This morning I was sitting with a client chatting about their business when she uttered a sentence that really struck me.

She quite casually explained,

“You know I really pay attention to websites now. I’ve decided that you really can tell what people are about.

We’re planning a house, and I’ve noticed that if I get a uneasy vibe from a website that is how the meeting with the prospective builder will go as well.”

Now it could be that this is just an isolated comment but I really don’t think so. I think there are an enormous number of people out there who are hitting a new maturity as online consumers.

I am reminded of Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of The Tipping Point. He explores “the magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold.”

I think we are hitting that threshold in online marketing. Our customers are getting much more confident in framing their own expectations of us and how our website should be.

They want to know who we are. They want to deal with real people rather than bland company shop fronts. They are wanting us to make it easy for them to trust us with their business.

There is a lot that can be a achieved with a well designed website that presents your branding and a sound search engine marketing strategy to get you in front of web traffic.

Once there that customer is going to want to see who you are and how much you care about your customers. This is where a well written business blog is a powerful asset to an online business.

If you are passionate and committed to what you do this will show and your online customers will feel more confident to give you their business.

For those of you already blogging hang in there. If you haven’t started I really think you should consider it. Ask yourself, if someone came to my website what would they learn about me?

Yesterday afternoon a hail storm hit Perth. From a humid day, it went all Scott-of-the-Antarctic in a real hurry. This video shows the view from our balcony and front door.

As he often does, Aaron Wall has posted something worth reading: Content Vs SEO: Business Profit Margins

In a nutshell, when running a business it isn’t enough to just publish good content and hope you will somehow profit. You need a business model, and you need marketing. Search marketing and content marketing are two of the four marketing groups that are so different online that they demand a new understanding and a new strategy (the others are email marketing and affiliate marketing).

Search engine optimization is widely misunderstood. It attracts criticism from two distinct groups: people who don’t understand it, and from people who do (and maybe know how to profit from getting attention). Criticising search engine optimization is like criticising press releases or advertisements – they are a part of marketing (and can be used well or poorly).

I still find it amazing that so many old school media organisations don’t make more money building on their offline assets.

Reminds me of the story of the ice cutters (see #8), as told by Guy Kawasaki.

Then again, maybe that is just the most efficient way to run out the profits from an existing investment. For News Corp, maybe the cost of transforming their existing assets is too high, so instead of wasting too much time or money trying they give money to Jeremy Phillips to invest in new stuff.

Overall, Guy’s advice is worth following: “Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.”

Or else.