If you are interested in entering the marketing, especially internet marketing, industry then here is the first part in a series of articles I’m writing to give you the foundation you’ll need.
Before you begin: If you’re like me, reading when you’re mentally ready to be doing can feel like pulling teeth. I like to screw around in a sandbox first, and then read. If that’s you, then jump to the Experimenting section first.
For your first 3-6 months, I recommend reading 1-2 articles a day (less than 20 minutes of reading). If you have a daytime job, you can fit that in on your break. If you want to fast track it, double or triple that, but much more than that and you’re not going to have time to apply what you’ve learned (more on this later).
There’s a saying “Give a person a fish, feed them for a day. Teach them to fish, feed them for a lifetime.” Today I’m just going to give you the fish. But in the next article I’m going to teach you how to identify authoritative resources for your continued education – which is a critical component of being a life-long marketer.
That being said, here’s some marketer blogs I recommend you subscribe to as a beginner:
Read everything these guys have written. The blog is young, so if you’re reading 1-2 a day I think you’ll get through it in a month or two.
These guys are not on-the-map as a marketing authority. I happen to know them only because I used to be Director of Website Development there, and am now partners with the owner in WPPluginCo.com.
You might wonder if I’m being biased or something: so just read some of their articles like Shaheen’s article on neuromarketing hacks. I can tell you, he’s not BS-ing when he says they’ve made their clients millions.
While they aren’t an authority on internet marketing, they are “great thinkers”. Most other marketing blogs really fail to go beyond the basics of marketing. These guys have quiet a few diamonds that will show you what it looks like to be unique in marketing.
These guys started as a marketing firm, and wrote articles like this infrequently to begin. But they created a tool called Website Grader (then called Marketing Grader, than split apart again to Marketing and Website Grader) that they used to automate auditing of clients sites. Eventually they became an authority and are great at staying ahead of current trends. They have a strong relationship with Google and can be trusted to give accurate information.
Here’s a few articles you should begin with, but I’d subscribe to their blog for regular reading:
Similar to HubSpot, but these guys focused on automating marketing (from my perspective). They’ve got some fantastic tools that you need to experiment with and they share some good information in their blog.
Here’s a few articles you should begin with, but I’d subscribe to their blog for regular reading:
After your first 3-6 months, you still need to be reading for a few hours each week. In future articles I’ll go into detail about what you should probably be reading – as it differs from the organizations I mentioned above.
Skip ahead if you’re impatient, but this context will probably help you!
Before I started advertising The Portland Company as a Portland SEO company I was designing and developing websites for about 6 years. I read a lot about SEO but was afraid to step out and say we offered it because – although I seemed to know what to do – I had no first hand experience. Then, one day, I wrote an article about “How to watch Google Play movies on the Playstation 3” and started to get 1,000 unique visitors a month to it. After about 2 months of this I optimized the front page of my website to say “Portland SEO Company” and within days my ranking was #1 and I started getting phone calls and emails.
For the next several months I experimented by changing references to “portland seo company” to “portland website design”, “seo portland”, and other variations. The results were just as spectacular. It was this experimenting that finally gave me the confidence, and the authority, to say “I know how to get your website #1 in Google’s search results.”
A lot has changed since then, so it’s not quiet that easy anymore. But below is one of the exact experiments I do to train my own staff to become experts in internet marketing. I’ll share more experiments in the next articles in this series.
By the time you start or finish step 10 you should begin seeing your website appearing in search results. As you monitor it every day while people are repeating step 8 you should see your website appear in results, and begin to climb until it’s #1 in the search results.
THIS is a perfect example of why I believe business is math. Marketing can be too. Maybe SEO is more like following a recipe than math, but either way the point is that you should be emboldened as you learn and experiment. Learning will give you the knowledge, experimenting will develop skills from that knowledge.
Want to try another experiment? Subscribe to this series and when I write the next article I’ll share another one.
In the upcoming articles in this series I’ll cover:
Since 2005 we've been offering digital and content marketing strategy and implementation. Including website development, search engine optimization and marketing, search marketing and more.
8215 SW Tualatin-Sherwood Road, Suite 200, Tualatin, Oregon 97062
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