If you listen you will realize that we had no idea what the true topic and direction was but that it was going to be a discussion on asking better questions, helping people online and in your company and really just being a good steward to others.

The initial idea came from a Reddit thread about Sitemap XML and how someone was struggling with an issue at their job. Most if not all the answers simply said X was dumb, why would you do that, and were really not productive. (Note – here is our episode on Guide to Sitemap XML and CMS)

Some of the suggestions people gave that maybe people thought they were helping but really they weren’t. Some of these answers are from other questions as well!

• Just change the CMS
• Have the developers use the API.
• Sorry but If you are even considering doing X manually, then you don’t know what you are doing.
• That CMS sucks.
• Why don’t you just use X tool?
• OMG I hate X!

Now there were some good and great responses but I am just focusing on those that were less than helpful.

We Need to Give More Details

If you are asking a question online somewhere (forum, group, Twitter, anywhere!!) give information. Tell us why and what and limitations and as much as you can. Digital Marketing is a Puzzle… let us know more than just one piece to help you solve it!

The more people know the more they can consider your resources and unique circumstances around your question. The more detail the more the answers may actually help you.

• What brewery should I visit?
• What CMS should I use?
• What software for X should I use?
• Where should I go to eat in (insert large city name here)?

We Need Ask More Questions

Instead of just spouting out that X is horrible or X is a bad solution ask questions. Ask questions to clarify why they are doing something or why they are trying to get to Point B. Ask about budget, resources, what they like, where they are – ask questions.

• What brewery should I visit?
  • Where in the city will you be?
  • What type of beer do you like?
  • What type of beer do you hate?
  • How much time will you have?
• What CMS should I use?
  • Are you demand gen, ecom or a publisher?
  • What is your budget?
  • What dev resources do you have?
  • What is your current tech stack look like?
• What software for X should I use?
  • What is your budget?
  • What dev resources do you have?
  • How are you at using X?
• Where should I go to eat in (insert large city name here)?
  • Where in the city?
  • What time?
  • What kind of food do you like?
  • What kind of food do you hate?
  • What is your budget and reason for going?

So many questions we can ask but also so much more detail people can and should give.

/End Dave Rant.

Full Transcript

] Matt Siltala: [00:00:00 ] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you all join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes, and we’re as usual are going to just jump right into it. And so, uh, this is one that, uh, that, uh, that they’ve been wanting to jump into and.

He loves, you know, when management is wrong, actually, I don’t know that that’s true or not. Uh, but, uh, we are going to be jumping into, um, a discussion today related to site maps and management. And, uh, I’m going to let Dave just go ahead and jump in and start us off.

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:44 ] This is, it’s a weird twisty. Like how did Dave get from.

What he found in red too. What the heck? Yes. I’m

Matt Siltala: [00:00:53 ] still trying to figure that

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:56 ] to the point where I thought, um, that [00:01:00 ] it was just completely wrong. Like I was like, these are the worst examples and the worst things. What the heck was I thinking? Like I thought I screwed up my Excel or my Google sheets, which

Matt Siltala: [00:01:10 ] it was just that bad.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:12 ] No, it’s not that bad. Um, Cause I just thought it was like me going on a rant against, you know, site maps and stuff. But what’s interesting is it was a Reddit thread on, um, the SEO topic. And someone asked a question about creating a site map for a million products. They’re doing it manually, you know, and what’s fun is literally every person was giving quote unquote advice.

And the advice is you’re an idiot use a CMS that has, you know, a site map plugin. Now, granted, this is from two or three months ago before, you know, and if you want go back to our. Our site map thing [00:02:00 ] where I basically threw every CMS under the bus that doesn’t create site maps, word, press out of the box did not.

Um, they just launched that in the last couple of weeks, but this was like three or four months old. And it wasn’t that really easy, you know? And everyone’s like, don’t do this. This is dumb. Use an API, change your CMS. Um, you know, you’re doing it the wrong way. Creating this manually is horrible. But no one actually asked, what is the business reason for this?

Like, why are you doing it this way? What is the upside? You know, you’re being told that you have to do this by management or by someone, you know, is there actually a business? And I think so often, um, Um, and it’s not just Damasio people and PPC, but so often people are like, when they look at why websites do things, if you want, if you want to understand why [00:03:00 ] SEOs, like are all bald and pull their hair out.

It’s because so often. And if you’ve never been an intern in the house, SEO person, you have maybe not too much of an idea. If you’ve worked at agencies and worked with these types of clients and it’s like, well, we just spent three months or six months in Matt. You’ve, you know, you’ve talked about that one example with the really large, um, infographic type thing that you guys built for like almost a year.

And then what happened? It didn’t go live. Like everyone was just like,

Matt Siltala: [00:03:32 ] if it’s not hair, it’s gray hair coming in. Lots of air. Yeah.

Dave Rohrer: [00:03:37 ] Um, and it’s like, this is why we walk around and pace and go, what in the world? Um, and social media people do it too. You know, you, you come up, we’re product people. It’s like, we’ve worked on this product launch for four months.

And suddenly now the company decides to pivot where four months of dev and market research and everything just goes out the window and we all just kind of go what, [00:04:00 ] and, you know, you might look at a website and. I think this might be a good example is I think through it, you look at a website and is an in house SEO.

You’ve been told that the developer resources that can and are able to work on something are booked for the next six months. So whatever you want, if it requires a technical change, can’t happen for six months, that team spends four months on that product that then gets shelved or, you know, pivoted as an SEO.

You’re like. Oh, I get dev resources now. No, because we just destroyed and shelved that project in pivoting. They’re now going to be working on this other project for the next four to six months again, because we really need to hurry it up. And now the resources you did have, or pulling from you because we’re now four months behind and you’re like, what?

And so when I read people critiquing and going after. You [00:05:00 ] know, like in this they’re like, we’ll just change your CMS. Yes. That, that clearly was not, you know, they should have thought of that. We have a site it’s completely built and tested. We have all sorts of redundancies that ties into our CRM. It ties into, you know, WooCommerce, it ties into Salesforce and all these other backend systems.

Yes. Why don’t I just replaced my CMS. Great idea.

Matt Siltala: [00:05:23 ] I love when people are always like throwing that out as the exam, as the.

Dave Rohrer: [00:05:27 ] Why are you on Wix? Cause it was easy. Like I hate wicks too, but come on.

Matt Siltala: [00:05:31 ] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Rohrer: [00:05:34 ] Well, I mean, I, I was looking at, um, someone’s site the other day and I was like, why are they doing it this way?

And I looked, there are one person it’s, um, a part time gig that they’ve started doing just recently. They’re not technical when it comes to HTML and SEO and just digital stuff. They just wanted it quick and up. They’re on Wix. I was like, we [00:06:00 ] could do something better in WordPress, but then I thought about, okay, what happens if I help them build it?

Or I suggested, okay, in one month, what happens? They now have to maintain the WordPress install. They have to maintain the plugins. They have to install, like install things. They have to babysit things. They’d one don’t have time. They don’t have the knowledge. So while a lot of people and I’m included go, Oh, why are you on Squarespace?

Why are you on wicks? Why are you on fill in the blank for whatever CMS, you know, does it all for you? Because it does it all for you?

Matt Siltala: [00:06:35 ] Well, it’s something else that I’ve learned over the years, to