Tag Archives: Facebook

Are You Trustworthy?

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snake oilThere has been a pretty clear line drawn across the Internet Marketing industry lately. This line divides the ethical marketers from the snakes. You know, the scammers with all the hypey “auto pilot one click instant traffic riches.” The industry has had it, and many marketers have been very vocal about this recently. It appears that the scammers have simply pushed the envelope too far.

For years we’ve seen digital “product launches”… we’ve all become accustomed to it, a few pre-launch videos, maybe a free giveaway and then the big “reveal.” It’s all good and in many cases very useful stuff, at the very least its educational and entertaining. But lately, there have been quite a few “launches” that spewed outright lies on the industry. Outrageous claims, fictitious product creators portrayed by paid actors, fabricated and doctored images to serve as income proof for a product that can’t do what it claims or might not even exist.

Marketers and consumers from every niche have been speaking out more and more against the snakes and scammers. The top industry forums are full of threads about these crappy products and the snakes that make them. Bloggers have gone crazy putting these guys on blast and Facebook has been buzzing for months about it. There are hundreds of Youtube videos where marketers and consumers of digital info products and software are speaking their minds. I guess the final straw has broken the camel’s back.camels back

The public outcry was heard loud and clear by a select group of ethical marketers that have banded together to create the first website to unify the good guys and hold marketers accountable for their actions. The website is called IMTrustWorthy.com and it has several purposes for both internet marketers and consumers of digital products. The members have all agreed to abide by the IMTrustWorthy “Prudent Practices” of Internet marketing. This is a list of 12 rules that help protect consumers from fraud and hold the marketer to a high standard of commerce.

First off, IMTrustWorthy provides a “seal” image with your unique license number digitally imprinted. The seal code can be placed on your website for the world to see that you are a registered member of IMTrustWorthy. When a visitor clicks on the seal a window pops open with the marketer’s name, and rating. The window may also contain comments from other IMTrustWorthy members regarding the character and trustworthiness of the marketer in question.

A member’s rating is determined by an algorithm that takes the positive and negative feedback left on their site into high consideration. This is a lot like the feedback rating in eBay except here the feedback is demonstrated by 5 stars and the comments are displayed on the marketer’s profile page. This is so that a potential customer or JV can look at what other members are saying rather than just having to take the endorsement of the company that sold the seal. In other words, you can’t just “buy” your trustworthiness.

That being said, there is also a “Premier” membership available for $17 per month. The premier members have some additional features inside the members area, they get a multi-site license which enables them to use the seal on as many sites as they own. Also, they get access to a “Seal Generator”, this is a software that lets you create seals in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Premier members also get to load a banner and link for their site which rotates in the website and can potentially bring consumers back to their offer. Over all this is a pretty good value for only $17 when you consider the prices that those “other” seal companies out there charge.

One of the things that you’ll like the most about IMTrustWorthy is the social aspect and the ability to meet other GOOD guys. The website has a “JV WALL” this is basically a communication page where you can comment on the threads and connect with other marketers. There is also an internal messaging system. It’s no Facebook, (then again who needs another Facebook) but it is well suited to help marketers create joint venture partnerships and affiliations with other IMTrustWorthy members.

I think it’s about time that we band together and separate ourselves from the snakes and the scammers. All in all this website is a WIN for the good guys. Sure, there will be scammers that try to brandish the IMTrustWorthy seal, but the other members will quickly make that known in the comments and their rating will drop. IMTrustWorthy doesn’t actually rate the marketers, the members do. If you ask me, that’s a pretty fair shake and only the scammers need to be afraid. I suggest you create a free account and check it out for yourself.

Google +1 Button – What it Means to You

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plus one

Are You Getting the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

Google has been working on the +1 button, and in the last month or so it has changed character.  It used to just add a count on your profile, where nobody saw it, but it’s now similar to the Facebook “Like” button, which is what I suspect Google had in mind all along.  So what does this mean to you?

The big benefit I see in the +1 button is the ability to share content with specific groups of people, using Google Plus‘s “Circles”.  One of the frustrations I have found in Facebook is that this capability, although it exists, is not easy to implement.  I have over 4,000 “friends” on Facebook, and clearly not all of them are interested in the same topics.

Let’s suppose I’m working with Google Plus and have three circles: “Friends anddog Family”, “Colleagues” and “Internet Marketers“.  If my dog gets fleas I might choose to tell my friends and family, and perhaps my colleagues, but it’s doubtful if any internet marketing friends would find that very interesting unless they happen to be marketing flea powder.  (As it happens, I don’t have a dog, so please don’t inundate me with anti-flea information!)

On the other hand, if I have just found a new web hosting package that I like, most of my friends and family won’t be remotely interested, but my colleagues and internet marketers may be.  Do you see how neat this can be for segmenting your market and avoiding spamming family and friends?  I really wish this was as easy to do with Facebook.

What is the Benefit of the Google +1 Button?

You guessed it!  Google uses the +1 ratings to help rank websites.  Of course, it’s not all they use, but it can certainly help your site to get better SEO rankings and hence more traffic.

Here is a video from Google explaining how you can use this new capability:

Try it out now by “+1“ing this article!

PS: If you figure out how to join the preview group, let me know! Google has not released the new capability to the rest of the world yet :-(

 

QR Codes – How You Can Use Them

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One of the cool things about QR codes is the curiosity factor.  It is not possible for the qr codeaverage human being to look at a QR code and have any idea what it represents: it just looks like a puzzle.  If you have a smartphone that can read it, it’s difficult to pass up the opportunity to scan it in and read the results.

In the previous article I explained what QR codes are, why they are important and how to get them at no cost. This article shows some of the ways you can benefit from using them.  I’m sure I have not thought of every possibility, but here are ten to be going on with: use your imagination to think of other ways you might use QR codes to promote your business.

1. Business Cards. Rather than clutter your business card with links, you can include your name, a photo and a QR code for your website, email, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ pages, etc.

2. Website Sales. QR codes can lead to specific URL’s, so you can create codes linking to certain products on your website.

3. Free Downloads. If you use e-books or downloadable software to promote your business, you can use QR codes to distribute them. When customers scan the code give them a free e-book or software download.

4. Flyers. Let’s suppose you own a restaurant. You can create a QR code linking to a URL with a discount on a meal and directions to the restaurant.  You can probably think of similar applications for other businesses.

5. Build Your Subscriber List. You can build your e-mail list by creating a QR code linking to your signup form.

6. E-courses. If you are an expert on something, you can create a QR code that generates an e-mail that tells your autoresponder to send regular course lessons to subscribers.

7. Discounts, Contests and Giveaways. These can be really effective when used in conjunction with QR codes. You can create promotions specific to the QR codes and place the codes in your advertisements or post them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

8. Scratch and Win Promotions. People love scratching cards! Even if they don’t win, they’re excited by the possibility: you can create that excitement by getting them to scratch and scan a QR code card to see if they’ve won.

9. Customer Service Help. You can use QR codes to give customers information about your product or service. Create a QR code that leads to a FAQ page where customers can get answers to their questions via email or live chat.

10 New product promotion. You can give customers a preview of future products using QR codes.  If you scan the code at the beginning of this post, you will see that I have included over 200 characters of information, including an e-mail address.  Send me an e-mail if you managed to read it.reading qr code

Let me know any other ideas that come to mind: this is all about sharing!  One of the questions I have is what is the best size for a QR code?  I used the medium size here, but there are many different sizes available.  Also, I used http://qrcode.kaywa.com but if you google “free qr code generators” you will find there are several.  Let me know which is most suitable for your needs, and why.

 

Facebook and Social Promiscuity

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Last month a botnet infected more than four million PCs. “The way peer-to-peer is used will make it extremely hard to take down this botnet,” said Roel Schouwenberg, senior malware researcher at Kaspersky. What threats do these attacks present, and how can we avoid them?

Phishing

For anyone who suffered from this attack, the threat is serious. Your private data may have been compromised, including credit card and bank account information, so watch out for money being moved unexpectedly out of your accounts. These “phishing” attacks are behind many of today’s identity theft cases.

Protection

So how can you avoid being a victim of phishing? The first, and most obvious action is to make sure that your software, especially the operating system, is up-to-date and has the latest security features installed. With Microsoft Windows, for example, you can allow automatic updates to your computer.

There are two problems with automatic updates, though. The first is that security against viruses, worms, trojans and botnets can only be supplied after the malware has been detected in the wild. In other words, until somebody else gets infected nobody knows the malware exists.

Apart from the delay this causes, the second problem is that sometimes the good guys goof. Occasionally – not frequently – the Microsoft patches cause more problems for your computer. You might do better to subscribe to a service that tests the patches before you install them manually.

Of course, that raises two more problems: first, additional delays, and second spending your own time messing around with installing patches rather than getting on with serious computing! You’re between a rock and a hard place. In case you think this only a Windows problem, malware Mac attacks have been increasing lately, so the rest of this article applies to you Apple users, too. (If you are using Windows, I suggest you subscribe to the Windows Secrets newsletter service.)

Facebook

Clearly, the best idea is to avoid contracting the infection in the first place. As with safe sex, avoiding promiscuity is the most effective way of avoiding infection. Social media can be powerful, but social promiscuity is dangerous.

Facebook promiscuity is a major source of infection. Do you get requests from friends using various apps that want to connect to your Facebook data? These are often (not always) phishing attacks.

When an app asks to connect to your Facebook data, it doesn’t just mean your public data: anybody can see that, of course. No, they are looking also for your e-mail address and your Facebook password, as well as other private information, such as birth date and family members that you may have included. Since Facebook doesn’t throw away your information, any data you have ever supplied is theoretically accessible.

Given your friend list, the malware can now send out spurious phishing messages to all your friends. And if any of them respond (because they think you’re asking them to) their private data is also available. If you, or anybody you “friend” on Facebook, uses their Facebook e-mail address and password anywhere else, that data is now available to the cybercriminals: once they get in, they have everything they need to access credit card and bank accounts, for example.

Precautions

So how do you protect yourself? There are a few simple steps you can take: as with safe sex, the more precautions you take, the safer you are.

The easiest step is to use a different password for Facebook than you use anywhere else. I know, this is a pain, and gives you one more password to remember, but it’s like using a condom for safe sex. You might also consider other social sites similarly, but Facebook is the one that has been most subject to attack recently.

The second precaution is to avoid rogue apps. When I get a message that wants me to use an app I’m not familiar with, I just block it. If you hover over the message, you’ll find a little “X” appears in the top right corner of the message, giving you several options, one of which is to block the app.

The third is to be careful who you’re friends with. The temptation is to be friends with everyone, but unless you have a serious common interest there isn’t really much point in making a person your Facebook friend. And anyone who keeps sending me requests from social apps I unfriend immediately.

Conclusion

I trust you were not hit by the recent botnet, and hope this post has given you some useful information on how to stay out of trouble in the future. Let me know if you have found it helpful. Stay safe out there, and avoid social promiscuity!