James Belvoir – get yourself a new agent :-)

Feb 27 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, critical approach to online media
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If you’re going to fake testimonials, at least try to make them stand up to 10 seconds of Googling..

I really dislike Facebook and its advertisers.  Facebook ads are generally exploitative and very often fall apart with the slightest critical inspection.

Occasionally I click one just to remind myself just how much I dislike them.  This one made me chuckle this evening – featuring a ‘testimonial’ from a rather miserable-looking young male model.

A quick Google search shows no-one by that name, anywhere.  Either James Belvoir has a really rubbish agent or this is an example of yet another FB advertiser faking testimonials.

Call me old-fashioned, but I find the cynicism of a business that fakes testimonials to sell junk to youngsters struggling with hair loss revolting.

How good is my online reputation?

Feb 27 | by Sam Deeks | online reputation management
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5 things you can do right now to assess your online reputation

1) Type your name (then your company name, then your brands or product names) in speechmarks into Google and search for it. What do you find? 

2) Set up Google Alerts for your name, brands and products. This will send you emails whenever you or someone else mentions you online.  Vital for picking up problems before they can become PR disasters.

3) Search Google for your email address. Whatever comes back in the search results, make sure it doesn’t compromise you, embarass you or leave you vulnerable to spam.

4) Search Google for any online IDs you use or have used. As above; make sure there are none out there in places that would damage your reputation or credibility.

5) Take a tour of your own online ‘real estate’. Step away from Google and take a drive through any sites you own or control as if you were a visitor.  This is hard to do  – but try to forget everything you know about your business, what you do and why you do it.  Be ruthless: ask yourself ‘what impression does this really create?’.  You need to remember that people will judge you on any website you put out as quickly and as harshly as they would if they stepped into your living room.  And the impression they get will be all-important – especially if your reputation comes under attack.

If you find nothing about you (or your products) when you do those Google searches, you’ve got a problem.  Why? Because you’re invisible and people won’t be able to make up their mind about you.  Worse, the first person to set out to say something negative about you will end up being the only thing out there to form the basis of other peoples’ impression of you.

If you find good references to you and your products, make sure to click through and find out where they’re located and what they say.  Make a note to connect wherever possible (via social media or email) and develop relationships with people who like and respect what you do.  What impression do these comments add up to create?

If you find negative comments about you, read them carefully and bookmark them.  Track backwards and find out as much history as you can.  Who is involved?  What is the issue? What are they saying? What’s being implied about you and your business? What seems to be their motivation? And how many people are saying it? Start taking notes. You’re going to need them if you want to do anything constructive about it.

These 5 steps will tell you a lot about your online reputation within minutes – and set up you up with basic monitoring so you’ll be the first (well, probably the second) to know if and when something starts to go wrong.

Taking responsibility for your part in your reputation

Feb 27 | by Sam Deeks | online reputation management
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Taking responsibility for the mistakes you made is the fastest way to rebuild your reputation – on or offline

If you listened to some of the ‘experts’, you’d think that online reputation management is about filling the search engines with more of your own propaganda.  It isn’t. Its really about learning to listen what other people are saying to you – and about you.

When you first discover an online reputation crisis you can either fight it or you can acccept what it’s trying to tell you – and it always has something to tell you. Most people, however, react defensively when they discover someone posting negative comments about their products or services in a forum online.

As a business, if you find your reputation is coming under attack, then the first thing you need to do is to not react defensively. The second thing you need to do is to find out – and then admit to – whatever you did wrong. Culturally, of course, we’re not very good at doing that.  We tend towards flight or fight and these responses lies behind all online reputation problems.

In most of the reputation problems I’ve handled, the client has played some part in their problems. Often, businesses will have done something that’s unacceptable to their customers and then compounded the situation by refusing to listen or put it right. A private individual might have made one or two foolish mistakes and paid for it with negative attention from the press that sticks.

Some people advise not responding to serious online reputation attacks.  Contrary to that advice, we’re finding that helping our clients take responsibility for their mistakes publicly (and then make amends) is the single most effective way of helping them to rebuild their reputations.

There’s no software solution to help you do that and that’s why we’re here.

As we always say ‘Find it, Face it, Fix it’.

mukaumedia site redesign – in a day

Feb 21 | by Sam Deeks | blogging technique
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We’re pleased to announce our site ’spring cleaning’ is under way!

It’s been a busy Sunday as we’ve been doing the site ’spring clean’ that we’ve been thinking of for a little while and setting up a new theme – ‘Venture’ by ModThemes.

I’m one of those people who thinks that the worst part of Wordpress is the soul-destroying search for themes. It’s great that there are so many themes to choose from but if you’re not careful, you can find yourself just looking…and looking some more.. in a never-ending search for that elusive ‘perfect theme’.

A while back I realised that life was for living, not for endlessly browsing the web for themes.  The trick, I’ve learned, is to find a theme that a) you can tell will pretty much do the thing you want b) is flexible enough to modify and fine tune and c) has support behind it if you need to do something especially tricky with it.

At some point, the desire to have a support forum available rules out the free themes option.  Beyond that point, the ‘premium themes’ world is surprisingly small.  However you search, you find yourself looing at same small pool of designers – and before long, you’re really looking at about 5 or 6 ‘theme houses’ that you’re going to end up choosing from.

Previously, I’ve paid for a theme by Brian Gardner (‘Chrome’ by StudioPress).  It was ok – but in my experience, came with too many things missing that you’d think would be pre-requisite functions.

This time I settled on ‘Venture’ by ModThemes – $70.  The reason for the choice was simple: firstly, it wasn’t so great a jump from the previous theme this site ran on (Brian Gardner’s free ‘Silhouette’) that returning visitors wouldn’t know where they were and secondly, it came with an ideal ‘3 product’ front-page showcase that I could see I could use right away.

10 hours later, I’m certain it was a good choice. Everything I’ve needed the theme to do, it’s done and we’re back on the air.  And I even bought the image for the home page from iStockPhoto – a first. There still plenty to do over the week, but I’m pleased at where we’ve got today.  I’m also happy to recommend ModThemes if you’re a Wordpress designer looking for a fast changeover :-)

ORM tip: careful what you do with your email address

Feb 20 | by Sam Deeks | ORM, online reputation management
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What you do – and say – with your email address can play an important role in your online reputation

Do you know where you left your email address online?

If the answer to that is no, you better go and do a quick check.  Do an exact search for your own email address in Google (don’t forget to put ” “s either side of your email address).

What did you find?

Most of you will have found nothing. Continue Reading…

Sam Deeks: deliberate reputation attack Part 2

Feb 18 | by Sam Deeks | online reputation management
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www.samdeeks.co.uk gets parked

So, the person who registered www.samdeeks.co.uk has now parked it on www.sedoparking.com.  This is a place where you can park a domain you’ve bought until you want to develop or sell it – and try to let it earn you money.

Update: I’m pleased to announce that we have resolved this issue with the result that this domain name will now be transferred back to my control.  Thank you to those involved.

Pleaserobme.com: a great way to make a point about social media

Feb 18 | by Sam Deeks | critical approach to online media, what do you think?
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www.pleaserobme.com demonstrates just how uncritical many social media users really are

Just came across this story on BBC website about a Dutch youngster who built a site that uses Twitter information about peoples’ locations to pintpoint empty homes.

The site’s makers say that they did it to make the point that anyone with half a brain can misuse the kind of personal information that people readily give for free every time they create content or sign up for a new ‘app’ in a social networking site. Continue Reading…

Sam Deeks: deliberate reputation attack Part 1?

Feb 13 | by Sam Deeks | online reputation management
3 Comments

Has www.samdeeks.co.uk been registered for revenge?

Sam Deeks says:

“A few weeks ago, an online marketing company handed over a load of customer accounts to a debt collection company.  On receiving letters from the collections company, a large number of those people went to Google and searched for marketing company name plus the word ’scam’ at the end.

Those people happened to find this site because of a post I wrote over a year ago.

Their comments had one thing in common: they all believed they had correctly cancelled their accounts and were outraged to find themselves under the collections cosh over a year later…..

Update: I’m pleased to announce that we have resolved this issue with the result that this domain name will now be transferred back to my control.  Thank you to those involved.

“Online reputation? I’ve never really thought about it..”

Feb 13 | by Sam Deeks | online reputation management
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Too many people don’t even think about their online reputation until it’s in ruins

One thing that most – if not all – of my clients have in common is that they didn’t know what an online reputation was until it jumped up and bit them in the proverbial ass.  Another thing they have in common is that when they find something negative about themselves online, no matter what they might have done to deserve it, it hurts in a very human way. Continue Reading…

Community Awards Register: Scam or not?

Feb 8 | by Sam Deeks | Scam or Not
24 Comments

C.A.R Community Awards Register: Scam or not? You decide..

** Stop Press 10 Feb – Office of Fair Trading is seeking a court order against the company behind the Community Awards Register **

I guess that just about answers the question, don’t it?  Read on for the back story:

Scenario: Letter comes through addressed to you at your home address.  Oh, look, it seems you’ve won a  ‘Community Award’ – one of a range of tasty prizes.

All you have to do to claim your prize is call an expensive premium-rate phone number which (according to the paperwork) will cost you £9.00 plus your network charge for calling or texting that number.  Who knows how much that would be in addition?

I have a depressing feeling that this, like those moronic quizzes on daytime TV, is legal – so long as it delivers some prize to someone, somewhere.  After all, by calling a premium line number of your own free will, you’re clearly entering into the contract, right?  It’s just a form of ‘gaming’ isn’t it?

A quick bit of research leads me down a depressingly long rabbit hole.

Come with me on that jouney for a moment.

Click here to view map

The first thing we learn is that the company behind this is McIntyre & Dodd Marketing ltd whose postcode, incidentally, isn’t what they put on the mailout.

That postcode points to The Recycling People in Ross-on-Wye (right).

The correct postcode should of course be HR9 5PQ (according to an online business directory entry).  Sorry, no, it’s actually this field here, (according to the company’s own website).  Did I say there? I meant here (according to what looks like their own business entry in Google maps).  That’s a bit more like it.

Next we find that the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against this company in 2007.  What for? I hear you cry. Click the link and read for yourself.  Suffice it to say, in the words of the ASA, “The mailing breached CAP Code clause 7.1 (Truthfulness).”

Today, we discover that the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) is seeking a court order to stop McIntyre and Dodd Marketing Ltd stating:

‘Our case is that these promotions encourage people to believe they have won a valuable prize when, we argue, the plain fact of the matter is that people are being sold a low value product. We have been unable to reach agreement with the companies or secure voluntary agreement that distribution will cease. So we think the best thing now is for the High Court to decide the matter.’

McIntyre and Dodd Marketing Ltd are now part of a group of companies called DM Plc.  Scratch the surface of any of these companies and before long you’re looking at a whole end-to-end database building, direct marketing operation designed (clearly very successfully) to collect names, addresses and postcodes from people entering ‘quiz’ sites and ‘prize draws’ online.

And.. yes, you’ve guessed it! This data then pumps out the other end in the form of direct mail ‘prize draws’ – just like the one you received today. The funny part is that you almost certainly gave them permission in the first place.  The one thing these people aren’t is stupid enough to fall foul of the opt-in laws around direct marketing and database building, rest assured.

Here’s how DM Plc’s shares break down and here are most of the people who get the lion’s share of your money.  And this gives you just a tiny idea of how much of your money is involved in just one of the companies in the group.  Market capitalisation (value) of DM Plc is around £13.5 million – a substantial part of it, no doubt, gained from mailing ‘games of skill and chance’ to your door with premium rate phone numbers for you to call.  Take a closer look at Reuters entry for the company and bios of the top 5 people here.

So is the Community Awards Register a scam?  You, the Googling Great British Public – and now the High Court – will decide.

From an online reputation viewpoint, the fact that 500 people visited this post yesterday and today after being spontaneously and independently moved to type the words “community awards register scam” into Google is very revealing.

What would you have to do in your business to send people searching Google for your co. name plus the word ’scam’ at the end?  And would you even know if they were?

And perhaps strangest of all is this full page ad from the online New York Times paid notices section in 2008.  What in the world might be the link between that direct mail marketing company name and this one? Answers on a postcard… :-)

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