“Not marketing when the economy struggles is like waving the white flag and surrendering your company’s future to luck,” said Tom Trush, a copywriter and author of Business Building the ‘Write’ Way: Marketing Tips That Will Have Your Kissing Your Copy. “Unfortunately, many business owners fail to realize you don’t need a big budget to see rapid returns.”

In addition to explaining several no-cost ways for using content to drive new traffic to any Web site, Trush will tell your audience at least 6 other little-known strategies for marketing successfully without a budget, including:

• An easy way to get on the first page of Google in only 90 minutes ‚Äì without buying ad space, paying for placement or even having a Web site;
• Why you should never advertise your products or services (and what to promote instead so you build credibility and trust with prospects);
• 6 simple methods for boosting believability in your product or service without a face-to-face or phone conversation;
• The $3.29 purchase found in any grocery store checkout lane that can electrify your marketing message and ignite sales;
• A 2-word question that transforms a product or service‚Äôs features into benefits prospects crave; and
• How to use a skill learned in first grade to create marketing materials that ‚Äútest‚Äù prospects‚Äô needs, while building desire for any product or service.

To reach Tom, please visit www.WriteWaySolutions.com

Who wins the consistency contest?  And who is likely to win the White House?

Fellow marketers, let us all learn from this spectacular demonstration of a rudimentary rule. In our chaotic and distracted world, the only way to get your point across is to repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it.

Great branding is really just smart repetition. Is “Change” a visionary theme or an empty cliché? On November 4, you decide. And is “change” one simple brand concept that’s been hammered into our heads for two long years? That is something you do not get to choose. We are all brand victims, whether in politics or the shopping mall.

Here’s the upside for your marketing. Success leaves clues. Whatever your brand, boil it down to a simple idea. Then say it again and again.

And again.

I see too many small business websites that are cluttered with senseless, ego-driven stuff. They want to cram as much stuff as possible into their menus and home page with no real path or clear call to action. They thinks is all important with no thought given to the site’s true objective. When you get right down to it, there are only two things that most websites need to accomplish:

1. Sell something
2. Get a lead

That’s it. Just like Chipotle’s menu, the goals for your site are pretty simple. Build a site that offers visitors the information they need to take the action you want them to take. Nothing more, nothing less. This gets into the art and science of what’s called “landing page optimization”. It’s how every element on your web page influences the people looking at it. It’s everything from graphics to layout to copy to buttons.

The Bottomline: Keep you site highly focused. Take inventory and eliminate anything that isn’t directly related to getting site visitors to take action. KEEP IT SIMPLE!

My interview with Andy Renk is now available.

Andy is the co-founder of Click for Clients, a training company focused on teaching entrepreneurs how to build web-based marketing systems at minimal cost.

He began playing with the Internet in 1993 while working as a corporate graphic designer. In 1995, Andy saw the potential for doing business online, so he built an e-commerce site — ProjectorSuperStore.com — selling audio/visual hardware.

Not long after the site was up and running, and a few crude search engine optimization techniques later, requests started coming in from all over the world. In only three years, and with just three employees, the company grew from $0 to $15 million in sales.

Since then, Andy has started several other Internet businesses, including Max Podcasting, a site for real estate video podcasts. He has also consulted with scores of small business owners across the country.

During this 44-minute interview, you’ll discover do-it-yourself secrets for creating a profitable website or blog, as well as …

• A simple way to convert “ugly” URLs into web addresses with keywords or phrases that search engines love.
• 3 ways you can stay on top of the latest trends in website design and functionality without spending hours scouring the Internet.
• How to automate the blog writing process and receive content targeted toward your key phrases.
• A free tool that rewrites text so you eliminate the risk of duplicate content on your website or blog.
• 2 online tools that help you identify lucrative keywords with low competition, making it easy for you to optimize your website for the top position in the search engines.
• A quick and easy technique for generating back links that will help push your website up the search engines.
• 4 resources you can start using today to instantly generate traffic and build back links to your website — at absolutely no cost.
• How you can quickly get started using social media to network, distribute your own content and receive cutting-edge information about your industry before anyone else.
• And much more.

Listen to this exclusive interview by clicking below:

Find more music like this on Social Orange

You can also read the transcript here: http://www.writewaysolutions.com/pdf/andytranscript.pdf

Enjoy

Tom Trush

One other thing … If you haven’t already, be sure to listen to my interview with brandologist Lisa Barnard. She explains how you can use branding to capture prospects and create customers at http://tomtrush.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-use-branding-to-capture.html.

A quick glance at CNN.com shows the usual doom and gloom “highlighting” the latest headlines.

Gators, dead cows may hide Ike victims … Which jobs will get cut first? … Cop commits suicide after stun gun death … America‚Äôs chilling future … X-ray shows knife stuck in teen‚Äôs skull … Mets pitcher sought after fatal hit-and-run …

Sure, I understand negativity drives the news, but these days it‚Äôs gone to an entirely new — and ridiculous — level.

All this negativity is the reason why I’m telling you about one of my favorite inspirational resources. My twin brother introduced it to me last year.

http://www.212movie.com

When you click on the above link, be prepared to set aside about 2 minutes. That’s how long it will take you to view the video.

What you’ll experience is one of the quickest ways I’ve found to transform your mindset, boost your energy and renew your focus. In fact, I believe the inspirational message in this video is so powerful that I used it last year to lead off one of my seminars.

While watching the video, I encourage you to think about how you can apply the inspirational message to your marketing efforts.

Don’t worry. You don’t have to sign up for anything or spend a single cent.

The video will start playing immediately after you click the link.

http://www.212movie.com
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Last week, as the US financial powerhouses began to pay the price for their lack of fiscal responsibility, I was on the road in Seoul, Nanjing (for SMX China 2008), and Tokyo.

I had a great time! I haven’t felt such excitement, vigor, and potential in a long time. SEOmoz sponsored the water bottles. Chris Sherman took a shot of me showing it off before the keynote speech.

I was going to post a standard review of the conference with stats, etc. but Shor wrote an admirably thorough review of the state of search in China and Chris posted a solid review and his thoughts of SMX Nanjing. So today, I’ll focus on things I came away with from the conference and on the financial market activity, what it means to the Search industry, and how I see it being perceived and responded to by our colleagues in China and Japan.

The Business Climate in Nanjing, Sept 2008

I met about 300 people involved in search, software, and technology at the Nanjing Conference and Exhibition Center (Chris got a great shot of the complex the day before the crowds arrived). Attendees were privileged businesspeople involved in a growth industry with sufficient expendable capital to attend a 2-day conference. The mayor came to open the event and Microsoft sent Zhaohui Tang, Principal Group Program Manager, Microsoft AdCenter, to demonstrate their suite of marketing and ROI-improvement tools. We’re not talking about reactions from the ‘man on the street’, but I think there is value in what I heard and saw.

On the surface, China seems impervious to the maelstrom in the US. The Asia Financial Times, however, begs to differ. Articles indicate that China’s growth has slowed from more than 12% to an expected 9% this year. Nine percent! Washington would donate a few right arms for that kind of growth. And there is no doubt that China is already a major force in the global economy in many sectors. China’s drop in production is affecting the global price of commodities. Carlos Slim suggests, “China is now the most important country to help responsibly in this crisis. China has great liquidity, large resources, surpluses in its current accounts and a lot of capital flow." That should give every American cause to think.

Some Observations from SMX China Nanjing 2008

Baidu is still the most popular search engine in China by a very large margin. Trying to use Google was, to put it lightly, frustrating, so I don’t see that equation changing anytime soon. However, this isn’t stopping Google or Microsoft from continuing their paid search promotion in the region.

Pay per click campaign management is still the major focus of concern for attendees. Making the financial case for SEO over SEM seems to be the biggest problem facing both in-house and independent SEOs. Pay per click provides a clear cost and ROI for business owners. SEO is more difficult to track. Not much different than the concerns of their counterparts around the world, is it?

Many indicated that they are involved exclusively or primarily with companies seeking to export their products to the US and other English-speaking countries. At the moment, pay per click campaigns on Google are the primary tool to promote products outside China. Alibaba, who swallowed Yahoo in 2005 in the China market, plays an important role in promoting export-active clients as well.

I was asked if SEOmoz would translate our tools’ interface to make them easier to use. Although some expressed interest in getting data and support for reaching other markets, they primarily requested US-centric data. With the meltdown in the US, I expected these people to be considering other markets than the US. But newspapers in China, Korea, and Japan are still describing the US market as the largest and strongest, despite the current woes. I didn’t speak to a single person who was worried about the medium or long term health of the US market.

Everyone expects a short term bumpy ride, but no one was considering holding back on their efforts to sell products to the US. As in the US, some people I spoke with were licking their chops at the low-cost buying opportunities. “Money is just moving around. Smart people just eat [buy] as much as they can while the others are being sick to their stomachs. It’s just time for the money to move around,” one attendee (whose name I sadly didn’t get) assured a group of us at lunch.

What the Market Activity Means to SEO

We are in for a recession. Not a depression, but definitely a recession. Smarter people than I argue about the length of time it will take, so I won’t ruminate about it. As companies tighten their belts, traditional media (print, radio, TV, even tele-sales) are already seeing a decline. Matt McDougal twittered about noticing that the economic slowdown is already pushing more advertising online. I’ll stick my neck out here – I predict that not only will this trend continue, but when things pick up, online advertising gains will continue to hold their ground and continue to increase. Furthermore, as SEM becomes more costly with more competitors for keywords, SEO will see a boon as well. I’ll revisit this prediction in the future to see whether I should get that Fortune Telling parlor set up.

Some basic business advice: when times are good, increase your market size as well as your market share. When times are tough, do it even faster. Stephen Noton has been consulting in China for some time; Stephan Spencer is opening an office in Beijing this month. And of course, SinoTech Group is growing. There are others. I’m encouraging you all to consider which markets outside your own cities, states, and countries will help you increase the size of your pie rather than continue to focus solely on getting a larger slice of your current market. In particular, I suggest you consider looking for companies outside your area that need experts to help them sell in your area. Be that expert and leverage it.

And now, Just for Fun… Seen and Heard at SMX China Nanjing 2008

On the first morning, crowds of attendees were delayed as our cars, buses, and taxis drove to the convention hall and again as we all passed through security screenings, had our bags x-rayed, and presented our badges for inspection. The mayor of Nanjing was on hand to welcome us to the conference, so security was high. That evening Inway Ni, co-producer of the conference, said, “The government wants to add more security tomorrow because we are expecting more people. They don’t know no one in China is going to do anything bad now. No one is interested in terrorism! We have found something with better ROI!”

• Inway Ni, on the same subject later: “We don’t have time even to argue with each other. We are too busy doing business!”
• Irene Wang, Alldao China: “Can you say something for the camera about the importance of our business?”

  "I don’t know your company.“

  "But we provide services for export companies to get their products to the US. It’s not about our company, just say something about the importance of the work we are doing!”

• TR Harrington: “Tell the man in the yellow shoes that the man in the yellow glasses said hi.”
• Unknown: “Look, SEOmoz and Google are on the same line and same size.” Well, there’s a moment to capture!

• Taxi Driver en route from the airport: “Nanjing is ancient! Nanjing is new! Look! [at the new 7-story shopping mall rising behind the city wall, circa 1038]"

Pictures of SMX China Nanjing 2008

Booth babes and giant spotted dogs were popular:

An amazing array of items are sold using cartoons. This cartoon is selling parental control software:

And finally, I’ve never been photographed so often by so many people in such a short time. Here I whipped out my camera and had a game of dueling cameras to the amusement of people nearby.

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We fall on the very search-engine-friendly side of SEO (I hesitate to use the phrase "white hat" because I think all the lines often blur). Despite this, I have a lot of respect for well-executed darker tactics and find it fascinating to watch and deconstruct them.

What I don’t want, however, is to take the blame on a client project for shady tactics employed before we even worked on the project. Some time ago, at Distilled, we had an issue with this when a client had a website banned. We weren’t to blame, but it was very bad timing – the course of events looked like this:

• Client (a pan-European brand) hires us as "outsourced SEO department" reporting to their chief marketing people
• We make recommendations regarding their main site
• Recommendations are implemented and traffic begins to rise
• Client buys a company with a well-known brand in one European country (SEO obviously falls under our remit since we are their SEO department)
• Shortly afterwards (and before our first recommendations), the website for the new brand gets banned…

What had actually happened was that their past had just caught up with them. The smaller brand had previously engaged a local SEO firm with tactics that were a bit past their sell-by date (mainly consisting of a huge link network of sub-domains off the SEO company’s own site and some other properties). There was not only a question of tactics here, but also of plain common sense – not only was part of the link network on the SEO company’s site, but so were proud links to "our clients" (all of whom got slapped, we believe).

Now, anyone who has worked with us will know that we typically look to improve the things directly under the client’s control first – most decent size websites have link equity they aren’t spending well and so technical and structural stuff is normally our first target. Many clients, unfortunately, still think we have magic buttons under our desks (or perhaps they’re hoping we’ll submit them to a few thousand search engines), and so it was perfectly plausible to them that even though we hadn’t yet made any recommendations for their new site, we might have pushed the button under our desk a little hard and got them banned.

It might be how some SEO companies work – get a new client and plug them into your shady link network – but it’s not our style. These kind of tactics might have their place, but in my opinion, that place is not when you’re playing with brand websites.

So, once we had diagnosed the issue, calmed the client down, bullied the old firm to remove the network, submitted grovelling reinclusion requests etc., we started to think….

The nature of our business is such that many clients have implemented ‘SEO’ suggestions before (whether in-house or agency) and many of them have pasts that contain the odd closet with perhaps a skeleton or two. How could we avoid this kind of scenario in the future – where we might get the blame for the sins of our predecessors?

The Pre-Sales SEO Due Diligence

Out of this conversation came a concept that we have gone some way towards but not 100% cracked yet. This is the idea that before signing a new contract, we should undertake due diligence regarding previous tactics independently of quizzing our prospective client (not only are clients not always up-front about previous tactics, but personnel could have changed, external agencies could have been responsible without being straight with the in-house team, etc.).

So, we are now starting to look out for a variety of things that signal warnings to investigate more closely before signing with a given client. We are looking for things like:

• Manipulative patterns in their backlinks
• Cloaking
• Doorway pages

Effectively, we are thinking like search engineers and giving them a little bit of a manual review. Now, we don’t have the tools that search engineers have at their disposal, but we can cobble together a bit of a toolkit to get some way towards this kind of process (and as I mention below, I’d love to hear how you guys go about this).

Pre-sales is not the only time that you might need to do this – sometimes you are going to be paid to do it. This happens when you are hired to work out what has gone wrong with a site when the owner can’t help. They might not be able to help because either the board doesn’t know details of what was done in the past and the team has moved on, the company purchased the site as a whole, or they outsourced SEO to a less-than-reputable source. As part of our global associate role with SEOmoz, we answer a lot of Q&A and this kind of diagnosis forms a fair bit of that work.

So, finally, I’m going to get to the point and present my methodology for diagnosing manipulative issues with websites:

Forensic SEO Process

I look for three main things:

1. Generally deceptive on-site practices (keyword stuffing, excessive internal linking, doorway pages)
2. Cloaking or other unusual serving of information
3. Offsite manipulation – strange linking patterns, etc.

1. For the on-site stuff, I typically:

• do a site: query and just see how many pages they have indexed versus the apparent size of the website
• search for some of their keywords across their site
• view the source of a few key pages
• check their internal linking structure

It’s pretty much a short, basic site review.

2. To check for cloaking, I typically change my Firefox user-agent to Googlebot, disable javascript and cookies and browse around a bit watching for different site behaviour. This isn’t enough to pick up sophisticated cloaking but it gives a good overall impression. The ultimate check is to compare the Google cache of their pages to the originals. This is a bit more time-consuming, but is the only way I know of to pick up all kinds of cloaking.

3. The one that caught us out with our client was deceptive linking practices. In an attempt to spot that, I delve into their backlinks a little. What I’m looking for here is things like:

• Repeated optimised anchor text
• Sitewide links
• Links from many low quality sites (long, hyphenated URLS, blogspot domains, etc.)
• Footer / sponsored links
• Hidden / cloaked links

Essentially, I look for anything that "smells wrong." Rand has written before about experienced SEOs’ sixth sense, and this is definitely the place for those skills.

I’m interested to know whether this is part of your process and what tools, tips or tricks you use. Share all in the comments!

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If your job or current tasklist includes building a social media strategy for your organization (or yourself, personally), you should be thinking about the branding created by the profiles you create. The profile name, the image you use as an icon or avatar, the webpage you link to and the words you use to describe yourself have a significant impact in how you’re perceived and how you’re remembered across the web.

Strategies for Choosing a Name

The name you choose should be based on branding considerations, SEO and reputation management intent. Choose the name of your profile based on your carefully thought out goal for social media participation (and if you don’t have one, get to work!): 

• Company Branding
  • Use the exact brand name of the company, not a modified version, a play on words or a name you picked for fun. If you’re going to be representing your brand officially in these spheres, you need to craft a profile that does just that. It doesn’t mean you can’t show personality or be fun with your profile, it just means you need to make it extremely clear that this profile IS your brand.
  • Consider adding a geographic or specific modifier only if this is part of your branding goal (for example, Utah SEO PRO). Because anyone can make a modified version of your name, you should also invest in owning the exact match brand name to be sure there’s no confusion (and, if possible, mention the profile you use in the exact match name).
• Personal Branding
  • First and last name must be included. Speaking from personal experience, if I could go back in time, I would alter all my profiles to be "Rand Fishkin" rather than "randfish." It seemed fun at the time (2001), but in retrospect, my full name would bring far more recognizable branding and credibility through those profiles, back to a personal brand. I can’t enumerate the number of folks who, offline, made the sudden connection that "randfish" and "Rand Fishkin" were one in the same – a clear sign of missed branding opportunity.
  • If your name is exceptionally long or difficult, you can consider shortening or modifying, but make sure it’s something you’re comfortable using in the real world as well. Remember that this advice is targeted towards professional use of social media campaigns, so if you’re just in there for fun, you don’t need to worry about this nearly as much.
• Boosting Search Rankings
  • Choose relevant, non-cannibalizing keywords and phrases to put in the name. You don’t want to directly compete with your own site on the keywords you’re pursuing – you just want the profile pages to have some keyword relevance (and oftentimes, the profile name is the only keyword opportunity you get in the title tag on social sites).
  • Make sure it makes sense, sounds reasonable and doesn’t come across as spam. No matter how much effort you put in, if the name is "student-credit-card-dude," no one will trust you or want you around.
  • A diversity of profiles may seem wise, but in reality, you may be able to draw far more link juice and value by contributing more significantly with fewer accounts.
• Pro-Active Reputation Management
  • Use the brand name and possible combination keywords to build phrases that make sense and can fill up important or risky search results.
  • Make sure to be extremely careful and non-provoking as you participate – aggressive or antagonistic behavior can turn a pro-active reputation management campaign into a defensive one very quickly.
• Re-Active Reputation Management
  • Consider using names synonmous with but not exactly your brand name. The reason is to avoid having responses to negative comments repeat the keyword of your brand name more times in the copy or having complaints about your profile come up in brand searches.
  • If you are representing yourself, be clear about it – if web users smell a rat, they’ll pounce, and you could end up exacerbating the reputation management problem.

Strategies for Choosing a Profile Image / Avatar

• Company Branding
  • Use the logo. If the logo won’t fit, use the most recognizable aspect of the logo that fits into square dimensions
  • If all else fails, go with the first letter or an Acronym for the brand name
• Personal Branding
  • Use a picture of yourself – a head shot, with your face as close up, visible and friendly as possible.
  • Make the photo fit your personality. Even if you’re going for a very professional profile, having a smile and a polo vs. a somber face and tie is OK. As with many things on the web, there’s a certain respect for the more casual and approachable profiles, but don’t miss the opportunity to brand visually.
• Boosting Search Rankings
  • It’s probably best to use a photo that’s cute, funny or enticing without being directly associated with your brand or you personally. After all, if you go overboard initially or learn the ropes by testing the boundaries of what you can accomplish from a pure rankings perspective, you don’t want that possibly negative branding reflecting back on you.
  • As others aruond the web (and in presentations) have noted on this topic, using an image of an attractive, younger woman on social sites can produce more interaction, more "friending" requests and a greater level of acceptance. I personally think it’s a sad example of sexism on the web, but my responsibility on the blog is to note valuable strategies, and this one certainly can deliver.
• Pro-Active Reputation Management
  • As with company branding, using the official logo is a generally wise move here.
• Re-Active Reputation Management
  • Using a photo that helps humanize you as an individual and your company can help – a group photo, a picture with your kids, significant other, on vacation, etc. One of the big problems in reputation defense is getting the opposing party to empathize, and this strategy can help start down that path. Now is not the time to be the faceless corporation.

I’ll let others tackle advice about how and where to link and how to optimize the descriptive elements of a social media profile page for maximum value (or maybe Jane can do it next week)

Also looking forward to your feedback about how you’ve had the most success with social profiles.

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If you’re one of those rare entrepreneurs that has the discipline to stay
reasonably focused on what you should be working on, feel free to skip the rest
of this article with the comforting knowledge that you have my admiration and
envy.

But, if you’re like most of us, you are probably plauged at one time or
another by the ‚ÄúShiny New Thing‚Äù (SNT) bug.  This particular syndrome is pretty easy
to describe.  There you are, minding your own business (literally) and working
on your startup.  Then all of a sudden, BAM!  Some shiny new thing comes along
and tries to distract you.  You either get distracted, or you stay up nights
wondering if you should have gotten distracted.  If you‚Äôre like me (my
sympathies if you are), you have this experience quite frequently.  I think it
harkens back to our childhood days when just about any shiny new thing
would immediately grab our attention. [Hence the toy robot photo, blog image selection is not a core competency.]

There are various manifestations of this Shiny New Thing (SNT) phenomenon. 
Here are a few:

1.  New technology/platform/language/framework:  This
applies mostly to developers.  There you are coding away on your project, and this article comes
up in Google Reader about this new paradigm-driven-framework.  BAM!  It‚Äôs so
cool!  It could change everything!  It could make you 10X more productive!  So,
you immediately start conjuring up ways to use that shiny new thing in whatever
you happen to be working on at this point in time. 

2.  New market/customers/industry:  Your startup has a
market, you probably even have some of the product developed.  You‚Äôre making
sales, albeit things are going a little slower than you hoped.  Then, you read a
blog article somewhere and BAM!  You think of this new market that you
could go after.  And, brilliant technologist that you are, you‚Äôve already
developed your existing product such that with just a few small tweaks you could
go after this new market pretty easily.  In fact, the beauty of it is that you don‚Äôt even have
to give give up your existing market/customer/industry.  You can do this one
too!  If one market is good, two has got to be better, right? 
Right?

3.  New Feature/Application/Product:  Your existing
product is cranking along.  The few customers/users you have seem to be happy. 
You‚Äôre signing up more people.  You‚Äôre supporting your users. 
You‚Äôre truckin‚Äô along.  Then BAM!  You get this idea for a shiny, new feature or
product to add to your arsenal.  You pause briefly to ponder whether the legal
services industry really needs an ERP app for the iPhone.  But hey, you know
this industry really well, and your best customer has a daughter who has an iPhone.  You‚Äôre
just a little ‚Äúahead of the market‚Äù, right.  Right? 

3.  New Company:  There you are, cranking along.  And,
you just kind of start getting bored.  Your idea was really cool and got you all
fired up in the morning.  It was so shiny, new back then.  But alas, it‚Äôs just
not that shiny any more.  The idea is sooo last month.  It‚Äôs really
hard to be passionate about it now.  You‚Äôve got to absolutely love what you‚Äôre
doing, every day, right?  It‚Äôs a waste of time to stick to something that you‚Äôre
just not excited about, isn‚Äôt it?  And then, BAM!  You come up with this
new startup idea.  It‚Äôs bright!  It‚Äôs shiny!  Life is good again. 

So, you get the idea.  If you‚Äôre like most entrepreneurs, you‚Äôve been hit by
some variation of the above Shiny New Thing bug at some point.  Unfortunately,
when you get hit with it, it‚Äôs rarely in the exaggerated, ‚ÄúBoy, that‚Äôs a supid thing to do, I would never do that‚Äù kind of way as the above examples illustrate.  The SNT bug is usually much
more subtle and insidious than that.  It‚Äôs why it infects so many smart,
rational entrepreneurs ‚Äî and me. 

What makes this problem a problem is that it is rare that going after the 
Shiny New Thing is going to increase your oddds of success (however you define
it).  Most of the time, it‚Äôs a distraction.  The rest of the time, it‚Äôs usually
a major distraction.  To really succeed and get things done, you‚Äôre
going to need to stick to something and get the basic machinery ‚Äúworking‚Äù and plug away at it.  Good ideas take time.  Great ideas take even more time. 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you be stubborn about your idea, business
model, product, whatever.  Far from it.  I‚Äôm a big fan of the agile approach to
startups.  But, there‚Äôs a difference between iterating on an existing
thing and being distracted by a Shiny New Thing. 

So, here‚Äôs my advice to you the next time you see the Shiny New Thing bug
buzzing around your head as you‚Äôre trying to get real work done.  Ask yourself
the following 4 questions:

1.  Am I simply intrigued by the shininess and newness, or is there
really a there, there? 

2.  What would I need to know and what minimal questions would I need
answered to figure out whether this Shiny New Thing is worth my attention?

3.  How long will it reasonably take me to figure out what I need to know? 
Can I even afford that investment?  How does it impact what I‚Äôm doing
now? 

4.  Should I go ahead and‚Ķ.Hey wait!  As I was writing this, I just came
across another topic for this blog as a result of something on Guy Kawasaki‚Äôs blog. 
Must‚Ķtry‚Ķto‚Ķresist‚Ķshiny‚Ķnew‚Ķthing.  Oh no‚Ķit‚Äôs too‚Ķshinyyyyyyyy….[click]

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  13,000+ members and growing daily.

You can also find OnStartups on Twitter.

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