The digital world we live and work in means we’re all surrounded by high-tech products. But for most of us, how these things work is much less interesting than what they can do for us. People are solution-oriented. Usefulness and efficiency are the measures of the tools we use, not Mbps or GHz.

Selling a tech product, whether it’s software, hardware or a combination of both, it’s important to remember that your audience is most interested in what it can do for them. How it works, how it’s built and even how much it costs are secondary concerns. Your future customers are the people who want what your product can do. They have a problem your product can solve, so when you’re talking to them, it’s their story you should focus on, not yours.

Understanding the personas of your customers is vitally important. If you know who they are and really understand the challenges they face, you’ll be able to show them how useful your product will be. The most impressively designed, beautifully crafted piece of technology is very hard to sell if people don’t understand how it can make their lives better or make their business more profitable.

There’s a strong connection between marketing and product/market fit.
If you’re talking with your customers the right way, creating a dialogue with them, you’re much more likely to tune your product to meet their needs. This idea is the core principle of content-based marketing.

Content marketing is a channel for communication, not advertising. Advertisements tell people about your product, but they don’t create a space for the audience to tell you about themselves. The comments sections on your blog and social media pages are some of the most useful tools you have to build a relationship with your customers.

• Listen to your target customers.
• Offer them useful resources and information they can use for free.
• Talk to them about the solutions your products offer.
• Encourage your audience to tell you what they need and want your product to be.
• Create a community around your brand that’s interested in what you have to say because you are listening to what they need.

What marketing challenges is your business facing? Are you creating a dialogue with your audience through content marketing?

Hi. I’m Emmanuel Marshall. Please get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to answer your questions about how you can use content marketing to grow your business.

• Email me: storymarshall001@gmail.com
• Contact me on LinkedIn.
• Connect with me on Facebook.

SEO for CEOs: how to win in the online marketing game

There’s so much emphasis on social media marketing at the moment that press releases are often forgotten. Some marketers view the press release as “old fashioned” because it’s been around a long time, but the reality is it’s a tried and tested tool that still has a lot of value.

Reaching influential publishers.

Press releases get your message into the hands of the mass media. A social media update might get the attention of a journalist or influencer if they happen to notice it, but if you send them a press release, you can get their attention much more directly.

Why would a journalist publish your story? Because your press release will provide them with interesting, engaging content that their audience will find useful.

In the twenty-four-hour news cycle, media outlets are always hungry for stories. If you give them well written, relevant content, there’s a good chance they’ll use it.

SEO benefits.

High-authority backlinks are one of the most important means of enhancing your website’s SEO.
A high-authority backlink is a link to your website from a domain that has a track record of publishing high-quality content, like a news outlet or industry journal. Backlinks from high-authority, heavily trafficked sites have a big influence on SEO, thus determining your website’s position in Google search rankings.

One of the best-known examples of high authority backlinking is when a news outlet includes a link to a company’s website in an article.

Effective press releases should include references to product news and research, that will encourage news outlets to backlink your source material.

Press releases are cost-effective.

Your press release will give journalists and influencers all the information they need in one place. You’ll give them a well-constructed story, images, statistics and links that they can readily turn into an article or blog post.

Getting your story into a mass media channel will put it in front of a targeted audience who are actively looking for information.

Advertising incurs an ongoing cost, and as soon as you stop paying your message disappears. By contrast, a news article creates a reference to your business that keeps driving traffic to your website and building your SEO permanently.

Once you’ve spent the time and money producing good marketing content, turning that material into a press release and sending it out costs very little.

Good content comes first.

The foundation of successful press release campaigns is quality content.

You want to get people to visit your website and read about your products, so you need to share a story that piques their curiosity and offers them solutions.

You can learn more about content marketing and how to build your SEO in my article “SEO for CEOs: how to win in the online marketing game.”

Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.

I create content marketing campaigns for my clients that deliver useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands to promote SEO and generate qualified leads.

Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business.

• Email me: storymarshall001@gmail.com
• Contact me on LinkedIn
• Check out some of my recent work: storymarshall.com

Digital marketing jargon explained in five minutes

Celebrity CEOs like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk exemplify the marketing cache that business leaders can create. They’ve become influencers; people whose opinion has the power to affect markets. However, you don’t have to be CEO of a billion-dollar empire to get the attention of your audience. Attracting followers and turning them into customers hinges on simple marketing principles that have nothing to do with fame and everything to do with offering value.

To attract an online following and become an influencer, you need to offer people useful information.
You’re an executive, so you’re an expert in your field. The way that business owners become industry leaders is by sharing what they know with the world. You don’t have time to speak with every prospective customer individually, but you can share your knowledge through a multitude of online channels: social media posts, blog articles, videos and webcasts. The difference between communicating this way and conventional marketing is that it’s personal. It’s not an anonymous company slogan, but an actual person, talking directly to their audience, telling a story. Unsurprisingly, people respond more favourably to storytelling than advertising. It’s that primary psychological preference that’s given rise to the era of online influencers.

Whatever your area of knowledge, there are potential customers of your business who’ll be interested in what you have to say.
If you’re CTO of a tech startup, your understanding of the way your company’s product works will help convince people of its value.
If you’re CEO of a financial services company, people will be interested in hearing your opinions on wise investment.
If you run a car dealership, people will value your advice on choosing a mechanic.

The key to becoming an influencer is to focus on sharing useful information. You don’t have to be a good writer or know how to make a YouTube video; you can hire a marketing consultant to work with you on creating your actual content. The important thing is to stay focused on what you can offer your followers and to communicate regularly.
Posting consistent, topical content will help to build a social media community around your brand and generate qualified leads, as well as enhancing your SEO.

Marketing is a very different game now than it was ten, or even five years ago. Online audiences respond negatively to conventional advertising, something we know intuitively from our own experience of pop-ups, spam emails and banner ads. If the image of your brand is repetitive, intrusive ads, you’re going to alienate people, even the ones who might actually need your product.
To connect with your future customers online, you need to talk to them about things they care about and offer them something useful.

Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.

I write marketing content for my clients that delivers useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands that promote SEO and generate qualified leads. You can read some of my recent articles at storymarshall.com

Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business:

• Connect with me on Twitter.
• Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Digital marketing jargon explained in five minutes

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a broad term that includes web design, blogging, content marketing, video, podcasts, internet advertising and SEO. Digital marketing began in the early days of the web as a niche segment of the advertising industry. But, it has evolved from the banner ads and email newsletters of the late nineties into a sophisticated, highly specialised activity that drives billions of dollars of online commerce.

Digital marketing, aka online marketing, has its own complex jargon, which can be frustrating for business people who aren’t steeped in the geeky world of SEO, click-throughs and funnels.

If you’re making decisions about how to sell your brand online, don’t let the marketing-speak put you off. The jargon sounds complicated, but digital marketing is a logical process, and the terminology is all about the objective: getting your product in front of buyers.

A professional marketing manager will take the time to explain their strategy in plain-English, but there are a few key terms that are helpful to know if you want to make informed choices about your company’s growth.
In the next five minutes, you’ll learn the most important industry terms and get a concise summary of how digital marketing works.

Marketing content (aka branded content).
Anything on the web that can be watched, read or listened to is content.
In the marketing industry, content refers to material created specifically to promote a product or service. Although online advertising in the form of banner ads or pop-ups is usually treated as a separate category, the line between ads and content is increasingly blurred. Most websites, blog articles, and social media posts published by a business are marketing content.

Content producer/writer.
A content producer or content writer plans, creates, publishes and promotes marketing content for a business. They post daily and weekly updates on social media, blogs and other online channels.
A content producer may be an in-house member of a company marketing team or a consultant.
Most content producers have specialised skills in content writing, video production, social media strategy and press liaison.
The main objective of a content producer is to bring buyers to a business by publishing content that will be interesting and attractive to their customer demographics.

Blog.
A blog is a website regularly updated with new written content, usually in a longer format.
Typical blog content includes news articles, opinion pieces, interviews with experts and how-to guides. Blogs are a means of growing a company’s online following and cultivating high-authority backlinks.

High authority backlinks.
A backlink is a link to a company’s website or blog from another website. Backlinks are a valuable means of bringing traffic to a business, and if they come from high authority websites, they have a positive effect on a company’s SEO, (Search Engine Optimisation).
The authority of a website is determined by factors such as their popularity, traffic numbers, age, quality of user feedback and trust rating.
Google favours sites that are backlinked by other high authority sites and is more likely to display them in top-listed search results.

Link Bait.
Marketing content that is created with the specific goal of cultivating high-authority backlinks is commonly referred to as link bait. Content categories like industry news articles, research findings and expert interviews are productive link bait material.

Traffic.
Web traffic is the number of people who visit a site and the way they move around on it. Growing and guiding traffic is an important marketing objective and a vital part of building an online following.

Click-through rate.
The percentage of people who see a link to a company’s website and click on it is termed the click-through rate. Click-throughs are often used as a measure of success for marketing content and digital advertising.

Bounce rate.
Bounce rate is determined by the percentage of people who arrive at a company’s website and then immediately leave without interacting.

CPC: Cost Per Click.
The amount of money spent on a digital marketing campaign, divided by the number of click-throughs the campaign generated.

CTA: Call To Action.
Digital marketing material usually includes a CTA, an element of the content that urges the audience to interact. A CTA may take the form of a button or a text link.
A CTA is designed to drive traffic to a website or capture the user’s contact details to allow further communication via email or social media.
Some typical CTAs include: “contact us now,” “shop now,” “follow us,” and “sign up.”

Click funnel.
A series of content materials with CTAs that is designed to guide customers through a sales process, click funnels seek to minimise bounce rates and make the process of converting leads into sales as streamlined as possible.
A simple click funnel example might look like:

• a user reads marketing content,
• clicks on “visit our website” link,
• reads the product description, and
• clicks on “buy now” button.

A good click funnel will also create an opportunity for further contact with a new customer, by capturing their email address or social media ID so that they can be engaged in a secondary click-funnel for upselling and repeat business.

Google Analytics.
Google created its ubiquitous Analytics platform to help users generate statistics related to their website traffic. Marketing managers use this data to assess the impact of their campaigns and design better click funnels.

Hashtags.
Hashtags are words or phrases prefixed with the # symbol. Hashtags are used in social media and blog posts to help users find topical content. Popular or trending hashtags are a useful way for digital marketers to deliver their content to interest-based demographics.

Inbound and outbound marketing.
Marketing content on a company’s website or blog is termed inbound marketing.
Conversely, banners pop-ups and email campaigns are categorised as outbound marketing, because the audience sees the material outside the perimeter of the website.
The term inbound marketing is synonymous with SEO because it is designed to build the stature of a brand, create user confidence and cultivate backlinking.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation.
Websites that place high in search results are much more likely to be visited by prospective customers.
SEO is a marketing strategy that focuses on enhancing the placement of a website in Google’s search result rankings.
Google measures the popularity, content quality and user ratings of websites to determine their rank.
SEO employs techniques like keyword placement, content marketing and code improvement to get the best Google ranking possible for a website.

Keywords.
One way Google selects search results is by cataloguing keywords. Keywords are the descriptive terms in a search query that define the subject matter.
Content writers use carefully selected keywords in web content to make it easier for their target audience to find it.
For example, keywords related to the fashion industry include clothing, t-shirt, jeans, lingerie and sportswear.

Lead.
A familiar term from sales parlance, in the context of digital marketing a lead is a potential customer who has shown interest in the company in some way such as following their social media, signing up for newsletters or downloading lead magnets.

Lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a tangible incentive for potential customers to submit their contact info, like an email address, in exchange for useful free content or services.
Some examples of lead magnets are free ebooks, webinars, software trials and demos.

Social media marketing.
Using social platforms to generate new leads is a potent marketing strategy. Successful social media marketing relies on creating short-form content that demonstrates value and carries a clear CTA.
The best social media content will motivate users to share it with their contacts; it’s the online equivalent of word-of-mouth recommendation.

Online marketing is logical.

This article has equipped you with some of the most common digital marketing jargon, but don’t be too concerned if you haven’t mastered the lingo yet. Internet marketing is a logical process that’s about understanding your audience and helping them find what they want.

Effective digital marketing isn’t a random numbers game. If you know who your ideal customers are, then you can publish marketing content that will connect with their interests and guide them into your marketing funnel.

Good online marketing is about giving your audience useful information, building a following and elevating the authority of your brand.
The era of intrusive ads that interrupt and annoy us is over. Nobody likes online advertising, but everyone appreciates a business that gives them free advice.

Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.

I write marketing content for my clients that delivers useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands that promote SEO and generate qualified leads. The digital marketing work I’ve done for clients like MailGuard, Uncloak and Innis & Gunn earned them international press coverage, enhanced their SEO and increased their web traffic.
You can read some of my recent articles, here: storymarshall.com

Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business.

• Connect with me on Twitter: twitter.com/raw_safari

Emmanuel Marshall on LinkedIn: "There are millions of businesses clamouring for the attention of customers so how do you get your website to stand out from the background noise? http://bit.ly/seo4ceos #marketing #business #management #advertising #digitalmarketing #contentmarketing #growth #startup #SEO #socialmedia #blogging #traffic #pagerank #onlinemarketing #socialmediamarketing "

You want your website to get noticed. There are millions of businesses clamouring for the attention of customers so how do you stand out from the background noise?

Search results are one of the biggest drivers of web traffic.

When a buyer is looking for a product or service, they use Google to figure out where to spend their money. If your website is on the first page of Google results you’re much more likely to connect with new clients.

So how did the companies at the top of the Google search results accomplish their high rankings? The answer is SEO.

How SEO works.

SEO — Search Engine Optimisation — is the way top-ranking websites get their Google search dominance.

There’s a lot of misinformation around SEO. Over the years as the online culture evolved and Google refined the complex formulas they use to rank websites, SEO techniques that worked well in the past stopped being effective.

In the early days of web-based marketing, all you needed to do to get your site onto Google’s front page was splatter your website with words related to your product. This technique was known as “keyword stuffing”. If you were selling toasters online, you’d just use the word “toaster” a thousand times on your website, and the Google algorithms would list your company first for anyone searching “buy a toaster”.

This simplistic process led to all sorts of manipulation by canny web marketers, and Google realised they needed to come up with a more refined formula.

Google search results are now the product of a very sophisticated set of analytic formulas that measure websites’ traffic numbers, user ratings, reliability and authority.

Links from authoritative websites have emerged as the foremost driver of Google search result rankings. Google’s objective is to give its users results that have been recommended and vouched for by other trustworthy websites.

Marketing experts say that websites linked by high-authority domains like news media and industry journals are given preferential treatment by Google.

So, what does all that mean for you and your marketing strategy?

• Keywords are still useful, but they’re not enough to get you on Google’s front page.
• A high Google search ranking and traffic growth depend on being acknowledged by established, high authority websites.

That sounds daunting for many business people. How can you break into that elite club of respected high traffic sites?

The most effective strategy for escaping web obscurity and pushing your brand up the Google rankings is content marketing. There’s no secret trick to it. There’s no special gimmick. Content marketing works because it builds credibility, and that’s the winning element in the SEO battle.

Content marketing.

Google’s analysis algorithms are primarily interested in what trustworthy websites think of your brand.

The more links that point to your website from high authority, high traffic domains, the more attention you get from Google.

Getting links to your website can be accomplished in two main ways:

• paid advertising,
• content marketing.

Paid advertising will get your brand in front of people’s eyeballs, but it’s not permanent.

The huge advantage of content marketing is that it promotes permanent links to your website that will be recognised by Google and count toward your search ranking.

Content marketing is all about giving people useful and entertaining information that they will actually want to look at. Unlike advertising, it doesn’t intrude into their browsing experience; it enhances it. A few examples of good marketing content are:

• articles about current trends,
• interviews with industry leaders,
• how-to guides and educational material.

The most potent feature of content marketing is its potential to promote sharing and linking. To get noticed by high authority websites and get them to link to your content, you need to have material that will be interesting and useful to them and their audience. If you publish articles that people will want to read, you have the best chance of getting the attention of the sort of websites that can boost your SEO by linking to you.

Here’s a simple example of the way content marketing works:

• You publish an article on your company blog talking about a new product you’re launching and the way it will benefit its users.
• You send a press release to industry journals in your category, talking about the article and encouraging them to share it on their website.
• High traffic websites are always hungry for new content, so if you offer them free material, they will often use it.
• An industry journal posts an article sharing your news and linking to your blog.

In this example, you’ve made two wins:

• you get an immediate spike in traffic from the industry journal’s link;
• in the longer term, that link will also boost your ranking with Google.

Content marketing can influence your online stature in ways that conventional advertising can’t, like building your brand’s credibility and making you the centre of an online community. Data released by Demand Metric shows that content marketing generates more leads than advertising and it actually costs less.

Good content is an SEO investment.

When you’re looking at ways to spend your marketing budget better, it’s worth considering the different impacts of advertising and content marketing.

• An advertisement appears as a distraction to a web user, something they want to filter out. And even if your advertising gets clicks, as soon as you stop spending money, your ads disappear, and your traffic dries up.
• Content marketing gets the attention of your audience by offering them useful information. Not only will it be a magnet to attract users to your site, but it will also encourage other sites to share your message, thereby lifting your ranking in search results.
• Unlike ads, marketing content is an investment; you pay for it once, and it’s there forever, bringing traffic to your brand.

Content marketing works on three fronts, building the credibility of your business, cultivating links from high authority websites, and enhancing your website’s SEO.

If you’re aiming for that coveted spot on Google’s page 1, content-driven SEO is the strategy for success.

Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.

I write marketing content for my clients that delivers useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands that promote SEO and generate qualified leads. The digital marketing work I’ve done for clients like MailGuard, Uncloak and Innis & Gunn has earned them international press coverage, enhanced their SEO and increased their web traffic.

Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business.

You can read some of my recent articles, here: www.storymarshall.com

Connect with me on Telegram: @polydigm

Follow me on Twitter: @raw_safari

• How to become an influencer exec.
• Digital marketing jargon explained in five minutes

When I was a kid, I loved crayons, clay and fingerpaint. My Mum made sure I had plenty of art supplies and always encouraged me to draw, probably because when I was drawing was the only time I stopped talking.

When I wasn’t drawing or talking I was either reading comics or bashing things with a hammer.
I loved rummaging through my Dad’s tool shed and helping him make chicken coops and bookshelves… although if I’m honest, my skills were more suited to demolition than construction.

Remember that old proverb: give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to use a rod and reel, and he’ll eat for a lifetime?
A functional understanding of basic tool use is a skill that will be invaluable throughout life.

Teach a man to use a hammer, and he can build a home.
Teach a girl to use a handsaw, and she can defy a despotic regime.

Refinement and culture are beautiful, but I think it’s not enough to teach our kids to paint pretty pictures, we need to show them how to use hammers and saws as well.

If you can’t afford to buy a house, it’s nice to have the ability to put up four walls and a roof of your own. And if you find your path blocked by walls, it’s good to know how to take them down as well.

Digital marketing jargon explained in five minutes

In 2013 I gave away all my furniture and moved out of my house.

I put two pairs of underpants, a t-shirt and a laptop in a bag and set out to hitchhike my way around the world.

As I travelled, I started blogging. It helped me make sense of the deluge of amazing, challenging and confronting experiences that came at me every day.

At first, I only wrote an article every few weeks, but people started to read what I’d written and send me messages asking questions and talking about their own travel dreams. Pretty soon I was writing every chance I got.

I travelled alone a lot, so in blogging, I’d found a way to share my journey with friends, even when I was on my own. I was hooked.

I fly instead of hitchhiking now, and I have more than two pairs of underpants, but I’m still travelling, and I’m still blogging.

Storytelling can sell ideas… and beer

When I began blogging it didn’t make me much money. I was writing about my hitchhiking adventures as a hobby and earning a small income from doing odd ghostwriting jobs.

Then, in 2016 I got a sponsorship deal with a brewing company to write about their beer as I hitchhiked across Europe and India. Innis & Gunn wanted their new IPA beer to be part of my adventure narrative. They saw that the story I was telling could connect with and inspire the people they wanted as customers.
The experience of working with Innis & Gunn was inspiring for me too. I gained new confidence that blogging had the potential to be a real job. I wanted to go pro.

The business of informative marketing

Since 2016 I’ve started to specialise in technology and business articles; writing freelance blog posts for companies that do cybersecurity, Blockchain, industrial design and AI.

The demand for content writing has never been greater because there’s a realisation amongst innovative businesspeople that traditional advertising is losing its impact.

People hate advertising, but they love to read stories. The internet is a place where people go to be inspired, entertained and get useful information that can help them achieve their goals. Nobody wants it to be a parade of intrusive, flickering adverts that suck up their bandwidth and clog up their news feeds.

Don’t advertise. Tell your story.

In the contemporary marketplace, good marketing means giving people something they really want, with your message folded around it. It should be like getting a gift; they open it delightedly and then notice your message printed on the inside of the wrapping paper.

Have you considered doing some content marketing for your company?

The online customer is increasingly hard to reach with traditional in-your-face advertising. But storytelling and informative content creates relationships and earns followers for your brand.

The idea is to give your audience something useful and thought-provoking that they enjoy reading. That way, when you present your product, they already have a positive relationship with you.

Research by marketing firms shows that the online audience, particularly millennials, respond positively to content marketing but make negative associations with brands that deploy intrusive advertising.
A study conducted by Demand Metric found that content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing and it actually costs 62% less.

Hi, I’m Emmanuel Marshall.

I write marketing content for my clients that delivers useful information to their target demographics. I help businesses build communities around their brands that promote SEO and generate qualified leads. The digital marketing work I’ve done for clients like MailGuard, Uncloak and Innis & Gunn has earned them international press coverage, enhanced their SEO and increased their web traffic.

Let’s talk about how I can help grow your business.

You can read some of my recent articles, here: www.storymarshall.com

Connect with me on Telegram: @polydigm

Follow me on Twitter: @raw_safari

• SEO for CEOs: how to win in the online marketing game
• Digital marketing jargon explained in five minutes

A is a place where the weather is dull and life is routine.
Familiarity has made A seem drab and lifeless. You walk down the street and the scenery is too familiar, the people predictable.
In A there is nothing new for you to experience, no sense of adventure.

One day, you overhear two people talking about B.
“B is beautiful this time of year,” you hear them say. “I went to B last winter for a week. It was the best vacation I ever had. Oh, B! If only I were still there.”

Intrigued, you Google B. Images of idyllic beaches, smiling people, and colourful food flash before you. Your pulse quickens and a sense of wonder begins to bubble inside you. B looks so exciting, so different from A.
On an impulse, you quit your job, pack your bag and walk out the door.

Two days later you are in B.

You feel alive and invigorated. The food tastes better in B. The people are
beautiful. The sun shines and life is exciting and challenging.
The people of B look at you with curious eyes. You are an outsider. You feel exotic.
You take pictures, post feverishly to Facebook, walk the streets wide-eyed and sleep long and heavily at night.

Gradually you learn the ways of B; its customs and currency. You pick up a few words of the local language. You begin to understand the subtleties of the foods and the layout of the streets. You become relaxed and at ease. The people in B are not so strange. They are like the people of A in many ways, like people everywhere, and you feel you understand them. Despite the language barrier, you make some good friends. They help you find a place to live and a job. You start to feel less like an outsider and more as though you belong.

One morning you wake up and realise that overnight B has become A.

On an impulse, you quit your job, pack your bag and walk out the door.

Article first published on Raw Safari.

Digital marketing jargon explained in five minutes

The trapper places a small bottle at the foot of a tree where there are many young monkeys. The bottle is tied to the tree trunk with a strand of wire and inside the bottle is placed a nut... One monkey climbs down the tree to the ground. He is curious. He sees the nut inside the bottle, and he reaches in to grab it…

April 2058.

I step out of the car and push my thick spectacles up my sweat-beaded nose. My legs ache. My back aches. At eighty-five, even sitting down for hours knocks you around.
The heat is uncomfortably intense. In the past ten years, the depleted ozone layer has let more and more energy into the atmosphere. The results are all too evident, here in the centre of Australia.

The rock sways gently in the rising heat haze. I stand, staring. It is massive. Red. Utterly beautiful. Iconic. Serene. Indestructible. Even from this distance, over a kilometre from its base, Uluru has an impact, in reality, that I did not predict.

I’m bringing a lot to this moment. I’ve been travelling, non-stop for more than forty years. My journeys have taken me to every part of the planet. Thousands upon thousands of roads. A million kilometres. More meetings, travel companions and friends than I can even remember now. My memory is full. I’m tired.

I decided, more than forty years ago, that this place, this sacred rock, would be my journey’s end; my last destination.
This is the last place to go. After Uluru, I plan to travel only in my mind.

My aching legs insist. I ease myself to the ground and sit in the soft red dust. Sarah, whose car we came here in, comes and sits next to me.

So. Is it like you imagined, Dad? she asks me softly, smiling and putting her hand around my shoulder.

I feel like I will cry suddenly. It’s been a long road. I’ll miss it.

We sit in the shade of a tarpaulin and eat sandwiches.

Don’t you want to go closer? Sarah asks me.

I shake my head. Around the foot of the rock, tour buses, helicopters, hundreds of parked cars are scattered across a quiveringly hot concrete apron.

This is close enough, I tell her. It’s not about the rock. It’s about being here. It’s about knowing I did what I set out to do. Well, some of it at least. It’s just a sense of completion, I guess.

A hot wind gusts at the saltbush. My lips feel dry and cracked. My hips are aching from sitting cross-legged on the ground.

I think back forty-something years to the day I sat down and with youthful presumption, wrote the story of this day. My lips felt a lot more supple then, and my muscles never strained or failed me. I suppose. Honestly, I can’t remember. The way ageing erodes your body, it works mercifully on your memory too. By the time you get to where I am now, you don’t mourn for your lost health, because you can’t really remember what living in a youthful body was like.

Maybe I don’t remember what being young felt like, but I remember everything I’ve done. Playing the blues with pirates in Thailand. Hunting with dolphins. Diving in the sparkling waters of remote Western Australia. Dancing, naked under the stars. Staggering, wide-eyed, through the ruins of Angkor Wat. Exploring the Alhambra. Picnicking under the stars. Hitchhiking through the Alps. Wandering, spellbound, in the desert. Heartbreak. Elation. Confusion.
So much confusion. Every journey I ever went on seems to have begun with confusion.

There’s a clearing in a forest, in a remote corner of Brazil.

I went to Brazil in 2016. I was forty-two years old. I found the clearing in the forest, and I camped there for a week.
I was angry. I was lost. I knew exactly where I was geographically, my GPS told me that, but I was lost in self-doubt.

I made friends with Alberto, the farmer who worked the land on the edge of the jungle. Alberto gave me a lift into town to get food and I helped him to change a flat tire. He invited me to eat with his family that night.
I spent a lot of time during the next few days helping Alberto mend fences and roll joints. In the evenings we ate in his kitchen. At night I went back to my tent in the jungle clearing to brood.

There was a woman on my mind. Of course, there was. She’d given me an ultimatum; give me what I want, or leave me alone. I loved her. I wanted to make her love me too, but I seemed to be unable to reach her.

I sat on the muddy ground under the lush forest canopy and cursed life. Where was it written that a man has to choose between the woman he loves, and what he loves to do?

There were a million insects in that forest. I slapped at mosquitoes, and smeared foul smelling ointment on myself, and smoked dope, and played the blues, and swore and wrote angry sentences in my notebook.

I made a crude slingshot out of frayed rope and a strip of tough, leathery bark and I hurled stones across the clearing and missed my targets and swore at myself.

At night I slept badly in the humidity.

I got the answer in the end.
After a week of building fences, and slapping at bugs, and tossing and turning alone in that muddy, mozzie infested forest, I could see what I had been missing.
She didn’t want me.
It was that simple.
The things she wanted weren’t mine to give. I was in love with someone who could never love me back, because the man she saw in front of her wore my face and spoke with my voice, but he just wasn’t me.
That was the turning point in my journey. After that, I was really free. I would be loved for who I was or not at all. And I would keep my self-respect, and I would follow the road less travelled.
The horizon opened around me like a tropical flower.

I walked down to Alberto’s cottage and asked him to drive me into town.
While we bumped down the road, Alberto told me a story.

My father was a very poor man, Alberto told me. There were seven children in his household, and we were always hungry. This land here is good. The soil is rich, but most of what my father grew, the landlord took in rent. To make a little extra money, my father trapped monkeys in the forest.
The way to trap a monkey is unusual. Have you ever seen this done?

I shook my head.

The trapper places a small bottle, or a hollowed out gourd at the foot of a tree where there are many young monkeys. The bottle is tied to the tree trunk with a strand of wire and inside the bottle is placed a nut. The trapper has not long to wait before one monkey climbs down the tree to the ground. He is curious. He sees the nut inside the bottle, and he reaches in to grab it. But once he has grabbed the nut, he cannot get his paw out of the bottle. With his fist around the nut, it will not fit through the bottle’s neck and as he sits there, perplexed, the trapper grabs him by the scruff of the neck.

My father captured many, many monkeys in this way. It is ingenious, you see? The monkey has a greedy nature. He wants to get free, but he does not want to let go of the nut, and so he is easily trapped.

Alberto dropped me off at the main road. I thanked him for his hospitality and said goodbye and hitchhiked to Colombia and went to a brothel and got a new tattoo and headed north.

After I finish my sandwich, chewing slowly and carefully so as not to bite my own wrinkled cheeks or pain my cracked teeth, I get my camera out and shoot a few pictures of Uluru. They all look like cliches. This is the most photographed landmark in Australia, and there is nothing in it’s immutable, ancient, inscrutable visage left to discover, except inevitability.
Perfect. The perfect place for an old man to soliloquise, and squint into the past.

I help Sarah pack up the tarpaulin. We climb back in the car and crank the air conditioning. I ease back in the comfortable car seat and take a deep breath. I look across at Sarah and smile at her.

Thank you for coming here with me, I say.

She shakes her head and smiles at me with love as only a daughter can smile at an old man.

Where do you want to go now? she asks me.

I think about that.

Home? I ask her.

Where’s that, she asks and laughs.

I turn and look in the rear vision mirror, at the empty dirt track behind us.

Let’s just drive for a while and think about that, I say.

Sarah nods, grinning. She starts the car and sends it into a tight, skidding U-turn; raising a cloud of red dust that mushrooms up into the hot, desert air.
I grin too, my sunburned lips cracking as the smile spreads, unstoppable, across my face.

Story first published on Raw Safari.

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I climb up to the cab and slide into the passenger seat of the truck. The driver is a big bloke. He’s got a shaved head, a scar on his left temple and a lot of scrappy looking tats all over his arms and neck.

I’m Gary, he says, and we shake hands.

I pick up hitchhikers all the time, Gary says. Look, mate, I’m gonna tell you, straight up, I’ve done some time in prison and that’s why I look a bit rough, but you don’t have to worry, I’m about the straightest bloke you’ll ever meet.

I nod and smile.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, Gary says. I found Christ while I was inside, and I decided to clean myself up.

I’ve been a trucky all my life, and I’m probably the most clean-living truck driver in Australia.

Me dad was a trucky, too. He taught me to drive and strip an engine. Me dad’s business was a small operation: him, me, two rented trucks, and me best mate at the time, Steve, who was the third driver.

Me and Steve were mates, since high school, and me sister Tracey was pretty much living with him, so it was a real family operation.

When we weren’t driving we were usually down the pub. We were all big drinkers, but Steve was something else. Didn’t know when to stop. He was OK until about his eighth beer, and then he got a real smart mouth and started picking fights. He showed up for work drunk more than once in a while. Dad gave him warnings, and lots of second chances, but in the end, he had to cut him loose.

Dad died in an accident when I was twenty-three. Fell asleep going down the Bulli Pass and wrote himself off.

After dad passed, I inherited the business. I started doing long hauls more and more cause the money was good, and dad had left a lot of debt.
I didn’t see a whole lot of Steve or my sister Tracey at that time. I knew Steve was drinking even more than ever, and I kept hearing about him getting in fights.

I warned Tracey to get away from Steve. I didn’t want her around him any more. I knew how he was. Tracey blamed me for his problems cause I wouldn’t give him his job back.
I tried to tell her he was trouble, but she didn’t want to hear it from me. She would just say; you’re not dad, Gary; fuck off Gary.
I tried to keep an eye out for her, but I was away on the road for three, four days at a time.

One weekend I come home from a five-day run and I find Tracey curled up on mum’s couch with a band-aid over her eyebrow. Her eye’s black, her lip is split wide open. She looked like she got hit by a bus.
When she seen me, she started crying, and I didn’t even have to ask her what happened.
I put my bag down and sat beside her. I said you got to stay away from that bloke.
She said, yeah, she knew that. She said she was going to break up with him.

I went over to Steve’s place to set him straight. He was crying. He could hardly stand up, he was that pissed.
I know I’ve done wrong, he said.
I told him, we go back a long way, you and me, but if you ever lay a finger on my sister again I’ll have to fucking kill you.
That was all I said, and I walked out.

Tracey moved back in with Steve three weeks later. What could I do? She was an adult.

Two months later he put her in the hospital.

I was in Townsville when I got the call from mum. I drove twenty hours straight and got to the hospital about two in the morning.

My sister was in a room on her own. Her jaw was broken, so she couldn’t talk. I sat beside her bed and held her hand. There were tears running down her face, and she made this sort of choking noise in her throat. The nurse told me she was sedated, and I should leave her alone to sleep.

I hadn’t had a decent kip in two days.
I got a cup of coffee from a machine in the waiting room. As soon as I drank it I threw up.
I was shaking all over when I walked out of the hospital.

I got in the truck and drove round to Steve’s flat. It was a shitty part of town, across the road from a row of warehouses. I parked the truck right outside the block of flats. My legs were still shaking when I walked into the stairway but by the time I climbed the stairs to the third floor, I was totally calm. It was like looking down on myself in a video game. I stopped shaking, and this insane anger just shot through me.

I kicked the door of Steve’s flat, right beside the lock. The door split, and I pushed through the gap.
The TV was on. He was standing in front of the couch, in his boxer shorts, with a beer in his hand. He just stared at me as I walked across the room. His eyes were wide open. When I stepped around the couch, he dodged past me and ran into the bedroom. I got my shoulder in the door so he couldn’t close it. He jumped over the bed and got out onto the balcony. He slammed the glass sliding door, and I just kicked my foot right through it.
Later on, I had to have about a dozen stitches on my leg, but at the time I didn’t even notice.

He was backed up against the balcony railing, kind of crouching down. His face was curled up in a sweaty knot of fear. I grabbed his arm and punched him in the guts. I was always a bigger bloke than Steve. He folded up like a sack of shit. I pushed him against the balcony rail and hit him in the face three or four times as hard as I could.

I don’t think I really wanted to kill him, but when he went limp and started falling over the balcony railing, I just kept on hitting him.
He went over the side.
The balcony was three floors up.

I walked down the stairs and climbed into the bunk in the back of my truck cab.
The cops found me there passed out when they showed up half an hour later.

Steve lived.
I pleaded guilty and I did seven years.
I spent my time studying. I read the bible and did a business management course.

When I got out I started driving again. I worked my arse off and I got a loan and bought a truck.
I got five trucks and seven drivers working for me now.
My sister Tracey runs the office for me.

Tracey got married to a really nice bloke a couple of years ago.
She and Dazza have two daughters and a little boy, so I’m an uncle now.

Nobody in me family ever talks about what happened. But I reckon Tracey told Dazza how I feel about boozers, ’cause he didn’t drink anything except orange juice at their wedding.

Originally published on Raw Safari.

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