The following posts were made in July 2008. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.

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I was having a quick conversation with the Captain today about how it is much preferable to work with clients who "get it" when it comes to the kind of services we (Room 214) provide.

I think a lot of companies in the SEO and SEM space enjoy taking refuge in the educational side of the business. They strike some success for a few clients, and suddenly are equipped to preach best practices for $200/hour and up.

The same thing is happening in the social media space. The anecdotal theories are seriously unending. "Experts" whore the speaking/conference circuit as a primary means of getting business. I don't fault them, really. The best way to learn, after all, is by doing.

What's really rewarding (and in line with my original point of this post) however, is when you get to work with a client who knows enough about what you do to hold your feet to the fire.

When James and I first started working with Strategic Media, we used to get irked by Brett Astor's needling of how and why we were approaching his search marketing efforts the way we were. He wanted this report, and that report, and what seemed to be an explanation at every turn.

The result of his actions, though annoying at first, proved to make us better service providers. We learned to embrace the nature of his kind of effect on our business. Today, we look to him as more of a friend than a client -- with no less expectation in terms of what we must continue to provide if we expect to keep his business.