The Good Stuff

I know, I know. Typically this is an assignment undertaken at the end of the summer and not before it technically begins. (Although, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever actually been assigned this essay. Not even in elementary school when it was more of a crayon-based operation than an actual paper).

But this (almost) summer, Mack Web Solutions is getting to the good stuff early and we want to share.

(Also, we want to explain, in advance, why you won’t be able to reach us in the latter half of this week. Because we know you’d worry and, frankly, we don’t want to have to deal with the aftermath of the missing persons’ reports. The Ice Cream Break Debacle of 2011 taught us that).

So consider this your official notice…this Thursday and Friday, June 13 & 14, Mack Web Solutions will be out of the office and out of your grasp because we will be in…

STRAT OPS!

(I know, I know. When Mack first announced it, I was desperately hoping for Hawaii, too).

Better Than Hawaii! (If you hate sun, sand, surf, and fruity drinks with umbrellas)

Okay, so it’s no island paradise, but we actually are really excited for this chance to take this time away and make good on something we promised ourselves to do: treat Mack Web like a client.

It’s been a goal that we’ve been working toward (with no little success) for the last year or so but, as with every client, it’s time to move on to the next phase of our growth.

Even though we’ve been around now for ten (that’s right, count ‘em: ten) years, the company has undergone such an evolution in the last 12 (er…16) months, that we really felt like we were re-setting the clock.

(Which is not going to stop us from having a celebratory blow-out worthy of the decade mark later this year).

So, appropriate to the re-genesis, we set some goals for ourselves last spring and we’ve spent a good part of the last year really trying to accomplish them.

The return on that investment has been beyond what we expected and, if we’ve talked a lot about it, it’s only because we’re so giddy-happy with the results of what started, essentially, as an experiment. A well-conceived, carefully-considered, painstakingly-researched experiment, but an experiment nonetheless.

Mad Science

That experiment, of course, was a little thing we like to call…Innovation Friday.

If you’ve worked with us, heard of us, chatted with us at all, you probably know a thing or two about Innovation Friday.

From 12-5 (almost) every Friday, we stop checking our email or answering our phone. We bar the doors and sequester ourselves in our offices with a plentiful stash of paper, smelly markers, and chocolate, and go about the business of making Mack Web the company that we want it to be.

This takes different shapes based on the stage of evolution we’re in at the time.

Sometimes we get to laugh and dream and throw candy wrappers and get a little high off fruit-scented markers and indulge our inner creatives.

Sometimes we just take the time to offer kudos, air grievances and frustrations, secretly psychoanalyze each other, and really, truly communicate.

Sometimes we have to knuckle down and slog through the hard, painful, punctilious work of sorting out the details of the model we want to build.

Every time we learn new things, whether from Mack, from each other, from our industry idols, or from our interactions with you lovely people in our community.

No matter what kind of Friday it is, the overarching aim is always the same: a sacred time and space where we can focus on us, so that we can

a) become this company that we’re proud to be part of and
b) become the version of our company best able to serve our clients.

What’s coming up this week is just a continuation in that grand tradition of deliberate growth and cultivation. (Including, but not limited, to the unquestionable cornucopia of comestibles).

Egg? Chicken?

Our Mack, in case you hadn’t picked up on it, spends a lot of time pondering ways to guide Mack Web Solutions down the path that our love of just, plain old doing things right necessitates.

It’s a beautiful trait of hers and one that we, her (almost always) adoring employees appreciate. But there comes a time when even one so grand as Our Boss Lady doesn’t have the knowledge or resources to carry on alone.

So when she was setting resolutions for the company this year, she laid out, in black and white, that she would not be afraid to ask for help.

She has followed through on that in two ways so far this year. First was in bringing in an HR consultant to help us find the right team members (a stunning success so far, but more on that coming soon).

Second, she got in touch with a strategical operations consultant. Which brings us, full circle, back to our plans for summer vacation.

(And to the ever-unresolvable question: Did our desire for excellence lead us to Strat Ops or did Strat Ops feed our desire for excellence?)

Operative Strategery

I know, I know. Strat Ops sounds so very espionage-esque (and if I’m harboring secret hopes that our consultant will turn out to be Sydney Bristow in disguise…well, that’s just between you and me), but it’s actually a huge planning session for the future of our company and (indirectly) maybe some of yours, too.

So here’s the nitty gritty:

• two days
• six team members
• one consultant
• ten years in review
• three to five years in projection
• ten brand new smelly markers (it would be a sin to forget those)
• approximately a metric ton of chips, popcorn, dried mangoes, and various forms of sweet, seductive tooth-rot-in-a-wrapper

That’s the summary.

The long-version involves a lot more heart-to-hearts about dreams and goals, candid talk about roles within in the team, uncomfortable chats about financials, and the laying-out of a concrete strategy for moving forward.

We’ll be re-examining who we are as a company and as individuals in relationship with each other, re-establishing what we do, and re-defining who we do it for.

We’ll be revisiting our mission, vision, and values. We’ll be putting absolutely everything about ourselves under the microscope and seeing what we see.

Behold…

I figure it’s going to end in one of two ways.

1. Either we’re all going to come out of this thing a collective bundle of paranoid, traumatized neuroses in the throes of a full-blown existential crisis, OR
2. We’re going to come out better, stronger, faster, with a definite plan for the future.

Obviously, the hope and plan is for the latter.

To that end, we’ll be practicing what we preach and setting the next set of big goals for ourselves.

And from those goals we will be developing a solid, defined strategy that will sustain and accelerate the momentum we’ve been building this year.

Because THE GOAL, the big daddy of what we want to accomplish, remains unchanging:

We want to help companies who align with our values and culture to build their brands and their communities and to accomplish big goals for their businesses.

(Also, we want to discover if it is actually possible to eat your body-weight in gummy bears).

Pardon the Mess

So don’t mind us as we duck out of your lives for a few days. We know it’ll be a wrench, but we have confidence in your ability to get by.

And don’t worry about us too much either. We’re not strangers to change and we’re more than willing to do the hard work.

After all, we constantly tell our clients that you can’t rest on your…laurels…if you want to be great. What kind of company, what kind of people would we be if we didn’t apply that to ourselves?

(Bad, lazy, hypocritical people, on par with those who talk in the theater, that’s what).

But hey, coming soon to a cafe-proximal office near you…the new and improved Mack Web Solutions.

Keep an eye out. You’re gonna like what you see.

(Unless we go with Ending #1. In which case, we’d appreciate it if you call the nice men in the white coats. We won’t be in any state to do it).

There are so many phenomenal speakers in our industry that it’s really easy to think that there isn’t a whole lot of work involved when you’re asked to speak at a conference. Come up with a topic and description, throw some slides together, rehearse it a time or two, and then get on that stage.

Not exactly.

A couple weeks ago I had the honor of speaking for Distilled at SearchLove Boston. It was my first time speaking in the industry and it was an amazing experience. I learned a great deal about what it takes to get prepared.

I won’t deny that I am an over-achiever and how I prepared for SearchLove may not be even close to what the other speakers went through. But for those of you who are curious about taking the stage and what’s involved, here’s a glimpse into a first-timer’s preparation.

In the beginning

Your session title and description is requested a couple months before you speak and well before you have your talk written. This made me a little nervous because this was my first gig and I had no idea how everything was going to shake down once I actually started writing my talk. So I decided to go with something more general so that no matter what I ended up focusing on, it wouldn’t be completely off the mark.

I decided to go with this:

Think Differently: How to Use Content, SEO, and Social Media to Achieve (Big) Goals for Your Business

SEO, social media, and content marketing are perfect for building community, but ultimately they’re only the tools. The true objective is to meet your business goals, growing your company into what you want it to be.

Mack will reveal a sustainable approach and process that goes beyond the tools, focusing instead on who and what a company should be and on building a thriving community around your brand.

A few weeks after I turned this in, I had a conference call with Rob Ousbey where we discussed what I was planning on covering in my talk. We chatted through a bunch of ideas and Rob gave me the run down on the level of the audience (advanced), what they typically like to hear (actionable tips), and that I needed to write my talk as if I were speaking only to the other speakers. He explained how this would help me cut out any parts that would be too basic, and focus only on things that would bring great value to the audience.

After our call, I sketched out a few notes and stuck them in a folder. And then, over the next few weeks, I carried around this little notebook and took down thoughts and ideas so that when I finally had the time to work on my talk, I could get right to it.

Starting with research & ideas

Before I started writing anything, I looked at a TON of decks to get some inspiration. Jon Colman, Mike King, Rand Fishkin, Rhea Drysdale, Wil Reynolds, Ian Lurie, Will Critchlow, Aleyda Solis. I tried to get exposure to as many different styles and approaches from the speakers in the industry who I respect most. I also watched several videos from past SearchLove conferences.

Then I read a great book that Rand had recommended called Resonate by Nancy Duarte. It was full of great recommendations on how to structure your talk and what it takes to fully understand your audience and their journey.

Taking Ian Lurie’s advice about never starting your slide deck first, I began drafting my talk by writing down all of the ideas I could think of related to my session title and description.

I didn’t even touch a computer during this phase. I just wrote down (and flushed out) all of the ideas I had been collecting in my notebook over the last few weeks. I tried to organize them into topics and exhaust all the stuff I wanted to say about each idea. I didn’t filter anything. I just got it all down and then stacked all the ideas from each topic into individual piles and paper clipped them together.

Then I let it sit for a week or so. I continued to marinate on the stuff I had put together and wrote down additional ideas in my little notebook as they came. I also had the opportunity to chat on the phone with Wil Reynolds. I very much respect his speaking style and I was hoping to get some insider’s tips from him since he had spoken at SearchLove many times.

My biggest take away from Wil was that my job was to make the lives of the audience easier. What was I going to tell them that was going to help them walk away and better do their jobs?

This got me to thinking that I needed to better understand the audience. I needed more info on demographics, pain points, and what they were really coming to SearchLove to learn. This made me nervous because I felt like I was running out of time, but I knew that this would make the difference between a good and great presentation. Wil had suggested conducting a survey, so I started figuring out what it was going to take to put that together.

Getting some direction

Instead of just asking a bunch of questions that I thought would help me get a better understanding of the audience, I decided to ask some industry peers. I wanted to get some feedback from a few friends who had either worked for or with some of the people and companies who may be represented in the SearchLove audience.

I also asked Lynsey Little and Lauren Brady, head of Distilled’s events, to provide me with some basic demographic information about last year’s audience.

So I sent an email to Nick Eubanks, Bill Sebald, James Agate, Chris Gilcrist, and Joel Klettke, and gave them the low down in order to get some input:

I received a bunch of diverse feedback from that group, so I put together a spreadsheet to make sense of it and organize it all:

At that point I could see that I really only needed to ask 6 questions to get the answers I needed. So I created a survey on Survey Monkey and with the help of Distilled, we pushed it out on social media to collect some data.

We didn’t get a ton of people who took the survey, but it did help me to get some clarity and focus my talk:

All of the survey work I did helped me to see that the pain points I needed to address with this audience boiled down to a few important things: buy-in, siloed teams, proving ROI, what to measure, how to change perspective, how long does it take to get results, and how do I get consensus in a larger organization.

I wrote these pain points down and hung them on the wall of my office so that as I continued to work on my talk I would be reminded to keep focused on these things.

Drafting my talk

Once I had pain points and knew exactly what I wanted to focus on, I had to figure out the best way to communicate the solutions to this stuff. Will Critchlow had reminded me to focus on my process strengths, so I broke this stuff down into stages.

First on a piece of paper:

And then, because I was going to have Natalie (our designer) create a graphic to illustrate all of this stuff once I was ready to put it in my deck, I also did a pretty version with colors and stuff all flushed out like this:

From this sketch, while Nat worked on the graphic, I began drafting my whole talk in an actual blog post. This way, I could flush out the narrative of the stuff I really wanted to say (stories, case studies, examples) and then later pull out the key points that would go onto the slides.

It took a while for me to write the blog post, but it really helped me to learn the material. So in a sense, I was rehearsing while I was preparing which really helped me in the end.

Creating the deck

Lucky for me, I’ve got Nat to help me make things look really good. She and I worked together to create the look of about 5 or 6 different types of slides. From there, I could go through the blog post I had written and pull out only the info that was going to make it onto the slides.

With the different types of slides to choose from, it allows me to create the whole deck without needing a designer (Nat does all the graphic work and saves them in a folder for me to use), it brings some variety, and it helps me to say things in different ways (making a bigger impact).

Here’s the basic slide types I used:

I’m very picky about the message that goes on each slide and it takes me a long time to get each slide just right. I like my decks to tell as much of the story as possible so that the people who never hear the talk can still get all of the value.

Once I had everything in the deck, I sent it to Courtney (our content strategist and the voice of our brand) to read the whole thing and make notes about each slide. She’s the grammar police so she’ll tell me if what I’ve said isn’t quite right, or, if I’ve completely blown it and missed a transition, connecting piece, or need to flush something out further (she seriously is my saving grace).

Practice

Once the deck had been through the wrath of Courtney, I spent some time by myself talking through it out loud. This helped me to eliminate some slides, move some things around, and add anything that was missing.

And then I was ready to practice.

And this is going to sound a little crazy, but I don’t like to practice in front of people before I present. I’m not afraid of public speaking and it makes me really uncomfortable to work things out in front of a few people vs. actually being in front of the actual crowd of a few hundred (or more). So I just prefer to work things out (out loud) on my own.

What usually works for me is I stand in my basement (by myself) and give my talk to the wall several times (I’m weird, I know). I write down notes as I go through it and work through transitions. I get as familiar as possible with the flow so that when I’m on the stage I am comfortable, relaxed, and I can feel like I’m having a conversation with the audience.

The finished product

In the end, after all of that work, it all comes down to this:

On the other side

Now that I’ve conquered my first big industry speaking gig, here are the most important things I learned:

1. Speak about what you love
   I will always make sure that I’m writing and speaking about stuff that I’m really passionate about. It’s a lot of work to do all of this. When you’re running a company and preparing to speak simultaneously, you have to push really hard and it’s easy to get tired and want to give up. If I wasn’t speaking about something I cared about, it would be hard for me to stay motivated to deliver such a quality product.
2. Use real content
   Whenever I’m writing or speaking, I make sure my content is real, authentic, and communicates what’s actually going on in real life. So the process I spoke about at SearchLove was something we had actually been working on at Mack Web throughout the previous year. This also helps because it provides actual data, case studies, and challenges that I can talk about first-hand. Another bonus is that using real content is a great way to leverage and make the most of everything you’re doing. Because I was using real-life stuff, as I wrote my talk it was a raw look into what we were actually doing at Mack Web which helped me to see what we needed to work on with our own clients and in our business.
3. Know when to take a break
   Because this was my first big gig, and it was for Distilled (I idolize and heart them a whole lot), I wanted to do a tremendous job. I worked harder on this deck than anything I’ve done in the last year. I’m good with that part, but the part I’m going to let go next time is all the anxiety. I had some pretty hefty expectations about having my deck done and rehearsed weeks ahead of time. That just wasn’t very realistic. With all I have going with Mack Web and my family, preparing for a speaking gig at this caliber was a lot to handle. The balance of my career and family was really tough during this time. So now that I’m on the other side, I realize that it may always be last minute getting these things together, but that I will get it done and I will do my best. I always do. I just need to allow myself more room, more flexibility, and take a break from the entire thing even when I feel like I don’t have the time to give.

Even though speaking is a ton of work, it’s so incredibly rewarding. Sure, it’s great to get Mack Web the exposure, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m speaking because I love it. It’s such an awesome feeling to be on that stage. And it’s really great to know that I can help people just by talking about something that I’m so incredibly passionate about (plus I absolutely LOVE all of the people and friends I’ve made).

Lucky for me, I’m getting back on that stage in July at MozCon. I’ve got my work cut out for me (again), but now at least I’ve got some great experience to stand on.

Looking forward to it.

So it’s Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend. Kids are up around 7. We’re headed to Boulder to meet Jon’s mom who’s visiting from Arizona. We’re going to stay at a hotel, have some fun at the pool, and go to a graduation party.

Sounds great. Except for the fact that actually getting there is going to be completely and utterly painful. It always is.

Even though we’re up at 7, we don’t leave until 9. It’s not like we’re taking our sweet time reading the paper and sipping coffee. It’s a whirlwind: up and down the stairs 200 times. Getting ourselves packed, getting the kids packed, applying sunscreen, putting on bathing suits, avoiding tantrums, eating breakfast, and shoving snacks into tiny little plastic containers.

We get in the car. The journey to the hotel is less than 40 miles away but it takes us an hour to get from our house to the Harmony exit, just 6 miles away.

Jon and I haven’t eaten yet, so we stop by Starbucks to pick up coffee and breakfast sandwiches. Jon realizes he doesn’t have his wallet. We have to go back home.

Finally en route. Kids are watching a DVD. For about 20 minutes, complete euphoria. Then Easton’s headphones don’t work anymore. Jon pulls over in an attempt to fix. No go. Easton is getting impatient. Wants his headphones back. Last resort: ditch the headphones and put the movie on the whole stereo system so that all of us can listen for the duration of this incredibly relaxing and blissful journey to Boulder.

Welcome to my life

Aside from the special trip to visit family in Boulder over a holiday, this is pretty typical of life on the weekend. The mass chaos that ensues when attempting to enjoy an outing as a family. The constant struggle to balance the break I so badly need, the limited time I get to spend with my husband and kids, the chores that need to be done to support our family, and the precious few hours I’m awarded to keep up with this tiny little passion of mine that I call a company.

But this is life. And instead of always pushing against, I’m finally learning to surrender.

The month of May

So the flywheel is starting to turn at Mack Web, but for some reason, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep expecting the surge of interest to wane and we’ll be right back where we were. Before all of this started to happen.

But things are different now. The team keeps telling me to prepare for abundance. I could be wrong, but this feels like an upward trajectory and we better hold on tight.

But with success comes a lot more of everything. This is what the month of May looked like:

Signed & onboarded two new clients
Trained a new team member
Got ready for another
Had daughter’s 5th birthday
Had husband’s 45th birthday
Mother’s Day
Bought a car
My 94 year old grandma died
Wrote my SearchLove presentation
Made the trek to Boston to speak at SearchLove

Not to mention the normal daily stuff like:

Meals for the family every night
Lunches for the kids every day
Baths
Laundry
Grocery store
Yard work
Reading to stay on top of the industry
Leading, managing & supporting the team
Time with my husband
Time to myself
Time for yoga
Sleep

At times, I was feeling a little like Joe Pesci:

I’ve got absolutely nothing to complain about. I’m blessed with two healthy and amazing kids, a wonderful husband, and a thriving company. Sometimes it would just be nice if I didn’t feel all of those blessings at once.

It’s always going to be like this

How lucky am I?

But for the longest time, I was having so much resistance to so many things in my life. I wasn’t seeing it as abundance. It was all just more work. More to handle. More to balance.

I’m not sure what happened but all of a sudden it feels like my perspective has changed.  I started to realize that my life is always going to be like this. I have a choice to look at it as a burden I have to bear, or I can see it as abundance.

Because the thing is, this is life and it’s happening right now. Not when the kids are older and Easton doesn’t need help going to the bathroom anymore. Not when Jon and I have more time for us because the kids don’t always need constant attention. Not when Mack Web is out of its current growth stage.

It’s always going to be something. So I’m learning to look at it through a different lens and appreciate the abundance. All of it.

Because I really don’t want things to be any different.

Even though there’s a great deal of pain that comes along with the success Mack Web is experiencing, I’m full on embracing it.

When I’m making lunches and doing dishes after a 14 hour day, instead of hating my life, I’m picturing my kids eating their little ham & cheese sandwiches on those cute little Hawaiian rolls.

If it takes me over a month to write a Moz post because I have to do it in 2-3 minute increments standing in the corner of my bedroom because that’s the only place I can find any peace, so be it.

When I’m running out of patience, compassion, kindness, and empathy because I’ve got too much to handle, I will have the breakdown I deserve and keep on pushing.

This is the life I have been blessed with. Bring it on.

Just go with it for a minute…

Everybody loves a process. And for good reason. Processes make things clean and simple. They ensure that things don’t get missed, that you can consistently deliver the same proven steps and, hopefully, get the same proven results.

And if you’ve paid attention at all, you know that here at Mack Web Solutions, we really love a good process. We research and test and put the steps together and shuffle them into the optimum arrangement. And then we share them with all you lovely people.

Because in addition to loving processes, we also love helping people.

(And ice cream. We love ice cream almost as much as being helpful and slightly more than processes).

But there is a very important piece to the business of web marketing that we try to keep sight of through all the processing and systematizing that we do.

We call it: The Human Element.

The Man in the Suit. (Which is entirely different from the Man in the Iron Mask).

I’m sure that sitting in a movie theater is hardly the strangest place to have an epiphany.   (We took a poll here in the office and decided that the actual strangest place to have an epiphany would be Disneyland or Six Flags. Because between the overstimulation and the sugar high, who has the concentration for soul searching?)

So, no, a theater isn’t that odd. All kinds of deep and meaningful can happen in a movie:  It’s A Wonderful Life and Shawshank Redemption and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Great Mouse Detective. (What do you mean a talking mouse who tracks down missing people and foils regicide attempts isn’t meaningful? It’s clearly symbology for the mysteries of the cosmos. Just ask Douglas Adams).

An epiphany in a movie theater in the middle of a summer blockbuster (and a sequel, at that) is a little odder.

Nevertheless, an epiphany is what I had, while thoroughly enjoying the charmingly irreverent Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man 3.

It was a very small epiphany but worthy of the name, nevertheless: We are Iron Man.

Without spoiling the movie for you, let me sum up the lesson learned in this third(ish) installment in the franchise:

The fancy (and it is hella fancy) suit isn’t what makes Tony Stark Iron Man. It is Tony Stark who gives the suit its name.

(Or something like that. The movie, entertaining though it was, didn’t do a particularly awesome job at closing all the emotional loops).

But the idea is there, all the same. He needs the suit to do all the high-flying, boat-exploding, damsel-rescuing stuff he does.

But is Robert Downey, Jr. himself…er, I mean, Tony Stark – with his ingenuity, his determination, his charm, and his charisma – that actually drives all of this accomplishments. And even when stripped of the armor, he manages to win the day.

(Uh…that might have been a little bit of a spoiler. Sorry. But it is fairly standard fare for the hero cycle, right?)

Processes are the suit.

So when I say that the Mack Web team is Iron Man, I don’t mean that we’re genius billionaires with alcohol dependencies and a ‘saving people’ thing. What I mean is that we’ve managed to find the balance between the magic suit of awesome and human anima that truly drives progress.

(And we did it without blowing anything up or spiraling into a self-destructive morass of booze and egotism. So take that, Tony Stark).

Yes, we love and use the processes that we’ve developed and we put them front and center in most of our public outings.

But inbound marketing (and Mack Web Solutions, in particular) is about more than the tools. What sits right at the heart of our company and our team is the understanding and knowledge of what we call ‘The Three Rs of the Human Element.’

(Well, sometimes we call them that. Sometimes we just call them, ‘that stuff. Y’know, the good stuff.’ An eloquent bunch here at Mack Web Solutions, I tell you what).

So, the three Rs: Roles, Relationships, and Reasons.

A quick note on the Three Rs.

As we talk about the three Rs, you’ll notice they’re all quite different in how they fit into the big picture. But the thing they have in common, the thing that ties them all together, is that they are all driven by people.

By being a person among people.

Which is the one thing we never want to forget to do. Be a real, live person with a soul who remembers that they live in a world driven by other such people, flawed and fantastic as they are.

So. There. That’s that. Note over. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Roles: Working with the right person.

AKA, If Your Archnemesis Has Developed Regenerative Technology, Make Sure the Guy At Your Back Doesn’t Have an Amputee Grandchild. (A bonus lesson, courtesy of Iron Man).

In most of the internal processes we’ve developed and shared, there is at least one portion that deals with assembling and training your team. Getting the necessary buy-in and priming them for success.

The Human Element (can you hear the appropriately dramatic echoes?) is an inescapable part of this. Because your team is made up of people, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, enthusiasms, and prejudices. And you have to be prepared to make allowances for that simple fact.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t train and educate and motivate and, when necessary, scold.

It does mean that you can’t just arbitrarily assign the roles to people on your team. Just because your 22-year old intern is the only one who knows how to use Facebook doesn’t mean that they should be running your social media.

It means that you need to be deliberate about how you assign the roles on your team. Web marketing has a lot of moving pieces and most of them you shouldn’t hand them out willy-nilly to whoever has a free moment. Instead, figure out who they’re best suited for and then find a way to make the balance work.

Some of that is obvious. You don’t ask the girl from whom crayons run away in terror to do your design. You don’t ask the introvert to run your social.

If that means hiring more people or different people, then that’s what you do.

That’s the dream anyway. To be able to maneuver the exact right people into the exact right positions.

But drastic personnel shifts aren’t the only, or even the first, solution.

Take the time to approach the team as if they were real people. Explain what you hope to accomplish with inbound marketing. Take the time to tie it to your real company goals. Don’t hesitate to offer training and time to get up to speed.

Be a person among people.

(See how that ties in? Nifty, right?)

Relationships: Much like Soylent Green, the Internet is people.

AKA, If Your Flying Suit-Robot Mistakenly Crashes You in the Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee, It’s Not a Good Idea to Alienate the Weirdly Tech-Savvy Kid With the Potato Gun.

This one is kind of a duh to anyone who’s been paying attention to the recent trends in search. Automated link building and mechanical SEO aren’t enough.

To really harness the power of the Internet, you need to capture the hearts and minds of the people who surf it.

This means reaching out both on and offline to the influencers in your industry. If they know you and like you and respect you as a person representing your brand, they’re a lot more likely to share and promote your stuff, wielding their influence on your behalf.

They’re also a lot more likely to share their wisdom and insight with you. Almost as if you were a friend or a mentee or something. Crazy, no?

It also means knowing what drives the people in your customer base audience. What do they really want from you? What resources are missing from the vast cacophony of the Internet? What is about you and your brand that calls a response from them?

You know how you find out honest answers to those questions? You develop relationships with the actual people who buy your product or use your service. And then you ask them.

And how do you develop these relationships? Be a person, of course. Be transparent, be enthusiastic, be humble, be generous. Take the time to listen as well as talk. Put yourself in their shoes and then act accordingly.

(But don’t forget to give the shoes back. Nobody wants to be friends with the guy who left them barefoot in the mud).

See how that works?

Reasons: Find the Why.

AKA, You May Have Built Suit Number One to Rescue Yourself from Afghanistan, But Once You Get to Suit Number Forty-Five, There’s Clearly Something Else At Work.

This is probably the single most important factor of The Human Element.

It’s not enough to go from day-to-day, following the processes, and reacting to everything that comes your way.

If you really want to do the inbound marketing (or, really, anything) right, you have to figure out why you care. What part of it is exciting to you? What do you want to do? What stirs your soul?

As many wise souls have pointed out, it can’t just be about the money.

It needs to be about more than building the tools you need in the moment.

You need to have some bigger vision, some overarching goal to drive you forward. Otherwise, you’ll always lag a step behind.

When the big names in, well, just about any industry talk about their journey to success, they rarely talk about the individual products they developed.

They don’t wax lyrical about the killer app they built (or discovered) and how it inspired them. They don’t talk about their fantastic breakthrough in spreadsheet usage.

They talk about their vision, about the world they wanted to help build, about the lessons learned, about the characteristics they developed in and of themselves.

These human lessons are what drove their successes.

But more importantly, if you don’t understand the why of what you’re doing, you’ll probably go nuts.

As someone who has been here at Mack Web Solutions for a while, through the internal testing of a lot of the processes and systems we use and share…let me tell you this, quite frankly: if I didn’t believe in where we were going, I probably would have quit in the middle.

Ironing out processes, shifting gears, backing up to see the bigger picture: this stuff can hurt. It’s hard, it’s frustrating, and you’ll spend some time feeling like a failure.

Without a clear destination in sight, the journey itself can be enough to make you turn around and go home.

So, figure out the why.

And then share that why with your team, with your customers, with your community. Your genuine passion and enthusiasm will be what draws them to you and sparks their interest.

You Are More Than an Arc Reactor.

So, that’s it, really. My rambling, ranting little reminder of why summer blockbusters about handsome, muscular, egotistic men with savant-like knowledge of robotics and an arsenal of quips are relevant to life.

Because they remind us that it’s not the tools that define us. It’s the spark of ingenuity and the ability to dream big for the future, the ability to connect with other living souls, that makes us great.

So, find your inner genuis, billionare, playboy philanthropist.

And then remind yourself: I. Am. Iron Man.

In this day and age, it’s all about information…or easy access to information, I should say.

Humans are intensely curious creatures and people always want to know what is going on in the world around them and, for the team at Mack Web, Fort Collins is the place where the majority of our life happens. (Ya know, since we live and work in this awesome, micro-brewing, music loving, outdoor-enthusing, food-truck-bearing town.)

So when we learned about a new blog on the Scoop Network, Faces of Fort Collins, I had to investigate; I absolutely needed to know more. (I am already a big fan of Kristin Mastre and the work she has done with the blog network she built from scratch; now she is one driven lady.)

So learn more I did, people. I went straight to the source. And in a fun role reversal, the blogger behind the Faces of Fort Collins, Kara Thompson, got to be interviewee for once.

Faces of Fort Collins Blogger, Kara Thompson

Here’s what she had to say:

How did you get started blogging?
For the past several years, I’ve been a full-time mom. When I saw The Scoop Blog Network advertise for new bloggers on Facebook in January, I submitted a pitch and was asked to join the network. Faces of Fort Collins is my first experience as a blogger.

My writing background is varied, and my past professional positions include being a newspaper reporter, a writer and editor in Services Marketing at an Air Force base, Communications Director at a small private school, technical writer at a research center at a university, and editorial director and project manager at a marketing and advertising firm. In these positions, I always appreciated the opportunity to talk to individuals and learn their stories, which relates directly to my goals for “Faces Of Fort Collins.”

Where did the idea of Faces of Fort Collins come from?
In my background as a newspaper reporter and writer/editor of various marketing publications, my favorite part of the job was always talking with people and learning their stories. I was never really interested in blogging about my own life, because I’m a fairly private person. So I came up with the concept of “Faces” in order to tell the story of Fort Collins by talking to the people here; it’s the people that define a community and can make it truly great.

How long have you lived in Fort Collins?
My family moved here in February 2009. We’d moved around a lot with my husband’s Air Force career. We had both previously lived in Colorado Springs, which is where we met. When we had the chance to chose a place to live, we decided to come back to Colorado.

How do you find the people you want to interview/highlight?
Initially, I asked friends to recommend people in the community that they knew personally. I got a great response and I’m thankful to my friends for being so supportive. I’ve done some cold calling, like to the Mayor’s office and to the FCPD Chief’s office; everyone has been so gracious. And now, when I’m done interviewing someone that I’m profiling, I ask them if they have anyone they’d like to recommend.

Who has been your favorite interview thus far?
I’ve had the opportunity to talk to some really wonderful people, but I’m going to say my first interview was my favorite because that meant that “Faces of Fort Collins” was off and running. It was with Gunter and Nicolette Bischof from Philomusica European Music School; they had a really amazing story to tell.

What has been your biggest challenge so far?
Getting used to juggling the at-home work schedule with the full-time mom responsibilities.

What do you like most about your job?
Very simply, getting to meet a lot of great people in the community.

What do you think Faces of Fort Collins will add to our community?
Maybe it will encourage people to be more aware that everyone has an important story to tell. Everyone’s story is a part of Fort Collins and what makes this such a great place to live.

And…in case this interview wasn’t enough…I even had the chance to do a rapid fire interview with Kara via video. Check it out:

Hopefully you have a chance to check out Kara’s blog because in a week or two, a special someone you know (hint hint) will be featured. Also, if you have suggestions on who should be featured, connect with her on Facebook.

Seated on the shoulders of giants

As we may have mentioned once or twice (a week), our very own Mack will be heading off to Boston in May to speak at Distilled’s SearchLove conference. We’re almost excruciatingly proud of her and ridiculously excited about the event.

As we’ve been preparing for Mack’s imminent and inevitable stardom, we’ve spent some time pondering the ranks she is soon to join. Some of the biggest names in our industry will be speaking at this conference and we took a little bit of time to bask in our awe and their reflected glory.

And then we realized how much time we spend thinking of them as giants and superheroes and how easy it is to forget the actual people behind the names.

As we’ve reflected on the journey our company has undertaken to get Mack to where she soon will be, we realized that all of our idols have gone on similar questions, fought their way through similar struggles, and come out victorious.

Oh, the humanity!

Which is why our homework for SearchLove this year was less about delving into the accomplishments and assorted accolades of the pantheon of speakers and more about celebrating the smart, human people whose drive and determination have earned them not just our hero worship, but our genuine respect.

Soppy, we know. But truth is truth.

So, with the cooperation of those same folks, we present to you this little look behind the curtain. We asked them each to answer two simple questions to give us some insight into the people they are. They were gracious enough to reply.

What follows is the web marketing equivalent of a glimpse of Bruce Wayne at his leisure, lounging around the manor in his jim-jams, eating PopTarts and playing MarioKart.

Speakers of SearchLove Boston 2013, we salute you in all your real, live person amazingness.

Thanks for sharing.

Mike Blumenthal

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
Besides cooking and eating, it would be biking or cross country skiing with my wife. We live 20 minutes from Allegany State Park and some of the best cross country skiing on the east coast. Both biking and skiing give me the sense of “cheating” nature by overcoming gravity. When the snow is good and the wax is just right, you can get a glide that feels like flying.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
Having grown up in a dysfunctional family of the 50′s and 60′s I somehow had lost sight of a career dream and all I wanted was to be in a normal family. I am not sure that it helped when I learned though that no family is normal…

Check out Mike Blumenthal’s blog.

Will Critchlow

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
My world outside work is increasingly about family these days. I’ve known my wife since college. We got together right after college and got married in 2008. Our daughter was born in 2010 and our son last year.

In activity terms, though, my top non-work, non-family thing is playing basketball. I’ve played since I was 11. Our high school was unusual for the UK in having basketball as a big focus. We went to the national semi-finals twice. I played in college (to give you an idea of that standard, our very best players were bench or walk-on players for D1 schools in the US previously). Now I play for a team in London in the London Metropolitan Premier league (the top regional league below the national leagues). My basketball claim to fame is guarding Steve Bucknall who now plays in our league.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a kid, I wanted to be an inventor or an astronaut. I used to sketch all kinds of weird inventions – I remember a powered skateboard. We took my daughter to the London Science Museum for her 3rd birthday last week and she was transfixed by the space exhibit. She met a real-life female Russian cosmonaut and now wants to go into space too. Maybe we’ll get to go one day.

Learn more about Will Crichtlow, in his own words.

Annie Cushing

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
My fave activity outside of work – aside from spending time with my family (duh) – is shoe shopping. Moar shooz!!!

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a doctor. Until I worked as a candy striper and saw how depressed people were in hospitals.

Find out more about Annie Cushing.

John Doherty

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
I have many activities that I enjoy outside of work, so it’s almost impossible to pick just one. My favorites all involve being outdoors, whether that’s riding my bike around Brooklyn, skiing, rock climbing, or camping.

Often I’m able to combine one of these with my other favorite pastime, which is travel. I’m fortunate to be able to travel a lot and can often do so for one of my activities. Recently I was in Colorado skiing, which was my first time skiing in the Rockies. Previous to that I had only skied on the east coast of the US and in Switzerland and France, where I used to live.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a middle schooler, and even into the first couple years of high school, I wanted to become a doctor. My focus was to be cardiology, so I was fascinated by the human heart and how it works. I remember dissecting animal hearts when I was young to find out how they worked (this was a perk of being homeschooled).

Once I got a bit further into my education, though, I realized that a) I hated science, and b) I would have to do at least 8-10 years more of school after undergrad to become a doctor. I decided it wasn’t for me and pursued writing instead. I’m glad I did!

Check out John Doherty’s blog.

Rand Fishkin

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
Actually, I have three (at least right now)

1. Laying my head on Geraldine’s lap on our couch while watching AdventureTime
2. Visiting the cornucopia of magical, hipster restaurants in Portland in preparation for our PDX office opening
3. Heading to Ashland, OR (where we got married) and seeing a play in the OSF’s Elizabethan theatre

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
Originally, a dog. Dogs are surprisingly awesome in a lot of ways, so I told my parents that was my goal. Then I found out that’s not how growing up works, so I switched to biology, with a specific focus on rainforest frogs. Imagine my dismay when I found out that rainforests are humid! (FYI – I hate heat+humidity). That’s probably what drove me to the marketing world.

Get to know Rand Fishkin a little bit better.

Mackenzie Fogelson

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
When I’m not working, I really love being outside. And with summer time right around the corner (my most favorite time of year), I’m looking forward to outdoor concerts, bar-b-ques, going to the pool, and spending time with friends.

Before we had kids, my husband Jon and I used to hike and mountain bike a lot during the summer. Now that we have a 2 1/2 and a 5 year old, we have been learning to adjust our expectations a little bit, but still enjoy all the things we love here in Colorado. We’re just starting to get the kids into hiking. We have one rule: no complaining. That goes for adults, too.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was in the eighth grade, I got 100% on an anatomy test where we had to name all the bones in the body. I still remember coming home from school that day and telling my mom and dad that I was going to be a doctor. Seeing as I’m pretty bad at math, don’t have a knack for science, and am not so crazy about puke and blood, I’m glad I became an entrepreneur.

Get to know our own Mack Fogelson a little bit better.

Ross Hudgens

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
My favorite thing to do is hang out with my awesome girlfriend, Melissa. We’re normally going out to happy hours, enjoying the sun on a hike or a patio (we used to live in Seattle), or watching San Francisco-area sports teams (where I was raised).

As a close second I greatly enjoy Crossfit, which is somewhat of a cult these days. It’s a nice substitute in my life for competition where football used to be, which I played in college. Of course, that SEO stuff is tough too!

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a monster truck driver for a time. I used to watch Gravedigger and Bigfoot and think it was soooo cool. That affinity didn’t last for long, though, and was probably one of the most short lived “I want to be x when I grow up” in history.

Check out Ross Hudgens’ blog.

Dr. Pete Meyers

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
With a toddler and an infant, I’m afraid the honest answer is “sleep”, a rare and glorious luxury. Post-40, I find myself turning into a bit of a fitness buff. In 2012, I took on a misguided challenge to do 50,000 push-ups over the course of the year, and was amazed to find that the resolution not only outlived January, but I actually did it. That’s spawned a whole new world of dangerous obsessions. My ultimate goal – the one-hand-clapping push-up.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
Green Lantern. I’m still working on that one.

Get to know Dr. Pete Meyers a little better.

Kate Morris

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
Crossfit. When I met my boyfriend almost three years ago, we talked about Crossfit on our first date. Our third date was him actually taking me to a Crossfit class. People in the class thought he was crazy for making it a date, but I think we are both a little insane. A few months later I started working out at a gym near me and been going for over 2 years now. We are not a standard Crossfit, we focus more on strength than most. I can deadlift 257 lbs and squat 220 lbs.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
A marine biologist. I had a serious love for marine life, and even though I was a bad swimmer (I was bad at anything physical as a kid), I really wanted to work with those animals. So I had the thought to join the Navy maybe (I am an Army brat) and go that way. Alas, I fell in love with business in college and stayed with marketing.

Learn more about Kate Morris.

Phil Nottingham

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of stage combat choreography (theatrical sword fighting), for an upcoming competition in Russia. It’s kind of like a mixture between a sport and a performance discipline and I really enjoy the mix of physical skill and creative flair required to get a fight looking good.

The stage combat community are also a fantastic bunch to hangout with, so all fitness gained through wielding a rapier is fairly quickly counteracted with several pints in the pub.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
I think I’ve wanted to do everything at some point in time during my childhood. Like all boys between the ages of 4 and 8, I wanted to be a superhero.

Then I wanted to be a professional footballer until the age of about 10. I think I then went through a phase of wanting to be a historian, and then from about the age of 14 to 18 I was very serious about becoming an actor until I decided that directing was more fun.

Find out a little bit more about Phil Nottingham.

Rob Ousbey

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
My favorite thing? Tough. I could say that I enjoy hacking together MVPs of startup ideas. I could say that living in Seattle has been wonderful because I can go hiking on the coast, on a volcano or even in a rainforest.

I could also admit how much I love playing boardgames, and am now working on designing my own.

But honestly, all that’s changed in the last year, because my favorite thing now to is hang out with my wife and son. He’s just turned 1 year old, and it’s like we get to rediscover what the first years of our life were like, all over again.

Each day it’s more fun to hang out with him, since he keeps learning how to do & say more hilarious things.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
The first thing I ever wanted to be was a radio presenter, from when I was 3 years old. Then I wanted to be a magician, then in the circus, and then I wanted to be a pilot. Then I wanted to be a lawyer, then an engineer, and then a radio presenter again.

The only one I ever achieved was being a radio presenter, but I still enjoy doing the occasional magic trick when the mood is right.

Get to know a little bit more about Rob Ousbey.

Neil Patel

What is your favorite activity to do outside of work?
I love partying with my friends…I’m a big believer that you should work hard and play hard.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?
Doctor.

Learn more about Neil Patel.

The curtain falls

And so we withdraw and leave Batman to his own amusements.

We’ve certainly enjoyed the little insights that these fantastic human beings were willing to share with us. (And we’re a bit saddened that the siren song of Search has deprived the world of so many potential doctors. And the occasional dog. Sad for the world, maybe, but happy for us).

We’re looking forward to the chance to spend some time when these phenomenal people and we hope to see you there, too. Let us know if you have any questions for them.

We can’t promise they’ll answer, but we can promise we’ll pass them along.

Also, as a point of interest…what’s your favorite not-work activity and what did you want to be when you grew up?

Many companies invest in conferences and trade shows to network or become more knowledgeable about a product or the latest industry trend. They spend hard-earned dollars on the travel, hotel, and admission…sometimes on a booth spot or sponsorship.

But how many companies making this type of investment plan out things like:

1. The goals they want to reach
2. The best way to communicate with attendees during the conference
3. Who they want to connect with
4. How they’re going to do all of these things with the team they have

In other words – How many companies go into each trade show with a legit strategy?

By addressing these types of questions in advance, you can take your old school routine of just attending a conference and hoping for the best and dress it up by actually becoming a part of the conference.

Integrating new school behaviors like the web marketing tactics of email marketing, blogs, and social media allow you to become a more interactive and deliberate feature of the exhibition and makes the most of the trade show experience and opportunities.

RLE Technologies’ success with web marketing tactics at a trade show

I’d like to highlight one company who has basked in the joy of success to get this point across: a plan involving web marketing tactics for a trade show can equal some BIG wins. (Who doesn’t like a big win?)

RLE Technologies, a leader in providing water leak detection systems and Web-based monitoring solutions for facilities, is experiencing great success with a plan leading the way to each trade show they attend (which is six this year).

Jenny Peterson, Manager of Marketing and Communications, was nice enough to sit down with me and share the success achieved by their team, all facilitated through a strategy specifically crafted to reach RLE’s goals.

That strategy, based on what RLE hoped to accomplish and research into the show and its attendees, included the following:

1. Ideas for pre and post blogs, and e-mail marketing

2. Prompts for networking and social media (like how to spread the word about their giveaways during the trade show and how to tweet like a pro)

3. A bucket list of things to accomplish during the show

With this strategic plan in hand (literally, they printed out the strategy and brought it along with them), RLE experienced some great results and refreshing success by breaking out of their old school routine.

Here’s what Jenny had to say about what RLE did with their strategy, the challenges they faced and her team’s new school trade show experience:

An occasion both sad and happy.

With June’s impending departure for the wilds of second-time motherhood, Mack Web Solutions is delighted to welcome a new talent to the fold.

(And, contrary to popular opinion, that delight has nothing to do with the fact that new people mean a free welcome lunch and occasionally cake. Nothing at all).

We are fortunate to have brought on Julie Sutter, a local marketing entrepreneur and writer, as the newest member of the Mack Web team.

We are excited to bring on someone who exemplifies the knowledge, integrity, initiative, and service that we hold at the heart of our company. We firmly believe that Julie will bring much awesomeness to her role as a Web Marketing Strategist.

(A certain level of awesome, in case you didn’t know, is the unspoken requisite for Mack Web employment).

The right person for the job.

Although she is a full-time employee for Mack Web, Julie also owns her own company, Unconventional Ink, an advertising and marketing copywriting and branding services business servicing the cultural and non-profit community (which, upon reflection, is quite the mouthful).

She’s also on the board for SpokesBUZZ, a community driven to amplify the local music scene and promote Fort Collins as a progressive cultural destination.

When necessity dictated that we hire somebody new, it soon became apparent that Julie, with her skills, experience, and name in the community, was a natural choice.

“As Mack Web Solutions grows and evolves, we are continually on the lookout for people with potential,” said Mackenzie Fogelson, our beloved founder and CEO.

“The relationships Julie has built with her colleagues, customers, and community exemplify who we are and what we do at the core of Mack Web.

“It isn’t just about web marketing, it’s about helping businesses transform into something better. The human element is extremely important and Julie understands and embodies that. She cares like we care, and we knew she was the right fit for our team.”

Getting to know you without the stalking. (Who knew that was an option?)

In order for the team and community to get to know Julie better, she’s opened up a bit to share the following vital information with you all.

Mack Web Team: When someone asks what your favorite book is, what do you tell them? Now…what is your actual favorite book?
Julie: The World According to Garp. For both answers. But I also like any book that has magic in it. Come to think of it, all books have magic in them.

Mack Web Team: What is your favorite quote?
Julie: For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
(That’s T.S. Eliot, we think).

Mack Web Team: What’s the most wonderful place you’ve traveled to?
Julie: It’s really hard to top New York City.

Mack Web Team: What is your favorite breakfast food?
Julie: Coffee, hands down. But if we’re talking solids: I never met a waffle I didn’t like.

Mack Web Team: If you had to be trapped in a TV show for a month, what would you choose and which character would you play?
Julie: I would like to be Samantha in Bewitched. Did I mention I like magic?

Mack Web Team: And, if you could have ANY super power in the world, what would it be?
Julie: Did I mention I like magic? Or do you need more specific magic? I think cheerfulness is a good superpower. So there’s that.

You can get to know Julie a little more by following her on Twitter (@juliemackweb) or circling her on Google+.

To our dear community, friends, clients, and random folks:

While Mack is speaking at her first conference, SearchLove Boston, I will be giving birth to my second son, Aaron Mose.

Seriously, it wasn’t planned at all- the fact that she and I will be doing monumental things at the same time is just fate being oh so very fate-like.

Fun Moments As A Team

It’s been an incredible journey, working for Mack and with the Mack Web team. From the moment I met Mack for coffee at a local spot to my impending departure as social media strategist and community manager, many unforgettable moments were had.

(Like the team indulging me with these costume props at my baby shower.)

(Or the time we went painting a Picasso and Wine. We love that place.)

(Or our first outing as a team, ever…the New Belgium Brewery Tour.)

Not An Easy Decision, But The Right One

Mack gave me the ability to create my own ground to stand on in the vast space of social media, and she opened up her business to my ideas and obsession for connection and community.

Although I’ve gained so much knowledge in the 16 months of employment at Mack Web Solutions, it’s time to hang my hat. (It’s not a physical hat, but perhaps I can talk Mack into looking into some great swag like that….)

It’s not an easy task to decide between career and family. It’s not an easy decision at all, so rather than choose one over the other…I’ve chosen both. Luckily, with the industry we work in, freelance work presents itself often and my Masters of Art in Adult Education and Training allows for me to teach at the local community college. In order to maintain my sanity while adoring my new child, I’ve chosen a more flexible schedule over a job and team I’ve grown to admire and respect.

Decisions like this are ones that may cause stress (as well as ulcers) for some, but luckily I have an amazing family who supports my decision and an amazing friend (my friend being Mack) who understands the role a mother plays (she has two beautiful children of her own).

With my departure, another amazing woman takes on the role of web marketing strategist. Julie Sutter is one smart cookie. I’m sure our clients will fall in love with the work she does, and I’m positive our community will appreciate her humor. I’m bummed that Julie and I won’t have much opportunity to collaborate. But I’ll take the weeks that we have as a team because even in a short time, big things can be accomplished.

Thank You For Being Awesome

I want to thank my amazing clients and team members for trusting me with important decisions, respecting the strategies I developed, and just being great partners.

I look forward to what the future holds, to what my son Aaron will look like (if you knew my family you’d understand why), and to see all of the amazing things Mack Web does for not only their clients, but for the company itself.

So with that, I say goodbye, Mack Web (as of May 10)…and hello motherhood part deux (Aaron’s due May 19). See ya on social. (wink, wink)

To a bright future,
June

I’ve been writing a lot about content lately because, among many other reasons, it’s one of the best ways to build online community, attract people to your brand, and become a leader in your industry.

Keep these three things in mind

There are three very important things to keep in mind about content:

1. It should serve a purpose (and not just to rank desirably in Google).
2. It should add value to your company, the industry, and your community.
3. It should help you accomplish the goals that you have for your business.

Just recently I had the pleasure of discussing the significance of these points during a webinar that I gave for SEMPO:

More stuff about content you should read

Jonathon Colman has been particularly inspirational lately with resources like Why Our Content Sucks and his seriously Epic List of Content Marketing Resources. And, if you haven’t already seen it, I’d recommend checking out Doug Kessler’s deck on Crap. The Content Marketing Deluge. It’s phenomenal.

This stuff has contributed to many of the things that I’ve been writing about lately:

Attract customers to your community with content
This is a post, recently featured on SEOmoz, that explains the difference between foundational content (content that is directly self-promotional and meant to sell your product or service), and community building content (content that is meant to be more about what you know than what you do). It’s important that you build a balance between this content, ensure that it’s focused on your customer, and pack it full of value.

How we accomplished (big) goals with content & social media marketing (in just 10 months)
Meant to serve as an inspirational case study, this post describes the journey that Mack Web took in a 10 month period that led to some amazing accomplishments. All with the use of content and social media marketing (and a whole lot of hard work and passion).

The gist

The basic gist of all of this good stuff is:

1. There is no secret formula to content. You’ve got to determine what you want to do with your business and develop a strategy that will help to accomplish those goals.
2. None of this is about you. Always work to make your content about your customer.
3. Work to build a better business. Don’t just create content because someone told you it would help you rank better in Google. Get inspired and passionate about your business and make that the reason for your efforts.