To help already busy entrepreneurs and small business owners navigate the world of online marketing, I’ve added an online marketing resources section to my blog (you can also access it by clicking on the “Online Marketing Resources” tab at the top of the page).

I’ve been compiling my list of favorite resources - from articles and blog posts to online courses (some free, some not) to books and much more - for a variety of online marketing topics. I’ll be sharing (and updating) this list in the weeks and months and years ahead. My goal is to provide entrepreneurs and small business owners with a place they can turn to find first-rate, solid, useful information on marketing online - minus the hype and the crap.

The first two resources pages that I’ve posted cover Google AdWords and Twitter. Hope you find these, and the other resources I’ll be sharing, helpful!

My darling 9 month old daughter is a bear. Without going into the gory details, I’ll just sum it up this way - I love her dearly, but if she were our first, she’d be an only child.

This is what made what happened the other night all the more extraordinary.

As usual she wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect of going to bed. We went through our usual routine - reading books, putting on the fan for white noise, and turning off the lights. Before placing her in her crib, I took a minute to pat her back and sing to her to try to get her to relax a bit.

She was very tired so she put her head down on my shoulder, head facing away from me and settled down. All of a sudden she picked her head up, turned to me and planted a big, wet, sloppy kiss on my cheek. Then she turned right back around and plopped her head back on my shoulder.

I was stunned.

After 9 LONG months of seemingly endless crying, fussing, and screaming (and that’s just been me!) - it’s indescribable how this small gesture made me feel.

What her intentions were, I have no idea. But I took it as a sign of appreciation. A sign that although I’ve been having a tough time with her, clearly I’m doing something right. A sign that things will get better.

It gave me hope.

It’s tough starting and growing a business even in the best of economic times. And when it feels like you’re struggling on daily basis just to get by, it’s hard to notice and appreciate the small victories that you do achieve. It’s hard to realize that you are making a difference in people’s lives.

Then someone or something comes along and unexpectedly gives you a big ol’ wet, sloppy kiss.

Maybe it’s a big referral from someone you thought didn’t think much of your business.
Maybe it’s a glowing review on the Internet from a popular blogger or reporter in your niche.
Maybe it’s a private message of appreciation from a satisfied customer.

These unexpected gestures can make all the difference in the world.

They can reaffirm that your are headed in the right direction. They can give you the strength and determination to keep on going. They can reignite that feeling of hopefulness that can easily get lost in the day to day grind of running a business.

The Bigger Lesson - It is Better To Give Than Receive

My point, however, is not just to keep an eye out for, enjoy, and celebrate those big, wet, sloppy kisses when they come your way. Rather, it’s to think about how you can give them  to customers, partners, associates, and others (and remember I’m talking metaphorically here when it comes to business - I don’t want to get blamed for any harassment lawsuits!).

When my daughter planted that big, wet, sloppy kiss on my cheek, I would have given her pretty much anything she wanted - a trip to Disney, a new car when she gets her driver’s license, ice sculptures at her wedding.

Because when you give people a special gift like that, it’ll make you feel good and the people you give to will want to pay it back many times over.

And if you can make enough people you touch feel that way - your success in business and life - is guaranteed.

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Small business owners will monitor their site stats and notice a keyword or phrase that starts sending some traffic their way. They type the phrase into Google and, what d’ya know - they’re #1 in the rankings!

That’s great! Or is it?

Here’s what I told my client:

One component of keywords is the competition and where you rank in the search engines (ie. low competition, greater chance of being high in the search results).

Another, and more important, component is what kind of people is the keyword going to attract (and of course, how many). So think about people searching the phrase “monkeys eating red bananas” or some close variation thereof.

What are they looking to find?

What state of mind are they in (research vs. buying mode)?

Can you make some educated guesses about the demographics of people typing in that phrase?

I could go on. Bottom line - it’s great that to come up 1,2, and 3 in the rankings. However, if the term is unlikely to generate visits from legitimate prospects for your business, then it’s not worth your time trying to figure out how to leverage the traffic.

It’s not about driving traffic to your website, it’s about driving legitimate, qualified, and motivated prospects to your website.

I’d easily trade 1000 or more of the former for just one of the latter.

UPDATE: It took less than 7 hours to get the #1 Google ranking for “monkeys eating red bananas.” Won’t do me any good, but it does show that if you find a good search query that no one else is using you can be ranked high very quickly.

I’ve teamed up with David Siteman Garland of The Rise To The Top to become a sponsor of, and Internet Marketing Expert for, his emerging new media empire!

David and I both come from a long line of entrepreneurs and have a passion for entrepreneurism coursing through our veins. I’m thrilled that I’ll be working with him to develop the web presence for TRTTT which is “THE source for entrepreneurial education and lifestyle design for young, emerging, and established entrepreneurs and business professionals.”

A major component of The Rise To The Top is a TV show which airs in St. Louis at 5 PM on WRBU-my46 TV every Saturday and at 1 AM on KDNL-ABC30 every Wednesday night after Jimmy Kimmel Live. Shows are also available 24/7 at www.therisetothetop.com.

David’s assembled an impressive list of experts and guests that will be sharing their passion and experience with aspiring and accomplished entrepreneurs. And people are already paying attention - the show’s second episode was seen by 100,000 on TV in St. Louis.

As The Rise To The Top’s Internet Marketing Expert, I’ll be on each show starting in January on a segment called “Build Your Business Online.” In the segment I’ll be providing viewers with a tip, strategy and/or other interesting tidbit about how to market their business on the Internet. Additional material will be provided online in the educational packet that accompanies each show.

I’ll also be helping David in promoting and growing the company’s popular website and blog. There are already lots of exciting plans in the works - be sure to check the TRTTT website often in the weeks and months ahead!

This little baby loved looking at books. She would sit on her floor and turn the pages one-by-one, get to the end of the book, flip it over and start all over again.

For the books she really enjoyed, she’d flip through them 5 - 10 times in a row before she getting bored and moving on to something else. Other books, however, she would toss aside as soon as she turned to the first page.

One day her father (no slouch in his own right) noticed something. The books that she quickly tossed aside were very busy. They had lots of pictures, colors, text and more. It was hard to focus on any one thing. Frustrated and overwhelmed by these books, his darling daughter would quickly move on to something more appealing.

This made the father wonder, “if babies are overwhelmed by lots of pictures, colors, text and more in a book, why would many website owners and designers think things are any different for their site visitors?”

It seems pretty obvious - people visiting a website want to find exactly what they’re looking for FAST! If they don’t, they won’t make it past the first page and will quickly move on to another, more appealing site.

Yet so many still try to cram every last graphic, offer, and piece of information they can on their home page (or, even worse, their landing pages).

If they would only keep things clean and simple . . . if they would make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for . . . if they would stop trying to tell their whole story on one page of their site . . .

then customers would be more likely to stay on the site and buy something, or contact them, or sign up for their newsletter.

An then everyone would live happily ever after.

This paragraph from his recent post “Death of the Personal Blog?” caught my attention:

There’s a difference between a blog about YOU (I call this a cat blog) and a blog about the reader. Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and my blog for that matter, are not about us, about what we ate yesterday or how great we are. They are about you, the reader.

It’s really pretty simple. If you want:

• people to read your blog;
• people to follow you on Twitter;
• prospects to come to your website;
• sales -

you have to make it About You - the reader, the follower, the prospect, the customer.

You can’t succeed in business going it alone. You need a lot of help.

Do you take the time to thank those who have made your success possible? Most of us (and I include myself) don’t do it enough.

So in that vein . . .

to my blog readers, clients, former clients, prospects, business partners, mentors, advisers, business associates, friends, and family -

my sincere thank you for your:

• time
• business
• care
• ideas
• comments
• patience
• criticisms
• praise
• advice
• testimonials
• interest
• understanding
• love
• confidence
• referrals
• critiques
• trust
• insights
• brutal honesty
• kind words
• not so kind words
• brain power
• inspiration
• sharing
• openness
• feedback

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Then early one beautiful fall morning, the truck arrived with what we’d been waiting for . . . a brand spanking new front loading washing machine - and a dryer to match.

(When you have an 8 month old that is a serious laundry making machine, a new energy efficient, back-saving, programmable washer and dryer with storage pedestals, is a life changer.)

But there was a problem. The pressure of the valves opening and closing in the washer caused a water hammer in our pipes. This is when the pipes shake and shudder so violently that eventually it sounds like they will break open creating a lake in the basement. Not good.

After consulting with my official plumbing problem adviser (Google), I found that there are devices called water arrestors which can be installed to reduce, if not eliminate the problem.

There were a lot of water arrestors out there, and not being an expert, I had no idea which one to choose. And that brings us to the point of this post.

After performing a few searches I came across a search result from Lowe’s that shows they carry something called a “washing machine arrester.” It was the only search result for water arrestors that mentioned washing machines, and they had it available at the local Lowe’s.

SOLD!

When I found the device at Lowe’s, I immediately noticed something that gave me pause. Nowhere on the packaging did it say “washing machine.” It was definitely the same device that came up in my search results - looked the same, had the same manufacturer and price. It just didn’t say “water machine arrestor” on the package. The packaging called it a “mini-rester.”

That’s when Lowe’s marketing smarts dawned on me. If they had called the device a “mini-rester” I’m not sure I would have bought it. By nichifying the name and calling it a “washing machine arrester” on their website, they positioned the product as THE solution for people like me who have washing machines that make their water pipes dance.

Brilliant!

So that begs the question, can you nichify the name of your product or service? How do you take the same labels that everyone else is using - consultant, web developer, battery, etc. - and nichify it so you stand out from the crowd?

Instead of a consultant, could you be THE small business social media consultant?

Instead of a web developer, could you be THE web developer for upscale local restaurants?

Instead of selling a battery, could you sell THE rechargeable battery for portable electronic devices?

Because when you use a name to nichify yourself to become “THE” something instead of “a” something, you make your prospects decision to use you (or buy from you) a lot easier.

I’ll leave you to ponder all this while I go do some more laundry.

And rightly so. From Pay Per Click ads to email marketing to social networking, the Obama campaign put together an internet marketing juggernaut the likes of which has never been seen in politics. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say the likes of their effort has never been seen on the internet - period.

However, the coverage in the media and blogosphere focuses on the methods - Facebook, Twitter, email marketing, Google AdWords, website design, etc. - while overlooking what made this all so effective.

Here are the three main things I think have been overlooked and what you can learn from them. . .

1. Strong Message and Content First

Tens of millions of Americans felt a strong emotional and psychological connection to Barack Obama and his message. I’ll leave it for the political commentators to cover the details of the reasons why this is so - I’m not trying to make a political statement here, I’m just stating the facts.

But it was this strong connection and how it moved people that was at the heart of the success of the campaign - both online and off. Armed with a powerful message, it was then up to the campaign’s marketing team to develop content that reflected that message and then figure out the most effective ways to deliver that content online.

LESSON: Online, content is king. You can emulate everything that Obama’s campaign did online and still fall flat on your face if you don’t provide quality content that strongly resonates with your target market.

Your job as a marketer is to find out what your market wants and desires, then develop quality content that satisfies those wants and desires.

This comes FIRST.

Figuring out how to use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email, etc. to effectively reinforce and deliver that message comes later.

2. He Made it About You

On a number of occasions throughout the campaign, Obama made a point of saying that the campaign is not about him, it’s about you - the people of the United States. (Of course this ‘about you’ talk resonated with me!)

And Obama’s social networking strategy reinforced this message. The campaign built a social networking infrastructure that made people feel more involved and connected to the candidate. They felt like they were being listened to and what they said and did mattered.

LESSON: It’s arguably the biggest mistake marketers make - talking about themselves.

No one cares. They want to know how you, your products and your services are going to make their lives better. How you can help them do or become something they want to be.

The best way to do this is listen to people. Get them involved. Engage them. Make them feel important.

Social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube - are a great way to do this. Use these tools to build a community of followers (or Tribe, as Seth Godin calls it) that believes in you and your message. Lead them. And be sure to make it about them and not yourself.

3. Go Where Your Prospects Hang Out

Obama got a lot of support from younger voters. And a lot of these younger voters hang out online on places like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. If Obama’s support came from the nursing home set this strategy would have been ineffective.

LESSON: It’s easier for you to go where your prospects hang out then to get them to come to you. Do your research. Find out where they are and then get there too.

The Bottom Line

I’ve seen some articles crediting Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. with delivering the election to Obama. While there’s no denying the campaign did a masterful job in utilizing these tools to help Obama to victory, there’s more to the story.

I’ve said before that the key to online marketing is offline. And it’s precisely because the Obama online marketing team understood that, they were so successful.

As evidence, I include this excerpt from Newsweek (emphasis mine):

“I don’t care about online energy and enthusiasm just for the sake of online energy and enthusiasm,” said Chris Hughes, head of New Media’s social networking. “It’s about making money, making phone calls, embedding video or having video forwarded to friends.” There was nothing starry-eyed about Hughes, who had been the Harvard roommate and later partner of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and made his first millions before he was 24. His goal was to make old techniques - like call centers and getting polling information to voters more efficient. “When computer applications really take off, they take something people have always done and just make it easier for them to do it,” he said. “And maybe bigger.”

And that’s the big overall lesson (and bonus Lesson #4) here for online marketers. Take timeless marketing fundamentals and strategies that have worked offline for years and then find the tools available online that will help you execute them faster, easier and more effectively than has ever been possible.

Doing that may not win you the presidency, but it may just help you build your own little internet empire to rule over.

Thanks, Scott!!