2010 January | UK online reputation management

Rule #1 for retaining your credibility in business…

January 31, 2010 By Sam Deeks 2 Comments

At least be good at what you’re supposed to be good at!

I’ve lost count of the number of ‘web design / internet marketing’ agency sites I’ve visited only to be astonished to find that they seem to have overlooked the absolute basics of search engine optimisation.

Let’s get something clear here: we’re not talking about clever, complicated nerdy stuff. We’re talking about the absolute basics you need to be doing if you’re to stand even the slightest chance of being found in Google by your prospects.

How can you tell a when a web design company won’t give you that? Well, you don’t have to be an expert. It’s easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for and it’s a fun, if slightly depressing, game you can play right here and right now from the comfort of your own browser.

Here are the rules:

Go find a web design / internet marketing company online
Look at the page titles that appear at the top of your browser window when you click on different parts of their site. Do they have the same title on every page? What are the keywords? Does it look like they will help their services get found by their prospects using Google? (Hint: things like “MyCompanyName: Our portfolio” are practically useless)

You’ll be amazed – and eventually bloody annoyed. I only wish more people played this game before they went ahead and contracted someone to develop their website. All too often people end up playing this game after – when it’s too late.

Here’s one I found today. Click on the thumbnail (above right) to zoom in.

“We design online strategy and build software” says the title on every page. Absolutely useless as far as Google is concerned – except in the highly unlikely (frankly bizarre) eventuality that someone out there types the exact words “we design online strategy and build software” into Google in the hope of finding a web designer in their area.

Rather depressingly, this company has also broken Rule # 2 which is if you’re going to showcase something, at least showcase someting YOU’VE made, not someone else – doh!?!)

If you’ve already paid for a website that Google can’t find because the page titles are all something like “We design online strategy and build software” or “Pickled Onion Designs: My portfolio” then all I can say is I hope you won’t make that mistake again. Basic SEO is an elementary part of a basic site – not some exotic luxury!

If on the other hand, you’re still looking around for a company to make your site I hope you’ll play this little game before you hand over your hard-earned money.

Filed Under: Big Marketing Mistakes, GRRRR!!!, how to Tagged With: basic SEO, credibility, online marketing, portfolio, web design

Google and China. Stop and think about it

January 31, 2010 By Sam Deeks 2 Comments

I have to confess I haven’t really stopped to give this any thought – until now

Clare and I were discussing the relationship between Google, Twitter and Facebook when the conversation turned to China. It occurred to me I didn’t really know what the situation was with Google and China and decided to dedicate at least half an hour to find out.

I knew that Google had cut some kind of deal in which it colluded with the Chinese government to provide a part-censored search engine and it made me feel uneasy – particularly with Google’s ‘do no evil’ corporate slogan ringing in my ears.

“I guarantee this will be far dirtier and more complex than it looks” I said to Clare and sat down to shed some light on my ignorance.

The first thing I learned was that Google and other US companies have recently been attacked by Chinese hackers. Second, that these attacks were aimed at the accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Third, that the Google accounts of a number of non-Chinese critics of China’s human rights record have also been hacked.

Ok. Pause. Think.

Over to Google’s blog. According to Google, these attacks have led Google to review the “feasibility of our business operations in China”. In a post, revealingly titled “A new approach to China”, Google justifies its collusion with the Chinese government so far like this:

“We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

So – we can only capitalise this market if we collude with the Chinese government to censor what its citizens can access. But that’s ok, because some information for the people is better than none, right? Now, with the Chinese hacks, the ‘do no evil’ mega Corp is lining up to throw away that whole market in a noble stand in defense of human rights, right? Well, that’s how Google wants it to appear, certainly.

But hold on.

Closer inspection reveals that Google’s market share of web search is far lower in China than it is in India – with whose government it also colludes to censor the content that its citizens can access. Whoa-aa.

Let that sink in. No longer one, but two, major boom economies where Google colludes to censor in return for access to the market. ‘Do no evil’ starts to wear thin.

Add to this the astonishing claim in the last week that these hacks were achieved via an architecture specifically designed by Google to enable the US Governments (among others?) a means to monitor its own dissidents… and the story begins to smell of hypocrisy.

So let’s review the story so far. Google agrees to help the Chinese government censor its citizens’ access to information in return for a share of the market. Google defends this by arguing that some information is better than none and by the deception that this has a role in opening up freedom of information in China. Meantime, Google does the same in India with more profitable and less controversial results since the Indian government isn’t under the microscope for human rights violations in the same way China is.

Then Google gets embarrassed as Chinese hackers access the accounts of Chinese human rights activists, doing so by means of an architecture created by Google to allow the US to do the same to its own dissidents.

Response? Make a big show of taking a stand against ‘evil’. This from and excellent piece in the online Asia Times:

“Google took an important and inflammatory step of escalating its conflict with China by using the e-mail hack against democracy advocates to wrap itself in a human-rights flag. As a result, its threat to stop censoring its Google.cn search engine in retaliation for the hacks has become a cause celebre for free speech and Internet-rights activists.

This cause has been taken up by the US government”

It’s a win-win for Google: if they ‘win’, the Chinese market is fully open for their exploitation. If they ‘lose’ and withdraw from China in protest, they lose that market but win a priceless ‘moral’ victory which will may help people overlook the idea that censorship only really matters to Google when it limits the scale of the opportunity open to it.

One thing’s for certain – I know more than I did an hour ago

Filed Under: GRRRR!!!, what do you think? Tagged With: censorship, china, google, hacks, Human rights violations, India, US govt

Online reputation: Why social media tells us so much

January 31, 2010 By Sam Deeks 1 Comment

Social media creates a powerful impression of the person behind the ‘front’

This is a relatively famous person tweeting a couple of days ago. Some of you may be following her and you may recognise the profile or the tweets. I’ve hidden her name and face because the purpose of this post isn’t to attack her reputation. However, despite going some way to disguise her identity, anyone with 20 seconds to spare can find out who this is.

That’s how social media is.

What impression do you get from those two tweets?

Maybe this person was trying to be humorous but forgot to put a self-effacing ‘lol’ or smiley at the end. Having followed her for a few weeks, however, I doubt it.

The point is that it doesn’t matter. In social media, the damage is done the minute you hit the ‘tweet’ button.

Filed Under: online reputation management, Twitter Tagged With: damage, online reputation management, tweets, Twitter

Online reputation: all your traces in one lump

January 31, 2010 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

Why is online reputation so important? Because the web puts all the traces you leave together in one big pile for people to make a judgment about

Once apon a time, you went somewhere, did something in the real world. Whatever you did, you left traces. Footprints, DNA, garbage, bits of paper, notes, recordings.. But whatever traces you left stayed where you left them. The only way somebody else would find those traces would be if they took the same journey as you; if they literally ‘re-traced’ your steps. That’s why Columbo was such fun. That’s why the TV ‘serial killer’ was all the rage in the days before Google.

Your reputation was the same. Because it was either ‘word-of-mouth’ or ‘old-fashioned-media’ it could be different in different places. In this village you might be thought of as a scoundrel. In that City, a respectable member of the community. Unless you got into the broadcast media, the traces of your behaviour tended to stay where you left them – visible only to the people directly affected by them.

But things are different now – very different.

Google brings the traces of everything you’ve ever done online together into one big, steaming lump. And very soon, Google will be adding everything you’re doing right now – every Tweet and every Facebook update – to the pile in real time.

What does that mean, Lt. Columbo? I’m glad you asked that question, Sir, I really am.

What it means is that people nowadays assess your reputation from the bigger picture they get when they look at that pile, not from any single thing in it.

Your online reputation – how someone perceives you – is the sum total of the following 3 risk factors:

The things you choose to say about yourself (your websites, blogs, profiles etc)
The traces you leave of yourself (your participation in any online discussions, activities etc)
The things that other people choose to say about you (customers, critics, friends, enemies)

The real problem for most people is that they only really give their online reputation any thought when something significant happens in the 3rd risk area i.e. someone starts maligning them or their business on a blog or a forum. My clients are invariably reeling from the shock of finding themselves under attack when they contact me.

Of course there is plenty we can do at that point to repair the damage and build a stronger reputation to limit the damage of any future attacks – and there’s nothing like being in a bit of discomfort to focus the mind on the issue.

Of course, the secret is to think about your online reputation before you come under attack.

So, to sum up: take notice of the fact that from here on in, Google WILL bring together everything you do and say online for people to form an instant – and lasting – impression of you.

And start behaving accordingly

Filed Under: critical approach to online media, online reputation management Tagged With: facebook, google, online reputation, real time results, risks, social media, tweets, Twitter

‘mu:kaumedia’s Sam Deeks proud to have helped at Davos

January 30, 2010 By Sam Deeks 2 Comments

Sam Deeks proud to have used social media to get a difficult issue in front of a world audience at Davos

Two weeks ago my friend Julia Lalla-Maharaj heard about the YouTube Davos competition. Activists all around the world were invited to create video pitches for the issues or campaigns they felt most passionate about. The YouTube community and a panel of 3 world-renowned speakers would be the judges. The prize for the winner would be the chance to debate their issue with world leaders at the World Economic Forum at Davos this past week.

Having given up her career to campaign against the painful and repressive tradition of female genital mutilation (FGM), Julia jumped at the chance, only just making the deadline to film her video pitch.

Next, we hurriedly bought the domain www.endfgmnow.org and set up email addresses. A friend made a holding page that outlined the basic campaign aims.

Then, suddenly, to her surprise, Julia made the last 5 shortlist. The YouTube community voted away like mad. Some of the shortlisted campaigners had huge YouTube communities behind them (one had 250,000 followers at the start of the race). Others, like Julia left the starting blocks complete unknowns.

A friend’s flat became campaign HQ. First line of attack was Twitter – creating a new account and leapfrogging quickly to follow a huge web of influential women who might be interested in FGM and the chance to take an issue about empowerment for women to the centre of a global stage.

Within a few days, we were following a couple of thousand key people – and being followed back by about 1/4 of those. Julia and her team pulled all the best strings from her years as a communications / PR consultant in London and all the links she’d made in her work volunteering in the 3rd sector.

If you believed the YouTube view count, Julia’s capaign didn’t stand a chance of winning. But I was confident that it wasn’t about clicky numbers from an invisible audience, or nice-sounding campaigns with palatable aims like making the whole world feel a bit better. The organisers were clearly looking for an issue that was real and focused enough for a group of influential – and powerful – people to have a meaningful debate about on a world stage.

Which is why Julia’s pitch won. Suddenly, the Google film crew were at the flat making a ‘Davos Diary’ and the interviews and news features began in earnest.

We quickly installed a WordPress blog on the www.endfgmnow.org domain and began to fill it with video content and the occasional emailed text blogs from Julia (who by this time was whirling around Davos getting into the black books of the likes of Bill Clinton, the Gates, Klaus Schwab, Paulo Coehlo and a whole host of others).

The campaign came to a climax today with a live YouTube streamed debate exploring how the different nations can work together to end FGM – and end it soon.

It was great to see social media playing its part in this campaign in a powerful and refreshingly unself-conscious way. This wasn’t about cute, cool social media gazing at its own navel. It was about getting things done in a real, offline world.

But it was only when I was watching the debate live from Davos this afternoon and I heard Julia say “…and that will be on my site shortly” that it hit me that she was talking to me, sitting on my sofa in Devon with one eye on the YouTube window and the other on the tweaks I was making to the End FGM Now site.

It’s at moments like that I see how amazing tools like WordPress and Twitter really are and – despite the nerdy frustration they can bring and the cringe-inducing self-obsession – how empowering they can be.

Filed Under: Benefits of blogging, WOW! Tagged With: Davos, FGM, Julia Lalla-Maharajh, Sam Deeks, social media, Twitter, wordpress, YouTube

Best email newsletter service? Campaign Monitor

January 27, 2010 By Sam Deeks 2 Comments

Campaign Monitor impresses me from the start as ‘get going straight away’ email newsletter package

Choosing the right email marketing software isn’t easy. Anyone can put up a site and create a slick impression but it’s only when you’ve committed your money that you find out you’re dealing with chancers operating out of their bedrooms.

If you’re not particularly techie but want a service that you can pick up and use, you’re going to be disappointed. For a start, whatever service you’re using you’ll find out that even creating a newsletter from a standard template isn’t a simple, drag and drop affair, far less editing a template to customise it.

I suspect that’s the biggest surprise the non-techie business person gets: nothing in the world of HTML and email is ‘what you see is what you get’ meaning that unless you understand something of HTML and php editing you’re going to struggle to to build a good looking newsletter. Which, of course, is why people leave it to agencies.

But once you realise that and learn enough to bend a template into something that suits you, there’s still a massive spread of difference between services.

I’ve only used two packages – but they’re a world apart. The first, GraphicMail appealed simply because of its name and the fact it had a ‘.co.uk’ at the end. Hey, I thought, I’d prefer a UK person to help me out when I inevitably get into trouble. On the plus side, GraphicMail is a low cost service, coming in at something like £9.95 a month for 2000 email sends. That seems simple enough – although (unbelievably) there is no ‘buy’ button on their site. After giving them some (clearly unwelcome) feedback to that effect, I was told that you had to sign up for a free account and convert it to paid. So what if I’d used it before and knew what I wanted? No answer.

Once aboard, the GraphicMail editing interface is clunky. There are plenty of free templates to get started with and you use the online editor to make any changes to the template and to the content. For a relative novice, it’s pretty unfathomable, resulting in continuously losing the whole template when accidentally (clumsily) deleting some CSS div or something or other. To be fair, my ineptitude isn’t GraphicMail’s fault but other systems (see below) anticipate this and do a far better job of minimising the risk of losing everything.

I sent a campaign from GraphicMail (eventually) after an unacceptable delay resulting from awful signposting on their site and a dreadful customer service conversation via chat.

Two days later, I decided to look for a better service. This time I read a ‘top 10 email newsletter systems reviewed’ list – from which GraphicMail was noticeable by it’s absence. Top of the list was Campaign Monitor, so I signed up to give it a go.

The whole experience was different from the beginning. The site is calm, professional and every part of it is so logically laid out that it anticipates what you need to do before you need to do it. Campaign Monitor is clearly designed for the professional design / web agency who wants to run multiple email campaigns for multiple clients. That immediately appealed to me, as I have at least three clients I needed to create campaigns for.

What also struck me about Campaign Monitor was that it soon became apparent that it would let me have an account, create various campaigns, import all my mailing lists and then charge at the point of sending. Something about that just makes sense. Why? Because with Campaign Monitor, by the time you come to send your campaign, it will have filled you with such confidence that you’ve made the right choice, you’ll pay without hesitation.

And here’s a lovely touch: you pay by credit card for however many you send. No ongoing fees. Just pay as you send. How customer-focused and sensible. Alternatively, you can buy a pile of credits up front and just use them to send. It’s a flat fee of $5 per mail-out (or ‘campaign’) plus 1c for each email sent.

So far, everything about Campaign Monitor works brilliantly. Templates are edited offline (with Dreamweaver or some such software) and imported back into your account. The beauty of this is that it means Campaign Monitor doesn’t struggle to live edit your templates AND your content online. It concentrates on just handling your content.

The only niggle I have with it is that when it came to creating my content, I found myself having to add images to my newsletter via HTML and switching back. That’s right, there’s no ‘image upload’. And then, of course, I realised why: Campaign Monitor isn’t there to serve your images to clients; that’s something you have to do. That, when you stop and think about it is a smart move (what jobbing web designer wouldn’t have their own server space?) and would also deter the ‘casual’ or inexperienced newsletter creator.

And, when all’s said and done, that kind of makes sense. Campaign Monitor is an easy-in, confidence-inspiring tool that will deter the unscrupulous spammer but welcomes the web agency or designer looking to service a range of clients. It even has clever options for sub-billing, allowing for mark up for email costings. I have no idea about Campaign Monitor’s customer service (I’ve had no reason to need to contact them) although the whole set up of this service leads me to believe it would be good. GraphicMail, by contrast, distinguished itself by my needing to contact them more than once – and giving some truly, memorably, bad customer service in the process.

Enough said. Campaign Monitor. You won’t be disappointed.

Filed Under: feedback, marketing Tagged With: campaign monitor, customer service, email newsletter, graphicmail, marketing, software

ADE651 Dowsing Bomb Detector – unbe-f****g-lievable

January 22, 2010 By Sam Deeks 2 Comments

How can it be possible that Governments spend millions on the ADE651 – an empty plastic toy that doesn’t work?

I’ve just watched the Newsnight report exposing the ADE651 ‘bomb detector’ which has earned a British man £50m in sales to the Iraqi Government. Experts took apart the device and revealed it as a ludicrous scam; an empty case with nothing in it that could possibly detect anything – let alone explosives.

It is unbelievable that this device has been sold in some 20 countries - making the ‘inventor’ something like £80 million.

Scams are everywhere and they seem to be on the increase. But it almost beggars belief that the ADE651 could be developed, marketed, sold and exported without someone pointing out the bleedin’ obvious: that it’s nothing more than a toy gun that wouldn’t look out of place on a Scientology table in your local market.

Unbe-f****g-lievable.

Filed Under: GRRRR!!!, scam, what do you think? Tagged With: ADE651, bomb detector, dowsing, Iraq

UNDP Jobs Opening: everything about it says ‘scam’

January 21, 2010 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

Don’t reply to email claiming to offer UN Jobs worldwide – no matter how much you want to make a difference

If your heart is breaking about Haiti, go make a real cash donation to a known, real-world charity via your bank or somewhere dependable.

If you’ve reached a point in your life where you want to make a difference in the world, go find a real-world aid agency and ask them how you could go about it.

The return address on this email offering ‘UNDP jobs’ is ‘unitednationdevelopprogr@hdrmut.net’. A quick look at the domain associated with it takes us to an Arabic site. By contrast, this is what the real UNDP site looks like. Which one do you trust?

Anyway, my spam-assassin report says its spam. So there.

Avoid.

Filed Under: scam warning Tagged With: email, Haiti, scam, spam, UNDP jobs

TripAdvisor reputation: what’s in a slogan?

January 17, 2010 By Sam Deeks Leave a Comment

Has TripAdvisor changed its slogan in response to its own online reputation problems?

Look at the old TripAdvisor logo and slogan and compare it to the new one. ‘Get the truth and then go’ has become ‘World’s most trusted travel advice’.

An interesting change from an online reputation point of view because TripAdvisor seems to attract a fair bit of controversy about the credibility of the reviews it presents on its site. Some people think it doesn’t do enough to ensure the veracity of the reviews it hosts. Others accuse it of being downright fraudulent, working to agendas unknown (and unproven).

Some of us understand the problems it must face in presenting effectively anonymous reviews when so much is at stake in terms of hoteliers’ livelihoods. It’s a minefield – one that I wouldn’t want to walk into.

I’ve written several reviews and they’ve all been posted without problem. I’ve made booking decisions based on what I’ve read (in the reviews and between the lines) and I’ve found it generally useful. I do think, though, that TripAdvisor could do more to improve consumer confidence in its reviews – not least by countering some of the critical comments out there that are easy enough to find if you’re looking.

Whatever you think about TripAdvisor, this name change catches the eye. And the owl has got smaller too. It’s as if someone’s saying ‘Ok, you’re right, we can’t guarantee these reviews are the truth – but heck, they’re still better than anything else out there’.

Filed Under: online reputation management Tagged With: logo change, online reviews, reputation problems, tripadvisor

TEMDI – The European Medical Directory: scam or not? You decide

January 14, 2010 By Sam Deeks 151 Comments

Is TEMDI another directory scam ripping people off with misleading forms or a reputable company?

** Welcome, visitors from Doctors.net.uk **

As usual, you decide. And to help you, we’d like to build up a list of comments from anyone who feels they’ve been fooled into signing a ‘contract’ for services they don’t want by TEMDI – The European Medical Directory. If you want to know more, then consult the ever-vigilant Jules Woodell on his site ‘www.stopecg.org’ where you can find full histories of this and many other scams, plus all kinds of other useful information.

My advice is the same as that for another version of this scam (the Expo Guide scam which is currently still very much out there judging from the ever-growing list of comment on this post): don’t pay and don’t even contact them.

Remember, paying once tells them you’re worth bullying for more. Contacting them by phone tells them you’re afraid and worth bullying. Responding to them at all ‘qualifies’ you for a step-up in harassment.

The people behind TEMDI – Novachannel AG – have a long and ugly track record of this kind of practice. The form they use is very similar to those used in all the other directory scams and is carefully designed to make you think you’re signing for a free listing when in fact you’re signing for a 3 year contract at 950 Euros a year. Would they stand a chance in court? No – but going to court isn’t (never has been) a part of their, ahem, business plan. They make their money from frightening you into paying. If a tiny percentage are scared enough to pay, then out of the millions of mail-outs they send every year, they’re making a pretty packet.

We look forward to hearing your experiences of TEMDI – The European Medical Directory. The more people report their experiences on sites like this, the harder it wll be for these directories to rip people off.

If you’re approached by an online business directory (of any kind) you should use my simple, common-sense test to find whether they’re worth the money.

You just need to ask two straightforward questions. This test works as well for legal businesses like TouchLocal as it does for scams.

Click the thumbnail (left) to zoom into the test

Filed Under: scam warning, Scambusters! Tagged With: Expo Gude, jules woodell, scam, TEMDI, The European Medical Directory