

We are the ones with our street on the feet.  We are the ones tirelessly creating 100+ hours of online training for our audience, like at my Local Internet Marketing Training agency.

My clients don’t have fancy automated software creating 100′s of links, or submitting to 100′s of directories.  We market to a specific audience.  Engage that audience.  Build review acuisition systems, not soliciting reviews.  Establish local PR campaigns.  Identify service improvements and capitalize from the change.  Survey audiences and implement improvements to further satisfy the needs of their customers.  Free wifi make customers happy.  Free wifi gets you citations.  Google likes citations.

Our clients need tools.  We need to know our online exposure without hours of research.  We need to know who is talking about us, where and when….without hours of learning solution A and failing at solution #2.  Our industry needs standardization towards regulations and best practices towards this new age of marketing.  Businesses need to learn how to properly engage with customers and continually figure out to improve this customer experience.

My job as an online marketer is to help my clients understand how this task is applied to their business.  In turn, my clients naturally move towards paid channels.  Google should help people like me to further grow their initial initiative.

Yesterday was likely my most frustrating flying experience I’ve endured since I began flying 25 years ago at the age of 10. While I may never know the true reasons how this day began, I realized last night while it was over I gained something of great value, a lesson. While we all make the same face on the shitter, businesses mess up all the time but with proper communication, challenges and adversity can be overcome. Did United Airlines screw up very bad yesterday or are they just a company no different than you and I, and ultimately overcame a typical challenge in business? Well, I don’t have my answer quite yet, I’ll have to ponder on that one further, but maybe you’ll gain some insight into this like I did. Fortunately I endured 15 hours of hell and it turned on a dime on the 15^th hour, ending my day with reflecting into a massive lesson.

Some United Employees could care less about a single passenger

My flight was departing from DFW at 9:44pm from gate E5. Here’s a picture of the scene as I walked up to the gate, a very typical scene before boarding a place. I didn’t pay attention to the frenzy of people at the ticketing counter, which now as I reflect back, was my first sign that today was just going to be that day. I enjoyed downloading my boarding pass on my smart phone, and used a QR code and my IL driver’s license to pass security. The one obscurity of this scene at the boarding gate that most of us didn’t notice at first, there are no United agents at the gate.

It wasn’t long after 9:44 that I realized I was sitting there with the tension and the energy high, everyone was fidgeting and no one was talking. There’s something strange going on here, and I needed to do something different. I asked the first person I saw, are you going to Chicago? Immediately he experienced a sense of relief but quickly expelled some of his frustration, I heard it in his tone, with his reply, “Yes, but the flight seems to have vanished”.

In my peripheral vision I saw several of the other passengers piquing interest in our conversation. So I spoke louder and asked another passenger, “are you to Chicago?” Well, you guessed it, their reply was the same. So I spoke louder, “Is everyone here going to Chicago?” I just rose a sleeping giant, an army of a 100 or so frustrated passengers in an airport under my leadership. I realized it was time to rally the troops and take charge. The mystery of the vanished United agents at DFW E5 for a 9:44 departing flight was sought to be solved, and an answer to why a major corporation took $300 from several hundred of us and aren’t delivering on their promise, to fly us from Dallas to Chicago with a noon arrival time. I just wanted to get home to my kids, my son was asking his mom every 30 minutes when is daddy coming home, and I had feel the pain of missing him as I read her text messages.

There was a plane, a couple of United workers on the tarmac not really doing anything and a boarding gate full of travelers, but not a single United employee. I soon realized and later learned the scramble of people outside security we’re the smarter or less oblivious travelers rebooking their flights. Those of us on the inside had no reason to think otherwise prior to departure, everything seemed normal. At that time, I saw a fast paced United employee speed walking, almost jogging, past our gate. DFW is not a United hub, so there was only a small handful of United gates and this was the only United flight departing at this time, to my knowledge. I darted over and asked him if I could ask him a question. I felt as if he raised his hand at me and he spoke “I can’t right now, I’m very busy”. The other passengers witnessed this situation, and the tension of my army rose.

A phone call on the courtesy phone failed, on both of them. The computer offered me a chance to rebook my flight on a 5pm flight.

Fear is extremely strong driver in our lives, but the results are can be extreme based on your choices

After some quick conversation with the passengers and learned one gentleman may miss a family member’s funeral, another is connecting on a transferring flight to Italy, bringing her brother’s bride to be custom made wedding dress and several who simply we’re going to miss their time with loved ones, I felt an immense collection of love in this room and realized this company was fucking with the most important aspect of people’s lives, love. This wasn’t a situation of what I later learned was mechanical failure, but a situation that a company was scared to deal with its customers, because they know they messed up. Fear is extremely strong driver in our lives, but the results are can be extreme based on your choices. It became clear United is experiencing some challenges today, and their front line retreated to safer grounds. The small United team at DFW responsible for leading their customer onto the plane, were hiding in their quarters to move those ready to board the plane back out of security into the pool of sheep at the ticketing gate. None of use wanted to deal with this, we just wanted the company that we gave our hard earned money to during a personal transaction, to continue the personal touch and provide us with a viable solution to return to our loved ones. It’s not much to ask as a customer, is it?

Google is making businesses better businesses and our lives easier

I quickly Googled [united customer service number] and knew to jump past the first listings of United sites and go to ContactHelp.com. This was the #2 spot on my Google smartphone. The first page has a clickable phone number and small excerpt that said “Speak “Operator” at each prompt. This took me 3 times until their system gave up and transferred me to a live customer service rep”. I hit one button, send, turned on my speaker phone and waited to hear the ‘operator’ prompt. It never came, only four prompts that would lead me into a frenzy of playing the automated telephone game, which I hate. I took the website’s advice, and spoke ‘operator’. Another similar yet slightly different prompt. I spoke ‘operator’. A third different prompt came on, but again no options for an agent. I spoke ‘operator’ for the third time and sure enough, I was on hold for two minutes for a live operator. Google was there to make my life better and easier, again. What a user experience!

While the man on the line was empathetic, when asked for a confirmation number, my initial reaction was to grab the boarding pass of my new friend and general next to me. It was too long to fumble on my smartphone to navigate to my own confirmation number. We confirmed his ticket and the agent proceeded to let us know that the flight is delayed until 5pm due to mechanical failure. He then told us to see a ticketing agent if we wanted to rebook all of our flights or wait for the flight 7 hours. I wasn’t accepting this. I told him that we have all done our part in our agreement and we’d like to speak an agent at the boarding gate to rebook our flight. I responded with some arrogance fueled by frustration, that I have a picture of the scene at his gate and that I’m in the business of Internet Marketing. I’m going to share this picture and story with my followers, to make ourselves heard to more than 150 of your customers locked inside a sardine can. He told me, while he didn’t realize I was on speaker phone and had 10 strangers huddled in a circle around me, he could rebook my flight over the phone, but he couldn’t help anyone else. This erupted my audience on my stage, with comments of frustration “he’s in india”. I proceeded to rebook my flight with him, where he had to transfer me to another airline to fly me to another state, connect terminals in under 30 minutes and fly to Chicago arriving home around 6:30 pm. It was a decent option so I proceeded. To this gentleman’s credit, he was very empathetic to our situation and just did his job with the limited power and control he was provided.

I had some time before my departing flight so I decided I should proceed with making some noise to United electronically, my problem was solved but there was still 99 other people with no solution and a lot of pain from missed love. I had the tools to try and do something, reflecting on my experiences of major corporations responding to angry tweets and solving the problem such as @Comcast. They understand the power on online social media. We find out later, @United doesn’t.

Is United using Twitter to promote themselves or as a communication channel?

Here’s my tweets. Our frustrated audience grew, frankly United could respond and say there was 50 people at the gate. I really don’t know, but my judgment grew or perhaps the group grew! I have yet to receive a response or mention from @United.

I decided I could write a blog post, I just need to get hooked up with Internet. Since I left my charger in my hotel room, I needed power for my wireless card, since the wifi seemed to not work in that area of the terminal. It worked, but was slower than Internet. Hmmmm, maybe someone throttled the Internet to limit access? I doubt it, but it’s not completely ruled out. I begun a mad dash to go find a charger in the airport. While jogging, I found a United employee.

Our conversation lasted about two minutes, I wanted to end it once I realized I’d be spinning my tires with her and no solution would come from it. It was her, an older short haired skinny lady who really didn’t give a shit about passengers, she worked at United for a paycheck. After my initial question and dialogue, she was on a rant of how a passenger who is missing their cruise line should have never, ever booked a flight so close to departure. She essentially minimized our problem, didn’t take accountability for their actions and in turned blamed the people who are responsible for her paycheck, her only objective for wearing her silly uniform. She should not be working for United. I realized any further conversation with her wouldn’t lead me closer to my goal, so I quickly ended it and proceeded to buy my charger.

After fumbling with my wireless card that wasn’t connecting to Verizon, I decided to send another tweet, this time ensuring I’m addressing @united. I knew I had to leave and I wasn’t doing a good job for my new friends, without Internet on my computer I simply couldn’t execute anything that quickly. I knew my only tool was my smartphone and I hoped my tweet could be read. It was a longshot, but I hoped United was smart enough like @Comcast. After some small talk with the organizer of Stompernet who was experiencing other delays for her United flight to Atlanta, I had to bolt off to find US Airways gate to board my plane and get my boarding pass. I only hoped the agent did his job.

US Airways Rocks!

Upon arriving at the gate for my US Airways flight, the ticketing agent could not believe my story. Just as she was about to process is, she responded to me and said ‘Sir, if you’d like I can get you a great seat if you wait for 4 minutes, the computer won’t let process the upgrade for 4 minutes”. I was having a bad day and she knew it, I’m not sure if she saw an opportunity to win a new customer, but she listened to me and took action. She can keep her job. Does US Airways rock better than United? No, I just met a nice employee who cared.

I sat beside a deadhead. A pilot who flies the same plane, an Airbus A321 I believe. He couldn’t believe my story of the vanishing crew. It didn’t matter, it was behind me and I was set to go home to see my son. We quickly moved on his passion, and something I’m very excited to explore at a later time in my life, being a pilot. He taught me a lot about the planes and answered some questions I had.

When I landed in Charlotte SC, I quickly changed terminals for a mad dash to my gate. TSA instructed me I had to exit security to get my boarding pass. I guess I can’t fault them for knowing the airlines’ procedures that I can get my boarding pass at the gate. The line was small and I put my credit card in to retrieve my boarding pass. I was not assigned a seat on this United flight to Chicago. I thought this was odd.

At the gate, I witnessed chaos. The line at the ticketing agent was 15 people deep. After some time and others were boarding the plane, I was one person away from sharing my experience and hoping to get on this highly overbooked plane. No one was stepping up to revoke their ticket, they wanted to see their loved ones and likely were experiencing frustrations from United like I was. We all make the same face on this shitter, but the sheep mentality kept us from being an organized forced to make a difference. This is just the way flying is I guess. Then the agent spoke, “Anyone without a seat assignment please wait, we need volunteers then I can assign you a seat”. If it wasn’t for bright passenger who told me she noticed there were half a dozen upgraded seats available in the AM on the flight, I’d have no hope of getting on this late flight.

Because of this day, I never took time to eat. I was famished. I only hoped I would get on the plane and buy some overpriced, decent boxed food on this 90 minute flight. I was dehydrated, my own fault for not grabbing a bottle of water sometime during the day. I did have a ginger ale on the previous flight. Then my name was announced, I got a seat. I was the second name and the first to get my pass, in this group of 20 or so unassigned frustrated tired flyers. I could tell, they all shared similar stories, but came from different areas of the country than me.

I bolted on the plane, bypassing the zone call. I sat down in my upgraded seat and asked a flight attendant for some water. I drank the glasses of water like I was taking a shot of jagermeister. In my seat, I sat beside a Caucasian shoe maker who lives and has a business in China and an attorney from Chicago. We had some interesting deep conversations on the flight.

This flight was horrible, but I was in high spirits. United Airlines serves no food on flights less than 90 minutes. A Korean stewardess reached into her pocket and gave me a tiny, half melted toberone chocolate bar. United should sell food, or prepared in a situation like this. 90 minutes on the tarmac is surely enough time to eat it, or have enough time to put it away if we depart. It was a little bit of energy!

The 90 minute flight turned into almost 5 hours in the sardine can. We sat on the tarmac for over 90 minutes because United wanted to push the plane from the gate, to move more passengers, while Chicago had stopped all flights due to severe storms. It turned out that I’d rather be uncomfortable in that plane with strangers hungry because our pilot communicated everything it seemed he knew of the situation. He was overly informative. He told us the truth. I heard the breakdown in his control as a pilot to get us in the air. He knew, as I did because of my Google weather software, that if we took off now we’d miss the storm and able to land before another major storm was approaching. Our window to take off was closing, and fast.

We got our clearance after 90 minutes. We were told the runway was backed up, but the pilot is trying to get us ahead. He never told us if we would, but we took a different turn and noticed half a dozen planes ahead of us as the jet started to fire up. We were taking off, only 90 minutes late.

Upon approaching Chicago, the captain informed us due to the storms, there were major delays at the world’s second busiest airport and United’s hub. We were in a holding pattern, for what sounded like 40 minutes. Every so often, we’d get an update. The time kept changing but our pilot was still demonstrating the lack of coordination at United and hassle their employees must be dealing with at ORD. It was all OK, we all seemed peaceful on the plane, the energy was calm and the passenger around me were all acting much different than my friends in the morning. We all make the same face on the shitter, but this time our environment was different. We had a very understanding pilot who had a massive passion of his career. He understood what it’s like to be a passenger and I later learned that he tries hard to disclose as much as he can, because he gets frustrated when he’s a deadhead in the back. How cool is that? Isn’t that just awesome! He managed to calm his entire plane who were all starving after being on a plane for 5 hours with no food and we had no solution in place.

Can you seen the 360 happening here? All he did was communicate with us. He, as an employee of United, recognized a problem, understood the frustrations of his passengers, reacted to communicate his understanding of the situation, expressed the actions he’s taking in his control and in turn, reversed a situation that could have similar implications to his business as the experience I had in the morning.

This time in my eyes, United Airlines, communicated with me. My perceptions was United failed that morning.

The truth is my perceptions, along with thousands of others, are the actions of each employee are perceived as actions of entire multimillion dollar company. The company creates the systems and processes, but it’s the employees who build the business.

I didn’t get home until 11pm after a flying day that started at the airport before 9am. I bet I could have driven fast from Dallas, perhaps that where some of my passion for being in control on the road over flying comes from. Nonetheless, I needed to share my feelings with this pilot. My mission is help people in life and I saw an opportunity to help tens of thousands of people. All I needed to do was to give this pilot a moment. I pulled him aside and just told him this.

“Today is likely going to be the most frustrating flying experience of my life and I fly a lot, but I’ll remember it for the rest of my life because of you. You told us everything, and I know you’re limited in your ability to control anything at United, but you cared and I just want to really thank you for caring about your passenger’s well beings. Today I’m walking off this plane as a United passengers and will continue to be a United passenger. I’m just one person you saved today and thank you for communicating with us”

This grown man, who seemed to be in his twenties, had a tear in his eyes. I kid you not. This man was fighting something. As he spoke in a vulnerable, weak voice, he shared with me his experiences of being a deadhead. I got it right there and then.

We all make the same face on the shitter, his business had problems, but it’s their people that make it. He had passion to continue to take my money and deliver a value added service. I bet he saved 100 passengers that day.

I hope that United builds the proper channels of communication and implement different channels of control for their employees. The flying experience doesn’t have to be so frustrating; us passengers know it’s difficult to manages these planes against mother nature and mechanical failure. We just want to know details. Without details, we get pissed off. You just need to communicate and overcome of your fear of angry customers. Sure, we all have our own ways to express ourselves, but that’s just it. We just want to express ourselves, and be heard.

It’ll be interesting if United responds to me or not. It doesn’t matter, I know others will follow Jet Blue’s lead. There’s gotta be a good reason why they are growing so fast and United isn’t.

All I know is that I’ll be communicating with my audience online and offline and will never hide.

Well, not really, I’m not looking for a job.

Although if I was looking, I’d definitely try hard to win the opportunity to work for the country’s top employer. I do want to do some work with Google though. We need to enhance your user experience when searching for local products and services. You’re good, but really suck to compared to where you could be in. I just want maybe Sergey Brin, Larry Page or even Google’s staffing manager, Todd Carlisle to perhaps take a gander at some of these thoughts.

You see, you guys are pretty darn smart and have done things nobody has ever accomplished. You are philanthropists as a company, your leaders really are out to do the world good, I think maybe your shareholders fight the value of profits over good will, but that’s expected. I’m glad to know Larry is stepping back up in April, I believe as long as those two have the control, the overall vision of the company will remain focused on the ‘user experience’ and not the shareholder profit. I can’t say much about Eric, I just don’t know much about him.

But you’re not as good as you can be

However, there are some things you guys aren’t so hot at either. Fortunately for you, A LOT of companies aren’t that good right now at many things online. I mention how one of your client’s, a $63 billion dollar retailer, uses your AdSense tool to drive people away from their ecommerce sales page. Not a bad job of your guys to build a tool that is mixing up the old school retail world. But this tells me something, the big boys don’t get it yet either!

What about those small businesses? Doesn’t Obama predicate growth in the small business sector? I know you guys have your eye on it, heck, there are only 23 million of these small guys in the United States alone! Yeah, they want a piece of the Internet Marketing pie, almost half their customers now are using the Internet, or almost all using you, Google, to find these small guys. Surely your shareholders want a piece of that revenue too. I’m sure with the growth and vision of your (biggest?) competitor, Facebook, they are not only profiling the social graph, but you think they have a business social graph in mind? Interesting launch of their Facebook Places, isn’t it?

You’re doing some things right for the Small Business

I love what you are trying to do with the launch of your Small Business Blog, local extensions, Google Boost and definitely Google Places with Hotpot. I get it. It’s necessary and a very logical solution to your most valuable asset, your users. I know Google Places very well, I’ve been studying your moves since 2005 in Google Maps. It was a great day for everyone on April 6^th, 2009 with the launch of Places. Everyone one my industry colleagues freaked, I embraced the exposure of businesses over websites. But why are you advertising a ‘feature’ of $75 free adwords, for small businesses in Entrepreneur magazine, February 2011….even when there is an article of one of your employees and this isn’t the tool for the small business now?! What about delivering the right message the right audience? I’d say a D– for your marketing department or perhaps they aren’t in alignment with their audience, yet. I’m not sure, it’s just not right in my opinion.

Now you want to rank Businesses

But that’s just it, you’re now in the business of ranking businesses. Very different from the day Larry recognized the relationship of old school publishing and the correlation to content on a webpage isn’t it? You’re doing alright at ranking businesses, but have a long way to go I think. As an Internet Marketer, I’m excited for what is about to come once you figure out social profiling and further introducing personalized search and recommendations (reviews) to further rank a business. We know you have filed for patents in this arena in the last couple of years. We all know the food is good at a busy restaurant, right? I know I don’t like a recommendation from my friend Ryan, but if Shayna said she loved this sushi place, I’d definitely want to know. I know you all know this, it’s pretty obvious, but I can’t wait until it actually works like this. Wow, that’s going to be a cool user experience. But it scares the hell out of SEO-ers and I don’t think I can truly describe the fear in the general mindset of that big pie, the small businesses owners around the world. They are scared about spending money with you guys, or online marketers. Free dollars won’t entirely work, but free education might.

I don’t want a job at Google. I’m sure I’d love it, but I’d still be working for someone. Granted, I LOVE the business model of working around a start-up mentality inside and allowing your people tremendous freedom for creativity. Some of your best solutions came from this, right? But I have a problem with you right now, you’re not doing a job at solving the same problem farmers had to deal with in the 80′s. They needed to create the demand for milk. The importance of calcium was born. Milk does a body good campaigns were run.

Business owners are just so confused and scared

My problem is being on stage with hundreds of business owners, who get the glazed over look when I discuss Google Places. I’m frustrated that the Internet Marketing industry is almost all black hat, even when they think they aren’t. I see a huge disconnect here guys and I think you’re messing it up.

Although, I’ll watch my words a little, you’re messing it up less than perhaps Bing. They sought me out 18 months ago, Kevin Hagwell, product manager for Bing Local. I shared my thoughts and have witnessed perhaps some of my thoughts into their local engine. Although I never heard back and I could care less.

The coolest thing is I’m on a plane with my son right now (5 yrs old) coming back from a speaking engagement for an Internet Marketing conference as a key speaker for Google Places. We visited Disney yesterday. He watched me speak from the back of the room. I don’t care what someone a little old school might say about that. It was my show, people enjoyed it and I’m living the American dream. Freedom. Not democracy, but to be free of all choice, from ego to details such as my wonderful opportunity to work to live and enjoy it with my greatest love on the planet, my son.

Here’s the Challenge I think you might be facing

So I’m not looking for a job, but like Larry recognized sometime in 1996, there was a problem and he saw a solution. You guys have a problem, creating and educating business owners about their opportunities online. You have ‘experts’ at manipulating your algorithm. Fortunately your engineers are awesome at building the algorithm and with the recent launch of Caffeine, I’m sure in due time you guys can squash the entire SEO industry. I hope so! But what about a solution? I’m not too sure your people are quite getting it. You’ve gotta get into the heads of all these business owners. You have the distribution, capital, exposure and opportunity. But you’re letting your most valued asset down, your users with their user experience. I’m only exposed to a small percentage of those companies in Google Places, but I really want to go to the busy restaurant. Not the top ranked business because the busy restaurant user is deploying SEO, or doesn’t understand what Internet Marketing is, is afraid of this behemoth, feels their company isn’t a fit or has lost a lot of money from an SEO or failed Adwords campaign. Wow, quite the mountain ya’ll have to climb, isn’t it?

It comes down to education. We need to properly educate business owners globally of the Internet. It’s not about a website and meta-tags! They need to understand in order to “rank” high in a search engine, they need to deliver a quality service, with effective customer service, offering their target audience valuable content exposed in the relevant area their audience is hanging out. Isn’t that just fundamental marketing? That’s what they taught me in the year 2000 after graduating with an expensive, rather useless marketing degree.

I think you guys are failing at this, even with your push in the last 6 months on trying to deliver education, say through your small business blog. That’s why I want you to talk to me, or hire me, I don’t care. Get me on the phone, get me out there, I don’t care. Buy my education company delivering this education to business owners. I can’t do this alone, but I have my own objectives in life, and it’s not being a business owner. I can’t wait to help others around the planet, but that’s for a different blog post. We need to properly and effectively provide the right education to business owners, in their lingo, their jargon and demonstrate that they can replicate a lot of their current business skills to the Internet, and in a lot of cases, without hiring an Internet Marketing firm. Or better, hiring an ‘Internet Marketer’ and avoid an ‘SEO-er’ type of world.

Bottom line, we can teach businesses that they simply need to be better businesses in order to survive in the new digital world. This will help make the world a little bit of a better place. I don’t care how we connect, but I feel very strong that I can offer some value to your team, I just need an ear.

P.S. Yeah, I know I’m putting myself out there. Check me out, I only believe the right way for a business to gain long term exposure on the Internet is to deliver a quality online experience addressing the needs of the audience, and in turn creating the appropriate transparency and exposure. In other words, engage in your audience online.

You may already know I’m a partner in Local Marketing Source, LLC, an online education portal providing Internet Marketing education to promote local businesses online.

Recently we have become the new sponsor’s of Local Biz Buidlers, the leading local internet marketing forum.  Our goal is to continue in Keith’s original vision of creating a large, powerful community of local Internet marketers where newbies and experts alike can give and take information in our special niche.

This is a great place for Internet Marketers and Local Business Owners/Marketers!

I’d like to introduce Ryan Smith, LMS’ managing partner.  Ryan comes to LMS with an extensive education background (MIT, U of C, MBA type of stuff) and a tonne of experience growing companies.  We like to describe our relationship like I’m the race car flying down the Interstate with no steering wheel, he’s the bumpers on the highway.  He keeps everything properly in check in all of our joint operations.

I have three different projects I’m building.  I’ve already introduced Local Marketing Source, but next is my Local Internet Marketing agency, CCS Internet Marketing.  We provide Internet Marketing services to a few different niches, including the transportation industry.  Third, I’m a partner in a National Same Day Delivery company, NAPAREX.  We are an online platform providing same day delivery to 1000′s of consumers in the United States daily through integration of 100′s of local courier companies.

All right, and sitting down right now created a presentation that I hope is going to be one of the best presentations on the Internet that is timely for the launch of the new Google places and provides insight to what is and the how to. While doing this I recently came across a Googler who is local to me in Chicago by the name of Jim Lecinski. I like Jim and I don’t even know him. He’s a Chicago Blackhawks fan, self-proclaimed as a rabid Blackhawks fan and he’s helping to change the world for good by being a Google employee. Anyone that follows me knows I believe this is company is making our planet a better place, so I like Jim by default.

Now you see this presentation that I’m doing is on the topic of geo-mods triggers that trigger the local business results when looking for specific products and services and how Google is starting to get a little bit better at trying to determine as to what I am looking for.

Sure enough, when searching for the keyword [Chicago beef sandwich] this triggers the local business results gives me two establishments in the Chicago area that feed you these sandwiches. I’m not here to comment on the accuracy or whether or not Google has gotten it right, but I am here to comment on is the second result that is “Baba’s Famous Philly Steak”. I mean, I’m in Algonquin Illinois and a search for Algonquin Hot Dog Stand gives me a local listing of Luke 50 km away!

Jim, this is a problem!!!!!!!!

All right, normally I would not take my time away from my work for such a useless post that will likely make no impact that anyone ever anywhere. However, the Blackhawks have not one Stanley Cup since 1961 and in fact they’re holding the largest NHL draught of any NHL team winning the Stanley Cup. Since living in Chicago, moving from Toronto, I’ve been very disappointed at the whole culture in this wonderful city. I am no longer disappointed.

On my faculty call today with my students at ,a href=”http://www.localmarketingsource.com”>Local Marketing Source, I had goosebumps talking about Jim’s post on how Chicago is beating Philadelphia in terms of the activity of searches on the Internet relating to the Stanley Cup final. That excites me!

So for a city of Chicago to be so proud of their beef sandwiches, our current rival sandwich shows up any search when asking Google for the Chicago sandwich, I must say this is the most wrong you’ve ever gotten Google!!

Jim, bring me to a game and I promise, I won’t be upset with Google anymore.