I recently spotted a blog post by Adam Senour over at Walk My Path. The post outlines why Gene Marks is right on certain comments from the blog post. I must say I didn’t think I would find someone defending Gene marks comments like Adam has. I remember Adam from posting on WebProWorld and I think he is a decent guy. So with that being said lets respond to some of his comments:
RSS Feeds
“Not only that, a small business owner will have to either invest the time or find someone to invest the time for them (i.e. an IT person, which a lot of small business can’t/don’t want to afford) to find an RSS feed reader, configure it, show the owner how it works, probably provide additional support on top of that, and so on and so on. The costs and trouble outweigh any benefit for a non-IT-related business owner.”
Invest time to find a RSS reader and configure it? Huh? Well if you can’t do that, then don’t even be online to begin with. If you’re not willing to learn and work with the components that make the web what it is then forget about all together. Keep yourself in a box far, far away from technology.
Dealing with RSS lets users get information sent to them in a friendly format that saves you the time of visiting blogs and websites. Not sure what the point is here.
Blogs
“Now…before everyone who owns a blog decides to tear a strip off me and talk about all the wonderful benefits of it and how it can generate so much traffic and blah blah
blah yadda yadda, consider also the amount of maintenance you’ve put into your blog.”
Once again I have to keep coming back to why your online in the first place. If a small business has a website (and most all should, that is a separate argument if you don’t think you should have one) then you should form some sort of communication with your visitors. Sure back in 1999 the web was more one-way broadcasting of information/content, but it is surely not that way any longer. Visitors to all websites want to be able to do more than just email the owner/webmaster of the website.
Search Engine Optimization
“but where the hell is the average small business owner supposed to find the one good SEO in a room full of 100 blackhats? “
OK now I obviously don’t agree here. Should we all stop buying cars since there are a lot of shysters in that business? No. Gene and Adam are so far off the mark here. People spent over 29 billion online this past holiday season. Up nearly 20% from last year. Search spend is expected to reach nearly $8.1 billion in 2007. You think all these dollars are all going to waste????
CRM
“CRM software (and no, Jaan, Outlook doesn’t count) is too expensive for any of the benefits that it can provide. Hell, I know people that use Excel for a CRM…and it works for them.”
Yeah I know Adam, just saying I don’t need or want anything to do with CRM software. I agree it is a waste of money to me.
AdWords/PPC Advertising, Online Video
“But does the average small business owner have either the time or the $5,000 or more to experiment with Google or Yahoo! or MSN or (insert PPC ad provider here) to find the combination that works, if at all possible for their business?”
I love how it is so easy put up road blocks for improvements. Saying things are too hard or to expensive should not be in any small business vocabulary that wants to grow. Do you think world class athletes stay at the top of their sport by complaining how long it takes to train? Do you think some of the biggest companies in the world got to where they were at by complaining on how hard it was to adapt to be successful in the ever changing business environment they work in? If you don’t want new technology that is fine. But don’t complain when your competitors pounce on it and take over your market share.
Web 2.0
“Gene Marks absolutely nailed this issue and more importantly nailed a much deeper issue with IT in general; the technology, the explanations of the technology, and the benefits of the technology are beyond the grasp of the average non-IT business owner.”
Hard to debate this one, since I agree Web 2.0 means so many different things to so many different people. As I tried to define it in my last posting: “I personally feel Web 2.0 has to do with more user generated content and making the web more of community for each and every website rather than websites simply broadcasting their message.”
In conclusion I see what Adam is talking about to a point, but I can’t help feeling like if you’re not willing to invest time into what makes the web go around then yes forget about doing anything from Gene Marks article at all. Stay far away from the internet and keep yourself in old hat brick and mortar commerce.
I don’t know maybe this is nothing more than link bait Adam Senour? Seems to be the only reason for Gene Marks to post such garbage.
