Claire Blue Ideas, LLC

A marketing ecosystem is complex and always moving – content flowing in and out, constant communication with potential business, website visitors morphing into humans in the sales office, Twitter followers converting into web leads. Sometimes the breadth of all that is going on feels so overwhelming, we have a tendency to bury our heads in the current project without looking at how it fits into the big picture.

If you own a business, the idea of free marketing looks like a grasshopper to a hungry brook trout — too big to swallow, but so damn tasty. You are on a budget, understand the value of marketing, you are crafty and you know if you could just make the time, you could do it yourself.

This photo was taken at the Atocha Station in Madrid, Spain in 2004 after a bomb destroyed a train from Seville, killing 191 passengers and wounding 1,800. This event touched me specifically because I was on the train prior, on my way to meet my parents in Madrid. Whenever I’m feeling bogged down by the grind, this event reminds me to take a moment, breathe, and be utterly thankful.

Beauty in the construction of even oldest cities didn’t happen by accident. It took planning, vision, creativity and finesse. Building a website is no different than constructing a building. You wouldn’t trust the finish to an amateur, or even yourself, would you?

One of the best ways to increase your ranking on Google is by linking up with other websites with content like yours. The way Google sees it, if users click through to your site from another site, the user has found that link useful. And if they stay and look around, even better. Google rewards that user behavior by increasing your site’s search ranking.

In a world where everything seems to blend together, it’s hard to stand out. Not just on Google, but in the marketplace. Nobody cares how pretty your website is, or how high you rank for keywords, or how gorgeous the interior of your shop is if it’s not relevant to them.

Accessibility in technology has created this amazing web of interconnected systems. Where your different marketing platforms can be used to reach different audiences, but function in unison. This idea does not stem from automatically tweeting out your Facebook ideas.

How do you keep in touch with your friends and family? Do you systematically email them, shoot your friends a text here and there to say what’s up? Do you send holiday or birthday cards, post on their Facebook wall?

Of course any SEO company will argue with me that that’s all that matters. But in my experience in marketing and in life, loyalty and interest stems from one thing only – trust. What makes you stand out is the quality of your product and trustworthiness of your marketing. Are you a spammer who spends money putting fake reviews on Yelp? Or do you really have the best flan in town.

All of your online marketing efforts are interconnected, and not just by links. They are connected by content and user interaction. The point of having a website and a Facebook page and a Twitter account and a blog and a…