Computer Warehouse - Bronze Spam Award winner!
Dingggg!
Our first winner! Reason? For having an unsubscribe link email address that doesn’t work.
CW gets the Bronze Spam Award because although I did ’soft-opt’ in to their list a long time ago while checking Mac prices, they’re now making it impossible to opt out.
The muddle of ‘the entrepreneur’
We did a podcasting job this week from a workshop at the Eden Project that explored the idea of the ‘entrepreneur’. There were some broadly-shared assumptions going around - such as that entrepreneurs were people who made the most of opportunities; that they were willing to risk failure in order to drive change and innovate.
A quick look at Wikipedia provides the following:
“An entrepreneur is a person who has possession over a new enterprise or venture and assumes full accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome”
Interestingly, the workshop didn’t really focus on accountability as a defining characteristic of the entrepreneur. And on the willingness to risk failure - which most people believed a defining characteristic of the entrepreneur - Wikipedia also has this to say:
“The research data indicate that successful entrepreneurs are actually risk averse”
That’s somehow not surprising. Look at Dragon’s Den. Those people aren’t playing a risk game. They’re playing a game of calculated exploitation and they only put their money into things they know they can drive to success. So where do we get the idea of risk from?
The people who take risks are the crazy alchemists, the nutty inventors, the creative nomads and the random innovators. They’re the ones who throw everything into their idea with a high risk of failure. But they’re not entrepreneurs - a distinction the workshop seemed to miss. Entrepreneurs are, however, people who seize upon the inventions and the innovations and capitalise them in the right place at the right time.
So it emerges that the defining characteristics of the the entrepreneur are the eye for opportunity, the discipline and courage required to act on those opportunities and the willingness to be accountable for the whole process. While at first glance, it may seem like the entrepreneur is a risk-taker (compared with working 9-5 in the office for the rest of your life) in reality his success derives from his ability to minimise risk.
Shouting at 3
Close your eyes and recall the last time you tried to explain the nuances of your problem to an Indian call centre agent. Bring to mind the feelings.
Think about it for a moment. Horrible, isn’t it?
I got charged internet usage for looking at RSS feed ‘headlines’ on my mobile. The problem is that nowhere does 3 tell you that you will be charged internet usage to do this.
The Indian customer service lady had no idea what I was talking about. At one point, I asked her to tell me where, online, I could read 3’s terms and conditions stating any charges relating to viewing RSS feeds.
After 10 minutes consulting her customer service colleagues, she proudly told me that www.bbc.co.uk would be a good place to look.
Eventually, she cancelled the £1.62 charge by way of good customer relations but warned me in the sternest tones to stop looking at RSS feeds.
Whether a company deliberately offers no channels of communication or whether it outsources to places where people struggle to deal with calls in a second language, the effect is the same. You are not being heard.
[BTW - did you know that the original painting by Edvard Munch was actually called ‘Shouting’?]
The company you keep
Your online reputation involves subtle but powerful chemistry. Here’s a real life example of how it works.
5 minutes ago. I was reading a post by Andy Lopata (founder of Word of Mouse network and author of ‘And Death Came Third’) in the ‘Make Your Mark’ Connectors’ Google group. I liked his book (about networking and public speaking) and we’ve spoken a couple of times recently. His post announced that he’d been appointed a regional contributor to US-based ‘The National Networker’ and was writing a monthly column.
So I clicked across to read Andy’s first column - a piece about Ecademy’s recent 10th birthday. When I finished, I had a look round the site, a sort of digital ‘let’s-see-the-company-you’re-keeping’. Moments later, I was reading a column offering ‘Network Marketers’ a word-for-word script they could use to recruit other companies’ staff into their business ‘opportunities’.
Now, as those who know me know, I take a very strong and very critical position on network (or ‘multi-level’) marketing. Given that the vast majority (some sources say over 95%) of people don’t make any money at all from MLM / NM ‘opportunities’, and of the remainder only a tiny fraction make enough to live on, this ‘industry’ is slowly being exposed for what it really is; an exploitative system that preys on vulnerable people, takes their investments at the same time as brainwashing them to take full responsibility for their failure to make money. For the record, that view is not based on my own experience. Its based on a huge and growing body of direct, personal testimony of people who have been damaged by its practices - and, more recently, backed up by statistical evidence emerging from high-profile law suits against Quixtar (formerly Amway).
Would I write for an online journal that elevated Network Marketing to respectability? No. I wouldn’t - but that’s a personal choice. But this experience does remind me that online reputation isn’t just about knowing what other people say about you; it’s also about thinking about the company you keep and what they’re saying. Have I considered what people might think of the associations I make or the places I write? Probably not. Its worth thinking about it, though.
A1, SAMFUK and my reading glasses…
Congratulations A1 on a nice online forum. Its only been open a few weeks, but its already seen quite a lot of activity. Nice atmosphere, well worth signing up and joining in.
I’ve always been interested in what makes a forum work - or not work. Recently, I’ve been jumping between Sales and Marketing Forum UK - or SAMFUK as I like to call it 
- and A1. Although SAMFUK’s gone through a considerable makeover recently it still hasn’t achieved the easy readability of A1. The simple result is that I’ve spent far more time recently on A1.
Moving from SAMFUK to A1 is like putting on your reading glasses mid way through trying to text someone. Its only when you’ve done it, you realise how much you were struggling before.
Being right - an obsession
I can’t tell you how many times I find myself sitting bolt-upright, way past midnight, suddenly wondering “Why the hell am I doing this?!”
If I’m really, really honest, a lot of the time I’m probably doing it because I suffer from a need to be right. Right?
Typically in our house it goes like this:
“Are you coming to bed?”
“I can’t. This is important!”
“What?”
“I’ve got to finish this post.. it’s…er.. very….”
Clare goes to bed. 60 minutes of furious writing / editing later:
“Why the hell am I doing this?!” [Quits without posting]
Now that’s what I call viral… [2]
I got an email from a perfectly sane, level-headed and intelligent friend today announcing that “the world famous Red Arrows have been banned appearing at the 2012 London Olympics because they are deemed ‘too British’ ” and asking me to sign an online petition.
Frothing at the mouth, I clicked the link and found myself looking at a petition signed by hundreds of thousands of people demanding the government let the Red Arrows fly.
Then above the petition I noticed this: “The allegation is not true. The government has not banned the Red Arrows…”.
A couple of seconds in Google revealed the whole thing to be a hoax. But the petition is still active and people are still signing it.
There are a couple of things that stand out from this. One is how astonishingly uncritical we can be of information that fits with the kind of things we expect to hear. Another is how the emotional response can take on a life of its own beyond the unmasking of the lie.
Now that’s what I call viral marketing.
I find an unusual URL in my blog stats. Naturally, I click on the link and it takes me to a free backlink checker. Nice. Whose site? ‘SEO PRO‘ of Australia. Thanks, chaps.
Did they spam me? No. Did they get me on their site? Yes. Did they give me something that added value? Yes. Am I blogging about them in return? Yes.
The mechanics of how someone appeared in our blog stats is the clever bit. Think about it. Unknown to us, one of the hundreds of businesses we’ve put a link to on G2B@blog has used the SEO PRO tool. Their results have turned up a backlink to the G2B@podcast, which they’ve then clicked out of curiosity. The referring page’s URL that appears in our stats? SEO PRO’s backlink checker. “Ooh” says I “who’s that linking to our blog?” and off we go again.
Email marketing - the law and spam
Most people starting out in business don’t know what the law actually says about what you can and can’t do regarding email marketing. Everyone seems to have their own definition of what constitutes spam - especially those people who offer to sell you one-off email-shots to their 10,000 name lists.
If your eyes glaze over when you read what the various official websites have to say about email marketing, don’t worry - you’re not alone. With guidelines like that, no wonder everyone’s spamming everyone else.
So, in a spirit of public good-heartedness, I’ve boiled down the rules to a couple of points that you’ve no excuse for not being able to grasp. Honestly. Here it is
1. You can send mail marketing to a LTD or PLC company without consent - so long as the addressee is non-personal (e.g. info@bigcityconsulting)
2. You can’t send email marketing to individuals, sole traders or partnerships unless there is consent.
The rules define 3 ways consent is given (or construed):
1) Where (at the point of collecting email addresses) you’ve offered an ‘opt-out’ box but the person hasn’t ticked it
2) Where (at the point of collecting email addresses) you’ve offered an ‘opt-in’ box and the person has ticked it
or
3) Where the email address was obtained ‘in the course of a sale or negotiations of a product or service AND then only where the email contents are concerned with that sale AND then only where the person has been given an opt-out option at every stage’.
This is what’s known as ‘the soft opt-in’.
If you’re outside of that, you’re spamming.
¡mu! news
We’ve been going through a complete review here at ‘mu:kau and taking stock of where we are after just over a year out there in the world of business. The process of reflection hasn’t been easy (it never is) but vital to do.
Just over a year ago, we made our first podcast. Since then, we’ve got our name out there as the right people to talk to if you want to know anything about podcasting in the South West of the UK. The ‘G2B@podcast’ has also been a great vehicle (read ‘excuse’) for tramping around the business networking circuit and meeting and interviewing loads of interesting people
We’ve captured seminars, interviewed happy (and not so happy) customers, podcasted business networking events, created fun podcast ’serials’, trained groups to podcast and delivered customer feedback surveys. We’ve set up 24/7 audio feedback lines for hotels and given presentations about podcasting across the region. We’ve partnered up with several creative businesses to add podcasting to their offerings.
It hasn’t been easy. The process of starting out in business is hugely challenging - especially if you do everything in the wrong order, as we did. And doubly so when you throw all manner of personal challenges and serious illness into the mix. Its been a tough - and in many ways, a humbling - experience. And we’re still here.
Right now, we’re developing the ‘mu:kau Heard package, producing various podcasts (including a series for BT global group), designing audio blogs for businesses and providing ‘mu:kau full-strength feedback for individual projects. Along with podcast training, podcast production, blog design and various audio feedback services our focus for 2008 is in the area of Online Reputation Management.
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