Watching each day, white knuckled in front of the television I have found myself completely engrossed with the Olympics.  I feel as though I’m close enough to Vancouver to feel the buzz, the energy of a collective mass of people united

Now that the ‘lympics are over I’m seeing social updates about “back to normal”, “what now?” and similar sentiments.  What I’m feeling is a bit different, instead of “what now?” I’m thinking “what’s next?”

Sounds the same, but has a different impact.  I was in sales management for many, many years before my time in SEO.  A huge part of successful sales is motivation and energy.  Taking positive feelings and pouring them into your job, your life and allowing them to generate their own momentum.

It would be easy to allow the games to become tainted with scandal.  To suggest that the negative impact on the community, and the country, wasn’t worth the $4 Billion.  I don’t think you can place a price on the good will and pride of a nation.  Assuming that you could, I think that those two weeks were some of the best $150 I ever spent.

If we let the games, Canada’s most successful games, fade into nothing but memories then nothing is gained.  I want to take something more than memories.  I want momentum; action.  I am inspired.  I am committed to working harder, and reaching higher.  Are you?

I just watched The Big Lebowski again.  It’s not for everyone; it did terribly in the box office back in 1998.  Now, it has a massive following worldwide.  There are festivals, message boards, even a recognized religion with an official website for followers of dudeism.

The Dude talks of takin’ it easy, man.  What will come will come, and when it comes – you just take it and move on.  It’s a philosophy that has served me exceptionally well during my years in marketing.  There’s a lot of literature out there talking about what works in marketing, where it works, what doesn’t work, what works to what degree.  There are hundreds of discussions debating the validity of one method over another.

Debating the validity of one method over another is, well, kind of pointless and not dude-like at all.  Everything works.  If it didn’t work, it probably wouldn’t exist.  There are varying levels of effectiveness, though I don’t think one can debate what that is without trying it.  It’s a marketer’s responsibility to learn and experiment with whichever disciplines they want to specialize in, because when you can prove your answers to the questions of viability it’s easy to get work.

If you don’t know the answer to a marketing question, it’s ok.  Have a seat, take a sip of your white russian and think about your options in terms of  time, money and risk.

If you have the time, you can do the thing yourself.
If you can’t do the thing yourself, you’ll need to scrap the idea or pay someone else.
If you find a cheap and fast solution, it will be accompanied by a massive risk.

There’s nothing wrong with risk, or spending time or money.  If black-hat SEO didn’t work (cloaking and scraping for example) people wouldn’t keep doing it.  Sure, it’s insidious, but it works.  It works most effectively when seasoned hatters sit at the helm of the spam-train.  It works least effectively when you have to search for “how to do black hat SEO”.  It will probably destroy your brand and your reputation, but it definitely works to generate revenue.  White hat SEO takes a long, long time but there’s virtually no risk and the payout always happens, eventually.

This is where Dudeism is helpful.  There is a path of least resistance, and there is a path of utter improbability.   The path of utter improbability contains great treasure and great rewards but is a hard and dangerous journey.  The path of least resistance is cool, meandering, easy and breezy but the pay is terrible.

What about you?  Would you rather take massive risks for a possible quick payout?  Would you rather pay for perfection?  Or take the time and do it yourself?  Whichever you choose, the Dude abides.

If you haven’t heard, I’m involved in the Extreme Website Makeover project.  Extreme Website Makeover is a joint project with Hosting Nation, Oceanside Web TV, Fusion Creative, Square Eyes Media, and Harbour City SEO.

We’re currently working with Robbin’s Wreaths of Parksville and providing them with a FREE state of the art e-commerce system for their small wreath manufacturing business.  The site will include a custom design built on the Magento framework, hosting and a domain, graphic design, development, programming, internet marketing and search engine optimization.  As we work to complete their new site, we’re taking applications for new contenders.

If you have an engaging story to tell about your company and the challenges you have faced to get onto the web, we’d love to hear about it.  You never know, you could be selected to receive a custom website valued over $5000, absolutely free!

How do you apply?  Well, drop me a line through my contact form or visit extreme website makeover to get the complete application.

Incidentally, items like this are a great way to promote your business.  Getting involved with community driven projects and coordinating with other agencies work wonders for building your online presence.

Applied Theory is a web comic about axioms, models, theories, maxims, principles, laws and postulates.  This is the first issue.  Click on the comic for a larger version.  Also, go ahead and download it, share it, hot link to it, repost it or whatever – just leave the copyright intact.

All this talk about privacy, I didn’t even have a privacy policy on my site.

It’s a massive oversight on my part, something I should have done as soon as I set up a contact form and launched a newsletter signup form.  If you collect information from your visitors, it’s never too late to put a policy on your site.  If you don’t know where to start, there are plenty online.  You could even link to this one, or copy mine and edit it to suit your needs.

Harbour City SEO: Privacy Policy