I’m very excited to turn the page in my life and begin a new chapter!

I will be working at SEO.com, a search engine optimization firm in Salt Lake County and one of the fastest growing companies in Utah. In March 2011, Website Magazine named SEO.com the best SEO agency in the world (ahead of hundreds of competitors). I consider it an honor to have been offered a position, and it has been a pleasure accepting that position.

What does that mean for the company I founded in 2008, YEA-NAY Marketing? Part of the reason I took the position I have is because I’m burned out doing my own business these past 3 1/2 years, and it is time for a change for me. I was struggling to keep up with YEA-NAY, and revenue never grew at a fast enough pace to keep up with the mountain of work to do. YEA-NAY Marketing will effectively shut down. We’ll be writing to individual clients within the next 24 hours to let them know what is going on to make sure we don’t leave anyone hanging.

As for what the partners of YEA-NAY will be doing… I was the last full-time hold-out at YEA-NAY, so we’re now all employed full-time at various companies. We’ve been developing some content sites for over a year, including a couple directories and blogs. We’ll continue developing those web properties generating revenue on advertising and affiliate networks. It will be a more relaxed and less risky outlet for our entrepreneurial ambitions.

If you or anyone you know is still looking for marketing services, feel free to email me and I can send you to amazing companies with whom I have worked. I love to connect people together and make sure people get what they’re seeking.

Thanks for your support (whoever you are reading this) over the years! Don’t worry, I’ll keep blogging here, and maybe even a little more frequently now.

I’m starting to get somewhat annoyed with/tired of seeing tech company videos, particularly SaaS companies, because the originality of their videos is, well, non-existent!

I realize many of them are probably produced by the same company or group of companies, and one person sees one they like produced by someone and copies the concept/format, but they are becoming so boringly (yup, it’s a word) predictable, it really is starting to be painful to me.

Here’s the format:

<engaging, somewhat personally focused- question describing a fairly common problem “Have you ever…?”>

<sometimes: “What if ..(insert ‘imaginary’ solution to problem)..?”>

<”welcome to ________(software name)”>

<________(software name) makes it easy to ________(particular activity)>

<”to get started create an account….”>

<next, _________ (first step in configuring software)>

<sometimes:  additional setup steps>

<now you’ll be able to _______________(solves problem)>

<brief overview of the cool things you can now do…>

<short statement why this software would benefit you>

<usually a short, specific call to action telling the viewer to try the product (free no-obligation trial, etc.)>

This model is getting really old, however. I still think one of the best videos I’ve seen is the Dropbox intro video. It’s simple, tells a story rather than only explaining details about the product, and it’s original and interesting because of this story format. If more commercial video producers looked at producing stories, the internet would be a whole lot more interesting and engaging.