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Multidimensional Approaches: Life and SEO in 3D

This post originally appeared on my now defunct marketing blog "Waiting for the Conversion" in 2014

As a father of three, I am growing used to experiencing the unknown -- or at least experiencing the other side of things as the now adult in the relationship. As a result, the older I get the less certain things appear to be to me. Perspective is an amazing thing. Each experience adds new data, if not an entirely new dimension to my consciousness. It’s scary and exhilarating and frustrating all at once.

To quote Aldous Huxley, “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” Because a lot can happen to you but if you do not take the lessons and gain the insights, it benefits you little.

I began working on the web in 1997 as a 17-year old summer intern at a company where my brother worked. I did research finding public e-mail lists and newsgroups and entered their pertinent information into a database that talked to a subscription app designed for Outlook. I had a very specific job to do and always met or beat my quotas. Many of us have very specific jobs to do and very specific quotas to meet and beat. But this operating model only succeeds in one dimension. The company I worked for closed and you won’t find the name of the product easily on Google. Why? I submit that while my boss had a great idea, the demand wasn’t there. There were dimensions of the market that weren’t considered.


Consider Disney. Walt Disney and the writers and animators who worked for him were well read. Like many creative minds, they had stories in their blood. They took old fairy tales and turned them into motion pictures with sound. With all their success they created a demand for the brand that was strong enough to sustain the pinnacle of experiential marketing: Disney parks. They were able to move from the written word (one dimension) to the screen (two dimensions) to the tangible (three dimensions).

Even with a story itself, the more dimensions there are to it the more we remember it. Take Pinocchio.  If you only examine it in one dimension, it’s very boring.
  • Pinocchio was a toy.
Let’s add in two dimensions to make things more interesting:
  • Pinocchio was a toy who was alive.
That’s better. Shall we try for more?
  • Pinocchio was a toy who was alive and experienced an existential crisis that led to meaningful interactions.
And here are the growing dimensions of the story of Pinocchio as shown in our construct.


This got me thinking about people and brands. Consider the following:
  • One dimensional: You are a brand.
  • Two dimensional: You are a brand that has a distinct voice.
  • Three dimensional: You are a brand that has a distinct voice and engages customers in meaningful interactions with useful content across a panoply of websites.
The first dimension doesn't even matter if you do not possess more than one dimension to support yourself. The second dimension is important but lacks both context and purpose. Enter more dimensions.


Now let's get down to the extremely practical, drawing from my experience in Search Engine Marketing. Within the silo of search marketing there are sub-silos. Even the sub-silos have silos. These silos, like all marketing channels, should complement each other. The only way to ensure they can complement each other is if they are aware of what the other is doing and work together to bolster each other's strengths. Consider SEO:
  • One dimensional: Perform technical audit of website.
  • Two dimensional: Perform technical audit of website, identify and fill content gaps.
  • Three dimensional: Perform technical audit of website, identify and fill content gaps and amplify off-site.

Any of these three dimensions can be one dimensional, a silo or sub-silo. Working together, we arrive at a cohesive SEO campaign that takes into account multiple dimensions to maximize the overall channel's efforts. Taken alone they are like I was at age 17 doing data entry, tirelessly working to knock out a quota. Added together, that effort takes on new meaning and purpose and can deliver a far greater result because it has context.

The next step is to see how the above SEO campaign acts as one dimension of a greater whole - and so on and so forth. Multidimensionality provides context and purpose to any enterprise and can help fuel its success.

With that, I'll leave you with this excellent series of slides about Pixar's Storytelling put together by Gavin McMahon.

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