Worrying Times?
Posted On: 2011-07-21
Those of us who have been involved in selling online for quite some time often feel that newbies coming into the online marketing industry are going to be doing it tough.
Learning how to market, how to get traffic, how to interact with their peers and how not to get conned by all the carpet baggers that this industry attracts can be a very steep learning curve and it's tough not to get burned along the way.
And I guess those of us who have been around for a while feel comfortable about being here ... we've learned the ropes, we've taken our lumps and we know how to survive. Hell ... we've even faced all the challenges that come with change and we're still here and still making money.
Of course there have been plenty of changes over the years. They've come along at a steady pace and it's been easy to make the transition that's necessary to survive those changes.
But now I'm beginning to think that we're right in the middle of some worrying times and the newbies ... those who are coming in fresh ... may just possibly survive these times in much better shape than some of us who have been around for years.
As I said a moment ago, we've all had to face changes to the way we do things. There have been changes in the way we interact with our target market ... there have been changes to Google's algorithm that have really impacted on us ... there have even been changes to the technology that both we and our marketplace access the Web.
We've coped with those changes because they've been gradual ... they've come along at a steady pace that we could cope with ... we transitioned and kept on making money. Sure some of the transitions were quite hard to make and they may have even required a re-think of how we might do things but we did it.
But now it seems as though in the last six months to a year the changes that impact on us are happening far more quickly than they did in the past. And that's not all ... change has become like a snowball ... it's rolling on and on and, just like a snowball it's getting bigger and bigger.
We're seeing a move by our market place to mobile devices and that means that we have to change the way we market our products ... and the products that we market ... or we run the risk of being left behind.
We're seeing a move by our market place to embrace social media ... MySpace was something of a false start but Facebook, Twitter and now perhaps Google+ are where people are heading and if we can't find a way to talk to the people on those platforms then we run a real risk of being sidelined.
And then there are all the changes that we're seeing Google go through. We have known for a long time that they are continually refining the Google algorithm but now those refinements are becoming bigger and they are having a greater impact on us.
With some of their latest moves it's obvious that basic SEO techniques are just not going to cut it anymore and some of those moves may have totally destroyed our old sites that were still making money for us.
While newbies may cope with all this change because they have known no other way will we more experienced online marketers be able to cope with all those changes. Sadly for some, the challenge of coping will become too much.
We tend to get a little set in our ways and become resistant to change and those who can no longer cope with all the changes will fall by the wayside. For others the challenge of meeting all those changes with the new sites that they're building ... even if they want to change ... and bringing all their old sites that are important up to the standard that Google requires may be just too much.
With so many changes happening all at once ... and continuing to happen ... will you be able to cope? Did you even notice that the changes were happening? If you did then what have you done to keep up with those changes?
Recently Rand Fishkin from Seomoz suggested that the role of a webmaster was changing as all those changes that I mentioned a few moments ago impact on us. He even suggested that perhaps the title we give ourselves has become deprecated and webmasters should perhaps now be called 'web strategists'.
I'm not impressed by fancy titles but I have a feeling that being called a web strategist is much closer to what we need to become if we want to survive into the future.