Recently I noticed a growing trend in the business world that has me perturbed. People are no longer telling you “No”, they just tell you “Later”.

Has it become politically incorrect to say “No” to someone?  What memo did I miss where this practice became acceptable? Do we no longer respect black and white decision making but instead have chosen to string people along indefinitely wasting precious time and resources?

Look, I will be the first to admit that an organizations success can rest squarely on it’s ability to convince potential clients that they need and/or want what they are offering. I also understand that this is not a perfect world and not everyone is going to make a decision the first time you meet.

But C’mon!!

We are not talking about people who are still in the decision making process.  I am talking about people who have made the decision to buy, see the value in what you are offering, have agreed they need or want what you have and money is not the issue.   And yes before you ask, they are the decision maker.

But yet they refuse to pull the trigger.  Do any of these new “No’s” ring a bell:

1. After the 1st of the year.
2. Once we get into our new budget.
3. We have to finish up this current project.
4. When I get back from vacation.
5. After I hire someone.
6. Once we use up the current version of what we have.
7. We are moving.
8. The markets down, we’ll have to wait till sales pick up again. (this one blows my mind)

Are these legitimate delays or are they just veiled attempts at not having to say “No”?  They may be legitimate…if used once…but if a potential client keeps putting you off then there is something greater at work here.

Something has changed since they originally agreed with you to move forward and now they are not willing to tell you that they changed their mind. And here’s the rub, these aren’t the people who now won’t return or take your call. They don’t ignore your email or your requests to meet. They let you in time and time again only to delay the project once more. It used to be that you could spot these time wasters a mile away because they were the exception not the rule.  Now it is becoming more prevalent and a normal course of business.  And if you are a sales organization…it could be the kiss of death.

Next time…”So how do you combat these non-naysayers? If you spend more time trying to re-convince prospects that were already there then you have to make them feel their own pain…”

The purpose of that post was to point out my belief that the average Joe or Jane would not have received the same attention from Southwest or the media had they tweeted a similar issue.

Well I am sitting here today in front of my computer with a little bit of egg on my face.

You see yesterday started off on the wrong foot for me. I was woken up by my phone ringing and my teen-age daughter on the other end informing me that she had missed the bus.  This meant I would have to get out of my perfectly warm bed earlier then I wanted to and take her to school.  Not an absolutely horrible thing…any alone time with your kid is always a good thing.

Once I returned to my home office I went through my normal routine (coffee – check, muffin – check, feed the cats – check ….. ) and started my day reading through everything I missed while I slept.  Around 9:30 a.m. I picked up my phone to call a client…. and nothing … total dead silence.

Ok…not a big deal – check the phone, check all the other phones that are on this line, no problems.  Since I am on DSL – I was slightly confused how my internet could be working but yet no dial tone.  So I reluctantly decided I would have to call into CenturyLink’s customer service and report the problem.

After about 5 minutes of being routed through their automated service network I was informed by a computer to first “Unplug every device that was contacted to the phone line, this includes all phones, caller ID boxes, cable/satellite boxes, computer and answering machines.  Then wait 3 to 5 minutes and then plug everything back in.  If this does not solve your problem please call back.”

Well dang – what a pain.  But I did it and yup you guessed it – still no dial tone. So back on my cell I go and I begin to navigate the auto-service menus – this time a little faster because I had been here once before already.

As I was doing this I decided to tweet a little comment about what was happening.

Is lost in the land of customer no-service at #CenturyLink. Currently wandering the halls of their automated customer no-service labyrinth.

Partially because I was frustrated, a little bit tongue and cheek, but I also wanted to see if I would get a response from anyone.

A little over 3 hours later what do I see in my DM box…

@TommyD69 Saw your tweet. I’ll be glad to help. Can you follow me and DM your account info/details of the issue?

I was impressed.  You see I am not an “influencer” like a Kevin Smith but it was nice to see a company, one I rely on to conduct my business every day, actually have a plan in place and is actively engaging with their customer base to resolve issues in a proactive manner.

So here I sit, corrected for the most part.  We as consumers can get the attention of companies we do business with simply by engaging them through mediums like Twitter.  Provided they have the foresight to be doing the same.

Congrats CenturyLink…on a job well done in this case.

By the way…in case you were wondering – the phone issue was a system wide outage in my area.  So large was the outage that once basic phone service was restored, the county’s 911 emergency service called every county resident to inform them that the 911 system was affected by the outage and gave everyone alternative numbers to call in case of an emergency.

And just as Cord doesn’t want to debate who is right or who is wrong I don’t either  (if you need the details of the incident you can catch up at Gawker.) I don’t even want to debate Cord’s point on how well Southwest handled this social media conversation and how all companies need to learn from them – mostly because I agree with him and I this would be repetitious.

But what I would like to do is ask this question:

Had it been an average Joe, someone like me with only a handful of Twitter followers compared to Kevin Smith, would this have even made the Podunk County News?

My answer is no.  Not in million years. And to be honest I would not expect it to.

I do not have the influence on the magnitude of a Kevin Smith.  But I can bet you a $100 dollars that had I tweeted the same experience – I never would have heard a “peep” from Southwest. Even if I blogged about it I can almost guarantee it would have fallen on deaf ears.  Maybe if I called Live at 5…Southwest might have at least sent me a form letter expressing their regret and offering me a voucher to get on the plane first next time I flew.

I hate to lump all of corporate businesses into the same pile but more often than not the average consumer will not get this type of response from a social media slap.  There are sites dedicated to exposing companies and their inability to provide customer service but with the exception of the occasional 60 Minute undercover story the major majority go unheard.

My point here is – as great as it was that Kevin Smith let the world know about a poor decision by a Southwest employee and as refreshing it was to see Southwest come out of the gate and engage in way that was real – there is a HUGE gap between those that can and those that can’t.

I hope that Southwest and other companies are beginning to engage in practices that not only address the big media moment of the day but look after the issues that are voiced by the thousands of us who actually fill their bottom line.

Do they understand how frustrating it is to get into reading a post and then they mention something they wrote a few weeks, months or even years ago and if I want to read it I have to go searching for it.

Guess what really happens – I leave, as I am sure almost everyone else does.  Another lost page view.  Another lost opportunity to sell/impress/convince your reader.

So that brings me to today’s, although obvious, Blogging Tip.

Link To Your Previous Posts: Don’t assume that I have ever been to your site before let alone assume that I read something you wrote 2 years ago.  If you are going to bring up a previous post then please – give me a link back to it so that I can get to easily.  Trust me,  it will only lend to your credibility and my desire to continue following you.

Bonus Tip
I know that we are all in a hurry to get information out sometimes and going back to find the URL of the post you did several weeks or months ago can be a pain.  Thankfully…there’s a plugin for that.

Link to Post “allows you to easily create a link to an existing article or page in another article or page. It adds two buttons to the tinymce and the quicktags editors, which list the existing articles and pages, with the possibility of filtering by content or category.”  You can get the plugin from WordPress.org

Knowing that and being able to remember them is another thing.  With Adobe Photoshop CS4 there are literally 100′s of key combination’s you can use to simplify many tasks, even the ones you don’t use often.  Some may even test your dexterity (e.g.: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Backspace).  But I have always had an issue of remembering most of them and have to look them up which basically negates the point of using keyboard shortcuts anyways.

Many graphic designers use the cheat sheet provided by Adobe (Adobe Photoshop CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts) and as long as you don’t mind reading through the 4 pages of shortcuts it works.  At least its comprehensive and official.

Well thanks to the good people over at Smashing Magazine they have release a handy pdf of the most useful keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop CS4 (most keyboard shortcuts are backward compatible with older versions).

“The cheat sheet is a mousepad-sized image featuring a typical PC keyboard. Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts are listed for each key, with the shortcut and its icon printed on the individual key. In red is the shortcut you will get by hitting the key in combination with the Ctrl key. For example, typing "t" in Photoshop will activate the Type tool, while typing Ctrl+t will allow you to use the Transformation tool. Additional shortcuts requiring more than two keys are listed as well.” – Smashing Magazine

You can download the cheat sheet for free here!

This is a great addition to any designers arsenal and you can rest assured its tapped to the wall next to monitor

A thanks and a hat tip to the cheat sheets creator Kenneth Setzer

“Originally, I intended to buy a keyboard overlay with Photoshop shortcuts, but couldn’t find any for a PC, just for Macs. So I compiled a list of keyboard shortcuts, and thought they would fit nicely on a mousepad. I think printing it out and hanging it by the monitor works just as well. I hope those learning Photoshop will find it useful, as well as the more advanced users who may have forgotten some of the less-often-used shortcuts. They save a lot of time, and can impress your boss!”

Just because your site is indexed and may even be found on certain terms does not necessarily mean they are the terms you want to be found for.  It is important to evaluate if these terms are generating the type of traffic you want.

Check your logs.
Take a look in your analytics application (like Google Analytics) to see what terms are actually delivering traffic to your site.  Do any of these terms line up with your marketing and/or business strategy?  There are many data points that you can use to evaluate this traffic:

• Bounce Rate (percentage of visitors who leave after only visiting one page)
• Percentage of New Visits (percentage of new visitors that have never been to your site)
• Pages Per Visit (the average number a pages viewed during a visit)
• Average Time On Site (the average time a visitor spends on your site)

By looking at this statistical data from the keyword level, you can interpret whether or not that term is of any value to your business.   This is a great place to start to evaluate the traffic you are getting (or not getting) from the search engines.  From this evaluation  you can then determine whether or not you want to invest your time in developing a search marketing campaign or if you should invest your money in a professional that can help you.

(Over the years I have received many questions from clients and often they are the same questions.  So I am going to begin to answer some of the basic ones here and build a simple online resource some of you may find useful.  If you have a question you would like answered, drop me an email and I will do my best to answer it.)

Whether you are a “do-it-yourself-er” or just looking to learn the basics of search engine optimization you need to understand one thing first.

There is no magic bullet to SEO.  No special tricks. No secret sauce.  Everything you ever wanted to know about search marketing is available on the internet if you know where to look and what to look for.  There are right and wrong things you can do so be careful.  Do the wrong thing and you could cause your site all kinds of problems including getting your site banned.

So these six steps below are the foundation to your learning.  They are the beginning steps or blueprint to every successful search marketing campaign.

Lets get started.

Step One: Understanding Your Keyword Universe
Your “keyword universe” refers to all the key terms that a searcher may use to find your business/site on the internet.  The important thing to understand here is, just having a large list of terms is not sufficient to help optimize your site.  You need to understand the competitive nature of those terms and the volume of searches each term typically gets.  There are many tools out there that can help you research terms such as WordTracker.  Tools like these will help you determine which keywords have the best potential to reach your marketing goals.

Step Two: Your Site and Your Visitor
There is an old adage I used to use when talking to clients, “Build your site with the user in mind first and you will take care of the search engines at the same time.” If you stop and think about it your ultimate goal is giving the end user what they are looking for.  And that is exactly what the search engines want too.  If you build your site professionally and follow a few guidelines the search engines have spelled out, you will successfully build a site that please both the user and the search engines.

Step Three: The Engines and Your Site
The search engines want your site to be successful…provided it gives their user what they are looking for…relevant content.  If you do a search for “nike shocks” the search engines only want to show sites that are related to that term.  Try and fool them by using techniques and tricks to manipulate the results and you may see success that is short lived.  Develop content around a topic that is of interest and value to your potential visitor and the search engines will consider you a valuable addition to their index.

Step Four: Link-ability Equals Popularity
Like it or not the internet is one large popularity contest.  The more people that link to what you have to say or offer the higher the value is given to your site.  Search engines use their complicated algorithms to determine who is the most popular and ranks them accordingly.  Now that is a very very simple explanation of how search engine results work (there are many factors beyond who links to you), but in a nutshell, that’s really all it is.  You can become popular by becoming linkable. You become linkable by having informative and valuable content that others want to share with their visitors.

Step Five: Track and Learn
Knowing how to track your search engine traffic and interpret that data will help you monitor and improve your search marketing campaign.  You will uncover terms that you thought were your money terms but in fact are actually duds.  You will also find terms you may never have thought of.  It will also help you find topics for content that your user is actively looking for a solution for.  “See a need, fill a need.” – from Disney’s movie Robots.

Final note: Don’t think you have to go this alone.  The amount of time and effort it takes to mount a successful search campaign can be daunting.  And in the end most people are better at running their businesses then they are are search marketing.  Don’t resort to black-hat tactics looking for that quick fix.  If you get overwhelmed remember there are professionals out there for a reason.  The have dedicated their careers to understanding and working to hone the art of search marketing.

Right now I have exactly 42 books that I have not read sitting on my bookshelf and around my house. It appears that books have been the preferred choice of gift givers over the years, which is great because I actually do like to read. I have amassed such a collection of unread books due primarily to a lack of time…and effort. But now I am going to make the time again.

As I work my way through these books I am going to review them here for your consideration. So here goes:

Title: Never Eat Alone – And other secrets to success one relationship at a time.

Author: Keith Ferrazzi with Tahl Raz
Publisher: DoubleDay
From the cover: “A cover article in Inc. magazine on YaYa CEO Keith Ferrazzi’s secrets to networking generated the largest response the magazine has received in the past ten years. Now Ferrazzi, working with Inc. writer Tahl Raz, explains the guiding principles he has mastered over a lifetime of reaching out to explain what it takes to build the kind of lasting, mutually beneficial relationships that lead to professional and personal success.”

Tommy D Gives It:

Tommy D’s Thoughts

Maybe it’s just the timing of reading this, but Keith’s book hit home for me more than ever. I have spent over 20 years in the business world and I have meet many people from all walks of life and from all over the world but my network is not as developed as it should be. This book makes you take stock of your relationships and really look at how important everyone one of these connections is to your personal and professional lives.

One of the principals it discusses is how no person succeeds alone. It it through their personal network that they grow, advance and realize the true measure of a fulfilled life. Not reaching out for help and asking for advice from your network could mean the difference between your desired success and simple existence.

Keith’s theories, from his Network Action Plan to not keep score and giving back, will help even the most introverted amongst us cultivate a network of people that will help push us to the success we desire.

This is a must read for anyone who wants to realize the true value of the relationships they have spent a lifetime developing.