Dallas Business and Marketing Blog

American Express has already bashed SEO Professionals or as they put it “so called SEO” so now I guess it is time for a bit of return fire. Seriously though this is all in good fun.

Today I got several solicitations from American Express, one for Franklin Spirko Media to get a gold card, one for a client we are working with and are listed as their “media address” and a third for Franklin Spirko MEDICAL to get the much publicized Plum Card. Yes I said medical and no there is not another division of Franklin Spirko in the medical industry, no such company exists.

Now that is just a typo right? Well not exactly you see according to Amex, not just anyone can get a Plum Card and the people at American Express seem to feel that Franklin Spirko Medical (which does not exist) is special enough to get the very special Plum Card. Now look we all know this is marketing spin at its’ finest. A sense of elitism by the customer, created by a color, an admittedly great marketing plan and a 185 dollar a year fee (waived in year one of course).

However, may be before American Express and their so called small business specialists (turn about is fair play you know) go around bashing SEO as a legitimate marketing technique they may want to look at whoever is providing them their “so called mailing lists”.

So what happened to all of these solicitations? Just like anything from American Express until they rescind their bashing of my entire industry, they quickly met with the office shredder.

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We have had a great week for our new Sales Director, Brad Hermett and with his assistance we have added two new clients.  The interesting part is both have a connection to us via our blog.

The first new client is VIP Reality who has done great things with SEO on their own, they currently are doing great with the Dallas Market but they also have a company to run, clients to serve etc.  So their president (Richard Soto) has given us the opportunity to start working with them on their new San Antonio Real Estate site.

How did I first meet Richard?  Via this very blog as he was doing some link building for his own company and interacting with the local business community here in Dallas - Fort Worth.

Our next new client is Tom Sadler owner of Executive Press a Dallas Printing Shop that has made a strong commitment to running an environmentally friendly company.  We will be doing some basic optimization and analytics services for Tom and we are also already quoting him to update the look of his site and take over his hosting.

While I met Tom initially because we choose him as our vendor to do some printing work for two of our clients there is still a blogging story in this relationship.  While Tom is not quite ready to start blogging himself just yet I did a post last week about meeting him and his commitment to the environment.

So here are two instances where blogging was a part in developing relationships that have led to new business and new partnerships.   Blogging is a very powerful marketing tool.  The key though is to make it part of true relationship development, this is not like casting a wide net.  In both instances these were exceptional organizations with something special about them.  They were both “blog worthy” even if we never directly worked with them.

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