Most people know me online as
"Power Linking" guy. Few know that I used to be a Wilderness education expert and wildlife tracker.In my non-profit years (all 12 of them in various environmental protection organizations) I raised money, lobbied Senators and Congressmen in halls of Washington D.C., and educated people about open spaces and protecting wildlife.
But my most rewarding job ever was working in wildlands of New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico. I took prospective donors on raft trips to show them what they would be protecting if they donated to our group.
I took Sierra Club members into Blue Range Mountains of Arizona to hear wolves howl and teach them to track bears.
Which brings me to why I got up at 5 a.m. this morning after laying down to sleep for only 20 minutes all night. I couldn't get it out of my head how much tracking bears parallels what we as internet marketers do to generate traffic for our sites.
You see, bears in wild have an incredible communication system. Much like those big cork boards that are placed all over college campuses for students to pass information on to each other, bears have high-traffic areas in wild where they leave messages for each other too.
When you get on trail of a bear, if you follow it long enough, you will come to something most people will walk right by unless they know what to look for. Wherever major wildlife corridors and paths cross in wild, trained eye can pick out signsthat wildlife can see, smell, and sense a mile away.
In these "crossroads" you can find incredible signs. Like links we leave around internet to let people know of our presence, bears leave their scent and marks in these wildlife "high-traffic" areas to either let other bears know to stay away from their turf, or to let bears of opposite sex know "Hey, I'm here, drop by sometime."
I can take you out in woods in bear country and within a short period of time show you a bear "sign post" which is really just a tree, usually biggest one in area, where they scratch their backs and leave their hairs and scent.
They will also claw as high as they can, stretching up on their hind legs to leave marks to show how big they are. Again, either "Don't mess around in my territory or you'll be dealing with me" or "I'm biggest most beautiful bear in woods, wouldn't you like to meet me?"
I have linking on brain, as many people know, from writing an awful lot about website marketing particularly in linking department, and I have come to conclusion that I led myself into this niche of internet marketing because it is so much like tracking bears. (As much as sitting on your butt in air conditioning typing a computer can be.)
