Archive for August, 2008

Online reputation management tools – Reputation HQ

Aug 30 | by Sam Deeks | ORM, news
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Watch this space for a test-drive of Reputation HQ

The people at Reputation HQ picked up a post I made a few months ago about online reputation management and suggested we take a look at their software. We did, but there’s only so much you can tell from the developer’s checklist of benefits.

More importantly, for most people not in the business of social media, there’s only so much you can tell about whether or not you could use it from the descriptions provided. All of which makes Reputation HQ’s offer to let us try it out most welcome.

From what I can gather so far, Reputation HQ is a tool that’s designed to be used by a number of people in an organisation working collaboratively to monitor and respond to threats and opportunities to the organisation’s reputation.

We’re excited to be able to give it a whirl and keen to let you know how we find it.

Boris Johnson BBC Radio 4 Today transcript – the Olympic interview

Aug 27 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, feedback
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Boris explains how he plans to safeguard £10 billion.

Its amazing how uncritical we can be when we consume media such as radio and TV.  It’s as if we become so hypnotised by the soothing flow of sound and pictures we overlook the absurdity of the content.

I’ve started freezing the moment in words to make sense of just how devoid of meaning they actually are – another example of someone with with nothing to say saying just that.

Transcript:
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JH: Well the Olympic flag will pass to London tomorrow in the shape of Boris Johnson, Mayor of London since May.  Mr. Johnson may or may not still be mayor when the London games begin in 2012 but what is certain is that there will be many rows between now and then over how preparations are progressing; there always are – there already have been.  That’s the problem, it always is.
Mr. Johnson is on the line from Beijing, good morning to you

BJ: Good morning, John

JH: Now then, the Chinese spent £30-odd billion, we’re going to spend less than £10 billion, you say you will come in under budget…how?

BJ: Well, I’m absolutely determined to deliver a fantastic games and  together with everybody involved in this we are resolved to produce..a.. brilliant British successor to these triumphant Beijing games.. ah, one that is full of wit and imagination, ingenuity, er, but is coming in under the £9.3 billion ceiling that we set ourselves…
Continue Reading…

Small business marketing support for Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset [promotion]

Aug 25 | by Sam Deeks | Get Found Easy promotion
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Affordable marketing help for professional service suppliers in the Southwest UK

Brian GriffinTop sales and marketing coach Brian Griffin has helped many businesses transform the way they market themselves and sell more of their professional services.

Could you use some of Brian Griffin’s marketing magic too?

He specialises in helping people who find selling uncomfortable to develop the confidence and the skills to sell with passion and integrity. Brian offers a scalable, affordable telephone coaching package that will suit businesses of all sizes.

Click the link below to hear Brian’s approach to sales (from his ‘Selling Services With Integrity‘ audio seminar).

Are you ready for some help marketing your professional services?

Call Brian on 01460 239020 for a free, no obligation consultation or email info@mukaumedia.co.uk

Mandigo WP theme problem with Viddler video embed code

Aug 25 | by Sam Deeks | blogging technique, how to
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Are your Viddler videos cropped when viewed in Internet Explorer but OK in Firefox?

I chose the fantastically flexible and good-looking Mandigo WP theme to build a site and tested a Viddler video on a post and a page. In a page, the Viddler video displayed at the right size on Mac & PC and in I.E. and Firefox.

However, in I.E on the PC the video in a post was shrunk to 200 wide and 450 high. (It displayed correctly in Firefox on both PC and Mac).

I did a quick test: dropped a YouTube video into both post and page. This displayed correctly in I.E. and Firefox…. so….

I then used the YouTube script and changed out the Viddler source file!

Presto! The viddler video playing correctly on Mandigo theme in Internet Explorer.

I’m not a programmer, and I can’t tell you what it is in Viddler’s embed code that caused that problem, but YouTube’s embed code looks slimmer, for starters. Anyone out there come across the same problem and can shed any light on it?

themes.wordpress.com : what happened?

Aug 25 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, feedback
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This is the current state of play of the Wordpress theme library.

Themes suspend

There are two areas where I think Wordpress is in danger of losing out to other user-friendly CMS style web design packages.

The first is that choosing a template is becoming harder. Seems like because Wordpress is an open-source project there’s no ownership and nothing to sell.

As a result, it doesn’t seem to matter that there’s no way a designer can get an overview of all the themes available. Go to the new themes page and you’ll find that no-one’s thought of putting a ‘view all’ option on the page. Same if you go to the plugins page.

The second area is in how badly documented everything to do with Wordpress is. I’ve said it before but there’s a growing ‘how-to’ information gap. In fact, it’s become a canyon and if you’re a newcomer, it’s too big to jump across.

The problem with the information that does exist is that it’s written by people on the wrong side of the canyon: the developers who made the stuff. And they seem to have lost the ability to see things from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know what they know.

Yesterday, in trying to work out why the simplest plugin ever – ‘list category posts’ – wouldn’t work for me, I discovered it uses something called a ’shortcode’. That was the first time I’d ever come across that expression. What was it? I searched in the Wordpress codex. I got a long, in-depth article aimed at fellow-developers that was no use at all.

Is this the fate of ‘open-source’ tools? That because there’s no money to be made and no frustrated customer to deal with nobody has to think outside of their own viewframe?

How to get good sound on your video

Aug 23 | by Sam Deeks | podcasts, video
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‘mu:kaumedia time-served tips how to get great audio on your video content

Good video audio sketchFor most video makers and podcasters, good vocal recording is a must.

Here’s the priority list of things to do:

1) Buy a video camera with a microphone input. Don’t even consider one without – you will regret it.

2) Buy a Sennheiser Freeport presentation system and use it for all your ’studio’ voice recording.

3) Buy the most expensive. professional camera-mounted shotgun mic or hand-held mic you can afford for on-location interviews and ambient sound.

The rule of vocal recording? Do whatever it takes to get most voice, least ambience. The easiest way to do that is to put a mic right next to the sound source – hence the tie-clip or lavalier mic (as recommended above).

Any further away from the source than that and you’re into unrescuable, ‘boxy’ or simply inaudible voice recording.  Here’s an example (in a relatively noisy room).

What is online defamation (libel)?

Aug 22 | by Sam Deeks | PIGs
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Online libel, slander and your reputation

defamation PIGAs more and more people express their pleasure, frustration or anger at our products and services online, more and more of us are going to find ourselves wondering about the difference between legitimate criticism and defamation.

You may well find yourself dealing, at some point, with an vengeful individual who has made it his/her business to tell the world that you’re a cowboy and should be avoided like the plague. Negative criticism like that can seriously damage your reputation, there’s no doubt about it.

So where does the line fall between someone’s right to express their opinion and defamation?

Let’s make some distinctions first.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation defines defamation as “a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone’s reputation, and published ‘with fault’, meaning as a result of negligence or malice.” Slander is spoken defamation, libel is written defamation.

In plain Inglish, defamation against you is: A false statement, presented as fact either deliberately intended to harm your reputation or as the result of negligence.

Three things have to be proved to win a day-to-day defamation claim:

1) The statement was published to at least one other person apart from you

2) The false-ness of the statement

3) That it is understood a) to concern the you and b) intended to harm you

However, if you happen to be a public figure, you have to go a step further and prove actual malice.

So there you go. If you find someone saying nasty things about your business on their blog, measure it against those guidelines. If you think you’ve been defamed, it’s going to cost you time and money to prove it.

So far as online reputation management is concerned it’s pretty much academic whether or not you win a defamation case a year later because the damage is already done. By the time you emerge victorious from the High Court it will be history and the only person who will care about it will be you.

The lesson here is that you’ve got to keep in mind that online reputation management isn’t about proving ‘the truth’ to anyone. It’s about hearing what’s really being said, assessing the threats and opportunities that arise – and most importantly, responding in a way that builds your reputation instead of damaging it further.

By all means take it to court but first, take it to an online reputation expert to help you chart a course through the difficult time ahead.

Online reputation management = online reaction management

Aug 22 | by Sam Deeks | ORM
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If I asked you to think of the one person who could do the most damage to your online reputation, you’d probably picture some seriously cheesed off customer slagging you off in a forum or rubbishing your company in their blog. Understandable.

But probably wrong. Paradoxically, the person who’s likely to do your reputation the most damage is you – by your reaction to criticism or attack.

When someone levels criticism at us or makes allegations that are likely to destroy confidence in our products and services, it usually hurts – a lot. We often feel genuinely upset that someone feels that way about our business but we’re fearful too of the damage it may do to our reputation and bottom line.

Our instinct may well be to ‘fight’ and argue, hit back or defend our position aggressively or take ‘flight’ and avoid dealing with the situation altogether. Mix in to that how easy it is to misinterpret text, the lack of body language and the safe distance that encourages online argument and someone’s critical comments start to look like a minefield that’s all to easy to blunder into.

Our number 1 rule (in life as well as in online reputation) is to not react. Not reacting creates the space to see what’s really going on. Make no mistake, not reacting hurts momentarily (which is why most people prefer to react with anger so as not to feel bad) but it’s the only way to turn a threat into a triumph.

Remember, both you and your critic will be judged by your conduct, not the detail of the matter at hand, and it’s our aim to see our clients handle the situation with dignity, empathy, accountability and respect.

LSIkeywords.com offers useful free keyword tool (again)

Aug 18 | by Sam Deeks | SEO, business insight
2 Comments

LSIkeywords.com logoSimple effective tool for refining your site keywords

[update Aug21] It doesn’t appear to work any more. That’s a pity.

[Double-update Feb 11 2010:  Victor Volder from LSI keywords has commented to say it DOES work again! Here's the link - go play!]

This came to my attention today and I’ve used it to perform a ‘last check’ on the keywords that I want to tweak this site for over the next few weeks.

It’s a fairly straightforward tool but what’s good about it is that it highlights the one- two- and three-word keyword combinations generated from the phrase you started with. It also shows you the top sites for the combination you entered which is quite interesting.

Do I trust what it’s telling me? For now, yes. Is it clear where it comes from? No. Is there any sign of who made it? No. If you do a search for ‘lsikeywords.com’ you’ll find this blog very near the top of Google. The only other significant reference is a forum post from the guy who had it made for him.

Every time I want to know about something, I go behind the scenes in Google and look for a sense of who, where, what, how. I’m looking for solidity, history… substance. Most of all, though, I’m looking for interconnectedness… how someone or something interacts and relates to the rest of the world. Is it deeply rooted? Embedded? Or has it just appeared out of thin air?

Get Found in Google – the hydraulic way

Aug 13 | by Sam Deeks | Benefits of blogging, marketing
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Hydraulic platformsWhat can social media tools do to help small businesses get found online?

Let’s face it, Google is the answer to all your problems. Got a bad knee? Google will diagnose it. Want a plumber? Google will find you one. Need to know which hotel to stay in? Google will help you decide.

The only question is how do you get your business found by Google?

Well, you can either have an expensive website built and resign yourself to paying hundreds of pounds a month for search engine optimisation or you can embark on a complicated and costly ‘Pay -Per-Click’ advertising campaign that could lose you money a lot quicker than you make it.

At least, that’s how the options have looked until now: expensive and shrouded in technical mystery. The good news is that things are changing fast. Now you can get great Google search visibility for your business – and it doesn’t have to cost you anything. Continue Reading…

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