An Owner’s Leap into Local Internet Marketing

While trying to figure out what to write for my first blog post I feel like I’m back in school, suffering from the writer’s block that inevitably leads to a sleepless, coffee filled night of scrambling to complete my assignment on time. The most challenging thing for me is, and always has been, topic selection.  I’ll spend 75% of my time figuring out what to write about, 15% researching and gathering resources, and 10% putting the final product together. This time hasn’t been any different.

So what should I write about? There are infinite topic possibilities. I find the whole thing to be overwhelming. Sort of like when I go to a restaurant that has what appears to be a never ending menu. I’d prefer there to be only a few great dishes to choose from. Otherwise, I waste too much time trying to decide, for fear I might make the wrong choice. I have to remind myself that I can always come back and order something different next time. Just as in this case, I can always come back and write about something different next time.

I finally decided that before I waste any more energy thinking about what to write, I’ll stick with the subject I know best, and you know the least about. That’s me… and how I got my start in Internet Marketing.

For years the face of our company has been my partner Scott Gallagher, while I, for the most part, have been working behind the scenes. I don’t really enjoy being in the spot light, and writing about myself feels a little awkward. I’m not even really sure where to start.

I guess the first thing I can say about myself is what I am not. Clearly, I’m not a writer. To be honest, I plagiarized almost every single paper I’ve ever written, going all the way back to 1st grade (Sorry Mrs. Wolleben). Thankfully my teachers didn’t have the World Wide Web at their fingertips to check the originality of my work. Now I’m forced to write original content if I want Google to see my blog post as relevant. duplicate content certainly wouldn’t give me any credibility to the search engines, or more importantly, to you.

My expertise lies more with computer programming, web development and internet marketing. Now if you would have asked me 7 years ago what internet marketing was I probably wouldn’t have known. At that time I had just finished college, where my focus was on computer programming and web development.  Marketing wasn’t even something I thought about. I was all about making things look pretty and work well.

Right out of school I started working as the Director of Technology and Operations for a courier company.  One of my first initiatives was to purchase courier dispatching software. On my quest to find the best software company I met Scott Gallagher, who at the time was a sales rep for one of the courier software companies I was evaluating. He and I quickly became friends. Over the following year and half our friendship developed into love, and we were married in 2005.

After we were married, Scott was still selling software to courier companies. One day a client expressed that it was wonderful that he had this great new online order entry system but what he didn’t have was a website. He asked Scott if he knew anyone that could help him out and Scott’s reply was “My wife.”
That was the start of our company. Scott’s background in marketing, sales, and business development combined with my background in web development and computer programming were a perfect match. Scott and I merged our skills to form a new entity which would later become what we know today as CCS.

Working side by side for the past 4 years, I have had the unique opportunity to absorb a good portion of Scott’s marketing knowledge through studying his work and overhearing A LOT of sales calls as he paces back and forth in the office behind me. I’ve also taken to the time to educate myself on internet marketing practices and trends such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), article marketing, website traffic and conversion and email marketing through various outlets, including research, participating in seminars and mastermind groups.

Now I’ve reached a level where I am able to put my marketing knowledge to work, and on occasion frustrate Scott when I do something better than he does.