Finding Your Own Groove: An Inventory Of My Successful Stumbled-Upon’s

You know it is funny, there are hundreds upon hundreds of articles on how to get your company and your product noticed on the web. Hey a few are mine even! Yet it had always crossed my mind…”if we were all doing the same thing, how is any one of us standing out of the crowd?” SEO page ranking is a good example. Man the jockeying that goes down in this multi million dollar business is fierce. And the rules are ever changing, it reminds me of the old school yard game I used to play. Maybe you did too, called “King of The Castle”? Where we all fought to be on the very top of a mound of earth. It would last for a brief while, but someone else was bound to come along and turf you from your lofty position.

Now I have a Facebook friend who recently and jokingly touted their success in scaling their mountain, because they managed to rank first in search pages by relating their brand to their geographic location. Awesome, except their internet marketing product was destined for a larger geographic location than an obscure village in England. Hey, I have to tell you, I am in the same boat and needless to say I am racking my brains as well, trying to figuring a different way around the giant obstacle of being a solopreneur trying to stand out in a crowd of a billion. Because that is exactly the daunting task we all face. I commend my English friend for their sense of humor though, because that is one thing you really need in order to stay focused, motivated and undaunted by the mountain before you!

Now I am one for putting a lot of irons in the fire. I do this for two reasons. Firstly, I figure that sooner or later the “Law of Probabilities” will start paying off . However there is a more practical reasoning as well. Because the very nature of my business ( a writing and marketing service) it is prudent for myself to test the theories in the marketplace for myself and thereby write from practical experiences. Now I have to point out that there are fruits to the labor, but I have to add- this is not the quick and easy… it is tough slugging and we all know this. However, what fascinates me the most is the successes I have reaped that were totally outside of the “common” internet marketing box. Activities I would not have even entertained unless I had been curious and ventured into pastures by mere accident. Yes I would like to say these were brilliant maneuvers on my part, but if you talk to enough entrepreneurs you come to the quick understanding that a lot of their successes were stumbled upon when daring to venture out of a precast mold and taking a risk or two.

See… that’s it… that was the one thing that was troubling me about my own process. I kept thinking, “there’s got to be a whole new angle to approach this visibility issue.” An entirely new angle is your best chance of standing out and going viral. Innovation, that was the angle I was seeking. And innovation should be at the back of your head on a regular basis as well for the entire duration of your business’ life cycle. You just have to mix it up to stay on top!

To get noticed you got to stand out…

My friend from England in their jest had a point though. Even the internet marketing pundits and Google it’s self stress the relevance of gaining a toe hold whether it be geographically, brilliant key word positioning, or in my case (where I just plain got lucky) uniqueness in identity. Let’s be honest, geographical SEO ranking is only successful if it is pertinent to your target audience. For example Sally has a bath and kitchen shop in Dallas. But if Sally had an online e-store selling bath and kitchen products she would have to be a bit more creative in her unique positioning for page ranking. (Unless of course She laid down a landing page for every major metropolitan area in America. And if she had that kind of energy, man there’s a whole lot of irons in that fire aren’t there? )

I caught a break in name sake…CHICKMELION. It is unique, surprisingly easily remembered and sticks out like a sore thumb and I am the ONLY one. But had my enterprise been called Bob’s Freelance Writing Services, it might not have been that lucky. Then I may have to hope anyone else with the same namesake is much less successful with their SEO efforts than me.

Clearly the larger the geographical area you service, the more the direct competition you face and the larger the crowd to get lost in.. Let that be a lesson learned in the naming of an enterprise. Again I have to say, I got lucky. It was a nick name I was stuck with; a play on “chameleon” and more than likely a poke at my tenancy for multiple personalities.

May I introduce myself….

Now I have a problem. I am unique and still similarly unknown. So it makes perfect sense to me to factor a little networking into the mix and hope to go viral that way; by word of mouth. Honing in on my target audience, B2B, I start setting up contacts on social sites. Facebook being one (and why not they have 50,000 potential networkers for me work with.)

Now I have to say this; and it is strictly from an artistic personality’s point of view, Facebook is too restrictive to be considered a viable artistic avenue. That being said, I found myself on another social site to answer that creative craving in me. It is here where I had my next successful stumble. This site allows for “comments” which are graphical designs and/or written text as greetings to friends on your list. This site provided me with an avenue to vent two of my passions in the form of what I call play. (Because if I do it without expectations for pay, I call it play!) They are: writing and design. What started off only three months ago as an artistic vent has now exploded to an all out demand. To date I have had 173,712 of these designs circulate world wide. Each graphic netting on average 3000 to 4000 hits and counting because they never really go out of circulation being parked in Photobucket. Each graphic touting “peace” or “inspiration,” which is a fantastic PR statement for my company and each graphic is signed, “CHICKMELIONfreelance” and my blog address clearly and easily found. The wonder about this that there was never any intent for this avenue to become a marketing vehicle for my business. I did it, (and am still doing it) out of pure pleasure of creation and the belief that we all are capable of creating positive energy for a better world I signed the comments as any painter would sign their pictures, but as things started taking off it made good sense to begin to use my corporate namesake. That’s when the marketer in me kicked in.

Speaking about a blog…

Now that I raised the “Blog” topic, this is a good time to mention the next ‘stumbled upon.” I own a blog. It’s one of my irons in the fire. It is an activity recommended by many a marketing Guru. I can’t say I lost sleep deciding what my blog was going to be about. It all just came to me quite naturally, as I was surfing. I found that on a daily basis I go through a mass amount of information: some I research for, some just drops onto my lap and again some I just plain stumble upon. My bookmarks are loaded and I was at a loss of how to keep on top of all this information. Then it dawned on me… how many others are there frustrated with hitting up multiple sites looking for relevant internet marketing information? Wouldn’t it be nice to have it all under one roof? It just made sense to house it all under the umbrella of an “Internet Marketing News Blog”… kinda your one stop shopping for internet tid-bits and revelations. And as out tag line says, “the best decisions come from having the most information…”

Now here’s a secret, you have a blog, you have fresh content coming in…. why don’t you have a widget? Seriously, it makes sense. Perhaps you can make your readerships life even easier by allowing them a mini application that is small, attractive and undaunting; yet easily pasteable to their own website saving them time and gaining you a more loyal following. A widget fosters the ability to quickly scan content titles and dig in deeper into topics they see relevant. It also fosters graphics. In addition your logo on the widgt, if clicked on, takes the reader straight to your blog. Wow! Can it get any better? Yes it can! What if I say you can get it for free… as well as set up a mobile application along with it. If any of this comes as a surprise, you just might want to check out widgetbox.com.

Here’s the fascinating part. Widgetbox hosts your widget on their site and indexes it much like an article bank hosts articles. Now that’s great additional exposure for you. For myself it translated into an additional 3,388 hits. Who would have thought of widget marketing? Again I have to say, if you have a blog, why don’t you have a widget?

You have to be of a giving spirit…

There is an old adage, ‘give a little and get a lot.” This has never been so paramount a concept relating to the success of a business as it is right here, right now! It is an intricate part of doing successful business on the internet, yet something that entrepreneurs are still having problems getting a firm grasp of. I have related a few of my successes to you, ones I hadn’t even planned on. These may not fit your situation, but there are no doubt forward thinking strategies that would fit you better than myself as well. One thread does sew it all together and that is the willingness to give a little in order to foster a relationship with your target market. Be creative and give something of value. Never take for granted the little things that makes people feel special. It is these little things that can easily snowball to greater rewards than you could have imagined. Here’s to your prosperous future.

About the Author

Carla M Dummerauf is the owner of CHICKMELIONfreelance who offers a triple threat advantage for small business such as writing, design and marketing services, ensuring you get the complete package.

CHICKMELIONfreelance specializes in: Article Marketing, Press Releases, Newsletters, E-brochures, Banner Ads, Squeeze pages and much much more at affordable prices.. It is Carla’s belief that no business is too small for the best of services, and no budget is too small for the best of solutions. Carla has held a Marketing Degree for over 20 years and lives to watch small businesses grow. After all it is the backbone of our country, don’t you think?.

Check out our INTERNET MARKETING NEWS BLOG at: http://chickmelionfreelancer.blogspot.com

where we keep ontop of the hot topics in the industry… because we feel the best decisions are informed decisions.