As featured in TEQ Magazine:

In today’s crazy, noisy, hyper-accelerated social media world, your choice is to be known for one thing… or none. Social media is fabulous in that, in contrast to your email blasts, newsletters, and direct mail, Google sees your blog posts, Tweets, and Yelps. That helps your business get found at the very moment when someone goes searching for exactly what you offer.

But if you’re Yammering about something different every time you check-in, thousands of other businesses will appear higher

in the Google results than you do. Even just a dozen or two above you means that you’re an Internet footnote destined for obscurity. Only Google’s first page, and maybe sometimes their second, has value in attracting customers.

Yes, you could bid for Google Adwords and pay from $0.25 to $100 per click-through (pity the lawyers chasing mesothelioma victims, one outrageously expensive click). Or you could learn to dominate “organic” search by attracting clicks for free. The trick is to talk about one thing early and often; the one thing in which you’re a world expert.

The key is to find a phrase that balances quantity with quality. Select a term too general and few of the myriad people searching for it will be looking for what you do. Choose a term too narrow and few people will be searching for it at all.

To use a real example, I’m currently working with Linear Corp, a company that has developed a new audio-equipment-interconnect-standard called Digi-5. This standard allows different vendors’ equipment to play beautifully together (like a symphony) in an interoperable, whole house audio system.

Digi-5 could focus on the search term “audio” and see 45,500,000 people (the actual number) search for it each month. But rarely would they be looking for exactly what we sell even if we somehow managed to work our way onto Page 1. Or Digi-5 could focus on the phrase “high quality CAT5-based vendor-independent whole house audio distribution system at an unbelievably low price” (yes, I’m radically over-emphasizing my point or shamelessly promoting a client…) and attract maybe one searcher in a billion… or not!

There’s a magical tool that can tell you exactly what phrases people are going to search for next month. It’s almost like having ESP (“extra sensory perception”, a phase that keeps coming up as I discuss social media; talk about social media). It turns out that human beings are not like mutual funds; our past performance is indeed a pretty good predictor of future results.

Tell me any phrase and I can tell you how many people will Google it next month, plus or minus 10%. Better yet, discover it for yourself. Find it by searching Google for “Adwords Keywords Tool”, then enter your word or phrase in the “Find Keywords” box.  Be sure explore the synonym phrases. Select a phrase or two that are relevant to your business and that have lots of searchers but not too many. Then, go back to Google’s homepage and try them out. If the search results are where you want to be seen, you’ve found your phrases.

From now on, every time you do anything online (website, press release, Tweet, Yelp, blog post, etc.) use that exact phrase like it’s your name. Soon, you’ll be attracting new prospects.

Yes, you’ll be known for only one thing but that’s far better than none.