Whether you call yourself an SEO, SEM, inbound marketer, online marketing specialist, or any one of a number of terms, your ultimate goal is the same: increasing sales or conversions for your clients. To do this, you need to bring a host of skill sets to bear. Sometimes, the skills of a historian come in handy.
This thought crossed my mind after reading Mike Fleming’s excellent post for Search Engine Guide on the various “professions” an inbound marketer must, er, employ. Like Fleming, I received a “liberal arts education,” but I majored in history. So when he talked about how he was recently “feeling a bit ‘stretched’ out of my comfort zone when I realized just how many hats inbound marketers are called to wear throughout the daily trappings of their careers,” I felt an immediate pang of familiarity.
Please understand that I don’t do inbound marketing myself, beyond reading and writing about it for about eight years now as a major part of my job. Still, when Fleming listed the “hats” of scientist, psychologist, investigator, consultant, accountant, researcher, writer, speaker, salesman, reporter, customer service representative and (stretching a point a little bit) doctor, I found myself nodding a bit, but waiting for the other shoe to drop. Where on this list is the humble historian?
Not everyone understands what historians do. We hunt for the data; we analyze it and look for trends; we form hypotheses and theories; we try to explain the causes of things at various levels. There’s a reason that history is said to be “the science of that which never happens twice.” In short, historians use many of the skills that Fleming lists – plus one very critical one that can be invaluable to any marketer working with a client.
To explain that skill, however, I need to back up to one of my college history courses. It was a historiography course, and only history majors took it. Historiography, loosely defined, is the history of history. In the case of my course, we examined the causes of the English Civil War – or more precisely, what historians said were the causes of the English Civil War at five different points in history, starting with immediately after the war itself and going through a diversity of eras (such as the Marxist interpretation and others).
I quickly learned that the cause of a situation may not be as simple as it first appears. I also learned that others looking at the same situation, and given the same apparent facts, can easily interpret it differently. But most importantly, I learned that the reason for these different interpretations has to do with the historian’s mental filter – that it’s almost impossible to remove yourself from your own time period and its influences, attitudes, or “prejudices,” if you will. This filter is enough to explain differences in interpretation without necessarily assuming the historian has a particular ax to grind (though that’s also possible, of course) or holds any particular malice toward anyone (though again, this is possible).
So how is this useful for SEOs to keep in mind? You come to your client, and approach his data, with a particular view based on what you know. Your client views his business in a particular way based on what he knows. Each of these are filters of a sort. If you want to get your message through to your client, you need to clear your own filter – as much as you can – and look at the data you have collected through HIS filter. If you want to convince him to try something, you need to convey it to him in a way that gets through his filter such that he’ll not only UNDERSTAND it, but AGREE with you about the right course of action.
It’s even more complicated than that, of course. There are other filters you need to keep in mind: the ones in front of the eyes of your client’s customers. And oh yes, there are Google’s filters as well. I could go on, but I’ve run out of space and time – rather embarrassing for a historian, I must admit. But perhaps you can see how this study of the past can help your clients prepare for a better future. Good luck!
Author information
The post What an SEO Can Learn from History appeared first on SEO Chat.
My idols are all Korean. And my dream is to maybe become famous in Korea. I have looking up Korean words and they seem kind of easy. Should i learn Korean as a third language?
what will be the ending of the story??
will Jang Geum die?? what will happen to Lady Choi and madame choi???
Modern Activists’ Armed With Technology.
Gone are the days of long hair, free love, and drug abuse. Today’s activists are technology savvy, trendy, and innovative. Take Aggressive founder and owner Reggie DeShields Jr. This 27 year old architecture student has built a clothing line of politically conscious apparel that boasted earnings of 1.2 million dollars in 2006. The young activist/entrepreneur reflects on the company’s almost accidental beginnings.
“It just started out as more of an emotion than an idea. I was always passionate about things I felt were wrong with the world and things that I wanted to change. I was seeing all of these injustices and it angered me so much. I had to get some of that anger out, so I learned how to make my own t-shirts with messages showing what I wanted the world to know. After a while people started asking me ‘where did you get that shirt?’ When I told them ‘I made it’, they asked me if I could make them one too. Then, when I put the shirts on a website, aggressivetees.com was born.”
What started as an emotional release for the young husband and father quickly turned into a full-time project as he was forced to quit his day job. Being computer savvy was a key factor in the endeavor’s early success as Reggie immediately began harnessing the power of the internet to promote his brand. Through affiliates groups, pay per click advertising, online social groups, free classifieds, and SEO, his business grew more swiftly than he could handle alone. Fast forward 2 years later, and Aggressive now houses 18 employees in its New Jersey office.
Even still, he has managed to remain humble in the midst of all this success stating that, “the reason my business took off so fast was because I had a message of liberty, and liberty is contagious. All I really had to do was fan the flames.”
Who has changed the world more? Was it the rebellious, marijuana smoking hippies who complained about the man all day while listening to music? Or is it the technically inclined, businessperson activists of today? You be the judge.
Reggie’s only advice for anyone thinking of starting an activism business is, “Remember that it doesn’t matter if you see immediate success with trying to educate people or make a positive change in the world. There is no such thing as being unsuccessful when it comes to these endeavors because you are planting seeds that will grow to make the world a better place even after you’re dead and gone. If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is.”
About:
Aggressive customer service department can be reached at [email protected] and their sales are offered at http://www.aggressivetees.com.
please tell me institue name or any coaching center name which provides knowledge of search engine optimization.suggest me what can i do for learning basic terms of SEO.
I need another korean drama to take up my time!:
I’ve watched:
-You’re beautiful
-Faith
-To the beautiful you
-K-pop extreme survival
-Panda and Hedgehog
-City Hunter
-Heartstrings
-Mary Stayed out all night
-Playful Kiss
-Dream High 1 and 2
-The woman who still wants to marry
-Big
-Goong Princess hours
-God of Study
-Romance Town
-Full House
-Full House Take 2
-School 2013
-I Miss you
-Coffee Prince
-Flower boy next door
-Shining inheritance
-Manny
-Rooftop prince
-Arang and the magistrate
-The king two hearts
-Nice Guy
-A gentlemen’s dignity
-I do, i do
-My name is Kim sam soon
-My girl
-wild Romance
-Baby faced beauty
-The Musical
-Flower Boy Ramen Shop
–Boys over flowers
-Shut up flower boy band
-Gu family book
-Nail Shop paris
-Secret Garden
-you’re the best Lee Soon SHin
-Monstar
-Runaway plan B
-me too flower
-personal taste
-sungkyunkwan scandal
-49 days
-shining inheritance
-my girlfriend is a nine tailed fox
-What’s up
What is Swift satirizing or mocking of the British systems in these quotes:
1.”Whether party, in religion or politics, were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice?”
2. “Upon what I saw in relation to our courts justice… What time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degre of expense.”
These are from Part II Chapter 4 and I am supposed to say what Swift ‘s purpose is and what he is satirizing in these quotes:
A. “This writer went though all the usual topics of European moralists, showing how diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own nature how unable to defend himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts…”
B. “The Learning of this People is very defective, consisting only in Morality, History, Poetry, and Mathematicks, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But, the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in Life, to the Improvement of Agriculture and all mechanical Arts; so that among us it would be little esteemed. And as to Ideas, Entities, Abstractions and Transcendentals, I could never drive the least Conception into their heads.”
C. “No Law of that Country must exceed in Words the Number of Letters in their Alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But, indeed, few of them extend even to that Length. They are expressed in the most plain and simple Terms, wherein those People are not mercurial enough to discover above one Interpretation..”
D. He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds; to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics which are not worth considering.
not talkshows those kinds that takes place in like the ancient times
with adventure and comedy. usaully with like mythology charcters. or with prince and princess.
ok all you science fiction nuts like me. can you guys send me some links to cool sci fi reference sites. i am looking for sites similar to things like memory-alpha but for other shows, sites that will have stats, and pictures and stuff. i have found some but i know that there a many more.
no blogs or forums just the database type and other reference type websites.
I am reading a book of poems called Lotus Flower Poems by Ven. Dr. Seo Kyung Bo, who has a Korean Zen master. In a poem or two he mentions that he played on his iron flute. I do not get the image. Of course I have a thought or two, but would rather learn more about it.
Alright, so long story short
-Last semester, my AP Government teacher gave our class a 200 point take home test that would be worth a VERY large portion of our grade (There were only 5 tests, including that one, last semester, but no final). -There was a multiple choice portion of the test with several essays, and we were required to cite our sources.
-I worked VERY hard on the take home test, cited every single outside source I used, edited it myself several times, had an English tutor (who said it was stellar) review it, used a website (Small SEO tools) to check for plagiarism and then turned it in.
-A week Iater, I saw that my grade had dropped a low “B” to a “D.”
-I asked my teacher about it, and he said it was “blatantly obvious” that I plagiarized and that I earned my zero. He also told me I was going to be reported for academic dishonesty.
-It turns out, turnitin.com did show that a portion of my work resembled someone else’s at a school not far from where we live, but I’ve never met this person. This is the evidence my teacher will use against me if I try to challenge his decision.
– I don’t know what to do now. I very well might lose credit and not be allowed to graduate because of this, and a “D” on my transcript is enough to rescind me from any school I’ve applied to. Is there anything I can do to save myself here?
So, I’m just wondering what should I be in the coming future. Well, in my school, students are mostly asked to talk about their dream occupation and all. I’m 15yrs old and I like fashion designing, music etc. In general, I like arts.However, I’m not good in drawing. And I can let’s say get 84/100 for singing. Moreover,I got a good fashion sense and I play with colours. I’m 5’7 & pretty skinny so my friends and also a few teachers think that I can join beauty contests or try to be a model. Bedsides this, I’m good in History, English, Geography and Science. I like learning about the past and reasons behind everything. I’m terrible at Maths. But I can do the basics. What do you think suits me?