Law #3 — Significance:

Understand this… There is a very basic law that governs information on the Internet. This law, as viewed from the recipient’s standpoint, is simply this: Information should be FREE! Break this law at your own risk.

Actually, there’s a bit more to it than that. You must first establish Trust with your audience before you can start asking them to pay for anything. Trust is a byproduct of Value and value is in the eye of the beholder.

If your audience gives your information a positive valuation, you are well on your way to establishing trust. The common currency used for this exchange on the Internet is obviously information. A key variable in this Value + Trust = Customer Loyalty equation is the significance of the information provided.

By significance I do not mean quantity. What I am talking about is the quality of your information. If you can communicate your special value to your audience in a single page, so much the better.

Perhaps you have a valuable piece of information (a whitepaper, a one-page matrix, a graph or spreadsheet, or perhaps informational tools) that would be useful to your audience. Great! Let them have it! Don’t be bashful about letting them know this information is theirs to use for FREE! There is a natural inclination (innate tendency) within all of us to return the favor. We’ve also heard this referred to as “pay it forward.”

By giving away significant information (content) you are tapping into this most basic of all human instincts. Your audience will reciprocate!

Good Content Law #2 – Current

Your information may very well be what your prospects and customers are looking for. However, if it’s outdated it’s as good as yesterday’s news! No one wants to read a newspaper from several days or weeks ago. In their quest for information, your prospects are looking for cutting edge data that will answer their questions and solve their problems. This certainly puts the burden of responsibility squarely on your shoulders.

This point speaks to a basic misconception that exists with many small business people about the Internet. The misconception is that somehow Internet Marketing requires less effort than traditional marketing. To this I respond with what I tell everyone who thinks there is some get-rich-quick formula that they haven’t yet discovered online: “You get back what you put out!” This is a simple truth that applies to everything in life including Internet Marketing. Another way to put this is “You get what you pay for.”

Fear not! Information is what the Internet is all about. There is literally an unlimited supply of information available online that you can provide to your interested eyeballs (prospects and customers). This will probably require you to change your view about using OPI — Other Peoples Information, and generally force you to take a less parochial view of the manner in which you service your customers’ need for information.

The upshot of this part of the discussion is that in gaining access to “good” content online, you will be presented with the opportunity to think more broadly about your business model. Actually, forced to think more broadly accurately describes the situation that you face. Again I say, fear not! This is opportunity knocking! Openly sharing information is one of the foundational principles that Social Media is based on.

I originally published this information over 5 years ago. As with many things online it’s as relevant today as it ever was.

Your content must first and foremost adhere to The 4 Laws of Good Content. For our purposes in this article, your content is defined as the information that you provide to your community members, prospects and customers. In the final analysis it must be:

Law #1 — Relevant
If the information that you are providing to someone who has taken the time to seek you out is not meaningful to them, or more importantly does not address their need(s), they will leave. The oft-quoted figure is 8 seconds. You have 8 seconds to capture someone’s attention and interest or they’re gone, never to return! Pretty harsh for sure, but that’s life on the Internet! Frankly, your lucky if you get 8 seconds. People (your potential customers) recognize full well that there is an endless supply of information out there, waiting for them to find it.

This aspect of good content has most to do with effectively targeting your prospects and customers. It’s very important that when you set out to do business on the Internet, you do so with a very clear picture of who your “ideal” customers are. Miss this point, develop a muddled focus on your website, in your ezine or other e-communications, and your potential for doing business successfully on the Internet is pretty close to “0.”

Worse yet is the situation where web surfers end up at a site that appears to have no bearing whatsoever on what they were searching for originally. This type of online duping goes on all the time and has become a serious annoyance. Don’t even consider doing such a thing in an effort to get more web traffic!

When you boil it all down, success online is dramatically affected by one thing!

Recently, a colleague and I were talking about success. Since he has given me good advice and friendly council over the years, he had my rapt attention while sharing pearls of wisdom from his 40+ year technology and business career.My friend asked me, “Do you know what the secret to success is?” Almost without letting him get the words out I said, “No, What?” After a dramatic pause he said, “One thing.”

Remarkably, my friend’s appearance began to change to that of Jack Palance (Curly), from his Oscar winning performance in the 1991 classic City Slickers . I waited with bated breath for him to share this life-changing secret.

Nothing happened. He wasn’t saying anything. We were just looking at each other in silence, until finally I asked; “And that ‘One Thing’ would be..?” A wry smile crept across his face. “I have no idea,” he said. “That’s for you to figure out. Whatever you decide, do it with all your heart and do it better than anyone else!” I got the point. My friend had reinforced a principal so basic and so true.

The principal of One Thing — Focus, is especially relevant when applied to the Internet. A singular focus is fundamental to answering the question; “What’s it going to take to do business on the Internet?” The numerous elements, tactics really, that go into the development of an effective e-Strategy for your small business are important, without question. But, more important than any combination of any element or tactic is …FOCUS!

I wrote this article in 2005 for Business Strategies Magazine. It is as relevant today as it was then. Note in particular the emphasis on Trust in the last paragraph as it relates to the success you will achieve with your brand on the web!

Most small businesses are of the opinion that their website is like a billboard on the Information Superhighway. Unlike traditional billboards, having a website without promoting it effectively is an exercise in futility (It truly amazes me how many small business owners and managers still think this way).

If the majority of businesses that have had limited or no success on the Internet were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that they have no clear direction when it comes to the Internet. This manifests itself in their lack of focus and their inability to state, in no uncertain terms, why they are online.

Why Are You Online? The development of a very clear objective statement for your online activities is important because it will help you shape what is it that you intend to do specifically and why you are online?

Branding is a term that you hear most often in relation to big product names like Coca Cola, General Motors, Microsoft, and so on. Not so coincidentally, these are some of the most well known brand names in existence today. These companies recognize that the perception that exists in their customer’s minds, which is essentially the brand message, is a valuable commodity. It is so valuable that often times it is considered as the most valuable asset of any company. For example, the Microsoft brand, which is one of the most well recognized brands in the world, is worth 65 Billion dollars, according to Interbrand, the brand valuation company.

In developing your website, it is important to keep in mind that your web site is essentially a document, or series of documents, that your web visitors will be reading. Understand that this is the expectation that they are coming to your website with as well.

Recent readability studies prove that the eye is immediately attracted to text, not pictures or graphics on a web site. This may be bad news for website designers out there who have a penchant for developing very elaborate Flash animations, but it’s good news for you. It saves you the time, trouble and expense of developing such things.

Creativity Killed the Customer
Recently, a web designer (former creative director for an advertising agency) colleague called me up excited to show me a website that he had just developed. When I got to his office and saw his latest masterpiece I was a little concerned. He had indeed developed a magnificent dynamic, database driven web site. Unfortunately at his customer’s request he had also developed a 2 minute long Flash animation. This was the first thing a web visitor encountered when they went to this particular company’s homepage.

I wrote the following article over 4 years ago and it was published in Business Strategies Magazine. It came up recently in a search result and I re-read it and pondered how, the more things change the more they stay the same. It really speaks to what the “Social Medium” is all about. Read and enjoy!

Like most great principles, integrity gets a lot of lip-service, but it’s seldom a true way of life, especially on the Internet. We have tuned ourselves to distrust what we read and see because frankly, so much of it is spin or an all-out lie. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is… When we hear the word integrity it often congers up an image of a stern and sober school master whose Quaker or Puritan upbringing shows through his innate inability to smile, joke or be happy. But this isn’t what I’m talking about when I say integrity. I am talking about that character quality that doesn’t cut corners or shade the truth, no matter what.

Integrity is the key to success in everything that we do. Integrity is honesty and truth, period. Shakespeare captured the essence of this in Hamlet, when he wrote; “And this above all, to thine own self be true. And it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” If we are honest with ourselves we can’t be dishonest with anyone. If our motto is integrity, we always have what we need. We sleep soundly knowing that we don’t have to worry about what we have said or done.

This was quite literally the rally cry that swept the nation after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Creek. By 1864 the gold rush had ended, leaving in its wake tens of thousands of broken men and women who had gone out to California seeking their fortunes.

We have seen some semblance of this phenomenon in the past related to all things Internet. In the mid nineties we experienced the cyber rush as companies and individuals sought their fortunes online. Dotcom mania swept our nation like gold fever, with a similar net effect. How quickly we forget the past…

The vast majority of the forty-niners did not strike it rich. The real money was made by the industrious entrepreneurs of the day who realized that these miners needed to be fed and clothed. They also needed a place to stay and equipment with which to ply their trade.

William Randolph Hurst III, direct descendant of the man who won the San Francisco Examiner in a hand of poker during that era, is credited with the first use of the term “picks and shovels” as it relates to the Internet. You see, Mr. Hurst understood that it was the farmers, restaurant owners, inn keepers and suppliers of everything from shovels to newspapers who made the real money. People with names like Stanford, Levi and Straus. These tycoons, and many others, made fortunes on everything from blue jeans to prostitution.

To date, it has been the “picks and shovels” companies that have flourished and prospered online. These companies have implemented business plans geared towards helping other businesses harness the true value of the Internet – community, collaboration and communication. This is especially significant as we move from an economy based on the valuation of tangible assets to one based on the real value of information.

Opportunities abound for today’s enterprising Netrepreneur. For example, the applications service provider or ASP business model also referred to as SaaS (software as a service), which is the automation and outsourcing of business functions, in many cases dealing with the distribution and use of software utilizing the Internet as the primary medium, has grown exponentially to a multi-billion dollar industry in the last several years. Furthermore, this model has grown faster than eCommerce originally did.

In addition to back office automation we are confronted with the ever present need to find and use information effectively. Websites and blogs online that support this function are called Portals. These websites rely on the sharing of information among customers, business partners, vendors, stakeholders and constituents, centered on a general topic area or industry. The Portal owner benefits financially from the affiliate relationships that he or she has with numerous vendors and suppliers represented on the site. An excellent example of a Social Media portal is none other than The Social Media Portal (SMP), Which bills itself as a resource that maps global social media, social networks and user generated content (UGC).

Portals that address a very specific need, application or segment of an industry are called Vortals or vertical portals. Vortals provide seemingly endless amounts of information and support to all involved on a relatively narrow subject area. The Vortal business model lends itself to the entrepreneur or small business owner who has a very particular interest, passion or skill.

Let’s not forget about information aggregators or intermediaries, Infomediaries for short. These websites  and blogs provide specialized information to producers of goods and services and their potential customers, increasing the value through aggregation. Infomediaries provide valuable data about consumers and their buying habits. These data are made more valuable when they are carefully analyzed and used in target marketing campaigns.

Do you have information you want to sell? Could you do it online? You may want to consider it. The online information industry will grow dramatically over the next several years, further offsetting the traditional publishing and media industries!

These are but a few of the information centric “picks and shovels” company types presently supporting real commerce on the Internet. Others include, knowledge networks or expert sites, efficiency based manufacturing models, virtual merchants, advertising, marketing, branding and promotions… If you can think it up you can come up with an application on the web.

So, do it!