Three years ago I posted ‘How to complain about Paypal in the UK‘ because I knew there was little or no information to help the thousands of furious customers out there unable to get their hands on their own money. I researched as hard as I could, but – apart from the Financial Ombudsman Service and (at the time) the Financial Services Authority, I drew a blank.

Since then, the list of complaints about Paypal has been steadily growing. What’s depressing is that each victim of Paypal’s outrageous behaviour tends to suffer in isolation. The stories are almost unbelievable and the sense of frustration and helplessness is overwhelming.

But recently, there’s been some good news, some really good news. Last September, this UK woman took Paypal to her County Court for holding her ‘frozen’ funds. Wow. What are you all waiting for!?

And not only that, other commentators report the Financial Ombudsman Service taking effective action and forcing Paypal to release their frozen funds. Wow again!

If you’re here because you’re having problems and because Paypal’s dreadful practices and lack of customer service is driving you mad, then please join the new Facebook group and help to put pressure on this monster organisation.

If you run your own company, it’s normal to want to increase the amount of business coming in. If you don’t understand online marketing, listing your business in an online directory might seem like a good idea – especially when these directories seem to guarantee a certain amount of traffic or enquiries.

If you are getting those promises from a salesman, the alarm bells should be going off at this point. Anyone who knows anything about the way the internet works will tell you that no one can guarantee you traffic (unless they’re clicking through to your site themselves), far less a guaranteed number of enquiries (even assuming you are getting any traffic) for the simple reason that a host of other factors about your business and your web presence combine to influence whether or not someone will actually contact you to buy.

The harsh reality is that you’re hungry for more business and the online business directories are hungry to sell you their services. This (in the light of the preceding paragraph) is an almost sure-fire recipe for inflated promises and, ultimately, unhappy customers.

The following is a simple, common-sense way to test what any online directory promises or implies in its sales pitches. Of course, only you can know what the salesman is actually promising, but do this test with those promises in mind – BEFORE you agree to anything!

I’m using TouchLocal for this common-sense test but you can do it for any one of those category-based directories.

First of all: Go to the TouchLocal home page. Choose one of their named categories. I chose ‘Sign Makers’

Step 1) In ‘Sign Makers’, select one of the paid listings (in this case a ‘sponsored business’) – I’ve chosen ‘Southern Neon Signs Ltd’ of Southampton

Step 2) Click on the company name and explore their TouchLocal listing. Click through to the company’s own website and make a note of their URL (so you can see if it comes up in Google searches later).

Step 3) Imagine you’re Southern Neon Signs Ltd. You’ve paid your money for TouchLocal to help people looking for a sign maker in Southampton to find you. Now you want to test how well they’re doing this. It’s time to put yourself in your prospect’s shoes.

Go to Google and do the obvious: a search on ‘sign makers southampton’. Look at the results. Do you see Southern Neon Signs there? No. Ok. Do you see any TouchLocal results there. Two. Ok. Do any mention your company? No.

Step 4) Explore the TouchLocal results. Click on the first one.

Step 5) This takes you to a TouchLocal listing page. Look careful at what’s happening on this page. First note that there are Google ads for your competitors in that all-important top part of the page. Next, note that there’s a listing for a direct competitor of yours directly above you! Then, note that you appear at the bottom of the page. Ask yourself what are you actually getting for your money here?

Step 6) Go back and explore the other TouchLocal result in the Google results page. Click the link to see what it leads to…

Step 7) Uh oh. This is worse. This leads you to a page with a single company listing on it – and it’s another direct competitor of yours! Plus another pile of Google Ads for your competitors.

So Southern Neon Signs Ltd paid money to a business directory in the hope of getting more business but their business name seems to be invisible on P1 of Google and where it DOES appear, it’s buried among their direct competitors and has no competitive advantage whatsoever.

At this point, you should be asking yourself ‘What did that business get for its money?’

They paid their money and got a listing in the directory. But remember, an entry in a directory is useless because nobody goes to a directory to search for products and services. They, like you, use Google when they want to find a sign maker in Southampton.

In Summary

The point of online marketing is that you’re trying to put your details (whether on your website or someone else’s – such as TouchLocal) in front of a potential customer. This customer is using Google to try to find someone to help with his problem. The words he’s typing into the Google search bar are what are referred to as ‘keywords’. You want your site to have those keywords in it, and you want Google to return YOUR site (not those of your competitors) at the top of its pile when someone searches for those keywords.

Google has to decide whose site is most relevant to the searcher. It does that by assessing the relevance (a complex and ever-changing formula) of your site to the searcher’s needs. An important part of that is your keywords.

If your site is well-made and has a liberal, and appropriate sprinkling of your business’s keywords (plus a host of other qualities that Google judges as contributing to its relevance) then it will be returned high in the search results when someone types – for example – ‘sign makers southampton’.

When an online directory offers to make your business more visible in Google and get you more enquiries or business, it will try to do this by competing for those keywords and presenting your business details as high up in Google as it can. The problem for any directory (and for you as a business with your own website) is that where there’s money to be made (for example, in sign writing in Southampton) there will be a lot of people competing with you to appear at the top of Google for those keywords.

Neither you, TouchLocal or anyone else can cheat your way to the top of Google (although many try). To get there – to be considered more relevant than all the other pages on the web that might reference ‘sign makers southampton’ (including all your competitors and all the other online directories competing with you and each other to get those top 10 slots) – you have to work really hard or pay a lot and take the short cut – using Google’s sponsored advertising ‘Adwords’ system.

So when an online directory offers you lots of exposure and implies that this will lead to lots of business, you need to remember that they’re going to be playing the game I’ve just described – along with literally dozens of other online directories doing the same thing for other sign makers in Southampton and everywhere else, for that matter.

The reality that nobody ever points out to you is this: there are only 10 worthwhile places on P1 of Google (plus the sponsored links). If you’re not in those, then (by and large) the business will go to those who are. And you can rest assured that those who are will be those who have paid or done the hard work to get their names on the first page. Not the name of TouchLocal or UpMyStreet or Yell or any of those directories.

Go to Google, type in ‘sign makers southampton’ again.

Look at the yellow shaded ads at the top and the ads down the right hand side of the page. These are Google Ads – paid for by the company wanting to appear at the top of Google. The more money there is to be made in their business, the more it will cost them to appear there. The normal law of advertising applies.

Look at the ‘organic’ search results – the rest of the results on that page. Note there are numerous entries at the top for TouchSouthampton and Yell. But put yourself in the buyers position. Those listings tell you NOTHING about any companies. To find a company to satisfy your needs, you’re going to have to click through to TouchLocal to find out more. The browsing prospect is going to go with a named company on the first page, not a ‘one-click-removed’ TouchLocal listing.

The bottom line is that a prospect is far more likely to click on any one of the paid ads or the Google business listings before they’ll go anywhere near the TouchSouthampton or Yell listings on that P1 of results.

The good news is that YOU can run this test yourself before you agree to sign up to any online directory.

Cut away the plastic so the 'slope' of the tab isn't covered

I bought one of these. Love the video quality, hate the unreliability of the recharging process.

I’ve only managed to charge it successfully once – which is why it’s currently lined up for return. Mine came with odd ‘dimples’ on the ends of the batteries (like someone had poked them with something) and plastic cut away around the tops of the battery.

A bit of research showed me that a lot of people are having the same problem with this device. The main fix out there says to cut away the plastic sheathing the batteries where it overlaps the top end of the batteries. I tried that but still it wouldn’t charge again – not directly from the MacBook USB, or from a mains USB charger or even a USB extender connected to the MacBook. I.e. nothing.

I registered to return the item, printed out the returns forms and read one more bit of advice: to cut away the plastic around the smaller of the two plastic ‘arrow’ tabs on the battery (the one that points into the body of the camera when the battery is in place). I presume that tab tells the camera that the battery is inserted it.

'Dimpled' battery end like someone hit it with something??

I noticed that the plastic sheathing on my battery came up to, and slightly over the ‘step’ on that tab. Logic told me that, as a result, the tab probably wouldn’t seat fully – and possibly, therefore, not do its job. So I cut that away too.

The result is that – at this moment – the camera IS charging (attached to the MacBook by an extender cable – mainly because it doesn’t sit properly when plugged directly into the MacBook due to the different depths of each gadget). That’s handy because I need it tomorrow.

Note right contact: is it supposed to look like this?

For the moment, this camera is in limbo. If my ‘repair’ has cured it, I might avoid the hassle and keep it – despite the clearly ‘pre-owned’ battery (and the ‘pre-owned’ mark on the lens) because, in reality, all I’d get back would be a camera I’d have to do the same DIY fix on anyway.  Flip – that’s a pity. You need to take ownership of this design flaw and make this ‘fix’ mainstream to avoid getting a poor reputation.

Charging now... but for how long?

Mine did today. And after an extremely frustrating online search (which provided NO results for that queston hence the title of my post) I learned two remarkable things.

So if you’re here because your Samsung LE40B550 control panel has suddenly stopped working try the following:

1) Point your remote control at your phone’s camera and press the buttons while viewing through your camera’s screen. If it’s working, you’ll see the light flashing (you can’t see this with the naked eye). Neat?

2) Next, move your AppleTV box out from under the corner of the Samsung TV where the control panel unit inside the TV is situated.

Presto! I moved the AppleTV box 8 inches forward and the Samsung remote started working immediately.

I’ll leave the technical explanations to someone else, meantime, if you do happen to be in that same situation then there’s a slim chance this post might help you.

My #1 business use for Twitter: the Twitter Search Widget

What’s great about Twitter is that everybody uses it in a different way.

For me, the #1 business use of Twitter has got to be the Twitter Search Widget. You can see it in action over there at the bottom of the nav bar on the right (scroll down to see it).  For me, it’s a kind of ‘oxygen’ supply to my website. I’ve set it up to pick up mentions of “online reputation”.

What that gives me is a constant, up-to-the-second flow of interesting links into discussions about online reputation management on my site. I don’t know whether or not readers of my blog use it to link off to other things but I certainly do.  It’s like having your own news stream on tap – and it’s faster and more responsive than any mainstream media channel. Every day, I’ll come to my own website as a jump off point to get into a wider discussion about online reputation management that’s going on out there.

Oddly enough, the Twitter search widget isn’t exactly easy to find unless you’re looking for it.  The link is at the bottom of your Twitter home page titled ‘Goodies’. You set up your search term, tweak how you’d like your widget to appear, then copy and paste the code into your site or blog.

It’s a tough question.  Here are a few tips to consider:

1) You need to understand the nature and the scale of the problem

Unless you understand what is currently happening to all this social media content that we create, how it accumulates, how search engines index it and how other people find it and the way they use it to make decisions, you won’t be able to do anything to help your kids.  Watch this great video from Common Craft for starters!

2) Next, evaluate your own online reputation and behaviour.

Do searches for your name and see what the search engines and social networks throw up.  Imagine you’re an HR manager in a company that you’ve applied to for a job. Dig around to build up an impression of this person (you) based on what you find. Be honest with yourself. What judgments about you might a stranger make based on the content you’ve posted online?

3) Next put your own house in order.

If you want to help your kids protect their future by taking responsibility for what they say and do now, you have to set the right example otherwise nothing you say will be credible. Take steps to ensure that your online content adds up to create an impression of you that you are comfortable with. If you can’t do that, hold your hands up to the mistakes you’ve made (these are blessings-in-disguise as they will be far more persuasive than abstract ideas to help them understand why you’re concerned).

4) Search for your kids online

Look at what comes up and look at what they’re sharing about themselves.  Again, try to see it from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know them.  Maybe you’re that HR person trying to decide whether or not to shortlist them for interview.  Maybe you’re a prospective girl/boyfriend trying to see what they’re like. Maybe you’re a university admissions officer wondering whether to offer them a place.  Whether we like it or not, people use web searches for all those purposes and more.

5) Don’t over-react

The impact of your kids’ uncritical and unconscious behaviour online will have an impact on their future (if it isn’t already).  As a caring parent, it’s not something you can simply ignore.  You can’t change their behaviour but what you can do is raise the issue to consciousness.  And you will only be able to do that when you are able to resist your initial urge to react.

If your kids are anything like ours, you are quite likely to be literally horrified; both by the things they’re saying and by what looks like a complete lack of common-sense about the impact this stuff may have on their future.  In fact, expect both to be beyond your ability to comprehend.  The secret here is not to react but to let it sink in for a while.

It’s an odd thing, but many young people think nothing of adding parents and older relatives on Facebook and then talking in detail about their tastes, activities and exploits in the kind of detail that’s hair-raising. They also add applications, sign up to petitions and competitions, join groups and share their personal data without – it appears – any kind of critical view about the nature of the marketing funnels they’re putting themselves into or the kinds of direct and indirect marketing that targets them as a result.

So when you survey your kids online presence, you may be shocked, disgusted and worried for them. So how do you not react?

The simple answer is to just sit with what you find and what you feel for a while and resist the urge to do anything about it to ‘fix’ it. That’s probably the hardest thing to do – but it is, in my experience, the most useful.  A tip is simply to physically resist the urge to talk about this until you’re certain you’re not coming from a place of reaction.  You’ll know when that is.  And resisting just means feeling the need to say something rising and consciously choosing to say nothing.  It’s simple, it’s hard – and it really works You can do this at any point in any conversation you’re having.  The reason it’s such an effective technique is that, although it’s uncomfortable for a few seconds, once you’ve passed the point at which you would normally react, you’ll find yourself in a different space where you can suddenly see and hear what’s really going on.

It might also help to remember what you were doing at their age. Could it be that the only real difference is that you weren’t able to tell the world about it the way they can? That we were able to have ridiculous views, dangerous experiences and behave idiotically safe in the knowledge that the world would eventually forget and allow us to grow up without it hanging around our necks forever? Just imagine if every stupid prank, hormonal grunt and know-it-all pronouncement you made as an 18 year old was still there in Google to haunt you? Sheesh. Us oldies really were lucky.

6) Ask them what they think and what they want to be known for

When you’re sure that you’re not coming from a position of reaction, talk to your kids about what you’ve learned about how online reputation works; how none of this stuff will go away – and how people do, and will continue to, use it to make judgments about them. Watch the Common Craft video together. Ask them what they think.  Did they know how people find things? Had they ever thought about someone using Google to make a decision about their future?  What would it feel like if something they put on Facebook cost them an opportunity they really wanted?

Don’t be afraid to express your concern for their future based on what they’re saying now.  Maybe they think it won’t matter in the future; maybe it won’t (who knows?).  Either way, if you come from an open and caring place – rather than from a closed place of disgust, judgment and reaction – you will be acting in a loving way.

Ask them what kind of person they’d like to be thought of as. What are the core qualities they’d most want to be know for. Then ask them if they think that’s the picture of themselves they’re currently building up.  If its not, be gentle with them at this point because if they recognise the discrepancy between what they truly want to be like and the impression they’re creating online, it will be hard to deal with and face.

Here’s a straightforward case-study in good online reputation management.  Last year, Innocent, the principled, value-driven smoothie company sold a stake to Coke – the all-American sugary drinks people.

Knowing that such an investment could turn off its brand devotees, Innocent did the smart thing.  It got in there first and came clean about what it was doing and why.

It’s a disarming strategy. Far from being afraid of the backlash, Innocent intelligently anticipated it (just one of the payoffs of being able to see things from your customers’ point of view) and came clean about it.  By doing so, they were able to put across a far stronger – and richer – case than would have been possible had they been trying to do it in reaction to an attack by outraged customers.

The real, hidden gem of a payoff from this situation is that by taking this action, Innocent have deepened their relationship with their customers, regardless of the issue. Their honesty and transparency is rewarded with trust and respect and that is priceless.

You’ll see that there was nothing hi-tech about what they did.  They posted an open letter explaining their decision. They acknowledged peoples’ likely unease about the investment. They posted a series of YouTube videos addressing the main questions people might have about it. And they put a text transcript of each of the video responses on the same page.

Absolutely nothing you couldn’t do yourself.  You just need to come from the right place and be honest.

Update: Since that initial investment last year, Coke has now bought a further 40% stake, increasing its shareholding to 58%. Despite this, Innocent’s 3 original founders insist that the deal doesn’t give any more rights to Coke as far as the Innocent brand is concerned.

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:

1. Go find a web design / internet marketing company online
2. 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.

It’s not rocket science – you just need the tools that your prospects have got (i.e. Google); the ability to think like them, a dose of humility and a crash course in not being reactive.

Oh, and you need to know there’s a difference between monitoring and managing your reputation.

Online reputation monitoring

The simplest advice for monitoring your online reputation is to start with the FASTEST (and therefore potentially most damaging) channels out there:

1) Set up Google alerts for your name, your company name and products and brands.  Sit back and let Google bring the good – and bad – news to you whenever it hears you being mentioned online.

2) While you’re waiting for Google Alerts to bring you news, go to Twitter and search for your name, your company name and your brands.  It’s the most ‘real-time’ network / source of content there is.  If people are going to rant at the point of dissatisfaction, they’re going to do it via their mobile, and they’re probably going to do it on Twitter.

3) If that’s all clear, next do a search in Google.  Do a broad web search first.  See what comes up in the first couple of pages of Google.  Hopefully, a lot of it will be your web site pages and things you’ve done to market and promote yourself and your products.  If not, sack your web designer

Remember: people use blog posts and forum posts to vent their anger or dissatisfaction. Learn to recognise how these posts and comments appear in the regular web results.

4) To focus entirely on blog content, do a dedicated Google blog search

5) Most of all, learn to think like a customer – an angry one and a prospective one.  When an unhappy customer wants to nail you for not listening,  they’re going to nail you by telling their trusted network how bad you are and follow up by publishing posts and comments online with words like rip-off’ ‘scam’ and ‘fraud’ to the end.  They want their experience of you to be found by others researching your company – and now they have the tools to do it within minutes.  Be warned; this stuff can kill your business in a matter of days.

When a prospective customer wants to find out the truth about your company, ‘XYZ consultants’, they’re going to start by searching for ‘XYZ consultants’.  Then they’re going to add the words ‘scam’, ‘feedback’, ‘rip-off’, ‘review’ at the end to see what comes up.

To manage your online reputation online successfully, you need to see these words as a code that customers and prospects use to bypass your own (naturally positive) propaganda.  So learn the code – and make sure YOU search the web regularly for these coded references to you and your company.

You wouldn’t believe how many companies’ reputations are in tatters online and yet they don’t even know about it.  It could explain that gradual drop-off in sales they’ve been seeing…

Online reputation management

Managing your online reputation priorities are as follows (listed in order of the amount of your energy you should expend on them):

1) Create the best products and services you can.  This is bleedin’ obvious, but the best way to create and protect a great on- and offline reputation is to do the basics really, really well.

2) When things go wrong, do everything you can to make your customer happy.  That means invite feedback, listen without being defensive, go out of your way to satisfy them

3) When you don’t do 1) and 2) properly, people will punish you online by Tweeting, blogging, forum posting and commenting anywhere and everywhere they can.  Count on it. When you finally find something angry / hostile / nasty (true or untrue) with your online monitoring (see the list above), the first thing you need to do is NOTHING.

4) While you’re doing NOTHING (i.e. not reacting, not getting into a fight to try to defend yourself), you should be getting really honest with yourself about what it is you might have done to create the situation.

5) Then you should be thinking about what you can do to put it right.  What you can do, and what you are willing to do.

6) Then consider approaching the disgruntled punter publicly (in whatever forum or blog his/her comment appears) and a) apologise for not having met their expectations b) apologise if you didn’t listen or respond to their original feedback or complaint.  Listen, I promise you, no matter how bad this makes you feel, you almost certainly didn’t listen the first time round.  If you can do this from a genuine place – i.e. that you really do care about helping this person to feel better about your company, you’ll be amazed what you can achieve.

7) If you’ve reacted dived in with both feet and made things worse, then call us to take the heat out of the situation on 01822 610841.

8 ) Start to create positive online content about you, your company and your brands to balance, and ultimately outweight the negative.  Beware: this only works when that content is genuine and credible.

Paying offshore SEO or Reputation Management Companies to flood Google with superficial stuff about you is a false economy (an expensive one at that!) – it will be transparent to any half-wit looking to find out what a company is really like.

If you want to do it properly, call us on 01822 610841.

]]> http://www.mukaumedia.co.uk/online-reputation-management-do-it-yourself/feed/ 2 http://www.mukaumedia.co.uk/blogging-for-money/ http://www.mukaumedia.co.uk/blogging-for-money/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:20:06 +0000 Sam Deeks http://www.mukaumedia.co.uk/?p=2229 Want to make money from blogging?  Here’s how it worked for me

Look, before we go any further, I’ll tell you the truth about how much I’ve earned so far.

Are you ready?  £15. Yes! £15 that could just as easily be yours!!!  That (as far as I’m concerned, friend) makes me a pro.  Which, in turn, qualifies me to tell YOU how do it, right?  And think yourself lucky I’m not trying to sell you my eBook ‘How to make more than £14 with my £15-Google-system‘ for $47!

Joking aside, it’s fun to see my grand earnings total rising inexorably day on day. And I’m not even trying, really I’m not.

So here’s the ‘mu:kaumedia guide to making easy money like what I do:

1) Set up a WordPress blog

2) Blog regularly about an area you’re interested in and (most importantly) that will interest other people

3) Make sure your basic post SEO is good (keywords in titles, headers and content)

4) Anticipate what people will be searching for in your area of interest and blog about it before they start searching

5) Sign up to Google adsense and splash a small block of ads on your site in a non-intrusive position

So how exactly did I make my Google fortune?

Way back in Jan 2009, someone invited me to the new, ‘invitation-only’ music streaming service Spotify.  It didn’t take a genius to work out that something as groundbreaking as Spotify + invitation-only membership was going to lead to a pile of people looking for invitations.

I then wrote a couple of quick blog posts with titles like, er.. “How do I get a Spotify invitation?” and some useful links (plus offer to give away the invites I got when I signed up).

Result?  Lots of visitors to give those invites to.  Followed by Spotify dumping about 600 more invitations on me to give away for them.  Followed by lots more people looking… followed by people placing links to my post in various forums and sites.

Eventually, I ran out of posts but that didn’t stop the people coming.  In the end, I posted a link to a page that, oddly enough, by-passes Spotify’s invite page altogether (I still can’t work out why they left it open??).  And still the people come at the rate of 1000+ a day.  And most of them go away happy.

After 8 months of traffic, I decided to sell my soul to Satan and put some ads on my site.  Result?  Vast sums of Adsense revenue.

So if I can do it, so can you.  Why, if I had me 10 blogs running… and I was actually doing it seriously, who knows how much money could be made each month?  £150? More, if I had no qualms about the nature or quality of my content or affiliate marketing scheme…or…or.. the mind boggles.  The only thing I didn’t do was put the ads on earlier. Heck, I might be blogging this from my yacht in the Caribbean if I hadn’t wasted those 8 months of traffic.