Last night, NBC premiered a new show starring Christian Slater as a spy who gets his brain wiped after every mission to gleefully return to his happy, perfect life. The premise of "My Own Worst Enemy" seems to be the battle between these split personalities and how they must find a way to work with each other if they are both going to co-exist.

So let's extend that premise to your website, and more specifically the conflict between traditional and online marketing. Too often I am asked to help a client choose between the two. Which way should they spend their valuable dollars is inevitably a hot topic and one that has no perfect answer other than you need them both.

Marketing professionals can't ignore the power of what's going on in the Internet today. In just 140 letters, one can slam your reputation or laud your brand on Twitter. They can post a review on their own blog. A person can post pictures of the whole visit on Facebook and so on. It's scary, but keep in mind that they can do the same in 250 words by sending a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. By making a few calls to friends and family, one can relay a horror story or recommend a service. This new world order may be scary to some, but if you look at the base levels, it's really a new expression of tried and true characteristics of human nature.

I do think though that there is a very significant difference to Internet marketing versus traditional marketing. It has to be cost. The good news is that if you want to get your feet wet online, it's not nearly as expensive to try. It's fairly likely that if you print 50,000, 64-page, four-color catalogs, mail them out and they bomb, management will notice and you may pay the price, but you can run a month long online campaign for a fraction of the cost and it'll just be caulked up as a blip on the budget. You then have the freedom to tweak and try it again a few times.

Of course you will have to overcome objections by some who feel that any spending on Internet is too much, because "isn't everything on the Internet supposed to be free?" But that is topic for another post.

So watch out for those minefields and keep fighting because you may find that your own worst enemy is really your best friend after all.

-- Mike

Earlier this week I took a road trip into Cambridge with a client to visit HubSpot. The company has been getting a lot of attention about their Inbound Marketing system.

Straight from their website...

HubSpot is an inbound marketing system to help your small or medium sized business to get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers.  HubSpot inbound marketing helps your company get found by the qualified prospects that are looking for the products or services that you sell in search engines, blogs and the blogosphere, and social media.  Once these qualified visitors are on your website, HubSpot helps you convert more of them into leads and paying customers through landing pages, lead intelligence and marketing analytics.

From everything I can see, they get it. Web marketing isn't just about search engine optimization of keywords, it's about helping to establish a complete web profile for your company that results in high rankings, higher traffic, and therefore better qualified leads.

They have combined knowledge and expertise about how to build a site that's optimized for the web, how to select the RIGHT keywords to focus on, how to use other forms of web communications to help create stronger inbound cycles. Most interesting to me though are the lead tracking tools that they have developed.

I especially like the fact that it's pretty clear from HubSpot's offering that they know it takes effort to establish effective web results. That there is no magic bullet. And that goes to the heart of what I've been preaching for years. You can't expect overnight results. You can't even expect you know exactly how people will find you. It takes time. With HubSpot though, smart companies who value that effort will see results.

Have experience with HubSpot? SEO? Or other insights, be sure to add  your voice and comment!

-- Mike

As anyone can tell you, customer service is everything. It's a sentiment that all too often today has become a cliche. But, I founded Dovetail on the desire to work as a partner with our clients. In fact one of our core values is wrapped around that very concept.

I recall seeing one of those office inspirational posters that said "Relationships take a lifetime to build and a moment to lose." I'm paraphrasing, but the statement is very true, and very powerful.

At Dovetail, one of the key ways we differentiate our products is by the myriad of complementary services we bring to the table. I've always known that without one, the other would be neither as potent nor appealing. And while we've never lost site of that, I have to say candidly, that over the year's there have been times when we've done a better job than others when it comes to service.

My goal, then with this post and those to follow is to openly discuss some of our challenges; both successes and failures. How we intend to learn from them, and ensure that you receive the service that keeps you coming back, that allows you to trust your company's vision with ours.

I promise therefore, our best effort... always; open communication as quickly as possible; and a true spirit of cooperation to achieve your goals.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back.

My blogging is not intended to be a one-way conversation, I encourage you to post comments as we go. I'll respond to each and every one publicly, right here.

-- Mike

Today, while you were quietly doing your job, living your life, maybe surfing the web you were most likely completely unaware that the single largest security patch effort in history was underway. It was revealed today that a serious flaw exists in all Domain Name System (DNS) servers. This flaw, which has been explained to be present since the earliest versions of the DNS protocol, could allow an unauthorized person to gain access to unique DNS information and effect a change to the server's DNS records. As a result a DNS poisoning would be in effect and the malicious entity could redirect traffic to alternate web sites.

Here's a link to the notification we saw today from US CERT.

Here's how it could have impacted you. For example someone could visit cnn.com and actually be redirected to some other site. A good hacker would make the alternate site a dead ringer for the original except perhaps ask for personal information. Imagine visiting your online banking site only to find out that you gave your personal information to an unknown person. That's the risk potential.

This flaw was discovered by Dan Kaminsky, the director of penetration testing for IOActive. Department of Homeland Security became involved and coordinated along with Kaminsky an unprecedented sharing of information with DNS vendors ensuring that a unified patch effort could be established. Those patches began rolling out as early as April, but this week, Microsoft included patches in yesterday's update cycle.

Currently the details on the flaw and how to abuse it are being held in tightest confidence by DIH, Kaminsky and the vendors, but a details are expected to be revealed during the Black Hat Security Conference in August.

For our part, Dovetail was alerted early today about the flaw and our Team is actively applying the patches to all of its systems.

This story is significant on so many fronts, but I think mainly because of the potential wide reaching havoc if the flaw had been discovered by someone else. Or if the coordinated effort failed, who knows, today could have been the day the Internet stood still.

-- Mike

Many people experience a bit of a slowdown this week. As vacations hit a peak, and Fourth of July weekend events take a bit of time to recover from, you may find that the phone is ringing a bit less and your to-do list isn't quite as out of control.

You may naturally feel like sitting back a little yourself, but this is a great time to take advantage of a little available time and take stock of your web goals.

So here's a few suggestions on the top 5 things to look at.

1. Design - Take a hard look at your website's design and branding. Is it still in sync with your overall efforts? If not, make a list of the top 5 things you'd like to address.
    
2. Navigation - Pretend you know nothing about your company and start a web visit. Can you easily navigate  your site? Is it intuitive? Are you reaching the pages you want your visitors to find? If not, make a bullet list of the top 5 areas in order of importance and then think about how you can re-tool your navigation to help people get there.
    
3. News - Remember we don't call these items "Olds" so why is your newest item so old? Take 10 minutes and jot down 5 recent newsworthy items. These could include new hires, new offerings, a new location, a trade show you're attending, anything can be news. Take the time to make it newsworthy.
    
4. Use - How are people using your site? How would people like to interact with your company's web site? Pick up the phone and call 5 customers and ask them. And pick ones that you aren't as likely to talk to on a day to day basis. Not only will you be less likely to know exactly what they are going to say, but you may just convert the call into a sales opportunity.
    
5. Explore - Choose 5 websites that you enjoy, or find to be well done. Explore them. Understand why you feel these sites are winners. Make a list of these features and ask if you may be able to emulate them in some way.

Give my top 5 a try, but remember you should work this exercise into your routine once a quarter to maximize your web site's success.

-- Mike