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Why Answers Are Hard To Find On The Internet · Inside Strategic Relations

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Are you getting reliable answers? Hi? This adjustin hit from
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the Center for Strategic Relation. I'm noticing a trend over
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the years. I first got on the Internet back in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and there were used groups, there were
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  Speaker 1: bulletin boards, there were all kinds of ways to ask
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  Speaker 1: questions and to exchange information. And I've noticed the trend
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  Speaker 1: over time that that has continued. But one thing significant
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  Speaker 1: has changed about that. When the Internet first started, many
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  Speaker 1: of the message boards and bulletin boards were private, and
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  Speaker 1: in fact, you had to verify or be somewhat crudentialized
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  Speaker 1: before you could answer questions. Many of the boards were
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  Speaker 1: also very niche focused, so the focus they were interested
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  Speaker 1: in that topic were usually subject matter experts of some kind.
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  Speaker 1: But today there are answer boards like answer about yahoo
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  Speaker 1: dot com and the different places where you could ask
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  Speaker 1: your questions and get back answers from just about anybody.
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  Speaker 1: And I want you to do this exercise one time
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  Speaker 1: to convince yourself of the complete lack of value of
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  Speaker 1: such a resource. I want you to ask the question
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  Speaker 1: about something to which you specifically know the answer, something
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  Speaker 1: that it's subject matter related, something that has a general interest,
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  Speaker 1: Because if you ask a specific question. By the way,
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  Speaker 1: you'll never get it answered because the people who are
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  Speaker 1: answered you don't have any specific skills. But ask your
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: question to which you know the answer, and then look
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  Speaker 1: at the diversity of responses, look at how the responses
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  Speaker 1: range from completely wrong to close to in some cases correct.
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  Speaker 1: And don't get me wrong, some of these services are great. However,
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  Speaker 1: are you saving any time asking a perfect stranger or
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  Speaker 1: the general public the answer to an important question in
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  Speaker 1: your business? For example, a lot of people will ask
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  Speaker 1: search engine questions, but I say, I ask them do
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  Speaker 1: this exercise. Ask the search engine about a topic to
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  Speaker 1: which you absolutely know the answer. In fact, you may
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  Speaker 1: be a subject matter expert yourself. This is useful in
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  Speaker 1: a couple of ways. But one it'll convince you that
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  Speaker 1: there's not every answer on the internet is even worth considering.
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  Speaker 1: And then it actually does take a lot of time
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  Speaker 1: to find real answers on the internet. If you just
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  Speaker 1: want any answer, that's great, it's everywhere. But if you
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  Speaker 1: are real authoritative response based on experience, if you want
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  Speaker 1: to authoritative information based on practical implementation, that's great, You're
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  Speaker 1: gonna have trouble finding it. But if you want just
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  Speaker 1: you know, any old answer to fill in a blank
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  Speaker 1: on a college paper. Yeah, you could. You could find
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  Speaker 1: on the internet. Second thing you're going to discover is
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  Speaker 1: that you won't always find the credible sources that you
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  Speaker 1: know about. So there's all this talk about search engine optimization,
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  Speaker 1: there's all this talk about you know, content is king,
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  Speaker 1: but the people who really have answers. Do you think
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  Speaker 1: they have a lot of time to sit around in
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  Speaker 1: new thought leadership? I think they have a lot of
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  Speaker 1: time to sit around and do a blog posts and
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  Speaker 1: other things. No, most of the content on the Internet
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  Speaker 1: is in place because of a back end financial interest.
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  Speaker 1: For one, Google encourages you to create content because Google
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  Speaker 1: is a search engine that helps people find content. If
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  Speaker 1: there's no valuable content for people to find, search engines
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  Speaker 1: are out of business. Websites like answer Yahoo answers in
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  Speaker 1: different places like that. They encourage people to ask questions
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  Speaker 1: and answer questions because if nobody's answering any questions, nobody's
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  Speaker 1: gonna ask any questions. Are Many of the content and
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  Speaker 1: advertising networks encourage you to create niche based or specific
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  Speaker 1: content so that they can show their keyword latent, average tising,
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  Speaker 1: or the keywoid based advertising. Even in the thought leadership world,
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  Speaker 1: those who perform thought leadership meaning those who blog, those
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  Speaker 1: who use social media to share their ideas, those people
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  Speaker 1: also want to justify their own behavior by encouraging other
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  Speaker 1: people to do it. Now, as a critical thinker, as
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  Speaker 1: someone who is really focusing their resources on what really
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  Speaker 1: matters in the profits of their business, you want to
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  Speaker 1: ask yourself, is following what these people are advocating? Is
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  Speaker 1: it working? Can I test it against what I'm doing already?
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  Speaker 1: Does it generate or produce a monetary value for the organization?
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  Speaker 1: Does it have direct impact on what it is that
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  Speaker 1: we do see? These are all critical questions you should
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  Speaker 1: ask yourself before or you go spend three hours searching
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  Speaker 1: for something on the internet. And in my particular case,
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  Speaker 1: i am into permaculture as a hobby. Before I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to spend hours watching two or three minute videos on
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  Speaker 1: the internet, I could just go buy a DVD program
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  Speaker 1: and maybe spend fifty bucks at the most buy a
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  Speaker 1: DVD program. I could take a design course which is
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  Speaker 1: about nine hundred and make twelve hundred dollars. And if
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  Speaker 1: I'm able to do that all at one time without
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  Speaker 1: a lot of delays. I'm actually saving a lot of time.
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  Speaker 1: Remember when we measure costs, we want to measure the
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  Speaker 1: actual dollar cost and time committed against either the everyday
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  Speaker 1: rate or your billing rate. Because it's critical to understand
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  Speaker 1: that it does cost you money to search the internet,
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  Speaker 1: it does cost you money to send emails. It does
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  Speaker 1: cost you money to not have answers that you need
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  Speaker 1: for bottom line results in your organization. So take the challenge.
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  Speaker 1: If there's a topic to which you are an expert,
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  Speaker 1: to which you absolutely know the answers, and you know
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  Speaker 1: everybody's an expert in something, go online, ask the question
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  Speaker 1: and see what kind of ridiculous responses you get. And
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  Speaker 1: that's because everybody's answering them now. The resources are available
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  Speaker 1: because it serves the needs of search engines, it serves
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  Speaker 1: the needs of advertisers, it serves the needs of various outlets,
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  Speaker 1: and it also serves the needs of the people involved
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  Speaker 1: because those who think they have information or know they
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  Speaker 1: have information, they want to share it. That's why I
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  Speaker 1: do these audio programs. I share these things with my
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  Speaker 1: members because I want them to be smarter. I want
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  Speaker 1: them to be able to get more from their business.
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  Speaker 1: And I want them to save time. So rather than
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  Speaker 1: searching the internet, I spend a lot of resources. I
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  Speaker 1: don't actually do it myself. By hire people who are
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  Speaker 1: indexers and people who resent information to catalog and index
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  Speaker 1: and cross reference the materials that I have available. And
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  Speaker 1: if I can't get something up online fast enough, I'll
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  Speaker 1: have a put a reference in and then somebody in
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  Speaker 1: the office will go research that out of the unpublished materials.
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  Speaker 1: But the key is is you've got to look for
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  Speaker 1: answers that matter to your business, and you're not always
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  Speaker 1: going to find them on the internet. I've had much
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  Speaker 1: more productive days just going down for the public library.
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  Speaker 1: Get ten books on a subject. Now, if an author
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  Speaker 1: is going to take the time to put together a book,
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  Speaker 1: they got to know their information. They're not always going
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  Speaker 1: to know their information. But if you get ten books
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  Speaker 1: on a subject, start with a list of questions, you'll
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  Speaker 1: most often find an answer that you can test in
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  Speaker 1: your organization. You'll find out from the test whether the
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  Speaker 1: answer is right for you. But the bottom line is
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  Speaker 1: a proper test is going to tell you more than anything.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, you could just make up an answer and
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  Speaker 1: test it and see if it works. Now, that's how
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  Speaker 1: Commas Edison invented a light bulb. Really, isn't that difficult.
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  Speaker 1: The bottom line is, folks, know where you're going for
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  Speaker 1: your information. Look for quality information, look for actionable information,
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  Speaker 1: look for resources to do it for you. Look for
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  Speaker 1: ways to know an answer is good by testing it
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  Speaker 1: against your existing situation. I could go in through this
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  Speaker 1: a little bit more about it's just a trend that
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  Speaker 1: I'm noticing that could could negatively impact your business, especially
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  Speaker 1: because a lot of employees will just go to the
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  Speaker 1: Internet and try to find an answer, wasting hours and
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  Speaker 1: hours when they could have just bought a book, or
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  Speaker 1: they could have just went to the library, or they
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  Speaker 1: could ask somebody who's a subject matter expert. Them pay
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  Speaker 1: the toll to get the right answer, because before I
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  Speaker 1: here's the bottom line. You're gonna pay either way. You're
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  Speaker 1: gonna pay for the hours and hours of searching on
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  Speaker 1: the internet, or you're gonna pay to buy a book
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  Speaker 1: and get it shippy overnight and just get the answer anyway.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I'm just in Hitt with the Center for Strategic Relations
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  Speaker 1: in hit Publishing director saying, yes, you can create and
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  Speaker 1: key profitable customers while turning every business relationship into profits guaranteed.
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  Speaker 1: This has been programmed I zero five one six a's