Boiling Point - Episode 027 - Lee Odden

Introducing Lee Odden

Lee Odden has been called a pioneer and legend of SEO.  He has blogged over 1.2 million words on his TopRank Online Marketing Blog, and is the CEO of TopRank Marketing.  Lee is also amongst an exclusive club of marketers with beards.

Our host, Greg Hemmings, met Lee at last year’s New Media Expo, which was one of Lee’s twenty-ish speaking engagements of the year.  Lee’s speaking engagements not only help to educate attendees, but also generate sales leads for his company, as well as offering numerous ways to network.  However, you don’t become a trusted source as a blogger, public speaker, or social media maverick from just thin air; Lee was in the trenches for many years.  He got involved with SEO in the late 90’s, but in 2001 he decided to take the plunge as an entrepreneur.  He decided to forgo a salary and focus in on online marketing while starting an online PR firm with a few associates.  This was just shortly after the dot com crash, and many online firms were not investing in marketing.  What Lee’s group did that was pioneering, however, was mix in the SEO and marketing into one neat package.  Now TopRank Marketing works some of the heavy hitters including:  Staples, Dell, Linked In, General, and numerous other B2B technology companies.

When it comes to creating content online, Lee finds many companies to be impatient.  He quotes a statistic that 90% of corporate blogs do five posts and then never post again.  He notes that you must survive to stand out.  Also, to stand out you need to differentiate yourself from others and be specific in your messaging.  By following through and creating interesting, useful content, you can generate more leads.  This can be exponential if you further engage your current advocates in order to make them feel a part of the team.  One way this can be done is thanking them for sharing your content.  Another way is by giving them content that is in easy to swallow sound bites.  Sound bites are superficial but effective ways to spread your message, especially in the time of Twitter.  

 

In this episode

Lee offers up some tidbits from his many years of experience in content creation, and public speaking.  He tells us how he developed a fantastic business with large-scale clients out of his neck of the woods in Minnesota.  Dave is engaged by Lee’s notion of being the best answer in order to be noticed.  Greg likes Lee’s business design, which has a win-win philosophy for the client, creator, and customer.