Daniel Smith
MacGyver connects a car battery to a horn, a metallic door handle triggers a horn blast that stuns intruders and you’re supposed to think he has all the answers to Internet marketing? Of course! Anyone who can stun people with a car horn and metal doors deserves consideration when tackling the task of making Internet marketing tools work together seamlessly. If he can save the world with one small invention at a time, then surely you can control the success of your Internet marketing campaign. Luckily, we’ve combined some of the best MacGyver-like solutions with some of the best tools for Internet marketing.
IFTTT as Out in the Cold
In “Out in the Cold”, MacGyver is trapped in an avalanche while skiing. He can signal a rescue team from beneath the snow with a ski pole and parts of his ski suit. He pulls the grip and point off of his ski pole, giving him a 5-foot long hollow tube. He tears off some cloth from his ski suit in roughly a square shape, and then a long, narrow piece and his zipper pull. He ties the square into a parachute with the narrow piece and attaches the zipper pull to give it a weight. He feeds the whole bundle into his pole and blows it out the other end, which he has poked through the surface of the snow. Then there is just a few moments before the team rescues him. What a great happy ending right? What would you do to get out of the bind where you feel constantly buried under the need to posts your blogs all over the web and social media? “If This Then That” or IFTTT might be for you.
“If This Then That” is one of the chain reactions and learning to acclimate to what is important in relation to your blogs, social media, and general content. Do you want to have a blog post built on popular website blogs of a particular site or just automate your RSS feed and social accounts to help cross-post blogs easier? It’s a pretty nifty tool to have in your pocket. If MacGyver could get out of an avalanche with just the tools above, think how far you can get with something like this.
Hemingway as Phoenix Under Siege
In “Phoenix Under Siege,” MacGyver moves a lock from the opposite side of a door with an electromagnet using two 12-volt batteries, a sink faucet as the metal rod, and some copper cabling to wind around the faucet. He connects everything and slides the lock out of place. That sounds like a lot of work just to connect a few parts to make a little magnet, right? What does that have to do with Internet marketing?
Simple. MacGyver uses what is around him to make all the parts connect as a whole. That’s what Hemingway does for style. You’ll be surprised at the simplicity having Hemingway check your work. All you do is fix some of the most missed, but still important, problems. Whether you’re writing a blog or trying to make all of the social media posts grammatically correct, you need Hemingway.
Like MacGyver, who moves things around to make it part of a whole, when you move around your descriptive words, run-on sentence, and overused vocabulary, your content becomes more accessible, and more reader friendly for sharing.
ManageFlitter as The Secret of Parker House
In “The Secret of Parker House,” MacGyver finds a skull under a recently destroyed gazebo. MacGyver uses the pencil top erasers,, modeling clay, glass eyeballs and cotton wool to reconstruct the skull’s face. That’s some miracle worker stuff right there. How can you make such simple things come together and make such a big difference? In walks ManageFlitter. This tool allows you to use what you need and discard what you don’t to make the perfect Twitter account. You can follow and un-follow people, marks spam accounts, bots, and people who don’t return the follow, and much more. It uses keyword search to refine the potential followers, and it begins with a free trial to test the waters. As you perfect your Twitter account and list, you can direct traffic on a more individually targeted basis.
Find the target, hit the eraser on the head, and direct more and more traffic to your site.
Analytics as GX-1
Maybe my favorite MacGyver solution was in episode“GX-1”. Here MacGyver builds a hot air balloon from scratch to escape a Soviet search party. The balloon was made of homemade super glue, old clothes, a parachute, welding equipment, a refrigerator, and metal box. Turning such small, everyday things into something so critically important and at such a massive scale are exactly what an analytics tool can do for you.
Regardless of the tool (Google Analytics, Core Metrics), they all provide the same pivotal piece of any Internet visibility and marketing solution: data. Data is an invaluable resource when trying to figure out what aspects of your Internet marketing strategy to put where. Depending on the mediums you’re looking to plug in (social media, website traffic, email, etc.), you can start to present information about your product and target audiences that have specific and unique traits and needs. Remember that you’re looking to fill a gap, a need, or fix a problem. Analytics can help you identify the problem and fix it with the right business solution.
This doesn’t just direct traffic, but also yields traceable and measurable ROI results.
Get To MacGyvering
The ever-omnipotent Internet defines MacGyver as “Someone who can jump-start a truck with a cactus.” That’s what is happening with these AWESOME Internet tools. Sure, just like the Internet, you could probably jump start a car with jumper cables or go the long and arduous way of having these elements work for you. So can anyone, so why not make that cactus, or these wonderful tools, work for you? Get out there and find your solutions in that pile of seemingly disposable waste we call the World Wide Web! You can do it!
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