Sometimes, you have to

We finally have a dedicated, in-house AdWords pro. With algorithms, monitoring, and tools, each of which change regularly, it's a full-time job to do it right. (We're using Hubspot too; I'll let you know how that goes.)

Part of a successful AdWords campaign is perfecting the landing page -- the place you go when you click the ad. The landing page is tuned to match the ad text, not only to entice potential customers but also because your AdWord placement depends on the relevance of its content.

So our AdWords pro has been giving us advice on the messaging for the landing pages. Specifically, he's been asking us to change our marketing message that has worked so well for us on the web, in print, at tradeshows, and in demos.

I don't have a problem with criticism -- the purpose of our software is to generate criticism -- but do we allow an "outsider" with no context to change our proven text?

Maybe so. A fundamental tenant of Smart Bear and my life in general is to have strong opinions, weakly held. This phrase, promulgated by Paul Saffo and echoed by many others, summarizes the attitude that conviction, while necessary for action, must be tempered with a constant search for disproof. Being wishy-washy is an impediment to inspiring people, working towards a goal, and getting things done, but turning a blind eye to contrary evidence is irresponsible and even dishonest.

With this in mind, a stranger unencumbered by our history and biases might provide the insight we need to disprove some marketing assumptions and freshen our content! New perspectives add depth. We can only improve; we shouldn't cling to ideas just because they're venerable.

Or maybe not. Ted Matthews argues that branding doesn't work unless you stick to your guns. New hires are quick to suggest change without understanding the battle that went into the decision. It's just like wanting to rewrite an application because of a little ugly code. Our messaging was honed by field tests, listening to customers, and hours of debate; how can we allow everything to change because of new person with almost no understanding of our product, customers, or competitors?

The way to reconcile these two forces is to see that "weakly" in "weakly held" can be modified depending on the origin of the original opinion.

On one end of the spectrum, some opinions were made without consideration. Why do we have a "Resources" web page separate from an "External Articles" page? No reason, it just ended up like that. So if someone else has a different idea and some rationale behind it, make the change.

On the other end, some opinions -- like our marketing messages -- were forged with a great deal of consideration. Everyone in the office (and beyond) brainstormed ideas, vetoed concepts, defended theories, and crafted phrases over many years. We've gone through iterations, measuring success objectively (e.g. AdWords conversion rates) and subjectively (e.g. reactions when giving talks at conferences).

This kind of opinion shouldn't be changed flippantly. If it deserved this much consideration before, it deserves the same consideration now. Perhaps more.

Still I disagree with Ted. You can't use "branding" as a shield against good ideas no matter how entrenched the old ones. But when the existing ideas are proven, when great works have molded them, new ideas should be challenged with proportionally high standards.

Be ready to change with reason, but don't change for no reason.

Do you have an example of where "Strong opinions weakly held" applied (or should have applied)?  Leave a comment!

This weekend I switched blogging platforms from Blogger to Squarespace.

Home, sweet home, don't fail me nowUnfortunately I was using Haloscan for comments, so all comments have been lost.  You should notice no other difference aside from some small design changes.

If you notice any problems with the feed, broken links, etc., please let me know!  (esmartbear at gmail dot com)  I know the feed got slammed with duplicates of the last 15 posts; unfortunately that was unavoidable.

For those of you interested in blogging, you might be interested in why I chose the relatively unknown Squarespace platform.

First, why leave Blogger? Blogger sucks, and not in a good way. Rant rant rant:

• Blog pages are slow to load. Slow == back button == fewer readers.
• Post editor is finicky. Has an odd choice of <div> placements which add vertical space in unexpected places. Have to switch to HTML mode constantly to get what I want, especially with images.
• "Publish post automatically on this date" feature has been broken for months. Instead of posting on the given date, it turns the post back into a draft. This feature is vital for me because I always write posts ahead of time, allowing me to write in spurts but publish regularly.
• Captcha required every time you save a post, even in draft, and letters were so hard to read it often took me three tries to get it.
• Doesn't have some simple sidebar widgets I wanted, e.g. "Search site" and "Recent posts."

But the obvious alternatives are Wordpress and Typepad, maybe Movable Type. Wherefore Squarespace?

• It's easy to inject arbitrary HTML and override CSS without hacking the system. They don't block Javascript and they've made their CSS extremely easy to modify.
• When a post is in draft I can view it inside the blog as it will really look, not just in a so-called WYSIWYG editor which doesn't use my fonts or my column width.
• All blogging systems change the permalink URLs to existing blog posts, thereby breaking external links. But with Squarespace you can redirect one URL to another, so with a little busywork, problem solved.
• Squarespace permalink URLs use the entire post title, maximizing Google karma for those words. Typepad for example takes only the first 15 characters.
• Squarespace is designed to be a whole website, not just a blog. Although Wordpress and Typepad have the concept of "pages" separate from posts, Squarespace goes further with a "main menubar," file storage, and real web statistics and logs. Today I only need the blog, but it's nice to have the trappings of a full web server.
• Squarespace's tech support has been responsive; Typepad's hasn't.
• Ian Clarke chose it, so it must be good.
• What if Squarespace goes out of business? I can export everything in Movable Type format, so this means I could move my blog to any major blogging platform.  In fact all barriers like this have a good answer.

It's only been a few days, but so far so good.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

I can't believe I started by saying "OK, people." Talk about your crappy opener. But with six minutes and thirty-eight seconds remaining, I had to press on. And plus Alexis had just brought down the house.