This week in the Client Spotlight is Laurie Richter, author of Put Me In, Coach! A Parent’s Guide to Winning the Game of College Recruiting. Laurie’s book is an essential guidebook for parents and their student-athletes who want to be recruited to compete in athletics at the college level.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

I wish I’d had a better understanding of how search engines work to drive people to your site, and how to develop language and content based on that. I still don’t know enough about it and it’s not what I want to spend my time thinking about. My instincts were to just write good content without regard to how it shows up in search engines.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

The most important thing I’ve learned is that if you want to be successful at selling something on the web, FIRST you need to build a relationship with people who come to your site and you need to provide them with something real whether it’s content, product or something else. You need to give a little before you can take. I’ve also learned that it’s a constant process of fine tuning – your site is always a work in progress.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Try to look at your site from the point of view of someone coming to it and what their needs are – vs. just focusing on what you want to get out there and say about yourself and your product or service. If you misjudge what people need and want because you’re focused on you and not them, your site won’t be relevant.