Aim for the Cheap Seats: How Internet Marketing is Like Baseball
Life — and web-site promotion and web marketing — is like baseball. Let me explain…
When you knock-in a run with a pop-up fly, everyone cheers. You’re the hero of the … hour? No. The minute.
Until the next time someone else knocks-in a run. Then he is the hero of the minute.
But, when you hit a home-run with bases loaded, you’re the hero of the hour, and the game (usually). And when that game is the final game of a 7-game playoff or series, you’re the hero of the Season! And, when that Season is itself memorable due to a convergence of great games, great players, and close calls… you’re the hero of a LIFETIME… and you get into the Hall of Fame!
Now, why is that relevant?
Because when we ask these questions about popularity, the issue of popularity ALWAYS is related to timeliness. You can’t answer the question without reference to the time frame. So, in the web and life, like in baseball, your popularity will always be related to:
- How long a period you are examining — a few minutes, an hour, a day, a week, a month or a year, etc.
- What else is or was going on in this period — look around you and see if what you are/were doing makes you a stand-out player in this time frame
Strategically, the decision you have to make is this: Do I want to try to make hundreds or thousands of plays of the minute or hour, so that I can continuously be on top of whatever is happening? Or, do I want to make only a few “plays of a lifetime” that will garner rewards (in traffic and hopefully income) for years to come?
Personally, I use a mix of both.
However, as the years roll by, I’m leaning more and more toward the second goal; I see the value of building major pages that yield traffic and accumulate ‘trust’ or ranking for years and years. Thank heaven I do have a few hundred of those pages. They are the big players in whatever success I have from day to day.
So, if you can write, if you can manage a writing team creating WONDERFUL CONTENT, then do it. Don’t waste time trying to be only the player of the minute by knocking-in a few runs here and there. People who do that, even for twenty years are always forgotten players. The players who make dramatic achievements — the MOST homeruns, the MOST of almost anything — are remembered. For a long time.
How long you are ‘remembered’ in the game of web marketing and page popularity depends on whatever else is happening. That you can’t control, the whatever else. But you can control what you do.
Aim for the Cheap Seats
PS: The cheapest seats are at the top of the bleachers. Aiming at them CAN put you in the history books. Aiming lower will GUARANTEE that you never get a mention above the footnotes at the back of the books.
Work like you’re playing in the final game of the World Series. Because, on the web, you are.
