Perhaps the best known political fact monitor comes from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. You’ve probably heard of it as FactCheck.org. It’s a nonprofit and nonpartisan site that monitors the accuracy of the folks who are running for major offices like, oh, president and vice-president.

We like FactCheck.org because they don’t take money from corporations, political parties, labor unions or lobbyists. Seems to keep them objective.

Another place you can keep tabs on the truthfulness of your favorite candidate (or your least favorite) is the Washington Post’s Fact Checker. They actually even fact-checked the recent Sarah Palin – Joe Biden VP debate while it was going on.

And, since we just returned from two trips to Florida, we can’t leave out the St. Petersburg Times nicely put together “keep ‘em honest” site called Politifact.com. It’s a joint venture with Congressional Quarterly, but that doesn’t keep them from having a sense of humor. For instance, they rate the candidates’ assertions as either “true, mostly true, half true, barely true, false, and pants-on-fire.”

All of these fact-checking sites, though, got us to thinking. When a candidate wants to pull the wool over your eyes they don’t always do it with factual errors, misstatements and deceptions.

No, by golly, they can do just as good job of wool pulling with their personality, delivery and charm. And, heck, those other fact checking sites don’t do much to check for personality quirks at all.

Which is why Saturday Night Live may be the best fact-checker of them all.

Now, I know you can watch SNL on some sort of older technology called television. But, I also know it comes on way past my bedtime – and maybe yours, too.

Instead, you can check the Saturday Night Live web site at SaturdayNightLive.com any old time. Go ahead, try it and get a personality fact check on the candidates:

You might even say that unearthing the inauthentic in our candidates’ personalities might just be more important than all the facts in the world.

Nice job, Tina Fey, Jason Sudeikis, Queen Latifa and the rest of the crew at SNL. Your satirical sketches do a great job of checking on the most important facts.

Gosh darn it. Doncha’ kinda’ wish these kinds of sites had been out there checking on those banking and real estate bozos before the economic meltdown?

Try looking up your industry or a general topic in Google, Yahoo or Ask. Go ahead, try it! Try using your favorite search engine to learn about healthcare, the credit card industry, biotechnology or even, what the heck, shipping and shipbuilding.

You’ll get millions of results – and that’s a waste of time if you are researching a specific topic for background such as recent surveys, industry overviews and the professional inside scoop.

Despite our best efforts, people still think that Google “gets” everything. In fact, even the best search engines only “get” a tiny fraction of what’s available on the Web. One reason is that some of the best information is hidden on the “Invisible Web” behind paid passwords. Some things, however, are are worth paying for.

Consider the James J. Hill Business Reference Library. This remarkable site offers Fortune 500-like research power to start-up companies and individual entrepreneurs. The cost? Less than your monthly cell phone bill.

The Hill Library offers databases that help you find new sales leads, resources to get the scoop on your competition, backgrounding tools that profile companies and individuals and much more.

Any one of these databases would be worth the price of admission, but let’s consider just their Special Issues Index.

Why Waste Your Time on Research? Just “Dial it Up!”

The Hill Library’s Special Issues Index is truly special – because nobody else has anything quite like it. Available only to members, you’ll just have to read the rest of this article and watch our 2-Minute video called “What’s So Special about the Hill Library?.”

Here’s how the Special Issues Index works. You see, as magazines, trade journals, and other industry publications come in to the Hill Library, they are combed for statistics, trend reports and industry profiles – and then indexed and filed into neat little topic folders just for you.

So, instead of using a search engine to get millions of results – most of which are not relevant to your search – you simply type in the industry or topic you are looking for and get all the articles in one place.

More topic examples? Just to name an alphabetical few from a random slice:

Cable Television
Canada
Candy Industry
Ceramic Industry
Chemical Industry
Children
Children’s Products
Clothing Industry
Coffee Industry

But, What About My Industry?

Wonder if your industry, topic or interest is included? Just give us a call and we’ll tell you if it is or not. Or, take advantage of a 10-day free trial at www.jjhill.org. You can even download the list of topics at this page called “Publications & Guides.”

Patricia Hoskins, Hill’s Technical Services Supervisor, gave us these background numbers:

Out of the 2400 articles listed in the Special Issues Index, 1100 are not available on the free web and a little over 1100 are not available in one of our databases. Even when available in a database or on the web, sometimes the accompanying graphics & tables are not fully available.

Even when available online in some form, learning about their existence can sometimes be difficult in the ocean of articles and websites out there.

Which is our point, entirely. People are always asking us how to find reliable, trusted information. The Special Issues Index gives you a great running start, with just one click. Try Google to see if they can match that kind of quick, concentrated value.

Beginning to see that background information like this can be critical in other ways? You undoubtedly work with any number of various people and companies – keep Special Issues at your side for the background you need for those future business deals.

And, speaking of dialing it up – as a James J. Hill member you can simply pick up the phone, send an email or chat online with their expert researchers – sending them out to lead you to whatever escapes you the first time.

Astonishing, actually. Some things really are worth paying for.

Adwords income accounts for 99% of Google’s total revenue. That makes it an important program to Google – and perhaps should make it an important program to you. Where do you find Google Adwords? They are clearly (cough, choke) marked at the top and the right hand side of your search screen results with the words, “Sponsored Links.”

Click here to see our short video about Google Adwords

So, try this with us at home. Go to Google, type in “dog food” and then Find Waldo, er, pardon me, Find the Sponsored Links. Do you see them? That’s Google’s cash cow. Now, do a search for “cash cow”…(just kidding).

We’re not here to tell you how to buy Google Adwords – certainly, no one seems to be having difficulty doing that. We are here to ask if they work. We have our opinion, you will have yours – and we’d like to hear it.

You might be surprised to know that Google does no advertising for their own Adwords program. Think about it. Ever seen a billboard or television commercial touting this program? Ever gotten an email from Google offering you discount rates on their newest version of Adwords? Ever been on the receiving end of a Google Adwords pop-up window while you’re surfing the web? Nope.

Still, successful folks are flocking to the site to plunk down money that buys ad space in the Google marketplace. Should they? Here’s a modest proposal. Why not ask the folks who buy these ads? If you are a wondering how to improve or start using Google Adwords, ask other folks like yourself if the program is working for them.

But, if you’re a “big dog” and already successful within your industry, be sure you also look at industries that are not like yours at all. For example, if you are a realtor, branch out and do some searches for “home insurance,” “homeopathic medicine” and “bail bonds.” Find out who’s doing a good job in those areas.

After you have found a number of specific Google Adwords that catch your eye, go ahead and call or email them. Ask them how the program is working. Ask them if they’re finding new customers and making money from the ads. Why? You might just learn as much or more from successful folks in other disciplines as you will from your own. The proverbial “whack on the head” may spur you to think about your strategies in new and creative ways.

We’ve been doing just that – and we had a string of answers that would indicate why Google is so rich. Most everyone who we talked to for a long time told us Adwords either didn’t work for them or that they were cutting back on their budget for the program (which is another way of saying, “it’s not working.”)

Then, yesterday, while doing an interview with Shep Hyken, an eminently successful speaker and businessman from St. Louis, we found a Google Adword enthusiast. But, he’ll tell you more about that soon. Stay tuned.

The “Land of Broken Promises” is otherwise known as the land of Internet marketing. The refugees from this land have been looking for more sales, more customers, better margins and ways to cope with the changing world. They’ve been promised all of these things by Internet marketers – but they are fleeing because the promises they’ve purchased are not being delivered.

Technology tends to seduce us. We believe that it must have some magic that we ourselves don’t possess. Because we don’t always understand technology, we have to “believe in it.” And because we worry that we will be left behind, we shell out to buy the CDs, DVDs, teleconferences, Adwords, optimizing schemes, affiliate programs, workshops, boot-camps and consulting memberships. But, too often we’re only purchasing our own dreams – and paying dearly for them.

Internet marketers are selling us a scheme to “get rich quick with a technological switch.” Carnival barkers and flimflammers have used the same approach for ages. What they sell is a quick way to success – a switch we can just flip to make our businesses thrive.

But, beware. The folks who offer quick technological fixes will stress two things:
1) Passivity – “you’ll never have to lift a finger”
2) Exclusivity – “this is all you’ll need”

Certainly, there are legitimate companies that offer ways to help build your business with Internet marketing tools. They will tell you the truth about what search engine optimization, Google Adwords, AdSense and affiliate marketing strategies can do for your business. Responsible companies will let you know how much work you’ll be doing (lots) and that you’d better supplement their solutions with other strategies. We’re not talking about those companies.

But the Internet marketing field is rife with hoodwinkers and carnival barkers selling technological hooflaw. And more and more folks are beginning to figure them out every day.

What if what your business really needed was for you to optimize your brain, not your web site? What if taking the time to improve your “Information literacy” would give you something far more powerful than any of the potions of the online hustlers?

We’d like to welcome any and all refugees from the “Land of Broken Promises.” And, we’ll devote the next 8 or 10 articles specifically to you.

We’ll propose that Information Literacy is far more important to your business than any Internet marketing scheme. We’ll talk about why the explosion of information now available on the Internet can be your most powerful business weapon. We’ll be honest about the amount of work that it will take on your part. And, we’ll ask you to bring along your own savvy, ingenuity, experience and pluck.

And then, we’ll let you make the decision – with no pressure tactics. Optimize your web site? Or, optimize your brain? Why not do both?