Princess Zelda: Link Building for Legends

How to Apply Star Trek to a Good Web Marketing Company Structure

Running an internet marketing company is just like running an intergalactic spaceship, I’m sure. It takes a savvy captain and a steely crew to navigate through the various obstacles of space and time! Who in your company has a good mind for engineering? Who can kick everybody’s butt into line? Who is the most logical? Next time you go to reconsider your structure, keep these characters in mind…

Red Shirts. These, of course, would be your interns.

You may not always realize it, but they are invaluable to have around! Who else going to do the dirty work when the captain and science officer are busy? Give these guys the tasks that need to be done and can be done by the average crewman, but would otherwise be a waste of someone’s time. Try not to bore them to death (Er…), but keep in mind that they aren’t yet experts in their field – if you give them something really difficult, like, say, going to the surface with your top talent, something may go horribly wrong.

Sure, they may not last very long, but they keep the story moving forward and ideally they will get the job done while they’re there. That being said, if you give them projects that take a long time to complete (like a year or two) make sure to track it so that if they KO on you, the new red shirt can pick up where they left off.

Uhura. She represents office management and your receptionist.

Office management is important to your company because they maintain the day-to-day communications and operations on board your ship. While everybody else is busy running the ship, office management gets to play mommy, making sure the crew has supplies and are keeping good relations with other members.

Your receptionist is in charge of picking up signals and transferring them to the correct department. He or she will also help keep tabs on the staff and do other odd errands, like planning office parties, or seducing the enemy with his(?) or her fan dance. A good receptionist will keep everything in order and running smoothly – a great receptionist will be smart, savvy about public relations and good with a phaser.

Chekov and Sulu. These fellows represent your sales staff.

As your navigators and helmsmen, their sole purpose is to continually help move the ship forward. That’s what your sales staff should do – act toward goals that might help move your company forward, either by bringing on an alliance with new life forms and new civilizations (clients and syndications) or by boldly going where no man has gone before (conferences)!

They need to not only have a good sense of the ship’s headings, but they also need to be good in the field. Your sales staff should go out to the surface armed with the tools they need to make it – make sure they have every proof with them, either in their heads or in their hands, that your Enterprise is the way to go for prospective clients.

Scotty. He represents your IT, programming and design staff.

Scotty is basically responsible for maintaining the ship and all its internal functions. To me, he is the epitome of IT. He has to run the ship without always having the right materials (“I need more dilithium crystals!”) and sometimes without enough time or understanding from the rest of the crew to get the job done. IT staff members might take a note from Scotty’s book and always give themselves more time than they think they need for projects (although maybe not necessarily in multiples of four).

Whereas programming and design may relate more to your product than your ship, I believe this is still related to Scotty in that he is also responsible for internal functions on the ship – making sure that all databases are functioning properly and designed to do what they’re supposed to. (If you want to keep an eye out on another great Scott, follow @great_scott on Twitter!)

Bones. This is your SEO staff!

As chief medical officer, Bones doesn’t have quite as direct a metaphor to SEO, but here’s my reasoning: what Bones does for the Enterprise, more importantly than take care of the ill, is serve as one of the primary tacticians for the captain. Who is always exploring the surface of a strange planet and has to make some incredible plan to get the Enterprise safely back on track? The captain, his science officer and Bones!

Your SEO team needs to be able to work with analytics and writing (your science officer) to come up with a plan on how to best get your ship to where it needs to be… or your websites to the top listing in search engines. Whatever. They may not always get along well with analytics and writing (“That green-blooded SOB!”) but in the end, their relationship will be crucial to the success of the ship.

Spock. He represents your research, analysis and writing departments.

As your science officer, Spock is responsible for looking at the data available and determining the best course of action. He’ll be the first to tell you if something doesn’t make sense (“That is not logical.”) and he is crucial to your positioning tactics and absolutely necessary to the development of content.

With the accumulation of data goes the accumulation of content. It is important that you take the research and data that you have an turn it into great content for your websites, blogs and social media sites. This is not limited to just words for your sites – images, video, graphs, and other various media will help develop your site into a real force to be reckoned with.

Captain Kirk. He represents your CEO! (And maybe everybody?)

What is a company without its fearless leader? A good leader must be dedicated and resilient, with a strong focus on his or her goals and values. Of course, every leader has a hubris. Just as Kirk may have been frequently overruled by his passions, the leader of a strong web marketing company must not be overruled by what he thinks the company should be, but rather driven by what the company needs to be to meet the demands of its market.

I also like to think of everyone as being their own Kirk aboard the Enterprise – and not just because I really want to be Kirk. Everyone is responsible for holding themselves and the people they rely on accountable. If nobody stands up and takes on their responsibilities to the next level, the ship might be moving – but it won’t actually be going anywhere.

Some information courtesy of:

Wikipedia: Star Trek: The Original Series.
StarTrek.com: Library.

What do you think? How does The Next Generation fit into this, is your Captain a Kirk or Picard? What about Star Wars? I’d love to hear your comments!