The Being Found Show helps listeners take control of how the Internet impacts their businesses – and their revenue. In this show, we talk about Cloud Wise Academy and Project Hometown aiding local businesses online, along with teaching online businesses how to utilize reviews, marketing techniques, and multiple platforms to optimize online traffic towards their businesses.
Joe: Welcome back. You’re listening to the being found show. This is the best two hours of radio for business and if you’re listening to us you will be found by more buying customers on the Internet. We’re going to talk about it if it matters. Also, the goal here is to put the internet to work for you not against you. All right so we’re going to do that. We’re coming to you from KCNR 1460 AM and now there are some things going on in the advertising world that frankly, I’m just not ready to get behind yet. And this story kind of freaks me out a little bit. And that’s this whole idea of these devices from Amazon or Google or Apple that come into your house and listen to you. What are they called like Echo?
Chauncey: Yeah or Siri.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. So the idea here is from the consumer’s perspective is how cool is it that you can tell your TV to turn on or off or while you’re cooking, You can say, hey turn on, you know music right. So I get I But what’s what’s the motivations for Amazon and Google and Apple and things like that too, to have something listening to you. And the reality is they are merchandising or marketing companies right. So how much better is that for them if they can start to compile data on what you’re saying or thinking or even if it’s just you searching. They can they can learn more theoretically. Again this is just kind of my own little theories but they can learn more about your natural speak of what you would like.
Chauncey: OK I can play devil’s advocate that a little bit because what they’re doing is you know they’re tracking speech so they’re getting a better understanding of speech across the board from a lot of different people. And then they’re also tracking intention from your speech in order to have better results for your speech orders right. Now so maybe the tone of voice and all this stuff you know eventually they’ll be able to truly cater to exactly what you want you to know. And so someday I might be able to say man I’m thirsty. Alexa hook me up and it’ll give me exactly the drink that I want.
Joe: Yeah. And I suspect you know that’s what’s happening. And that’s what they’re doing. And for businesses you know I think a lot of us local businesses are a million miles away from that mattering to us you know that’s still out there but we should be watching what these monster companies are doing because it will eventually impact us.
Chauncey: Now having said all that and I agree when I say Alexa, find me a web design company Alexa’s using a search engine.
Joe: Right. So search bots like Google are getting where they’re looking for the text that is more naturally written than a copywriter would write. In other words, it may not be perfect grammar. They’re looking for more like somebody would have spoken when they’re looking at content. And the reason is so much of search now is being done through Siri or OK Google or these devices or you know it might just be why you’re driving and you tell your Google Maps to find your restaurant near you. I don’t even know if restaurant near me existed in Google search until devices started coming around right. It became a more natural thing. Now here’s what’s going on though. So I think you’re right. I agree. Nothing do about it’s happening. However, Google was about ready to release and let me read this article from Businessinsider.com and let me just read a little bit of it so Google will permanently disable a control on its new $50 speaker after the gadget. Listened in on some users. What ended up happening is a there was a reporter from Android police I think it was something like that where they’re watching what’s going on with Android and Google and all that. So he got the device early and he was going to do a review and he found out that this device was actually listening recording and pushing it up to the server. Now Google says that this was just a problem with the button and the software and it will go ahead and permanently deactivate that in the next update and that should solve the problem. I don’t know.
Chauncey: Does that mean that it was listening prior to my saying OK Google?
Joe: Yes, it is always listening.
Chauncey: So like when my wife and I are talking about what we’re making for dinner my speakers listening to that.
Joe: That’s right. That’s the whole point here that the way you’re supposed to activate this device and really all of these devices. Is there some phrase you say and in this case, it’s OK Google or there’s a button you push or hold. In this case, it just listened and recorded and uploaded to Google servers.
Chauncey: So basically if we want to talk smack about Google we have to lock ourselves in the bathroom and whisper.
Joe: Right. Well yeah. This isn’t a conspiracy show but it is pretty crazy. You know that that’s going on. Now, this was only a $50 speaker. This will probably sell like crazy and be in almost every kid’s bedroom, every house, this is mass production. So why do we care for this show? Well, it’s a little creepy. But the other reason we care is that we’ve got to know. We have to know that these monsters who are really forming the way marketing and consumers buy are refining what they do as much as they can. And that is leading towards speech and how people search and in our world to be found or, Chauncey for us get our clients found, we can get them found in Maps Google maps and things like that where people speak into the map and say you know we’re having to, oh go ahead.
Chauncey: I think what you were saying about near me is being a search term is a prime example of us staying on top of changes in technology because that term didn’t exist prior to somebody talking and now it’s the hottest search are finding services around here.
Joe: Yeah yeah. If you and I would have been helping somebody get their web page found before this, before speech came into play, you know it would have been restaurants in Redding California. Or a Mexican food place, you know, next to Mt. Shasta mall, you know. But these devices are going to work for the consumer and for the big search engines that are trying to do a better job of giving the consumer what they want. So to stay out of that loop is a mess now. So this would be creepy and telling. Now one other story I want to go into real quick have you seen this. So let’s see this was in Social Tech Crunch. Steve Wozniak, he’s one of the co-founders of Apple. He’s launching something called was WozU. You know what’s really interesting. Let me read a little bit about this from the article, Steve Wozniak changed the world with Steve Jobs blah blah blah. We’ll start an online learning platform focus on both students and companies that will eventually hire those students. OK, so he is Cloud Wise Academy. What I was thinking is this. I feel a little vindicated like I’m ahead of him. You know that’s the whole idea of Cloud Wise Academy is to train the students and the business. That’s why we have the being found show. Right. So of course, I wanted to go give this guy a high five. Probably the nicest guy in tech too.
Chauncey: So you know maybe your Apple phone told him about it.
Joe: That’s right. Sorry. I actually shut Siri off. So WozU will also offer platforms for tech companies to recruit. So he’s going full circle. He’s going to set this up to train and retain the workforce for tech companies. He’s also going to create the curriculum that will be given to K through 12 students, who are doing stem programs. Here’s his deal. He says his goal is to educate and train people in unemployable digital skills without putting them years into debt. So people often are afraid to choose a technology based career because they think they can’t do it. “I know they can. And I want to show them how”, says Steve Wozniak. I just want to show them this is Cloudwise Academy. The only thing is he’s got a heck of a lot more resources to do this. And if anything else this just re-invigorated my commitment to Cloud Wise Academy and its goal to train and equip our workforce for this new economy.
Chauncey: Well you’ve hired some people straight out of the school and they have turned out to be some of your best employees.
Joe: They’re amazing. Yeah. Yeah. They’re amazing. And there are people, pretty much anyone that went through the school thus far, almost without exception, has never coded a thing. And was not even in tech until they took our class and there are several people who have careers now or working for me or worked for other people. Not to mention instructors. You’re an instructor. We’ve had other great instructors. Nathan noble and people like that who get to learn from your wisdom and your experience because that’s how Cloudwise works. It’s not theoretical or kind of the normal education system we actually hire trainers and instructors who know these things and are working the skills right now and teach. Again cool stuff in the news and Cloud Wise Academy. I’m just re-invigorated like whats going on and I’ll get into that a little bit more.
Joe: This is the being found show the local businesses guide to being found by more buying customers. You can check us out on Beingfound.com or listen on KCNR1460am or our podcast or all the different ways we’re trying to make it possible for you to listen. There is a new class coming at Cloud Wise Academy to give a little context here. We have the being found show. We also have a marketing business called Cloud Potential. I’m going to tell you about a nonprofit project that’s going on called Project Hometown that we’ll talk about. A real passion of mine is the Cloud Wise Academy school that we run and we run it right here at Redding. It’s a small school we’re not like the size of the college or anything like that but we do classes. We try to do one every six weeks somewhere between you know 20 ish people come to a class and we try to teach the most valuable tech skills that are needed right now in the workforce. The other thing we try to do is get rid of that stigma. That this can’t be done or you can’t do this or you’re not able to do this or you’re not a tech person. Every single person who’s taken our school so far is someone who has hardly opened a computer. We had to tell some people what a browser was and if you just said I don’t even know what you mean by a browser, well then you’re perfect for our school because we start teaching you how to open your computer and find out which browser is right.
So anyone can take it. And this is the classes are really inexpensive. They’re $275 for six weeks. We’ve got a class coming up. We’ve already got 8 or so students enrolled in the class which is on November 6. We also have a scholarship before I talk about the class. You can go to Cloud Wise Academy and scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see some links for signing up for the scholarships or donating scholarships. It’s a completely nonprofit. I actually don’t control it. It’s controlled by the Shasta Regional Community Foundation. They also review all of the applications and determine who can get through. But the idea of the scholarship is to help people who really want to improve their lives and learning these skills can help them improve their lives because they’re in such high demand. So if you think you don’t deserve this class, if you think that you’re at a point in life or you have to change if you think you’re at a point where nothing’s working or you have kids or family members who you know they didn’t spend a fortune on college or they feel like they’re at a dead end or life’s not going the way they want, these scholarships are for you and the school is for you. To me, it’s trying to take the term alternative education out of alternative education. This is just education.
Chauncey: It’s just skills. I don’t care what you do, there is not a single career on this planet, you know, if you’re a ditch digger, computer skills will help you. They will help you move up and in any career that you’re in.
Joe: Google just did its biggest grant ever of one billion dollars. Google is donating to help train the workforce. Steve Wozniak, the founder of Apple, training the workforce. Why are they doing this? Well because these skills are so needed they’re so in demand.
Chauncey: Not to get off topic from the school, but I read an article a while back that said that 70 percent of the careers that are going to exist 20 years from now and I mean 70 percent of the careers 20 years from now don’t exist today.
Joe: Yeah that’s right. Well and we’re training people in college. Colleges matter and there a way for some of us but they’re not away for all of us. And colleges aren’t even teaching the skills that are valid now let alone the skills that we don’t even know need to be taught. So it’s why schools like mine, which there’s a lot of them I’m not the only one. It’s why Google and WozU that are doing this because they know that there needs to be a more rapid way to train these skills. It can’t all be a four-year college or a six-year or eight years. The reason is the skills that are needed are needed now and they evolve. What you and I learned to do even two or three years ago, Chauncey, has become obsolete in some cases -or were foundational and now we have to do a whole other set of things.
I’ll give you another example of your ditch digger analogy. I went out to the logging conference where Shasta College and Shasta Cascade Logging Foundation go out and there’s all these stops of all the different ways people do logging and all the equipment and you kind of walk around get to see how does a sawmill work how does the machine, these giant tractors that cut down trees, work like people don’t do that with a chainsaw anymore. So there’s a tractor that grabs a tree and a socket it and that lays the tree down. So I went to all these and you know up in all of them there was a laptop sitting in that big monstrous machine or there was a computer running that mill that cuts the trees into planks and the whole reason I was invited to go out there was because the logging industry can’t find enough trained workers to help them operate those machines. But now what happens when that computer inside that giant machine goes down who drives out there and repairs that?
Chauncey: A lot of those types of jobs are generational. You know so my dad was a logger and then I became a logger because I live in the proper location. And I had the opportunity to become that and because it’s generational, it was done one way before and it’s done another way now. And so there’s that Skip in that education. That’s what you’re talking about as a good way to turn that education quickly on to people who want to continue doing those generational items but need that little extra bit of technological education. Right.
Joe: Right. Well and you know I just feel so blessed because you know, Cloud Wise Academy was getting started a little over a year ago and I can’t remember how many students were taught. But in that same amount of time, we now will be teaching high school kids. We’re going to be teaching them skills needed for our project hometown program coming up. We’re currently teaching at a local college and we will be teaching in Butte starting in January. I say that because how awesome is that that the colleges see that these skills need to be introduced in a rapid fashion into their communities and they’re just acting on it. They’re doing it. So you know this is not abstract; this idea that these skills need to be taught or that they’re missing. Even our college system is going to work to try to get them in. The giants of the tech world are starting to put massive amounts of resources into teaching these skills. And why does this matter? Well, I want people in our community who need another start or maybe run a business and you want to know more about technology so you can do a better job. I want you to know about the school and I want you to know there’s no reason you can’t do it. It’s $275 a class and if you can’t afford that there’s a scholarship and if you can’t afford that I’ll probably pay for you. So there’s just no reason to not take this. These skills are in super high demand but the other reason I talk about this is to point out for our local businesses, you can’t stand on the sidelines anymore.
Joe: If you’re not going to train your self and you don’t want to learn these new skills, which by the way almost every business owner I talked to says “I’m too far in the way I do things or I spent the last 20 years learning what I needed to to get here. I don’t want to learn all this stuff.” Fine don’t. But you better be training your workforce. There is not a business in Redding, not one single business, that should not be sending somebody in their business through Cloud Wise Academy, especially this next class coming up which is WordPress, which you know that something like a quarter of the Internet’s built with WordPress. Almost every Website in town is probably built with WordPress. So business owners, if you don’t want to learn more fine don’t. There are things I don’t want to learn. I’m a terrible writer and I don’t even want to spend the 10 years it takes for me to build or write something. That’s why I do a radio show instead of a blog. But there’s no reason that you can’t send your workforce to Cloud Wise Academy or Udemy.com, that’s another place that you can learn. In other words, you better start training your workforce because the rest of the world is working to train their workforce and Cloud Wise Academy is here, Project Hometown’s here, the Being Found Show here, all of it’s here to make sure your workforce is trained.
Joe: OK so I didn’t get to explain the class I don’t want to go too much into the class and this one we’re talking about Cloud Wise Academy and why you should do it if you’re a business or if you’re an individual. The class is coming up I think on Nov 6 and you can go to Cloud Wise Academy to find out more. But the idea here is it’s about WordPress. Most of the internet is built on WordPress at least for local businesses. We’re going to teach our students from scratch how to set up servers, build a site, and launch it. Everything you need, you’re going to be shown. Our classes, I think of as like wood shop more than a class because at the end of the class you’re going to have built your website without losing a finger. Our instructors are there to explain the step that you’re going to need to work on that day. Then you go to work on it and they walk around and they help you get things done and other students help you get things done.
We have something in the school called No student left behind which means that some people might struggle with one part while others do well. While the people who are doing well help the person who is struggling and then you’ll notice that the person who is struggling is doing well at another part and the other person struggling. We help each other out.
Everyone gets a website built by the end because I think you learn a lot more by actually doing it. Like I could tell you how to swim all day long, but if I just dropped you in the water, you’d probably sink and drown. You need actually to be out there moving and doing, and so that’s what’s unique about Cloud Wise Academy. That’s why anybody can do it. So it’s WordPress. It’s over there in our location by the Venture Hub and gets started.
Chauncey, real quick, you’ve been an instructor at Cloud Wise. Well, you know just real quick what was your take on the students or about how the class works out. What would you tell people?
Chauncey: Well you know everybody was eager to learn and very helpful to one another. And it was hands on because you know basically in my class I ended up treating my class as though I was a project manager and they were my team. So my class was search engine optimization, and we picked a Web site. And I had like 15 tasks and 15 students, and I said OK you’re doing this and basically pointed them around and if anybody needed help they were asking one another. I was walking around the room, and then we were going over in the end what they did and then we saw the changes in search results. You know, so it was very organic, very interactive, and an enjoyable time.
Joe: All right let’s move on. There there is an ad that I saw. I don’t even know if I’d call it an ad. I just love the new creative ways to be found. Two football players, Travis Kelce and Greg Olsen, well I don’t know a thing about football. I have no idea who those two guys are. They may be somebody important but anyways. These two football players challenge each other to eat a Paquis Hella Spicy Carolina Reaper Madness chips and see who can last the longest.
So these two guys they look like they’re in their home. They got a glass of milk and a Pepto Bismol next to him. This box shows up and looks like it has one chip in it. And there they’re both in their different homes being videoed, and the idea is they are going to eat these chips and see who’s the toughest and who makes it. I don’t know if it’s an ad. I don’t know if the chip manufacturer talked to both into doing this, but it’s great. So you can also catch this article in adweek.com. The author of the article is David Kiefaber. He’s a contributor to ad week. It’s a hilarious video but the reason I brought this up was you know for one I don’t know if a regular AD could make sense for a chip that’s so miserable nobody would ever want to eat it. But there are those niche people who think this is fun. Some people do this, and some people test hot sauce. My son will eat a ghost pepper anytime you ask him to which is mind-boggling to me. What a cool way to get your name out and be seen.
Chauncey: Oh absolutely. And fun you know, anything that you can do to make what you do fun is gold you know.
Joe: Yeah. I wonder if this is just probably two iPhones set up with a $10 tripod video. I mean we all could do this. Nothing is stopping us all from doing this. So I just wonder, as a local business nothing is stopping us. Why couldn’t a local business, let’s say that you’re a Mexican restaurant, walk around with a cell phone and challenge people to try your salsa.
Chauncey: You know one thing that restaurants can do especially a sort of like taco shop kind of place, a little sort of middle ground and below restaurants. I don’t think it will go to the upper class but do those food challenges and then videotaping those food challenges and having them up on the board. I mean there’s a whole social media campaign right there right. You know where you got to eat the six-pound burrito in 30 minutes or whatever you know.
Joe: So it does make you think, well sure you need to still sometimes produce something as amazing as you still need a full production. Sometimes you need a staff to come in to make an ad for TV or whatever. But there are tons of opportunities to make some interesting, valuable things, content, or videos that get your name around or attract the type of customer you’re looking for. And you know this is a great example. I just wonder if we couldn’t challenge our community to try more of these unique and creative simple ways to get more positive attention by making some fun videos or starting some fun little challenges or you know whatever. I’m not super creative so I’m not the guy that comes up with those things, but you know. Couldn’t we do that in this community? What’s stopping us?
Chauncey: Well creativity you know is what’s stopping us you know. We need those people to come out of the woodwork and be those creative people. We need to find an environment for those creative people to work their magic because they’re out there.
Joe: Well and especially until I got connected with the Venture Hub and everything going on there. I didn’t realize there were so many creative forward thinking individuals around and right here in town. For example, Matt Thayer from Spero Pictures is a top production house right here in Redding and all over the United States, across the globe doing videos. And he just did a video for Megastar Financial for Matt Brown which is hilarious and so well done.
Joe: Chauncey, you wanted to talk about reviews.
Chauncey: I did. I have a really funny story that starts it out. My wife and I went down to Monterey to visit my son who’s going to college down there and we eat at this cafe. There’s this part of the cafe where you get all your stuff. It’s where everybody goes and above that is this chalkboard. I read the chalkboard, “Don’t order your eggs over easy or you’ll get them raw.” And it says one star and it says a name.
And then there’s another one that says like you know don’t do this that or the other thing because the service here sucks. So there’s this list of like five terrible reviews about the place I’m currently eating. And then at the bottom, it says, “Don’t get on our negative review board. If you have a problem all you have to do is ask and we’d be happy to fix it.” And so I thought this was really funny that they were taking the negative reviews and basically using them against the people who were coming in basically saying all you have to do is ask to have it fixed instead of just going off and complaining about it.
Joe: Now did you happen to notice if that was also leading to people who liked them giving them more good reviews?
Chauncey: No I didn’t I didn’t check it online or anything like that. But the food was great and the service was great like everything about the place was great. We really enjoyed it but I thought it was just kind of a fun way to remind people who have a problem that We’d be happy to fix it before it even got to the point of writing a bad review. And then it also kind of reminds people to write a good review.
Joe: Yeah there’s two sides to me right now. One side’s upset because I can’t stand passive aggressiveness. So don’t freak and leave a bad review if you didn’t talk to the manager or someone. Talk to the manager and do something about it like maybe the waitress had a bad day or whatever. But it’s so passive aggressive to just go leave a bad review. The other side to me is the business owner for years now. I’ve listened to what sounds or feels like a very valid explanation of saying “I just don’t have time to get reviews” or “I don’t have time to go and see if people are leaving reviews” or “I’m not really sure what my customers like and don’t like.” Well, you better make time because customers are giving reviews whether you like it or not. You better find out they’re saying. But also it helps you understand what people actually think about your service so you can do what you and I talk about a lot. Is it just your service? That’s the key to good reviews is hearing the complaints and making it visible and doing something about it and not sticking your head in the sand.
Chauncey: Yeah well ultimately you know my topic really kind of came down to that there are three ways that reviews really help you and why they need to be so important. The first one is search so it’s not very exciting to listen to but positive reviews help you show up in local search results. They’re a thinking factor for local search results because they create trust factor to the search engine. The search engine starts to trust that you are something that their audience wants.
Joe: Well so real quick so if your local direct competitor is actively getting reviews and you have no reviews then that is a factor where your competitors are getting a bit of an advantage on you in the search that they will show up first.
Chauncey: The second is conversion. Obviously, this is the one that makes a lot of sense to a lot of people if you have better reviews. People are more likely to click you.
Joe: So when you say conversion you are saying from the search engines or wherever those reviews are showing up to be good because it might be on you know 100 different sites that it’s more likely people are going to follow through because there are people saying good things about you which as a consumer is obvious but sometimes it doesn’t feel obvious as a business.
Chauncey: Right. And conversion you know is very important. You know you can get all the traffic you want but if it’s not converting there’s no money there. And then the last one is basically helping you with your organic search. Because as we’ve talked about a lot on this show your website is really no longer your Website. Your website is a collection of your presence across the Internet. And as you build up each of these presence areas it adds weight back to your Web site. It adds the quality back to your website.
Joe: Well you’re nailing some that I’d like to try to make sense of here. We do tend to think of the Internet as a business. We tend to think the Internet is us making a good website. So if I’m a local truck accessory store I think well once I’ve made a good website I’ve done my part for having a good presence online and getting more customers. What you said and what we talk about is essentially the entire Internet is your Website. Yelp is developing part of your identity. Google is developing part of your identity. Bloggers who may be talking about you. The White Pages, your Website, and Facebook are all developing a part of your identity and your job as a business. As best you can is to recognize that that’s your identity and make sure that you’re being found in the way you want to be found where people are looking.
Joe: If nobody’s looking or talking about you on Twitter or your products, well then don’t worry about it there. Go where people are, which is Google and Facebook. You know what I mean. So the whole internet is now your conversion platform not just your Website. I know that makes people go, “I’m shutting this off, that’s too big for me to take on. I just want a website” but I’m sorry. That’s the new reality.
Chauncey: And here’s a way to put not too fine a point on it is that I’ve seen quite a few successful businesses succeed from only having Facebook pages and Yelp reviews and all that stuff and they don’t even have a Website. I have never seen a successful business that only had a Website and didn’t have any of those other things.
Joe: That’s a good point. Well and one of the reasons I want to talk about reviews today is I’ve seen something pretty incredible happen over the last few months, especially the last couple of weeks. We have a client who is in a really competitive market here locally. There are a couple of its competitors that are good and they’ve been online for eight to ten years. If you google these type of services they’re going to show up and in three months our client is head to head with them. You know they’re not number one for everything but all of a sudden this client’s brand new Web site that’s only been around for three, four, or five months is in the top four, top three, top one, top two. One of the things we did really early on for that client was we went and got a bunch of reviews.
We actually went out and asked his customers if they would review him. And he turns out he’s a great business and he’s a great businessman. He’s super friendly super nice. So it was easy to get positive reviews but I attribute a lot of that success to him going so high up in the ranking to the reviews. And one of the things I wanted to talk about was a client’s ratings going up. In other words, are being found on Google and other search engines way higher up than I would have thought so soon and against some heavy hitter competitors and I think it’s super important and a big part of it. Chauncey is going to share with us you know exactly what’s happening. What is that successful concoction that’s allowing this client to do so well?
Chauncey: So. Two things were going on I know the client that you’re talking about. We were also fixing their citations. But a lot of their citations are review sites. And so here’s the power of doing those reviews is, for one, by doing the reviews, we knew that conversion of reviews was coming through. So we made sure that all those profiles were ready to accept reviews meaning that they were all totally accurate. Now we’ve expanded our website into the area just like we were talking. So that creates trust and that creates backlinks, that creates all that stuff and then reviews themselves create trust. Now Google will just use it as saying OK well these guys are trustworthy and these people are liking them so I’m going to serve these people up more so now that these people are served up more now they get more traffic.
And now that more traffic comes through the site has more usage and more people using it and it’s converting more people adding to Google saying OK good people are liking this. So I’m going to serve it up even more. And so that’s where it’s happening here. There’s a big cycle where once you get into that cycle of traffic that converts and usage you’ve now sort of entered the realm of competitiveness. But you need to get in there. And so there are several ways to get in there and reviews especially when it comes to local is a great way to get in there.
Joe: There are generally two types of clients that we have. There are businesses and two types of situations. One is that you are developing your first new Website or your company is fairly new and you get to put yourself in all and you get a nice clean Web site. In other words, you get to set your impression from the start. The other is I’ve already got an impression that’s been around for years or for however long and that’s got to be cleaned up. Now I’m saying all that because maybe I’m a little grouchy about this too.
You know one of the things I was thinking about going over on the show is we have a checklist that’s a hundred items long and it takes us 90 days if we work really hard to make a website healthy enough to be found. It is a lot. This is hard work. If you think being found for the products people are looking for is insanely valuable so people who know what they’re doing are trying to be found too. So businesses when you’re talking to your Web site team or your team you kind of got to be educated on this is hard work. Frankly, if you’re calling your Web site team or your team and you’re saying it’s been 30 days why am I not number one? Your website team should fire you as a client. They really should. Maybe after 90 days, or six months you, for a lot of your terms, you might be showing up you know in the top five. You know that’s that’s probably OK. And if you’re not by then you probably should start asking what’s going on. Unless you’re a complicated business.
But really this is insanely hard work. And not a lot of businesses are prepared to do it on their own. We get that. The show isn’t so that you know how to do every little thing nut that you’re educated as a business so that you can lead whoever’s going to do this stuff better. And it’s to give you solutions. But you know it’s tough. This is tough stuff. Just that cycle Chauncey was talking about has taken us about four months to create that healthy cycle with fairly a new business. Had it been a lot older, I don’t know how long I would’ve taken but because then we would have to clean up the past mess.
Chauncey: But it is about finding your niche. And so you know reviews are not your only way and there are other ways a lot of people going through social media especially if your business has anything to do with entertainment or people having fun you know stuff like that. The client that we’re talking about is more of a sales service situation which is reviews. I know if it has to do with entertainment you know social media is a great way in. So there are multiple ways in and it’s about sort of understanding you know what is going to spearhead my attack you know and by starting that cycle of being found through trusted traffic the whole thing. Traffic, conversion, and usage.
Joe: So talk to us. You had another topic that you know I don’t even think it’s Thanksgiving or Halloween or anything yet and you are talking about Christmas.
Chauncey: Christmas is coming up. Don’t wait until December 15th to try to come up with what you’re going to do to get traffic and conversion for Christmas.
Joe: What does a plan look like or what are some tips that we can give to be prepared that Christmas traffic?
Chauncey: Well here’s the beauty of people searching for Christmas. They only do it one month out of the year. So if you have like a page up for your Christmas specials you can go ahead and leave that up year round. Just don’t link to it because nobody is going to search for it and if they find it well then they’re crazy. And so this is going to add to its value by leaving it up year round.
Joe: You know nobody searching for that in in January. And if they find it they see it’s a Christmas special you know you have dates on it but you know so. One good thing is to figure out what you’re going to do. You know here’s how most businesses enter the realm restfully of advertising at Christmas is they use Adwords. They come up with what their plan, is their conversion, what they’re going to do and then they get somebody and they start putting together their ad campaign and then they start running their ad campaign to drive traffic to their page that’s going to give that deal or give that perk for Christmas. And what that does is maybe you take a little financial hit know you’re running some ads you’re also getting a percentage off maybe. But this creates loyal customers throughout the rest of the year. And so it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of that.
So what you’re saying is it’s a clear distinction in the intent of a buyer. In other words, we know that the buyer is looking for a Christmas gift and if they’re a man that Christmas gift is probably for themselves. I said my wife will love to have one of those watches. I’ll buy me one so she can have one. So and right now I’m sure she’s listening saying Yeah that’s absolutely true. So we know in other words it’s a perfectly clear time.
Chauncey: We know that they’re looking for Christmas gifts so why not make a landing page on your Web site that is offering not Christmas gifts but most people know that there are Christmas deals to be had, there are Black Friday deals to be had. People are looking for these terms. So if you get yourself ready now you will be prepared for these terms. Then you leave them up through the following year because nobody is searching for Black Friday deals on what you got in February you know but you’re just not linked to but next year when it comes around you’ve got some as we wait for that.
Joe: Right. Well and the other thing is Google isn’t necessarily crawling your site every day. They may not call it again for months. In other words, they’re looking at Google which only so much computer power and they can’t crawl the entire Internet every second of every day. So just because you put a special for Christmas up five days before Christmas. Guess what. Google may not have even called it. Right.
Chauncey: So no. Absolutely this is a little technical and not exciting but when you submit your ex-e-mail sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools part of that is saying a general idea of how often this page is updated so that the bot knows when to come back.
Joe: Right. Right. So if you think you’re just putting it up come two days before Christmas. Google might not even have found it yet. And really your only opportunity for traffic is ad words or advertising like you’re not going to be anybody, actually, even if they didn’t find it they don’t have enough time to trust it.
Chauncey: They don’t have enough time to figure out what they trust. You should have your strategy planned ahead like when are we going to make money. Where are those opportunities to convert and to find that loyal clientele, those repeat customers, those people who might talk about us in the future you know?
Joe: All right. OK, so you’re listening to The Being Found Show get prepared for Christmas.
Joe: You’re listening to the Being Found Show, which if you’re listening to this show I guess we have been found so good for us.
Real quick. I was just checking in on the sign-ups for the WordPress class and we’ve got seven people signed up for the class in November and we have looked like four of them will be up for the scholarship.
So that class is officially going to happen and we’ll probably have filled up by the time we start the class but there’s always room for more let’s not discourage. They can call if they’re interested or go to cloudwiseacademy.com but most of them are millennials anyway. They’re going to the website or you can text us.
Right. OK, I want to talk about another thing going on in the community and listeners please don’t tune me out. It takes me a minute to explain this one but I’m telling you this is a big deal. I don’t know about six or eight months ago maybe a year ago we had Jake Mangas on the show ( Listen to the interview with Jake here ). He’s the president of the Chamber of Commerce here in Redding. He and I were talking about after the show what would happen if all of the local businesses in our county, not just got their websites up online, but actually got their products and services online the way people want to buy. What would happen if 17000 registered businesses were all selling in this new e-commerce economy the way people want to buy. What would happen if you’re a business or you’re someone who sells or works with the business to step back and think how your consumer life works.
How do you shop? Do you look for products online to compare prices? Do you compare features? Do you look to see if it’s in stock? Do you look to see if they’re shipping? Do you know how you shop? Well, how many businesses in our county do you think have their products available in that way and it’s not very many, maybe 5 I don’t know. Not very many. It really isn’t very many.
Chauncey: Just give a realistic number. Not a lot. And there needs to be more. We’re all short-sighted. Well, how does this help my business directly and stuff? But if you think about like industry lobbyists they’re like going out to help their industry and our industry here is or in this environment is your local town. The more money flowing through your local town, the more success flowing through your local town, the more money that’s coming to you.
Joe: And so that’s the idea essentially. I’ve been speaking about this a lot. I’ve talked to a lot of big organizations who are now helping. And the way I’ve been describing it is we are in a new economy something like there was an industrial revolution. 150 years ago or whatever was there was a change of how business is done and how consumers buy. We’re in one of those now. And just like that in the Industrial Revolution businesses and communities who were able to transition or who accepted a railroad line to come through their town were the ones that thrived while the ones who said we don’t need that railroad spur to come through our town or we’re not able to adjust went the way of the buggy whip. I’m sorry there are winners and losers in business and there.
And so this is the idea: What if this county embraced this new industrial revolution which is really the e-commerce economy. There’s this new economy that we can tap into both to save dollars in our county. Imagine if your customers could find out if you had stock in inventory or if you had products that were in stock or what your prices were or they could say gosh I’m looking for this product right now who’s got it in town and they could go buy it. Imagine if they could do that. That’s how you want to shop. So imagine if if-if this community could actually operate that way. So that’s a challenge that came up when I was talking to Jake Mangus. Now, this has come a long way since that talk so the whole idea here is Project Hometown. The idea is Project Hometown is bringing this community together and that’s its goal to bring this community together to train and equip our companies so that they’re thriving in the e-commerce economy. This is a big deal. We’re going to speak about this at a Chamber event on the 26th of October so get with the chamber. We’re also doing a giant event, a half-day event, which we call Amplify where we’re going to talk about this in December.
But let me talk to you about what kind of involvement is going on. Redding Chamber of Commerce , The Smart Center , the Shasta EDC , Nortec , which supports the grant and the funding for like 17 smart centers they’re all behind this. They’re giving funds they’re giving resources for this to happen. Then there’s also this whole community of our local tech developers, Pacific Sky and companies like that, who are getting involved to help make this happen. They’re all doing this to help you Businesses make it in e-commerce economy. Project Hometown is not for profit. It’s not a business idea. It’s like Switzerland to try to organize a bunch of people and organizations together to get this done.
But there’s even more. Reach Higher Shasta , which helps interns from high school find businesses to intern with, has actually donated money to Cloud Wise Academy so that we can train high school kids to help local businesses get their websites online. We’re developing a mentoring program so local high school kids will actually be able to go to work for Project Hometown partners like Chauncey, like my marketing company, like Pacific Sky and others. They’re all coming together and these high school kids are going to go work with them to help add the resources to get the 17000 businesses in Shasta County online. Imagine what that would do to this economy if we were actually offering all of these products that you see and all of your stores and all of your warehouses.
We were offering them the way people want to buy. How many more sales would we get locally? How much more would we get from other communities who find the products they want from us. What kind of what would this community look like two years from now if we pull this off. Eight months after one little discussion they’re all coming together under Project Hometown to help make this happen. All we’re missing now is your local businesses this year.
Chauncey: Here’s one thing that they’re realizing and that is that a lot of this online purchases going out to these big box stores these big box websites. And you keep that here locally.
Joe: Well that was my original thought. My original thought was you know everyone keeps saying well you can’t compete with Amazon. No one company cannot compete with Amazon but 17000 businesses can compete with Amazon. Those same products, Amazon does not necessarily sell cheaper. I manage several e-commerce companies and I own three and I’m telling you right now we find products that are the same price or more on Amazon all the time. So what Amazon does is it lets people shop the way they want to. That’s it. Amazon works really hard to make a shopping experience that people want with reviews and comparing features and showing multiple products and recommending products and is getting him into all those kind of things. So you want to compete with Amazon you want to quit whining about whether Amazon is kicking your butt or not.
Well just do this. Go to Project Hometown. Let us know that you want to be involved with all of these organizations. These students were training, these tech companies, they’re all going to release in December and they’re going to start doing the things that you need as a local community. And I’m talking free and cheap and low cost for a lot of things so that’s an easy on-ramp for you as a business to get selling your products online. Now to your point Chauncy. You know the Amazon is real and all these things are real but we can beat them as a community and that’s what Project Hometown is. Let us know you want to be in there because the students, the tech companies, are going to partake in local companies and when to get you online the way customers want to buy.
Listen to the full episode: Being Found Show
