HFTB Marketing Blog

Are you optimizing crap? And if so, how optimal do you expect crap can get?

David Meerman Scott points out that search engine optimization (SEO) without good website content is like optimizing crap. In his recent post, “Visualizing Crap,” David goes on to show an interesting visual created by Mark Smiciklas of Intersection Marketing Blog of the crap creation process. I’m including it below.

What’s interesting to me about the idea of optimizing a site that doesn’t provide stellar or exceptional content is that the practice is so prevalent.

So what accounts for the need for optimal crap?

For one thing, it’s easier to optimize a shoddy existing site than it is to go back, take a hard look and sink the money into developing great content and revising the existing site (or starting from scratch). It’s easier to bring in an SEO expert/firm and pay him/her/them to wave their magic wands and… voila, your crap is more findable. Congratulations.

I would make the case, and often do to those that at least are polite enough to feign interest, that SCO should preempt SEO.

What’s SCO?

Site Content Optimization (SCO). Not only does SCO come before SEO from an alphabetical perspective, it is also frankly, more important.

This is the point at which the SEO geeks stand up and throw out the “if you’re not indexable it doesn’t matter how good your content is,” excuse the term… crap.

This is partially true. But the interesting thing about good content is that it tends to get found. And assuming that a business has had some success selling its products or services to some market, there is a good chance that their content, if compellingly SCOed, will reach that market. That’s the beauty of the Internet; Google does a pretty good job of sniffing out the relevant content.

So in honor of all those that have ramped up the crap assembly line as so ably illustrated by Mark Smiciklas and further distributed by David Meerman Scott, let’s start hyping SCO – at least as a precursor to SEO.

Funny thing is, if you give SCO an honest go, you’re half way there with your SEO anyway.

After all, the world could use less crap… particularly the findable sort. Personally, I prefer my crap unfound.

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SEO David Meerman Scott, Good Job, Sco, search engine optimization, Search Optimization, Seo Optimization, Site Optimization, Website Content

I got an email yesterday from Netflix. They don’t typically barrage me with meaningless, salesy emails… so I opened it.

It was an apology. My first thought was: “An apology for what? I really enjoy Netflix and their new streaming service is awesome.” It is, by the way, awesome.

The apology turned out to be for a problem I might have experienced watching their instant streaming service over my Xbox 360. That’s right – might. They were proactively apologizing for something that I didn’t even have a problem with.

Here’s a screenshot of the actual email.

Now, the traditional wisdom on a situation like this might have been to wait for the complaints to come in and then respond to them in turn. After all, they wouldn’t want to alert subscribers like me that didn’t experience a problem that there might be something wrong with the service. Silly, isn’t it.

But I’ve heard thinking like this time after time from companies. The old, “let them come to us and don’t cause a problem in the meantime” strategy. Problem is, waiting for your customers to come to you with a problem isn’t good enough. And with the wealth of social media tools available to businesses today, there really isn’t any excuse for doing so.

The great thing about the Netflix approach is that they turned a negative into a real positive – even for subscribers like me that didn’t experience a problem in the first place.

To contrast this approach, take a look at Blockbuster. The purpose of this post is not to slam Blockbuster. We were subscribers for years. But the experiences have been so different to this point, I think it’s worth relating.

Blockbuster had a great program that allowed subscribers a certain number of titles at one time on a monthly basis… same as Netflix. However, Blockbuster’s differentiator was key for us. They allowed two in-store movie swaps per month. So not only could you get movies through the mail, you could also get instantly gratified in-store if you just had to check out the new Ben Affleck flick (unlikely, I know… but stay with me).

Problem was, Blockbuster canceled the in-store swaps. Okay, I get it… probably too expensive. My issue wasn’t with Blockbuster canceling the feature. It was the manner in which they did it. I might have received an email – not sure if I did or not. Blockbuster sends quite a few emails on a monthly basis typically with little relevant content. This equals a low clickthrough in my experience. I probably didn’t open it if I got it in the first place.

The way we found out that our subscription had been downgraded (features downgraded… not price, by the way, that cunningly stayed the same) was when the store clerk told me I could no longer swap the movie out as in the past. And that was the extent of the explanation. Evidently Blockbuster in store has no exposure to the Blockbuster Online account information.

So what’s the moral of the story? Simply put: Communicate with your customers. Good, bad or indifferent, just let them know what’s going on. Good businesses don’t need to hide behind customer service departments. They can preempt customer service calls by being straightforward and offering mea culpas when they make sense.

As a subscriber, I feel better about Netflix today than I did yesterday. Primarily because they screwed up!

What do you think about companies that take a proactive stance toward customer service issues? Have you had similar experiences, either positive or negative?

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Marketing Disruptive Technology, email, Media Tools, Netflix, Proactive Approach, social media tools