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Everyone would love to be a little bit better in almost every facet of life. Once you get out of grade school, it’s very rare that you score 100% on anything, whether the test is of the multiple choice variety or a real-world challenge. We could all use to be a little faster on the football field, smarter in the boardroom, friendlier at the party or handier in the home.

Things are no different in the world of search marketing, especially for any company not called Google. The pursuit of self-improvement is not only a reality for the major players in Internet marketing but a necessity for competitiveness in the future. In fact, many feel–and I agree with them–that it has been Google’s unending quest for improvement that has made it so successful.

In today’s edition of the Tues News, we’ll take a look at some of the ways that people and companies can help themselves improve and we’ll keep in mind that what’s good for the goose is often good for the gander. Perhaps some of these tactics can be useful to you as well! Let’s get going:

• Find your shortcomings: One of the first things that someone on a self-help kick should do is identify the things that they are currently doing wrong. A lot of the time, what you’re doing wrong may not seem wrong, but when your goal is to please others–say, sell a product to clients–what you think is important may not, and often doesn’t, line up with their priorities. Search Engine Watch released this study on cart abandonment that shows that the top reason that users leave online stores with items sitting in their cart is due to high shipping costs. Even if you don’t think that your shipping costs are high, you may find that raising prices in order to lower shipping costs has a positive effect. Always be willing to try new things! [Search Engine Watch]
• Find ways to get ahead: In addition to recognizing areas of improvement that currently exist, we should always be looking for ways to innovate to get us ahead of the competition. Twitter, despite all of its success, has yet to monetize particularly well. This week, though, Twitter announced the introduction of “real ads” as they are described by Marketing Pilgrim. Even though ads do as much harm as good, it was important enough to Twitter to explore real ads as a revenue driver in order to continue to provide a useful product. Even though everyone was happy with Twitter without ads, it was important enough for Twitter to try new directions in order to stay ahead of the curve. [Marketing Pilgrim]
• Get advice from others: Sometimes, identifying what you’re doing wrong and what you aren’t doing that could be helpful is the hardest part of the equation. It’s difficult to get a user’s or client’s point of view if you’re neither a user nor a client. So, what do you do? Well, in Yahoo’s case, Ad Age decided to ask the audience how to fix Yahoo. Unfortunately, when you have a company with as much breadth as Yahoo, when you ask for opinions, you’re going to get a lot of them and some of them are going to conflict. “Readers’ suggestions ranged from personalization and an emphasis on fun to a debate on whether to keep the brand’s signature purple.” Sounds like Yahoo has a lot of work to do! [Advertising Age]

Self-help is a bit of a buzz word nowadays. Everyone is looking to improve in one way or another but we seldom know how and even less often are willing to put in the necessary work to do so. When you’re going up against the likes of Google, though, it is imperative that you constantly explore new avenues of self-help or risk being left in the dust.

Truthfully, though, self-help is a worthy cause to pursue even if your competition isn’t Google. If you aren’t working to better yourself, then you’re standing still. Even if your competition is only moving at a snail’s pace, if you’re not moving at all, then they have an infinite advantage over you.

Thanks for stopping by. Read up on and keep up with the online world; keep reading Tues News! Catch ya later!

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