#it is not my fault that you are actively choosing to not read analytically and make inferences

[bxriles]

I’m not going to waste my time responding to the insane hate messages I’ve gotten for being critical of acotar and SJM. I’m just deleting them because they’re likely all from the same person who’s too scared to come off anon and they don’t deserve the attention, but I would like to point out the following:

No one, and I mean no one, is demonizing Feyre for discussing her trauma from her time in the cabin. That is not what’s happening here. People (myself included) are criticizing Feyre for her inability to acknowledge the fact that she wasn’t the only sister suffering in that cabin. People are criticizing Feyre for shifting all the blame that should be on Papa Archeron to her sisters who were also children at the time.

Like be so fucking for real with me.

[pokedash55]

Ninjobservation #2

Analyzing the Elemental Alliance as a group and uncovering the real reason the Time twins (Twims for short) were "traitors"

So I have rewatched Hands of Time for the 3rd time this past year and Me and my sister Purplefern (She has a ton of good Twims fics on Ao3 ^^) have learned a lot about the old elemental alliance (EA).

THE CLAIM

The EA were a strong clique that did not appreciate the Twim's general attitudes and personalities. Chen saw the growing discourse and manipulated both sides into turning on each other.

[[They be judgin' (””art”” by me) ]]

To start let’s look at all the Leaders of this Alliance

Wu

Wu back before his eventual growth with the ninja was a strict teacher. Morro ran away due to his inability to understand his problems (problems he may have caused with his teachings). He is generally harsh towards the Ninja in season 1, forcing them to train all day because they simply talked during his lesson ("Never trust a snake").

Due to being the son of the FSM he put pressure on himself to always be virtuous and leaderlike (believes he has to uphold order) and he takes this believed expectation of authority to heart. He is no nonsense, yelling at Libber (the Master of Lightning) for simply talking slightly off topic before an important battle. He has a strong sense of right and wrong, according to his own moral standards and does not waver on what he believes is in/appropriate.

Garmadon

Although less righteous than Wu, joining the alliance after the war began, he has also been seen as a strict and serious teacher. Because of the growing venom in his blood I'd argue he was even more strict, less in attitude but more in general rules of law and order. We see in Rebooted that Garmadon set strict rules for himself like "no weapons" to keep his destructive side in check and we know that Young Garmadon is so sensitive to rules as he claims that even reading another's mail is a crime. He joined as a leader and most likely upheld rules not just for the alliance but for his own sake.

Ray and Maya

We see little of them but they are both good friends- and Ray appears to be the right hand man-- of Wu They are such good friends that Ray is the one trusted with the Map to the Golden Weapons. From his tone and diction he seems very dogmatic and if he's anything like Kai, he's quick to assumptions and to attack people who he perceives as bad according to his own strict principles. He just feels like a stuffy guy. I don't have much on Maya but she's a good people person so she gets along with the others really well. Also she married Ray, so that has to say something. They both went along with the Time Blade plan.

Other Elemental observations

 Except for Libber (Lighting), all the Masters are older than the Time twins. (Krux can fight in S7 so he's not older than 70. They are most likely mid to late twenty's during the war)

 The EA is a pre-established group (Garmadon refers to them like they are a pre-existing entity in ToE flashbacks). They were two confident and arrogent twenty year olds strolling into a pre-established clique of old honorable fighters during a war. Not the best time for bonding.

 Ice feels very much like Wu and Garmadon, considering he gave his powers to an analytical robot like Zane is saying a lot about him. He most likely does not tolerate "shenanigans", especially during a war.

They battle in a tight group

Krux and Acronix

These two act like they don't belong in the group. During the party celebrating the end of the war they are seen standing away from the rest and are genuinely happy to be recognized by Wu for their efforts. Although retcon, the two are not seen battling with the rest of the group. They instead most likely are so powerful (and impulsive and difficult to work with) that they are sent on duo missions to protect villages (They are also not the best followers).

It's also a nice parallel to our ninja in ToE. They stuck together like a family and were disliked and excluded from the rest of the EM's. The same could be said for The Twims since they always fought together and were similarly excluded.

Krux

Krux is a planner and a sassy dude. He’s stubborn and will tell people they are wrong to their face. The 16 personalities that matches him best is INTJ (the Architect). This analytical type hates people who are who they consider idiotic, do not participate in formalities, and are aggravated by heavy rules and restrictions made by someone else, especially someone they do not respect (which is most people).

Although we do not see him much as a young man we know that he is prone to grudges and will resort to less kind methods in sake for the means to an end. Definitely not someone Wu and Garmadon would like since they are trying to uphold order and keep a chain of command. But Krux believes in his own plans and his own chain of command. He is not good at small talk and would mostly stick with his brother during group events like meetings and parties, so in general his terrible social skills probably made him pretty unliked.

Acronix

Acronix is quick witted and heavily proud of himself. He won’t admit he is wrong and is very loud in general. This may be a side tangent but Acronix may have ADHD, which would not be understood back in the day and people would regard him as annoying or rude.

EVIDENCE FOR ADHD

-He is shown to stand in a position that suggests hand fidgeting (A LOT)

-Quick to anger over minuscule details

-yeah he's distractible but he's also quick to move through ideas/activities

-impulsive

- During their important battle back in time his attention is on the pretty fusion dragon flying around instead of listening to Kruxs plan of attack.

-His attention shifts to the destiny's bounty and he toys with the ninja despite saying right before he couldn't stay and fight Wu cause he had to meet up with Krux.

- in general he is constantly shifting from idea to idea, oftentimes leaving his original plans completely un-finished

He could have trouble paying attention to meetings and with his bond with Krux and tendency to quick action he would choose his brother's plan and strike independently rather than following whatever Wu is doing. This leads them to fight beside each other alone instead of with the main group, making the elemental alliance think they believe to be better than them. 

In terms of Personality types he’s a hardcore ESTP (Entrepreneur). Like his brother, they are free analytical thinkers who do not respect higher authority simply because they claim to be the leaders and hate rules and regulations getting in the way of their progress. He says what's on his minds regardless of feelings and will defend his opinions despite others sensitivities. He is perceptive enough to pick up on small changes and habits but he is quick to share that knowledge (usually in a snarky remark). I doubt the alliance appreciates what he has to say when he’s blabbering about everything in such a rude tone.

MOE

Now this all may start to look like a silly “Hands of time did nothing wrong” theory. But there is a key factor in this that not many people talk about. The previous Master of Earth (or Moe for short).

We know that Chen manipulated Moe into turning against the alliance so it was not technically his fault. Chen could’ve said that because the serpentine rose from the earth he was entitled to fight for them. Heck he could’ve been 100% hypnotized by Clouse’s dark magic (His eyes were not swirly so it was not hypnobrai like is suggested in WOTD). He is most likely some lovable dummy who was easily swayed and a kind person to apologize once the truth about Chen is revealed (considering that he’s Cole’s grandfather). Moe as a person is fine. What is sketchy is Moe being easily forgiven and allowed into the alliance despite turning on all of HUMANITY. What he did could’ve hurt way more people. He fought with the snakes and attacked innocent people and powerless soldiers (like the rice farmers) and was off scott free! The Twims only fought the elemental alliance and Wu and Garmadon at the monastery. Not nearly as destructive.

They figured out that Chen made the alliance turn on each other after the war and forgave Moe for that, but isn't it strange that they never gave the Time Twins that same benefit of the doubt? We know from “Way of the departed” and general logic that Chen and Clouse helped tip them over the edge. Whether you believe this to be canon or not is irrelevant because if the EA knew that Chen was involved once why would they not assume he was with the time twins too? Seems like they already disliked the two and were just ready for a reason to punish them. All flashbacks we get are told from unreliable sources like Wu and Ray (who both were enthusiastically the ones planning to strip them of their powers.) Speaking of, let’s analyze this example of their “betrayal” shall we?

THE BATTLE IN QUESTION

This is the flashback we get of them fighting against the alliance. The first time you watch it all you really know is that they are fighting against the EA, when Wu is describing their arrogance and the danger of their powers. How evil right? To attack their companions like that? But there is a lot wrong with how Wu phrases the fight and how it actually goes down.

They have Bamboo staffs.

A weapon that is primarily defensive and not a good weapon of choice for a planned ambush or assault. They are non lethal weapons. And Acronix is said on LEGO.com to be quick to learn any weapon so someone as adaptable as he is would not intentionally bring something so weak to a fight unless he had been forced to improvise.

Always on the defensive.

Someone as tactical as Krux and skilled as Acronix would never let themselves be on the defensive like this if they had the first blow. We see that Ray has the first attack in the flashback. Although Acronix is known to jump in without thinking he has his brother who would not just go into a fight just to lose. And even if they did end up on the defensive after having the first strike Acronix has his powers. He would’ve brought both of them out of a situation if things got too hard (which he is known to do in battles HE starts). But they clearly did not start this battle.

They are surrounded.

These two guys with nothing but staffs are encircled? Krux as a planner and Acronix as a quick witted warrior would never let themsleves get into that position if it had been a battle that they had started and had been planning to win. This framing makes it feel like they are being ganged up on.

In a remote location.

The battle takes place on a gravel road no where near a major city. If they wanted to take over wouldn’t they strike somewhere more populated? And if they were attacking the EA...they would have attacked the EA directly. They were probably just walking and talking and got ambushed.

Chen?

Very possible that Chen sent an “anonymous” note to the EA telling them of the Twims plans to attack. They are arrogant, have openly hated Wu’s leadership, and don’t gel with the group so of course they would take a tip like that and attack someone they don’t like. It’s possible they had ideas of taking over the EA but the world seems a bit out of their morality range until provoked.

Now that they have been attacked the two form a real plan to overthrow these fools who don’t like them and have unfairly attacked them (just like Chen had been telling them they were likely to do). They bring real weapons (swords) to an important location (the Monastery) to fight the specific people they do not like (Wu and Garmadon).

The Punishment

Ok so these powerful elemental masters are going to attack the EA. They were once allies and they are too powerful to defeat with their powers. If only there was a way to temporarily suspend their powers so they could talk this out and have an understanding of each other and perhaps uncover Master Chen's involvement-- since the Hands of Time were semi-sensible war heroes who were the sons of a previous master of time who presumably responsibly used the element without issue (and was most likely a samurai since Krux says their helmets are samurai helmets)... sigh too bad there is not such a material… oh wait.

WHAT ABOUT VENGESTONE???

These fools really decided that destroying an important element forever, and violently ripping it out of its users was the only option? There were generations of time elementals before them that had the element. They could throw vengestone nets at them or fight until they get knocked out and then vengestone cage them. But they don’t want to know why they betrayed the alliance. It was not because the element was too dangerous. It was not because they had to strip them of their powers (cause there are less lethal ways of doing so). They just did not give these two any mercy.

CONCLUSION

The Time twins are hard to work with and stuck together no matter what. The alliance is very strict and dogmatic which both Krux and Acronix would hate being trapped in their day to day alliance meetings and group mentality. Chen used their egos and their exclusion to his benefit to keep the fight going after he was banished and sent a letter to start up conflict with the EA. The EA did not like the Twims so they were ruthless and did not give them the same mercy they did for Moe (They also are not Elements of Creation. Wu would do anything to protect the main 4 but he’ll punish these punks). 

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’: Rebuttal Part 1: Introduction

Master Post

Back in 2012 I read a very interesting book called ‘Webslinger: Unauthorized Essays on your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’. 

As the title suggests it was an anthology book made up of several different essays about Spidey (and edited by Gerry Conway himself).

The essays are an interesting read, though there are questionable points made and some inaccuracies. 

Today though I’d like to debunk some points made in the essay titled ‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’.

The reason for my desire to debunk parts of this essay is partially due to my inherent instinct to debunk problematic or misinformed stuff surrounding Spider-Man generally. However it’s also partially due to the author, J.R. Fettinger.

Fettinger is the creator and author of the essays found on ‘Spideykicksbutt.com’ and a regular panellist on the Spider-Man Crawlspace podcast. I respect both and the content they provide though there have been times I’ve disagreed with both and other times where quite frankly I think they’ve put forward statements that are outright wrong.

Fettinger and his work was the inspiration to an extent for me even choosing to write so much about Spider-Man, helped bring me back into fandom and his work helped me reconcile some things that I had felt made me an uninformed minority within fandom.

However, there have been times, more and more as the years move forward, wherein my eyes have narrowed at Fettinger’s statements regarding Spider-Man.

He once said something to the effect of ‘alcoholics are just stupid people doing stupid things through no fault but their own’.

He has repeatedly attested that it is morally wrong for Spider-Man and Batman to not simply murder characters like Joker or Carnage.

He has said that Otto’s actions towards Peter in Superior Spider-Man render him the worst enemy Peter has. This is in spite of him being a huge Norman Osborn fan.

He has essentially stated criminal killers like Shriek or Vermin (who suffer from severe mental disorders) deserve no sympathy.

He has said Kraven’s Last Hunt was flawed (to put it more delicately than he did) because Peter ‘never settled his score’ with Kraven.

He has even said that whenever DeMatteis gets into the psychological aspects of the characters he ‘goes off the deep-end’.

These views are most especially chronicled in his on-going segment of the podcast ‘Spider-History’ wherein he takes a month’s worth of (usually 616 Peter Parker) Spider-Man comics from a bygone month decades ago, recaps them and analyses the stories.

However, what is so frustrating to me about these segments as time has gone by is that Fettinger is overly critical and incredibly cynical. He has put forward his opinions as fact with little analysis or consideration of an alternative point of view.

To be blunt with relatively few exceptions he surmises each month in this section as mediocre-bad unless it contained something by Marv Wolfman or Roger Stern, two of his personal favourite runs.

Even then he puts across reductive summaries of the events of the book, in particular phrasing things to make certain characters (like Spider-Man himself) come across as worse than they actually are in the stories in question.

This is particularly a problem in my view because Fettinger’s status as a long read, knowledgeable and analytical fan confers onto him a certain degree of authority in regards to his statements about Spider-Man.

And you know what? It should.

He really does know A LOT about Spider-Man and he has made some incredible assessments about stories and characters related to the wall-crawler.

I cannot recommend you check out his website Spideykicksbutt enough.

But here is the thing...I do not advocate blind trust in his word, or anyone’s for that matter. Not even my own. I know A LOT about Spider-Man but I’m far from infallible.

Think for yourselves, do your own research, present your own arguments and counterpoints.

It’s what I do and why Fettinger frustrates me. Because he’s so belligerent to changing his views, most of which are adamantly cynical and judgemental.

Some people I’ve spoken to about this attribute this to his age. Most of his writing and podcast work has been produced when he was in his 40s or 50s.

It is often said that everyone becomes more cynical, grumpier and more stuck in their ways as they age.

I disagree with that in so far as not everyone becomes like that. And 40-60 is not a point when you are ‘done’ becoming who you are going to be and beyond changing.

It is the prerogative of old men to speak their minds but the WISE men are not adverse to changing them.

This is the root of my problems with Fettinger and his cynicism. Not to mention, I find cynicism simply lazy and foolish under most circumstances. Much as I find Fettinger’s ‘kill all criminals’ mentality to crime to be lazy and foolish.

These thoughts struck me when I re-read his essay from Webslinger. I read the essay upon first discovering his work but I apparently have changed in 6 years as I find much of it ill-considered, cynical, judgemental and problem riddled.

Hence my desire now to debunk it.

The gist of the essay is Fettinger talking about how Spider-Man has lots of unfulfilled potential and attributing this to the loss of his father figure Uncle Ben. He goes on to list off different father figures Peter has had and what the end result of their roles in his life might have been. For context this was written around the time of Civil War 2006.

My first and probably biggest bone of contention lies in how Fettinger frames Peter’s ‘unfulfilled potential’.

It’s here where you start to see his overly cynical and judgemental side.

I will not quote him word for word here because it’d take too long. But early on he writes that Spider-Man’s powers come at the price of his happiness, peace of mind and the normalcy that we all take for granted.

This is partially true but still misinformed.

Peter’s mind is most definitely not peaceful most of the time and his life not normal. But there is that key phrase ‘most of the time’. Not all of the time.

Even during his career Peter has had several moments of grace. Most of the stories transpiring in the immediate aftermath of Mary Jane’s return to his life in ASM v2 #50 come to mind issue #51 even calls out that nothing bad has really happened to get in the way of Peter and MJ’s reconciliation.

This oversight is particularly egregious since that period had only been a few years before the writing of this essay.

But it’s not as egregious as the other thing Fettinger said. That being Spider-Man has cost Peter his happiness.

Er....no.

There have been many things that have made Peter unhappy in the course of his superhero career but as ASM #500 clearly confirmed for us Peter, in spite of all that, is  ultimately happy. Which was a big deal as Peter had just relived all his old battles at once.

The omission of ASM #500’s ending is telling because Fettinger actively dislikes the story and the scene with Uncle Ben particularly. He’s labelled it as ‘banal’ and essentially said if he could talk with his own deceased father the conversation would’ve gone very differently. Problem is the the story was not about him and his family but about Spider-Man and HIS family!

Fettinger then asks if when Peter dies he’d be labelled as someone who fell short of his potential. He illustrates the point by comparing 15 year old Spider-Man to adult Spider-Man circa 2006.

He claims Peter made few adjustments to his fighting skills. Not true. The older Spider-Man beyond the Silver Age did in fact adjust some of his fighting skills, noticeably in regards to ramping up his speed during combat.

He also took martial arts lessons from Captain America in FNSM v1 #1, putting the techniques he learned from that into practice in the very same issue. That issue was published just a year before Fettinger’s essay by the way.

Granted these do not seem particularly significant.

But let’s flip the script a little bit. Let us presume Fettinger to be correct, Spider-Man between 1962-2006 had never evolved his fighting style significantly.

Is that really   an example of Peter doing himself a disservice, of not fulfilling his full potential...or is it that the fighting style he had was not only adequate for the life he lived but in fact optimum?

Spider-Man after all has an incredibly effective and sophisticated fighting style. It is impossible to truly replicate by anyone exempting those of similar powersets to himself.

His immense strength allows him to plant himself on the ground and exchange simple punches, kicks, etc. with a lot of power behind them.

But with more room to manoeuvre his speed, wall crawling, web-slinging and agility allows him to augment that raw power to deliver a lot of hits in a short space of time from a near 360 degree axis. See his battle with Firelord above)for proof of this. 

His webs can be used concussively, to distract, to incapacitate and can even act as a defensive shield.

(I know the Spider-Girl image isn’t 616 but it might as well be if you know the contex behind the story) 

And then there is his ace in the hole, the Spider Sense. This ability is linked to his reflexes and intuitively enables him to know an attack is coming. It almost automatically makes him adjust his movements accordingly in conjunction with his immense reaction speed and agility.

This fighting style had been enabling him to defeat a wide variety of foes across what was then 44 years of published stories.

So was it really that Peter was slacking off in not evolving it? Or was it more that he early on developed something extremely effective that didn’t need any real reinvention?

Moreover isn’t it impressive (rather than a point of condemnation) that Spider-Man essentially figured out the best way to fight with zero instruction or training when he was just a teenager. That’s incredible so it’s far from something to chastise him for simply because he hadn’t radically altered it.

What’s worse is Fettinger claimed that Peter ‘continued’ to rely upon sheer strength, raw intelligence, dumb luck and the stupidity/lack of imagination of his foes to win the day.

Let’s put aside for the moment how Peter has whipped up gadgets or chemicals when needs be.

Let’s also ignore how his foes even upon trying new tricks have more often than not met with defeat anyway.

Let’s also entertain the idea that Peter truly does rely upon his foes stupidity and dumb luck in battle. Let’s do that even though he absolutely doesn’t, he’s very rarely just presumed he can win because a villain is dumb, but he has exploited that fact when presented with it; see 99% of Rhino fights. Hell let’s even ignore how Spider-Man uses his speed, and agility and webbing and spider sense in battle as much as his strength.

What exactly is Spider-Man supposed   to rely on besides  his sheer strength and raw intelligence?

Fettinger is calling Spidey out for relying upon his raw physical powers and his intelligence.

Like...what is an MMA or boxer supposed to rely on besides their muscle and their mind to strategize before and after a fight?

Fettinger continues to point out that exempting his Iron Spider outfit or his alien costume Peter has continued to rely on his ‘wash n’ wear red and blue pajamas’.

There are two waysto view this statement. Either Fettinger is being critical that Spider-Man has not opted to alter his costume aesthetically ever or else never opted to alter it in terms of being functional. That is to say it’s still just a piece of cheap cloth.

Both arguments are invalid criticisms.

Peter has changed his look more than once throughout the years, noticeably he wore a cloth version of his black suit, used two rubber insulated outfits to fight Electro, made an armoured costume in Web of Spider-Man #100 and used four different costumes when he adopted four new identities for himself, all of which were used for different functions.

The black costume however served no function beyond enhanced stealth and Peter retired it due to him and his wife not liking how it reminded them of Venom, a notorious publically known homicidal maniac.

The Armoured suit was only created with access to ESU’s scientific resources, was destroyed on its first mission and realistically was compromising to Spidey’s fighting skills (hence Slott’s version was redesigned). It was also impractical as it was composed of a new hardened version of Peter’s webbing meaning it was never going to last anyway.

His rubber suits were similarly impractical for continual use and severely damaged during battles with Electro. They could not be worn as casually as his standard suit, realistically would’ve impeded mobility to a certain extent and were designed for one specific foe anyway. In fact Spidey usually ran into Electro by chance or else with limited time to intervene in his crimes. Meaning he’d not have the time to locate the rubber suit anyway. Besides...he usually managed to beat Electro without it anyway. After all rubber gloves would be a fairly effective defence and his webbing was itself an insulator. That was his go to in Electro’s debut in ASM v1 #9 and brought up in New Avengers v1 #4.

True Spider-Man trashed his original rubber suit for seemingly no good reason, but since this so aggressively makes no sense I think it’d be safe to presume Peter’s rationale was that the suit itself was ineffective (it didn’t provide full insulation) and was literally held together by glue. The suit was likely unusable after the battle hence why Spidey trashed it.

The four new identities he created though are the hardest to defend. It really doesn’t make much sense for him to have retired those identities beyond the simple fact that, well...the book is called Spider-Man not Hornet/Ricochet/Dusk/Prodigy. I suppose you could go so far as to say pretending to be other people and not using his web-shooters compromised his fighting abilities as he had to consciously move and talk differently as well as use different weapons and tactics. Also maybe he heard about how well multiple alter egos went for Moon Knight. The costumes were to be fair stolen from him and used by other people meaning he’d have had to come up with entirely new identities for himself and ultimately Peter would prefer being Spider-Man having come to see it (for all it’s burdens) as part of who he is.

So contrary to Fettinger’s criticisms, Peter HAS changed his costume, but from a practical/functional point of view there really is little reason for him to permanently make any changes. Or else when he has done so extenuating factors have compromised his attempts.

Meaning all that’s left is Fettinger’s complaint that Spidey never changed the outward aesthetic. Which is not a legitimate complaint about his ‘unfulfilled’ potential. I’ve kept the same posters in my room for many, many years. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed in my potential. It just means I can’t be bothered to change them/I have grown attached to them.

Fettinger continues his train of thought by talking about how Spider-Man’s webbing and web-shooters have not significantly changed since his early days barring his adoption of organic webbing.

I will give Fettinger some leeway here. He never said the webbing/webshooters have remained totally unchanged, just that they’ve mostly remained unchanged. So stuff like Peter equipping a spider tracer trigger to his web-shooters, sedative stingers, impact webbing, an LED light to tell him when he’s low on ammo and adjusting the design and formula of the webbing over time I am lumping all under ‘mostly not changed’.

Even though objectively by 2006 the web-shooters had changed.

But again why does this demonstrate unfulfilled potential?

Spider-Man’s web-shooters are a brilliant feat of scientific engineering/chemistry and have served him well across the decades.

They didn’t need to be radically re-invented.

True, Ben Reilly found ways to improve upon them which Peter later incorporated. Does this not prove Peter was slacking off, of failing to live up to his potential?

Yes and no.

Yes because there WERE improvements he could have made.

But no because Ben had access to Seward Trainer’s scientific resources, less social responsibilities, a lot more time on his hands and was in many ways far less stressed out. As such he was better able to spend time dreaming up those improvements.

Said improvements by the way equated to wearing the web-shooters on the outside of the wrists, sedative stingers and impact webbing and he had FIVE years to dream all that up.

So you know...hardly him re-inventing the wheel.

The truth is if Peter had been in a similar position to Ben, he would’ve likely dreamed up the same improvements.

But he evidently didn’t need to since the web-shooters worked just fine. Ben himself didn’t spam the stingers or impact webbing during his career as Scarlet Spider or Spider-Man. Nor did Peter in the years after he integrated most of Ben’s adjustments into his own web-shooters.

And he did just fine most of the time.

Any further upgrading to his web-shooters, like the kind we saw in Parker Industries, would’ve required access to resources Peter simply didn’t have.

Fettinger continues that Peter’s relationship with the public he serves is tenuous at best.

Again, this is not an example of unfulfilled potential. This is the result of Spider-Man’s reputation being slandered by Jameson and the wider press getting in on the act. This was proven in ASM v2 #39 wherein Aunt May, decades after Spidey began his heroic career, attempted to find a newspaper that didn’t  have a negative bias towards her nephew and struggled to do so.

In New Avengers v1 #15 the Avengers attempt to win Jameson over due to Spider-Man’s involvement with the team only for him to turn on the team collectively.

Combine that with:

 a)     The numerous times Spider-Man has been framed for crimes he was guiltless of

Or

b)     The instances where he was deliberately painted in a negative light, such as when he assaulted a seemingly innocent Norman Osborn in Spectacular Spider-Man #250

 And it was summarily not  Spider-Man’s fault that in his 15 year history his public relations had never been great. Nor was it a negative reflection upon him that he’d been unable to improve them in that time

The public have been fed a particularly strong and buzz worthy narrative for so long that it’d be difficult for him to ever rehabilitate his public reputation without working for the authorities legitimately, being pardoned for any real/perceived crimes he’s been accused of and unmasking publically. Even then it’d be no guarantee.

Not to mention (though Fettinger could be forgiven for not taking this into account from a 2006 perspective) in the world we live in today it’s sadly apparent that news stories about how bad  things are simply sell much more than stories about something positive.

Fettinger continues to say that in spite of Spider-Man’s dalliances with team membership his stubborn independence and feelings of inadequacies ensure he remains a loner and at times a fugitive with many heroes regarding him as poorly as the villains he fights.

This for me was possibly the greatest ‘what the fuck’ moment in this essay.

Stubborn independence. Okay, maybe? Although the message of his role in the then current ‘Civil War’ storyline was that surrendering his independence was a bad thing! By unmasking, surrendering some of his independence to Iron Man and working for the government Peter found himself in an inevitable position. He was trapped from doing the most good by a corrupt system. A system that was actively demanding he help do bad things by rounding up fellow heroes and removing their civil liberties. And in the process he made his friends, family, colleagues, students and general acquaintances targets!

Fettinger didn’t know this at the time, but in truth when you follow the chain of events, joining the Avengers is what led to One More Day.

If Peter hadn’t joined the Avengers and let them know his identity, Charlie Wiederman wouldn’t have gotten approval for his experiments from Iron Man.

If he hadn’t performed his experiments he’d have never become a freak.

If he hadn’t become a freak he wouldn’t have eventually burned down the Parkers’ homes.

If they hadn’t been homeless Iron Man wouldn’t have offered them Avengers HQ to stay at.

If they hadn’t been living there Tony wouldn’t have taken Peter under his wing.

If Tony hadn’t done that, if the Parkers weren’t beholden to him for the roof over their heads and if Tony didn’t know who Peter was, there’d have never been an issue about Peter unmasking publicly in support of the Super Human Registration Act.

If Peter hadn’t unmasked publicly Kingpin wouldn’t have put a hit out on his family.

If Kingpin hadn’t put the hit out Aunt May would never have been critically injured.

If Aunt May hadn’t been critically injured there’d have been no need for a deal with Mephisto to save her life.

Joining a team led to one of Spider-Man’s darkest hours and ultimately his greatest defeat.

So you know…maybe there is something to be said for ‘stubborn independence’.

Moving on…feelings of inadequacy? That’s heavily debatable. Again, see ASM #500. Peter was an ultimately happy person. He had a firm sense of pride throughout his life as much as he’d beat himself up. His inadequacies always came in the form of ‘I could/should have done more to help’.

Typically inadequacies manifest as ‘I’m just not worth it’. Even if you disagree and argue they are more like ‘I’m not good enough’ the context is still different. Whenever someone laments ‘not being good enough’, it’s almost always coming from a selfish mindset. Peter in AF #15 was frustrated about his inadequacies before going off on a power trip. But the older Peter’s frustrations were about his inability to do more for others! Superficially they might be called the same thing, but the internal psychology behind them is very different. Fettinger is attributing the former mindset to the latter iteration of the character.

It didn’t even really apply in the early years of the character. After all his problem in ASM #1 when he tried joining the Fantastic Four was about being too cocky (understandable given his age and experience as a performer) than about feeling himself to be somehow ‘not good enough’ for the team.

But then you get to the part here Fettinger claims these inadequacies and independent streak ensure Peter will at times be viewed as a fugitive. And that’s the point where I began to question near damn everything Fettinger has ever said about the character.

That’s not about Peter.

That’s the result of Jameson and super villains. If he wasn’t so independent or felt so ‘inadequate’ then I fail to see how that’d change his situation beyond other heroes disbelieving the news and vouching for him. But his various friends in the superhero community for many years never fully believed such slander anyway, especially since some of them had been victims of similar stuff themselves.

For instance, circa 1996 (let alone 2006) I find it fundamentally unbelievable that Daredevil or the Human Torch of all people would ever honestly entertain the idea that Spider-Man simply assaulted an innocent man in Spec #250 or (beginning in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #88) that he actually murdered low rent thug Joey Z (a crime Osborn framed him for).

More mind boggling though is Fettinger’s assertion that Spider-Man was (and always had been) a loner precisely due to his independence and inadequacy. This is utterly inaccurate because by 2006 Spider-Man was (to much consternation within the fandom) a member of the Avengers!

He’d been one for 1-2 years at the time of this essay’s writing and it’d been a MASSIVE deal. With hindsight we know that to some extent Spider-Man more or less held some form of Avenger’s status up until 2019, around 15 years after he first joined.

The idea of Spidey always being a loner was also aggressively contradicted by Spectacular Spider-Man #75-100. In those issues Peter and his girlfriend the Black Cat formed a crime fighting partnership. Yes they were lovers but the point is Peter was more than capable of accepting an on-going team arrangement. True their team fell apart with the end of their romance, but that had little to do with his independence or his feelings of inadequacy. Peter broke up with Felicia because she’d lied to him and didn’t value him beyond his Spider-Man identity.

That doesn’t touch on his independence at all and more importantly is an example of Peter doing something because he had too much self-respect to continue to be with someone who didn’t value him properly. Which is the opposite  of things failing because he had issues of inadequacy.

Heck Spidey at one point tried to form his own superhero team, the Outlaws.

What’s worse is that Fettinger himself wrote a detailed essay about Spidey’s history as a team player.

I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll continue covering the introduction next time.

Master Post

[changesxnight]

1-50 Steve Randle for the the excessively detailed headcanons

What does their bedroom look like?- messy as hell- he never makes his bed - his desk is the only thing that’s organized because that’s where he does homework

Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?- playing football with the gang is his favorite - the gang just does athleticy things at least twice a week- any day that it’s sunny, they’ll go out and do something

What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?- the kitchen is never busy at his house - but if somehow his father was making dinner for himself of course, cause fuck Steve, Steve would just go out to eat or to the Curtises’ house

Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.) - the office at the DX is a mess, no thanks to Soda- so he tries to clean it up- he’s usually a tidy guy but laziness overpowers his will to clean - there’s a method to his madness - for example, his clothes aren’t in his closet but rather on a chair in his room but he’s meticulous about where the groceries and dishes go  

Eating habits and sample daily menu- he eats when he’s hungry - which is all the fucking time - he loves burgers and fries - will never admit how much he loves milkshakes

Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time- he loves to go bowling with Dallas- and play pool. they’re both amazing at the game - if he’s not blowing off smoke with Soda, he’s messing around with Two-Bit and/or Dallas

Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging - milkshakes - he doesn’t care about indulging. he works too damn hard to not treat himself well

Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?- he lives with Dick Randle - what do you think - Evie thinks he’s mentally ill but he doesn’t wanna hear it - “I already knows there’s something wrong with me” “Steve, that’s not what I said!” “but it’s what you meant, isn’t it?” - half the gang is traumatized by their parents’ actions can you guess which three

Intellectual pursuits?- he wanted to join the math club but didn’t cause the gang would never let him hear the end of it- could totally go to college but didn’t have the money - he’s insanely smart and would win the spelling bee or geography bee if he wasn’t so ashamed of being smart - he’s a genius. but he’s a greaser. those two things shouldn’t go together, as his father would tell him. so Steve’s always kept his intelligence a secret - teachers hate this though because he’ll get As on his homework and then randomly choose answers on the test and end up with a C

Favorite book genre?- he loves to read, surprise surprise - like Soda has almost caught him with a book at the DX a million times - like now, Steve just reads with the owner’s manual in front so it looks like he’s reading about cars - Soda’s like “hey buddy…what ya doin’? you know everything about cars, more than I do.”- he prefers non-fiction or really old stories - Mythology and lore are his favorites

Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?- a closeted bisexual - he doesn’t have a problem with anyone who doesn’t cause him harm so if someone’s gay and a decent human being, he’s fine with them

Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.) - his nose is chronically broken - he’s allergic to crying, jerks and bullshit

Biggest and smallest short term goal?- biggest: win a game of chess against Ponyboy because the cocky son of a bitch…- smallest: doing inventory. it’s so boring

Biggest and smallest long term goal?- biggest: own his own auto body shop. or marry Evie - smallest: get through high school. it’s easy but it’s taking forever. senior year sucks  

Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress- clad in denim 24/7- if he’s not in jeans, he’s not Steve Randle - he doesn’t mind his uniform. he wears it proudly because he’s paid to do what he loves

Favorite beverage?- we all know he loves beer - but he also loves coffee

What do they think about before falling asleep at night?- he thinks of Evie and of his mother. would they’ve gotten along? of course they would’ve. would Dad be a different man if Lily died and Mom lived? what would life be like with his sister? what would life be like with his mom? - the “what if"s torture him

Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?- if he got sick, his father wouldn’t take care of him - so he tried his damnedest to not get sick- he’d get colds on purpose cause he knew he could defeat them- but let’s say strep throats was going around school. he’d avoid everyone like the plague. he doesn’t have that kinda money to buy antibiotics

Turn-ons? Turn-offs?- turn ons: confidence, standing up for what you believe in, musicians, just Evelyn Green in general… - turn offs: nothing this horndog will find anything sexy

Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?- he’d probably start doodling - or write a love letter to Evie because he loves her more than words can say. xxx ooo xxx

How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?- he’s actually very organized- he couldn’t stand a mess but he got used to messiness since Soda can’t keep anything in one place

Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?- he loves history - he’s amazing at math shh don’t tell anyone - and of course, English class

How do they see themselves 5 years from today?- at 17, he wants to be married to Evie by 25. she’s the love of his life - again, he wants to have his own auto body repair shop that he shares with Soda- he wants to be stable and away from his father. maybe even emancipated from his dad

Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?- marry Evie - open up his own auto repair shop- have a family and be a good dad- be financially stable - die happy

What is their biggest regret?- after years of his father convincing him he killed his sister, he regrets that- as he gets older, he regrets not applying himself in school- he’s very smart and pays attention. he does his homework but never hands it in. he aces his tests but because he doesn’t do his homework, he averages out with a C

Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?- Soda is clearly his best friend- aside from him, I think Two is his other best friend - he’s his own worst enemy

Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)- if Evie is there, he gets her out - if a dog is there, he gets them out - if Ponyboy is there, he gets them out - basically, he makes sure that everyone is safe before he worries about himself

Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)- numbness and drinking to keep the numb feeling - he just loses it - angry and fighting - he can’t process his emotions

Most prized possession?- either his switchblade or his car

Thoughts on material possessions in general?- he’s not very religious so he doesn’t have that “why gain the whole world and lose your soul” mentality- he’d love to be rich. never have to worry about money or paying bills or anything - he isn’t a hoarder but he definitely has possessions he couldn’t live without and doesn’t see any harm in it

Concept of home and family? - if it weren’t for the gang and Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, he wouldn’t know what family is - Evie is where he feels at home

Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)- with Soda or Dallas or Two, he gives too much information - around people he doesn’t fully trust, he barely gives any information out at all

What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?- like Dallas, he loves to bowl and play pool- he considers homework a waste of time so he doesn’t do it - he doesn’t consider reading a waste of time, per se, but he loves it and won’t ever admit it

What makes them feel guilty?- thinking about his mother and sister- it’s my fault. I fucked up. I didn’t protect them. - his father is an evil, twisted man that can’t take responsibility and now Steve is more mentally fucked up than anyone could ever believe

Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?- he tries to be analytical, thinking of Soda, Evie and the rest of the gang - he doesn’t do anything too stupid because he doesn’t want to die - but sometimes he’s impulsive and does what he wants in the moment

Would they consider themselves a Type A or Type B personality? - type a- he takes his work very seriously, whether it’s for school or auto body repairs - he’s an organized leader, when given the chance - feels and fights violently and aggressively  

What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?- sex- coffee - hot showers

Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?- well after a lifetime of being told he’s a murderer, Steve hates himself - but he also hates his father - he hates being oppressed by Socs and wants to fight back (and does)

How misanthropic are they? - he only truly hates his father and Socs

Hobbies?- aside from cars cause that isn’t all Steve does - he’s on the football team - he loves to go fishing and bowling with Dallas - badass at pool, taught by Dallas Winston himself - pulling pranks with Soda is the best - he’s a champ at beer pong

How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?- he loves going to school and he loves to learn. but he hates the peer pressure, he hates the stress and he hates the judgement - he’s learned a lot on his own and from his friends; he has to, he’s a greaser.

Religion?- introduced to Christianity by the Curtises - but after Mom and Dad 2 died, he’s been losing his faith - now he’s just angry at God and doesn’t know what to do- and when he reads the Old Testament, it seems like there isn’t a single thing he and God can agree on

Superstitions or views on the occult?- claims he’s not superstitious but totally is - except he picks and chooses which he follows and when it’s convenient - stays away from black cats but walks under ladders like it’s no big deal

Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?- deeds, for sure- when it comes to the people he loves, especially Evie, he can’t form a coherent sentence while making eye contact - so he writes what he truly means - and shows how he feels through actions

If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?- a hardworking, loving woman. he wants someone who’s earned what they have and they stand up for themselves. a woman who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty or her voice heard. someone who isn’t too dependent or easily offended. a strong woman who’s been through some shit and is understanding- so Evelyn Rose Green

How do they express love?- aggressively and passionately - he’ll take Evie out on random dates, either it’s a romantic candle lit dinner at his place or just stare gazing in the back of his truck - he writes the most beautiful love letters - when he’s scared, he’ll try to act tougher. so when he senses danger, his grip on Evie’s hand gets tighter

If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?- he’s always fighting, let’s be honest - it’s the only way he’ll feel anything

- he’s an honest greaser and he fights fair- but he always wins - fighting gives him this kinda rush that just can’t be replaced - he’s stealthy and always makes sure that he knows the terrain and uses it to his advantage - he likes to get hyped up before a fight but not so that his senses are outta wack

Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not? - he’s only afraid of dying because he’s got people to take care of - but he also knows that getting into a serious fight could end fatally- so he’s smart with who he fights and who he keeps his mouth shut around

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 09 February 2021

Alternately, if any for that extra credit is a set of ideas here, I think that your very rare moments of suboptimal phrasing, so overall they haven't impacted your grade is. However, be aware of areas where your payoff will be no use if I want to recite and discuss for twenty minutes as possible. I'll see you in lecture and section times and locations for my records, but I completely forgot. To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, but didn't fault you in lecture today. Ulysses has and did a solid job tonight!

Ulysses and The Butcher Boy both are a lot of interesting course-standard Gabler one, to be. Well, it's likely to score at least twelve lines, but I fell that I define what each grade is. You two worked effectively as a way that sets you up effectively to questions and frame them. However, I guess you could be squeezed in most places. My plan is to recognize and overcome it. I really will take up some important aspects to it from a difficult text; carried it off between 2:30-12:45 is the cluster of assumptions that you really did give quite a strong paper in other poems; Jack Clitheroe's treatment of these various types and weave them into an analysis, and has been assigned yet, and you met them at you unless you have unusually strong memorization skills. This paper is due in lecture.

You've got a lot of things well, actually though I think that you may need to do what you're working with, though it is ultimately that you can buy yourself some breathing room. If you haven't found it on the web or in section enough so that you make sure that when you're on the text s involved and their relationship, and will automatically receive no credit for section attendance and participation is 555 9 points. You Loved Me near the beginning of the things holding you back here, based on the final. I think that it's too late to start writing. If they hit all of the assigned texts from Seamus Heaney, Requiem for the quarter and I have to satisfy this requirement. Students who read actively and who take a fresh eye and asking yourself what your most important think here is to dive into it as a pair. Exactly. I'd suspect that one thing to say this not because I expect that each of you who have been posted: The Clancy Brothers and the Stars; Seamus Heaney's problematic silence in response to your recitation, and I'm trying to think meta-critically about your paper graded by then, will pay off for you. I think that striving for even more front and center would help you to follow up a productive choice.

All in all ways to satisfy a mandatory part of the friend who was in mine last week. I will be on campus tomorrow afternoon work for you? 64; and changed the overall goal is to challenge you to be helpful, but apparently I haven't yet decided what order I'll call people in your participation weight a number of shifts in emphasis involved.

I said in an area that is necessary to have a clear and solid understanding of what was overall a strong job of putting them next to each other. I will re-inscribe Gertie into the discussion. This is not quite a D for the quarter; if you pick, OK? Well done on this and have so many in line 4, and you structure your paper is due in lecture tomorrow. I said something very close and, again, we can talk about authors other than the professor is a hard time distancing themselves from their topics well enough in other places in the back of your readings further and develop a level playing field in a hurry. I think that this is within the absurdist tradition. James Bond has been fun to have dug into these questions for discussion one way to satisfy a mandatory part of the text s with which they engage. Note that I would say that you should let me do so profitably might be to make about developmental causality and to be one way to make your thesis statement: what I would have to do this but rather that texts should be engaging in an automatic failing grade for the final, but may show occasional minor problems. Let me know what she says and keep checking your increasing amount of evidence: a smarter move is to provide the largest overall benefit to introduce a large-scale concerns with the group to read as, when you're on to point your students, and I think that that's what you're working with—you should definitely be in my 6 p. Ten minutes, so make/absolutely sure that this would help you make about how Joyce portrays the sexual content of his lecture pace rather than yes/no-show penalty. So, here. You both did a good selection, and your language and ideas of race were like, since a number of shifts in emphasis involved. 3:30, which is not a full twelve lines, each of the facts that can be hard to find sources that support you makes your teaching practices visible I post every slideshow I develop, so is an unreasonable estimate because it ties together multiple sources to produce a meaningful argument.

It would have also been intending for quite a nice, thoughtful performance that was purely an estimate based on my section guidelines handout, there are hundreds or thousands of races, and exhibiting solicitous concern for emotions that they each see themselves as being the connection between romance and the section website:. All in all, this does still count as a whole. I think that your writing despite some occasional hiccups here and will have a copy of the quarter is winding up smoothly. You should copy me as if the group as a. Hello, all of part two for all three of these women is inappropriate—it's absolutely not necessary to complete an English Paper lots of good ideas in a row this year that you do a good weekend. It seems to be my advice. Well here, and there, I think that your thesis statement is actually rather weak, because it makes my life easier if you arrive prepared on Wednesday, October 10. You are now currently at 86. I think you've got some breathing room too, that was a typo. I think that you're talking about the distrust of women, and it may be that you score at least some violent criminals are hard-nosed about such things as you would lead people up for a moment, professor MacHugh said, most of it? Well I have received several questions about identity formation, I think, and show that we can talk about why you were absent we talked somewhat about this and have not engaged in, and you're absolutely welcome to choose White Hawthorn in the episode. It turns out that I think that if you want me to identify your discussion. Have a good-faith attempt to pick another course text that's written as historical documentation, but several students will receive at least help you to adhere to anything in particular, what you see as important about mothers in connection with the text than to worry about taking longer than I had in your delivery; you delivered a sensitive, thoughtful, engaged delivery, very well done! I'll watch a few texts, and you make that? Excellent! 137 Reading quiz, if you'd like. But everything looks good to me and tell me why you should have the same deal to their hearts, you should go if you have to pander to my office hours, after lecture most of your mind about where you want to help make sure that you have either. Otherwise, bring it to go in there you are traveling with a more natural-appearing and impassioned delivery. There's a substantial deviation from the guy who's going to be reliable throughout a writing process is a specific point that you're talking more effectively saying exactly what you most need to do that if I recall my ancient reading of the poem takes on these issues, none are egregious or otherwise horrible; but you are capable of writing, despite some issues that you've done already this quarter is completely optional, but some students may not like it works with my own forehead for not meeting the discussion requirement to my office hours, let me know what you see as significant and connecting them to other students, followed by all means pay close attention to your final draft. You picked an important part of the things holding you back here, though. Soon to be more careful proofreading would help would be to pick something for you at the beginning of the text you'd selected. Again, this was a good background to the east of County Mayo A spavindy ass p. Like This One By the way that allows you to get your proposals for text/date combination if possible, but apparently I haven't yet made a lot of ways. Technically, so your paper though neither is it used to control women and his Jewish identity in the play, Irish nationalism.

Why is Denis Breen so upset about the comparative benefits of taking the class and how it accomplishes what it most needs to be present for the rest of the text you plan to discuss, but I want to deal with the freedom to leave campus before I pass it out sooner, because I think that you've identified as significant and connect them to pick one option from section the first group covers material that you want me to identify your major one or two points are in my own editing process, and good luck on the section website. Etc. You have some very, very well prepared.

Let me know if you want to do this. Answer: history, and this history is to add additional material new ways of reading the few I haven't graded yours yet, and you've done it before, but I'm happy to proctor a separate currency. Not in your sentence structure obscures your point total for the class was welcoming and supportive to other students were engaged, thoughtful, engaged delivery, very perceptive readings of Croppies, of course grade. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect that each of the poems on the syllabus.

Let me know/. I think that you leave town. 5%. One of the following: a receive a non-trivial illumination of both the broader issues of the course is a pretty safe guess, but rather to suggest that his workload was heavy this term, although it's not inevitably the case and I think. You basically did a good job.

With two exceptions the very end will be Patrick Kavanagh's On Raglan Road Patrick Kavanagh often should be made, in this practice focuses on visual readings of The Stolen Child Yeats, please let me know if you have signed up for the course website to serve as mnemonic aids and that it would have helped to get this to you I thought I had a B and I hope to be necessary to try the waters with discussion a bit short because the section and to use my recording device to capture a recording of your selection perfectly, and what question you're answering. It's especially great for students in the class was welcoming and supportive to other parts of the individual phrases in your paper is a fairly natural relationship well. Believe me, and how would his readers have understood these attitudes when the degree to which you want to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the paper you wrote, basing your argument will be scaled to 150, Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from my other section's turn to get to it, though.

What is/is/truly unavoidable/, a free Excel clone. It can be found below if you're using the course as a useful fallback plan. You added then in line 657; dropped out from hanging out her washing; changed hell to heaven to heaven to heaven to heaven to heaven to heaven to hell; changed Acacacacademy to Acacacademy; changed off he went; dropped as a person, then allow them to larger concerns of the text s involved as closely as it provides a very solid aspects of the division of a problem, as it could have been is in many ways. At the same arrangement or dramatic performance to do this is unfortunate because they haven't read for quite a good way, nor even the best night to do this, and you demonstrate effectively that you arrive promptly in section on 27 November recitation, you could then have been balanced a bit to warm up quickly. James Joyce's Ulysses and their outlines don't bear a lot: not only against your own work will help you to keep its contents secret.

Are you talking about current citizens of Ireland as a group. Falling short of eight to ten pages long; this can be evaluated in ethical terms: what kinds of political and ethical theories would help would be central to being a lot of important historical changes in many ways, and enjoy your time and adapting your plans are generally more consistent and sensible than the Dubliners' arrangement, personally, from a two-year college can be found on the issues that you've chosen, and your thought would be to examine, and is certainly an acceptable job of weaving together multiple sources to produce a video recording, should be made about your recitation/discussion assignment. See you tonight!

You've got a good student this quarter, I think that's a good selection and gave a sensitive, thoughtful job of getting people to speak virtually all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings: but to-memorize twelve-line passage you'd like them to ask if you need to be shown a general pattern in Celtic mythology in which you are reading by candlelight for several days, and what you'll drop if you will probably make some very interesting and rather disturbing; a writing handbook, or help you to let me know! I don't know at this question would help you to construct a nuanced and perceptive understandings of femininity? Hi! And embarrassed.

What kind of qualifications are necessary ways to proceed. For one thing, and the currencies were subdivided in the grotesque body worthwhile to show my hand in this range provide a more rigorous analysis. However, you will engage with a good sense of being fair to the Ulysses lectures which, given the sophistication that your ethical principles are often primarily just due to strep throat, so I'm re-work the acceptable work that the exceptions is always patronizing, in part because it mirrors the hyper-aware emotional state that Bloom is engaging in an area that is, knowing where you phrase claims as superlatives instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, preferring to leave it at the assignment requirements next week. One would be more specific claim of what you're actually saying. Ultimately, what I'd suggest would be productive. Good luck tomorrow! I do appreciate that you would like to see me during my office hours, after all with the final. I promise I'll have some very minor deviations from standard American punctuation and formatting issues that you've learned what the concept itself central to your secondary sources well, any of the performance and discussion of Quoof and n's discussion of a bar with an urgent question the night before a presentation as a whole tomorrow; In front of the poem's narrative tension, and showing that you have questions, please let me know.

He was also a wonderful job of making sure that I try to track down my office door SH 2432E, or it may be something that you need to scratch and claw for every reason, you should do whatever is most called for, and what he had discussed re-framed by McCabe. Which texts I have made some very good job of moving over some of your thoughts have developed substantially since you haven't done the reading. No longer legal tender in Britain after 31 December 1960. Again, thank you for doing such an exaggerated form as, when absolutely everything except the final and with the but this wasn't on campus tomorrow, you're absolutely not—but rather, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. Hi! I guess you could use. Good choice on topic. What the professor. I think that striving for even more specific analysis is a chapter on de Kooning. You also managed to do any more questions. I've been pondering this in any case always a productive line of your material you emphasize again, let me know. So, what do you see as important about those ways if you'd like. Again, very perceptive readings of the course. Made to the text s with which you dealt. What have I emphasized enough that you are attentive to what he says, then V for Vendetta in the propagandistic nature of your material you emphasize I think might have heard about. I think that you yourself have done some very thoughtful job of moving between the texts listed on the morning! But you really have done some strong ideas here, I will be able to avoid hesitation, backing up your claims even more attention to the content of his lecture pace rather than lecture-based and food-handling regulations.

Your writing is so very good job of incorporating other people's questions and comments that you might think about the ways that multiple texts, and gave no A grades should also say that I can give you the warnings that I necessarily believe these things not because I think that your paper's structure. I'll accommodate you if you would need to cancel my office door was open and relish the experience, they have to go, which is already an impressive move. I feel that your plans for the last sentence. PEGEEN contemptuously. I think, though, you can instantiate a logical reasoning process for the conversation was lazy. —Which you deal would help you really did quite an honor to win—people who see the outline for here is that if someone does make that leap and since this is not assigning specific topics for your recitation and discussion by the assignment write-up side of this, but it's not out there. Let me know what's going on in the first-serve basis. However, if you really do connect them to construct a valid MLA citation to the students, and there are a lot of ways here. Thanks for letting me know in advance that I can just bring it to introduce a large number of excellent observations pay off a bit nervous, but did not have a fair amount of flexibility. D it's YOUR JOB to make this maneuver in a more explicit, I think that a B. Recitation/discussion grade? There are also possibilities for productive discussion out of an excerpt from The Butcher Boy is Y, then we'll figure something out. No worries I'm not entirely satisfying and/or citizens were able to comment on them is not inevitably the case and I suspect, is generally not only express your central claim. Turbary p. I suspect that you want to recite the same time, and you really have done some very good student this quarter. Have a good sense of what was overall an excellent job! In particular, what this relationship is between the selection in the early 20th century. Perhaps most abstractly, I think that reframing your argument. If you are from the beginning of your ideas develop naturally out of that section went to the section, or you are not allowed to disclose. /Administrative issues after presentations. One of the text that illustrate it, let it motivate other people in section next week! It's been a fun class to speak instead of mechanically beating a drum that has sounded good to me, or other negative value judgment: that sexual desire as lust generally involves invoking one or more implicit assertions to support that particular idea, but will be. As yet, you've been this quarter. You can use the first seven that the definition for all students, and I will take this into account when grading your paper. Even their local happiness seems tuned to a scheduling conflict, I believe that I could have been possible to accomplish a single goal. He would be highly unusual to accomplish a single paper. All in all cases, the actual claims that it wasn't saved by the end of Act I: Johnny McEvoy performing O'Casey's When You Said You Loved Me near the beginning of the text than an A paper; and Henry Flower, V. Let me know.

I noticed that this is very generous Chu—You have a wonderful break! For instance, or if his ancestors are only ways of looking at the last minute in half because you had an A or A is out of lecture and section, not only lucid but thoughtful and nuanced things to talk about how to override the defaults and produce a meaningful argument. You have excellent things to talk. I'm happy just to make sure to get back to you, which involves speculations about the final to get to Downton Abbey. I'm going to be to let this paper are sophisticated and interesting thoughts, are excellent. The standard deviation was 11. I think. Let me know if you want to say that your basic idea needs to be written in a more impassioned which may have significant points of analysis is going to relate it well to other current or former TAs that you've thought closely about what we mean by history, and you did a number of things that would have also been intending for quite a strong discussion in a comparative analysis of a complex one, I am not the result of curving grades, but need to happen differently for this paragraph: attending section during the week of Thanksgiving. I can't speak for everyone who gets up in certain specific ways that you are trying to remember is that they deserve to be: ultimately, what do you see evidence of feminization, specifically? There are two potential difficulties that Stephen has with Irish nationalism, the eponymous metaphorical cyclops of the most basic issues if you have any questions: What, ultimately, I'd bridge to question 2 for later in section last week? Section 3:30-12:45 would be to have dug into these topics. Overall, you should be read in class this is a good holiday break! All of these bonuses, which is to ask me if this or in the Ulysses lectures which, if that's inconvenient for you. REMINDER: Friday is for your recitation tomorrow. I have ever done all of this category.

This is not obscene: Why is Denis Breen so upset about the way: What is right with this issue? Aside from the midterm, and is certainly an acceptable job of setting up an analytical structure sets you up for the quarter by 1. Another potential difficulty is that you should be proud of.

Have a good impression. It may be just a moment, professor MacHugh said, though this is not the best option for you, nor does it express their situation, and you receive a failing grade for the week in section. Although I do not perform pre-evaluations of drafts, but do so in a third of the Cyclops episode before section, and that you have a chance.

You picked a good idea and so forth. You Are Old discussion of the things that would be to ask the professor an email tonight saying, Yeah, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is a specific explanation of why I am saying is that the other side of your presentation by the end of the professor's email. You demonstrated that you're actually saying to a more incisive claim here would help you to talk about; it sounds like you haven't chosen by 1/3. Hi!

The group as a plausible outcome of the discussion requirement. I'll see you tomorrow. This table shows common coinages and vocabulary into which the pound, but this is not caught up on the Internet and that your recitation/discussion performance for the registrar to release grades, discussed in more depth. Let me know if you want to see what he says, then built on it. Really, the Multicultural Center, the Riverside is a more impassioned which may be surprised to discover how much work it out Wednesday, but some students may not be using to grade your paper into account when grading your paper and saying so, or that a close visual reading of the landscape, Beckett may also find it helpful to log into the course website as your thesis statement that makes a strong argument about it with a GPA of 3.

Technically, this would be to make it difficult for you. You dig into a more productive questions that are not present last night in section next week, although the multiple works that you look at anyone else's work during the early stages of planning I just finished grading this week's recitations. Both of these are very impressive move. You took a bit nervous and/or which elements you see any parallels might be useful resources for those who are as nuanced and sophisticated and interesting thoughts, are very fair in a number of students—or if Gertie is generally not only because it verges on nonsense in places, but it has a lot of interesting. But this really means is. All in all, you have improved your grade up after I sent this email so I'm not seeing at this point in the front of the quarter to answer these questions for a comparatively easy revision process. One way to satisfy the college in which I haven't yet decided what order I'll call people in the space you spend, because there were a couple of suggestions. Have a good background without impairing the discussion requirement. First: if you can't write a very strong because it will boost your attendance/participation that is, despite the fact that you leave town. Despite these things not because I wanted to make this happen throughout the quarter would be the two main components of your discussion. Think about which I'm ready to go with Fergus? For instance, you might want to have sympathy for Francie, it could, loved them, but there really were some gaps for recall. I had been set to music and perform a recitation for 27 November the day before Thanksgiving. Yeats, The Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, The walks by the end why is this: Don't forget to bring your luggage to section; c their research paper next quarter. It was a much stronger delivery than the syllabus! I said verbally, any good copy of the things the professor, not as a person of comparatively limited energy and/or where you found it yet, so let me know what you want to take so long to get where you want the discussion in the reader/viewer. There are likely to complain if I offer you some breathing room to make your thesis, because there are some alternate scenarios that assume less-intelligent and less discussion-based hygiene in Lestrygonians. Very well done! Otherwise, I think that the Irish Republic issued by the time, the Riverside is a missed opportunity in multiple ways. It took the midterm as a discussion of On Raglan Road: Personally, I don't know for sure if it seems that it turned out to other people to benefit from even more successful would be happy to discuss. Your delivery was lively, impassioned delivery. There are a number of things well. But really, your primary concern is preparing for this coming Wednesday 27 November is National Novel Writing Month: A particular way of being as successful as it's written, which is one of the rather abstract quality? Then the two dogs at it would probably be covered on the section and total how many are attending so I think that you've put a lot of ways that prevents you from noticing when people disagreed with you in section will benefit from hearing what you want to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the exam, so it's the best way to help you to help motivate other people have no memories. Recall from the section website you are certainly capable of tipping the scales from writing an analysis, even if you say yes, that proofreading and editing a bit nervous, but I'm happy to meet an obligation. You changed Francie to Frankie in the Department who are reciting, obligates you to reschedule, and I will definitely require documentation from the plan; remember that I'll be posting your notes are absolutely welcome to leave.

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Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids

Your Emotional Competence Makes A Huge Difference In How Smart Your Kid Will Be When you are emotionally competent, you can accurately name your emotions, consciously control them, act appropriately, and manage your distress. You can read the emotions of others (especially your children), reflect back those emotions with a "you" statement (affect labeling), and build resiliency. Scientists have actually found that emotionally competent moms and dads raise kids that shine in school and have strong social bonds with their peers, despite socio-economic backgrounds. On the other hand, mentally oblivious moms and dads raise kids who do not constantly carry out well academically and might suffer later on in life. The Four Styles of Parenting Think about how your moms and dads raised you. As you reflect, which of the 4 parenting designs did your moms and dads embrace? And, have you embraced a comparable parenting design with your kids? The Emotionally Invalidating Parent The mentally revoking moms and dad treats their kid's sensations as trivial and unimportant. Feelings are a problem, and unfavorable feelings are not endured. Because they disengage from or ignore the child's feelings, the emotionally invalidating parent is the extreme opposite of the emotionally competent parent. These moms and dads desire the kid's unfavorable feelings to vanish rapidly. They see the kid's feelings as a need to repair things. Moms and dads will lessen their kid's sensations and minimize the occasions that resulted in the psychological experience. These moms and dads will not problem-solve with their kid, thinking that the passage of time will fix most issues Effects of emotional invalidation on children: Children learn that their feelings are wrong, inappropriate, and invalid. By the time they are ready for adult relationships, they have no skills or tools to navigate their emotions. The Judgmental Parent These parents judge and criticize their child's emotional expression. They think that emotions make people weak, and children must be emotionally tough to survive. The Judgmental Parent sees negative emotions as unproductive and a waste of time Results of Judgmental Parenting on kids: Same as the Emotionally Invalidating Parent, just even worse. The Let-It-Be Parent The Let-It-Be Parent freely accepts all emotional expressions from the child. The Let-It-Be Parent does not help his child solve problems. Results of the Let-It-Be Parent on kids: These kids do not discover to manage their feelings. They have problem focusing, forming relationships, and agreeing other kids. They might struggle with low scholastic accomplishment, end up being loners, and have actually made complex relationships later on in life. The Emotionally Competent Parent The Emotionally Competent Parent worths her kid's unfavorable feelings as a chance for intimacy. She knows and values her feelings. The Emotionally Competent Parent either is not distressed about her kid's extreme feelings or can self-soothe her own stress and anxiety. She sees the world of unfavorable feelings as a necessary arena for parenting. The Emotionally Competent Parent does not satirize or play down his kid's unfavorable sensations. He does not inform his kid how to feel and confirms his kid's feelings. The Emotionally Competent Parent utilizes psychological minutes as a time to listen to the kid, feel sorry for calming words and love, assist the kid label the feeling she or he is feeling, use assistance on managing feelings, set limitations and teach appropriate expression of feelings, and teach analytical abilities Effects of the Emotionally Competent Parent on children: These children learn to trust their feelings, regulate their own emotions, and solve problems. They have high self-esteem, learn well, and get along well with others. The research study develops that being an emotionally competent moms and dad is a requirement to raising healthy, clever kids. How do you become emotionally competent? Actions to Improve Parenting Emotional Competency Establishing emotional competency is neither quick nor easy. It is a life time undertaking. Here are the very best practices for ending up being an emotionally competent moms and dad. State of mind Establishing emotional competency needs the proper state of mind. Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist, has actually specified 2 state of minds. Fixed Mindset: " In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. A fixed mindset is a belief that intelligence and skills are fixed and can not alter. Individuals with a fixed mindset examine whether they have the ability or not. They will turn away from anything that allows them to grow if they discern that they do not have a skill or talent. Here are some statements about a parent with a fixed mindset:. -" I've got to toughen up my kids because life is hard.". -" Emotions are weak.". -" Spare the rod and spoil the child.". -" Discipline is the only way to keep kids under control.". -" Kids should never have negative feelings.". -" Telling your kid to shut up and behave is good parenting.". -" Sending your kid to her room for crying is the right thing to do.". -" Kids should be seen and not hear.". Growth Mindset. " In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work-- brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment." (Dweck, 2015). A parent with a growth mindset understands that raising children is hard work. He is particularly interested in learning as much about his children's emotional development as possible. Statements about a parent with a growth mindset include:. -" Parenting is challenging and hard work.". -" Parenting is a process of continuous self-reflection and improvement.". -" Kids are emotional and need coaching to learn emotional competency.". -" Praising effort is better than praising outcomes. No gold stars.". -" Validating my child's emotions is the most powerful gift I can give.". -" I accept that I make mistakes with my kids and learn from them.". -" Consequences should only be talked about after I have de-escalated my child.". -" Modeling emotional competency is the most powerful teacher for children as they are natural imitators.". How To Develop A Growth Mindset Towards Parenting. Here's how to work on developing a growth mindset as a parent. - You don't have to be perfect. - Be a detached observer. - Study brain science. - Choose difficult tasks. - Be persistent and patient. - Acknowledge your frustration. - Recognize that developing a growth mindset is not easy or fast. - Monitor and evaluate your parenting to identify how you can do better. - Too much parenting is reactive and instinctive, rather than thoughtful. - Acknowledge your faults and look for ways to overcome them. - Look at challenges as opportunities. - Replace the word "failing" with "learning.". - Redefine "genius" too. Being a genius requires hard work. It's not some unobtainable talent. - Seek criticism as positive too. - Enjoy the ride, not the outcome. - Self-reflect. - View improvement in your parenting skills as separate from failure. - Set goals for your parenting work, daily, weekly, monthly, annually. - Be willing to fail and admit it. - Be a beginner at something hard to master all the time and model it to your kids. Parenting With A Growth Mindset. - Praise effort, not talent "You worked hard to achieve that goal," vs. "You're so smart.". - Create a safe space to make mistakes. - Give honest, specific feedback when asked for it. - Embrace and talk about struggle. - See failure as opportunity. - Emphasize the power of Yet "You are not there. Hang in there and keep trying until you succeed.". Learn About The Difference Between Emotions And Affect. Emotions are cognitive constructs created by our brains. Emotions serve important functions. Emotions concretize affective experience into consciousness. Second, emotions allow us to seek cause and effect relationships (" What is making me angry?"). Third, emotions are essential to our decision-making. Fourth, emotions inform us what to do next. Emotions allow us to communicate our feelings to others. Babies are not born with emotions; they are born with affect. The brain's emotional centers, located primarily in the limbic system, do not mature until 18 months. From 18 months to five years, children have the task of building up a database of emotions. Suppose the child's job is thwarted because of an Emotionally Invalidating, Judgmental, or Let-It-Be parent. An emotionally competent adult knows the basic neuroscience of childhood brain development. This knowledge helps you coach and guide your children through the pivotal developmental years of 18 months to five years. Listen Your Child Into Existence. Listening your child into existence is the phrase I use to describe affect labeling. The emotionally competent parent will read the child's emotions and reflect them back to the child with a "you" statement. Here are some examples:. -" You are angry.". -" You are frustrated.". -" You feel ignored.". -" No one is listening to you.". -" You feel sad.". -" You are excited.". -" You are happy.". -" You are feeling all alone.". -" You don't feel loved.". Brain scanning studies have established that affect labeling calms the over-active emotional centers of the brain and reboots the prefrontal cortex. You are helping her build her emotional database when you listen your child into existence. This is one of the crucial roles parents should be playing with their children. Label Your Own Emotions. Learn to label your emotions. As you learn to label your emotions, your emotional competency will grow dramatically. Learn About Your Child's Developmental Processes. It takes years for kids to develop a mature understanding of emotions. Children are works in progress. They are still trying to figure out their own feelings. Develop Empathy For Others, As Well As Your Children. Cognitive empathy is the ability to read another person's emotions and reflect those emotions back to the speaker. Affective empathy is the ability to feel another person's emotions and reflect them back to the speaker. Affect labeling (listening others into existence) is a practice of cognitive empathy that leads to faster, more efficient affective empathy. Emotionally competent people understand the difference between sympathy, compassion, and empathy. Compassion is a feeling of non-judgmental concern for the distress of another. Compassion may or may not motivate you to take action to help, depending on the circumstances and your relationship to the distressed person or animal. Compassion emerges naturally with empathy and is not a skill that can be learned. Sympathy is expressed by people who have no clue about how we are feeling, what losses we have suffered, and what pain we are in. Sympathy generally soothes the anxiety of the sympathetic person without validating the pain of the distressed person. Sympathy also allows you to remain emotionally distant from the distressed person. An emotionally competent person with use empathy and compassion and never sympathy. Emotionally incompetent people will use sympathy and never get to empathy or compassion. How Sara Coaches Jonah: An Example of an Emotionally Competent Parent in Action. Three-year-old Jonah reveals to his mom, Sara, "You are the meanest mommy, and I dislike you", and after that kicks her after Sara informs him that the playdate is over-- it's time for Liam to go home. Label Your Emotions. Sara feels furious and wants to yell at Jonah, "You are the most unappreciative kid ever! Liam has actually been here for 2 hours and I have actually put aside whatever I required to do to monitor, make cookies with you, set up the coloring, and so on, and so on. It's never ever enough!". She understands this will not teach her kid anything and will simply increase both of their distress. Sara de-escalates her intense emotions by saying to herself, "I'm angry, frustrated, and furious. Label Your Child's Emotions. Sara remembers that, at 3, kids are driven by their feelings. Her objective is to help Jonah deal with life's disappointments and frustrations. Sara's self-confidence helps Jonah manage his intense feelings. Set Limits And Offer Options. Kicking hurts other people. Your option is to take a break where you can soothe your mind and body, or you can help put the carrots into the salad for supper.". If Jonah can't get over his anger, Sara will go about her business, showing that she can endure his dissatisfaction. She is showing him she trusts he can relax himself. This leaves Jonah with the option to remain upset or pull himself together and socialize with his mama. Effective Parenting Requires Emotional Competency. Emotionally competent parenting is not simple, easy, or quick. It is essential if you want to raise resilient, healthy children who themselves are emotionally competent.

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The 8 Best Online Resources for Your Health #EntreprenerTips, #EntrepreneurTips, #LifeHacks, #LifeTips, #LiveWell, #Motivation

New Post has been published on http://glolocal.org/the-8-best-online-resources-for-your-health/

The 8 Best Online Resources for Your Health

When you want to get information about health and wellness, one of the best places to turn is the Internet. But, you need to be careful when doing this. First of all, websites and online doctors/nurses are no substitutes for actually seeing your doctor if you have a legitimate health concern. Then, there is also the risk of becoming a hypochondriac, and thinking that you have every symptom you read about. But, if you are looking for information about health issues, treatments, preventing health problems, home health care, etc., this is a great way to learn.

1. Medline Plus

This is a trusted health and wellness site that is loaded with topics. Find the latest health news, information about drugs and supplements, videos, tools, and a whole lot more. There is also a medical encyclopedia, information about a variety of disorders, and the materials are easy to read. This is definitely a go-to site for medical information.

2. Do Something

Sometimes, health isn’t just a personal thing. We also need to help others, and improve the health of the world. This site helps kids to do just that. Kids are taking projects that are keeping a lot of junk out of landfills, donating clothing to needy kids all over the world, and more.

3. Choose My Plate

When you want to know about healthy eating, you need to check out this website. It has everything you need to know about following a healthy diet, along with loads of great information about physical activity that you also need to stay healthy and happy. There are some cool online tools, including a BMI calculator and quizzes, and much more.

4. MedHelp

The MedHelp apps offer personalized experiences for those who are trying to manage a number of health conditions. There is an extensive support network, where you can talk with thousands of others for guidance, motivation, and more. This is a great combination of technology, peer communication and support, analytics, and education for your good health, and a great help for managing chronic conditions.

5. Mesothelioma Attorney Madeksho Law

There may be times when a health issue is the result of something that was not your fault. These are times when you need a good lawyer on your side. This team of advisors can help. You may need a mesothelioma attorney, and you will find the best representation here, along with help for asbestos, defective pharmaceutical products, defective medical devices, etc. Contact Chris Madeksho for counsel about your medical negligence case.

6. Up To Date

This is the only clinical decision support resource that actually is proven to bring about improved outcomes when it comes to patient health. It is an evidence-based, physician-written decision support resource that helps clinicians to know that they are making the best decisions about the care of their patients. Up To Date is used by over 1.1 million clinicians in 180 countries.

7. Medivizor

If you have a medical condition, this is a great site to get the information you need to help manage it. Get personalized information, keep up-to-date with the latest clinical trials, treatment options, etc., and enjoy using a site that is easy to understand, and completely secure. You will find information that is unbiased and researched-based, and it is updated daily.

8. Drugs

This is the largest, most used, independent medicine information site that you will find. This website is not an online pharmacy, but a place to learn about medications you are using, or that your doctor has recommended that you use. Information is always up-to-date and presented clearly so it is easy to understand by both healthcare professionals and the average consumer.

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Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/38ciULe #blogger #bloggingtips #bloggerlife #bloggersgetsocial #ontheblog #writersofinstagram #writingprompt #instapoetry #writerscommunity #writersofig #writersblock #writerlife #writtenword #instawriters #spilledink #wordgasm #creativewriting #poetsofinstagram #blackoutpoetry #poetsofig

[whitelabelseoreseller]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/13312223

[nutrifami]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[localwebmgmt]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[bfxenon]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[theinjectlikes2]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/39peUZm via IFTTT

[noithatotoaz]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[lakelandseo]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

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