Enjoy

SEO Conference Bingo Card – Get yours now is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

I’m looking forward to learning some good concrete examples of social media strategies that have been proven to work in the B2B environment.

The main session I’m looking forward to is at 2.10 this afternoon, a panel entitled:

“Examining strategies for using social media for business to business marketing”

Here’s hoping for some proper actionable tips

If you’re here, have a good day guys and if you see me wandering about, by all means say hi

#SMWF Day 2 – What I’m gonna do is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

Panel: Managing your company’s online reputation via social media

and here;’s the blurb:

• Levels of engagement – from shallow engagement to fully including your customers in business decisions – what’s appropriate and how is it achieved
• What is social reputation and why is it important?
• Being prepared
  - building your reputation before a crisis hits
  - creating a framework for quick decisive action
  - social media training and guidelines for your team
  • Importance of open dialogue and transparency
• Relationships with influences and brand advocates
• Engage with customers and act on complaints

Moderator: Andrew Smith, Managing Director, Escherman Limited & Social Media Trainer for CIPR 
David Bailey, Neighbourhood Communications Manager, Staffordshire Police
Colin Smith, Director of Marketing Solutions UK, Linked In
Colin Watkins, Digital Communications Manager, Channel 4
Catriona Oldershaw, Managing Director UK, Synthesio

Question:

Does it take a communications crisis to persuade a company there’s something important in social media.

• You can’t learn social media when the streets are burning - David Bailey, Neighbourhood Communications Manager, Staffordshire Police
• Do roleplaying into handling situations that might come up in social media – get match fit
• listen to the social media sphere so you can engage when required
• People move on in social media quickly from reputation issues
• Don’t wait, build trust as and when you can, listen to the conversation before it gets to the boiling point

Where do you start in social media

• talk about the issues that affect your customers (anti social behaviour and dog poo)
• Think about how you’re going to grow it from the start
• Try things out
• The talk of doom – don’t say anything you don’t want your Mum to read
• put yourself in the mindset of the people you want to communicate with, don’t think about it to what you want to achieve, think about relationship building and talk to them in their language

We’ve seen the emergence of social scoring tech, what are the views of these tools to prioritise who to engage with

• People game the system so they need a level of human interaction
• a single comment can be more important than influence if it’s in the right place
• It’s an indicator but you need proper professional judgement

Reputation is no longer the job of just the PR team

• You can’t get social media 100% right all the time, it’s how you manage it when it goes wrong that shows how good you are at social media but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it
• No longer can you “put lipstick on a pig” and gloss over with mission statements, if people disagree on social media, you’ll get found out
• Facebook rumours and myths can cause real fears amongst idiots
• you need to acknowlege people rather than ignore them

#SMWF – Panel: Managing your company’s online reputation via social media is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

• Levels of engagement – from shallow engagement to fully including your customers in business decisions – what’s appropriate, how is it achieved
• Top-tips for encouraging social media engagement from leading brands
• The difference between true engagement and followers / fans and how to translate these into sales
• Measurements and metrics – what are you trying to measure, why and how does it translate into outcomes/sales?
• How can you prove your social media ROi, and justify social spend to the board?

Allister Frost, Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, Microsoft
Reggie Bradford, CEO, Vitrue
Jonathan Bean, COO, Mynewsdesk
Patrick Salyer, CEO, Gigya

Ok…here we go!

Engagement is a mean to an end, rather than an end in itself (I really like that)

We started by measuring simple metrics, such as like, follow etc. However one’s engagement is different to another person’s engagement. A lot of likes mean nothing but some mean a lot more. It’s the connection to data outside the social media world that is important.

People should concentrate on the metrics that show quality engagement. Ask fans in the form of a question rather than sending out statements

Brands that do best in social channels are those that can bring some sort of emotional engagement with the brand

examples include: Dell Idea storm, KLM

It’s more about creative content and creative ideas.

The content has to be relatable, however, people need the ability to engage

Brands to admire are those that repsond no matter what the communication channel

Not all users are created equal – there is a section of users that are used to sharing everything and are willing to share everything. As this section grows up, you have to design your site for those users and at the same time design for the conservative users.  There’s a chance of losing trust with the user and they could be burned forever.

Arguement on the panel regarding the hypersharer….As you grow older, you lock things down to protect what you have. There has to be a value exchange, if it doesn’t we will reject it

Social ROI

There is apparently true ROI in social. We’re talking about social applications.  Websites have to optimise for social

(There’s a really annoying person banging somewhere)

Panel: Social media engagement measurement and metrics #smwf is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

Details say:

• Understand how “visibility” translates to the buying cycle and what it comprises.
• Shake off social networking fatigue: Google+ will give your business prospects tremendous impetus
• Build a robust profile that grows your business
• Create useful content that grabs attention and draws reactions that build loyalty
• Fit Google+ into a larger strategy of amplifying the human digital channel
• Build a content strategy: Deliver value to audiences and win more customers

but lets see!

OK here we go! Session by Chris Brogan, President, Human Business Works

Chris starts by saying there’s nothing new in this presentation, but it’s all about execution.

His official note is to please tweet ad shgare this, and share them. I won;t be tweeting during this presentaion but I am blogging.

Apparently if you think you’re in PR only, you’re going to be the person pouring the coffee in starbucks, you need to think you’re going to be in sales, pr, marketing SEO, web etc etc…..not sure I agree with that as we all have specialties but I agree there must be corssover these days

Social tools are just that, tools, just like a telephone and they should be on every desk in the company, just like a telephone.

If you’re website has any kind of conversion funnel, the best sites have a single next step option rather than none or too many to confuse visitors

Interface

intention

effort

How do we interface

there are differnces in how we interface between computer > phone > face to face

what we do face to face matters but why interface matters.

How do I make business happen between between online and real life

• video is one option

we’re now talking about whether sites look good on mobile devices and whether mobile is a better interface than a laptop. I would agree in some ways but disagree when it comes to proper business. People will not do proper business on a browser. Certain interactions sure, but not actual business (personal opinion)

Checking a phone is a new smoking, I would agree with that one

Web interfaces should be designed for the 3″ 7″ 9″ 12″ and proper computers

Email marketing is alive and well. Bad email marketing is dead. If your email newsletter looks like am incredibly designed HTML website, STOP IT!

If you are putting more than more than one response, you have the paradox of choice.

If your email marketing marketing comes from do-not-reply@ – it’s not a relationship. If you want to stun people, allow them to hit reply. The interface matters

email should be 350 words or less!

Embrace brevity

What is your event strategy

1980s marketing tweets of “please come and see me” They don’t exist for you to use old marketing techniques. Use them to create realtionships

Conversion is what is important, not “likes” – likes are the “opportunity” for business. Likes by themselves are pointless.

Outposts (facebook/twitter etc) are outposts to bring people in, don’t send them out. Think of them as telephones…People can call them.

Creating usable useful content is important in 2012. If you’re just there, it’s pointless

Look at creating youtube content. I’m not sure I agree on youtube, yes it’s a massive search engine, but if you look at the profile of youtube visitors who actually look on youtube, are they going to be the person looking at making a major buying choice in a business. I agree, it would work from a brand/b2c perspective though

We’re now talking content creation.

Look at FAQs – old suggestion or content creation, but still a good one

Make your buyer the hero!

Branding has 3 stages

1. What you’re known for
2. What people will say about you
3. Where they use you as part of the storytelling of their brand

He’s dissing Sonic…..Sonic rocks….awesome corndogs and shakes

Business is about belonging

I’ve never spoken to a logo…people look at faces.

I agree with some that Chris Brogan says about Google+ – some I don’t!

Listen to people on social then use that to convert them to customers

#SMWF – Cultivating Visibility & Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

I shall be spending the next 2 days at the Social Media World Forum learning to get more out of social media, and then on Friday, I’m heading to Linklove from the good folk at Distilled to see some of my favourite search peers lay it down and give it up.

Anyway, so not to change the habit of a lifetime, I shall be live blogging throughout the week or for as long as my battery lasts. So far, I’m all checked in at #SMWF and sat in the exhibition hall waiting for the keynote. First plus is free wifi, makes the job of the blogger much easier. First fail is there appeared to be no mobile friendly site available relying on an old fashioned printed brochure (weird)

and I’ve just noticed there’s an actual iPhone app linked from a qr code on said printed brochure, I may retract my previous statement after testing it…qr code worked

OK, I withdraw my previous statement regarding the lack of mobile site, excellent app, I suggest you download it. Only niggle is the lack of ability to add sessions to my calander but you can’t have everything!

Jim’s conference week of awesomeness #SMWF #Linklove is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

Going Viral on Pinterest: Driving Big Traffic and Making Pinterest a Real Marketing Solution

And this is what I came up with….Added kittens and shirtless men and everything.

So far, it’s not gone viral…oh well

My attempt at pinterest content is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

Anyway, it was the standard “someone wants to buy your domain and “network brand”  from a Mr Jerry Dong in China…Let’s pick up with the proforma scam mail.

(It’s very urgent, Please transfer this email to your CEO or appropriate person, Thanks)

Dear CEO/Principal,

This is Jerry Dong—Senior Consultant of domain name registration and solution center in china. have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 5, 2010, one company which self-styled “Everyboi Company” were applying to register “jimsdomain” as Network Brand and following domain names:
”
jimsdomain.asia
jimsdomain.co.in
jimsdomain.com.hk
jimsdomain.com.tw
jimsdomain.hk
jimsdomain.in
jimsdomain.net.cn
jimsdomain.org.cn
jimsdomain.tw ”
After our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “Everyboi Company”.

Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

Ben forwarded it on to me with a

Dear Mr Dong,

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, our CEO, Ken Ding, is currently out of the office. I have forwarded your email to my colleague, Jim Seward, who manages all of our domain registrations. James will be in touch with you shortly.

Kind regards,

Ben
Ben Carey
PR Executive

and this is where the fun began. My response to Mr Dong went like this:

Dear Mr Dong

Thank you so much for your email. On speaking with our CEO, Ken Ding and our Financial Director, Phuk Yoo we have decided that it is vital that we as a company purchase these very valuable and not at all spammy and worthless domain names.

Obviously in the UK, we have purchased all our domain names to protect our brand, however I imagine these more exotic domain names are much more expensive, therefore I have put aside a budget of £10,000 to acquire them before Everyboi Company do so.

We had a number of similar emails over the last 3 years explaining how several different companies were going to buy them and I very stupidly thought it was some sort of scam and ignored them. Thankfully all of these companies decided to change their mind at the last minute and not purchase them.

If you could send me an invoice as soon as possible, that would be great and I will forward it on to Phuk to get a purchase order raised.

I look forward to hearing from you to resolve this matter

kind regards

Jim Seward

Now, how anybody can think I’m not taking the piss is incredible, but that’s exactly what Mr Dong did.

Dear Jim Seward,

Thanks for your confirmation, Of course, Register by yourself is the best way to protect the intellectual property rights.

Following is the procedure, you can do follow these:
1. You fill in the dispute application form return it via email(scaned) or fax.
2. We will send the Invoice signed & stamped to you, In the meantime We will formally submit the application to register for you and put on records.
3. You transfer the payment to us according to the Bank information on the invoice and fax the payment proof to us.
4. We register the domain names for you within 2 workdays after getting the payment proof.
5. You will be awarded the certificates of Network Brand after 10 workdays.

Following is price list, for your reference$B!’(B
jimsdomain.net.cn 30 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.org.cn 30 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.co.in 55 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.in 55 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.com.hk 55 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.hk 55 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.com.tw 55 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.tw 55 EUR/Per Year
jimsdomain.asia 55 EUR/Per Year
Network Brand:
Jim’s Domain 150 EUR/Per Year

Attached the Dispute Application Form,pls check.
If no question, please fill the form and return to us ASAP,we will help you dispute and register these domain names as per the information which you will fill out the form, after we receive your returning form, the invoice will be transferred to you. thanks for your cooperation.

Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

Wow, those are some expensive spam domains, and 150 for the “network brand” is crazy, especially considering it’s something that’s completely made up, think I need to dispute this

Dear Mr Dong

I is confused following your mail. My local domain registrar shows most of these domains as available, and only wish to charge us a small percentage of the prices mentioned here to register these names. I’m assuming the additional charge is due to the domain “dispute” and if I were to actually try to register them, they wouldn’t go through?? Perhaps you can advise

Also, we have no such thing as a “network brand” in the UK and nor have I come across such a thing within my 20 years on the internet, however I am inexperienced as to what this is…Perhaps you can explain as I’ll have to explain to Ken Ding and Phuk Yoo who will no doubt ask and it will be up to me to explain. By the way, I think it’s important to tell you at this point that I really like ham, do you like ham? I had a hog roast at the weekend which is kind of a roasted ham which was really nice, do you have things like that in China, I’m very interested

I look forward to hearing from you and clearing up with worrying development

kind regards

Jim Seward

not one to be thrown by someone disputing his spam….Mr dong hits back with

Dear Jim Seward,

Thanks for your response.. First the Network Brand is the protection of the trademark in internet also it’s the part of the IP rights. Secondly it can be used for searching your company’s information and brings the benefits to your company in the internet. Chinese government will issue the certificate when you formally finish the registration, and it is unique for an company in internet. Network brand is very important, we advise you protect them. please confirm.

It is the official price for the disputed domain,we do not have the right to decide it, please confirm.
Meanwhile, what i need to tell you is that the price you get from the other place is the price in the first year, the price of annual renewals will be very expensive. Here you will have an average price every year.

Then, we register the domain in China.According to this , we have great advantages that many other institutions can not match, and with more protection. We can provide you with free follow-up services , domain management and analysis. we can also give you the certificate issued by Chinese goverment, can you get these in another places?
Last, if you choose to register all,we can apply for the discount up to 10% for you. Please confirm, we have tried our best to help you, hope to see you in good faith so that we can carry out the further work. Looking foward to your response.
Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

ah, so I’ve learnt something, network brand is the protection of trademark on internet…I didn’t know that, but not one to let him off so easily, I respond

Hi Jerry Dong

Ken Ding did a google search on “network brand China” and it brought up lots of things claiming that this is a scam and was worthless and in the words of one website “any company trying this scam are a bunch of low life robbing criminals” (their words, not mine and apologies as I know this isn’t the case) and I couldn’t find any proper documentation on it….Can you point me to some documentation online or send me something that explains the process properly so that I can reasure him it’s legitimate.

I obviously trust you and if it were up to me, I would have sent you the money by now….(looking at your figures, we’d oviously want to protect it for 20 years so that would be 12,500 Euros, but Ken sent nearly £30,000 of company money to someone claiming to be the solicitor of a desgraced Nigerian Prince who then just vanished so he’s very wary now about doing things online now…plus his wife ran off with another woman she met on adultfriendfinder.com….whole nasty business, left him crushed and very wary.

I look forward to hearing from you

kind regards

Jim

PS….You didn’t answer my question about your love of ham

Jerry decides to play hardball

Dear Jim Seward,

I believe that I have clarified what Network Brand is, if you think it is not important, you totally can ignore it. However, if you still have doubt, you can check our website www.ds-network.org, which may convince you. If you would like to register, please fill out the form and return to me ASAP in order that we have basis to assist you dispute. Anyway, If the application form will not come to us in 2 working days, we will deem that your company waive these name, in that case, the application from that company should be approved.

Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

I’m really worried now, this fictional company may get these spammy and worthless domains! But I’m not going to let Jerry get the better of me….Oh no, time to get legal on his ass

Dear Jerry

This worries me greatly and I certainly don’t like being threatened in this manner regarding our branding, nor do I like the fact that you’ve completely ignored my attempts at trying to connect with you, as I do with everyone I do business with regarding my love of ham, shows that you are more interested in making money than in building lasting business relationships. Therefore I have decided on this occasion not to do business with yourselves and shall register the domain names with one of your competitors. I had just received clearance for the payment as well. Oh well, I guess that’s your loss as it means I have to progress down a legal channel

I have also forwarded your emails to the lawyers of our Chinese subsiduary at the insistance of Ken Ding who have been ordered to commence legal proceedings firstly against yourself personally, ds-network and Everyboi Company regarding the protection of our trademarks, which I have been informed are registered as trademarks within China and therefore protected under the 24th Session of the Standing Committee of the Fifth National People’s Congress on 23 August 1982.

The only way to escape this action at this time is for you to immeadietely hand over the disputed domain names to Jim’s Company, which can be done to our domain provider hostway (TAG-HOSTWAY)

I look forward to hearing from you

Jim Seward

I’m sorry it had to come to this Jerry but…..Alas, Jerry decided at that point that I was “playing with him”

I have already said really clearly. if you really want to protect these domain name please sent the debatable form to me in the next work day?If you are playing with me ,let’s say bye-bye !

Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

Keen to reassert my honest business intentions, my “CEO” Mr Ken Ding stepped in

Hi Jerry

Apologies, I’ve just had this mail though from Ken Ding, it appears I may have misjudged you and been to hasty. Would it be possible as Ken suggests to get a small extension until Monday? Apologies, I’ve just had this mail though from Ken Ding,

“Hi Jim,
Thank you for handling this in my absence. I do wonder though if you have been too quick to dismiss Mr Dong? I’ve just been speaking to Phuk Yoo and it turns out that his business associate, Yuu Pong, has had previous dealings with Dong and thinks you could be wrong about the Network Brand. If Pong is correct and you’re wrong about Dong then what implications does this have for our business?

I urge you to try and appeal to Mr Dong’s better nature and gain a small extension until Monday when I should have the necessary finances in place to complete this deal.

This weekend will see me finally united with my new Thai bride, Ting Tong, who comes from an extremely wealthy family. I am so excited to be meeting my new wife for the first time J . I have just transferred ?100,000 of company money to Ting’s personal account so she can invest this money into some “lucrative business opportunities” in Thailand for us. I am sure this will provide our company with a very sizeable return on investment, certainly enough to pay Mr Dong and perhaps with an additional financial gesture to reward him for his patience?

Please can I leave this with you to take care of?

Sincerely,
Ken

Ken Ding
CEO”

it appears I may have misjudged you and been to hasty. Would it be possible as Ken suggests to get a small extension until Monday?

Kind regards

Jim

Suitably chastised, Mr Dong comes back to me, but he’s obviously losing patience

Dear Jim Seward,

I would like to remind you that it is necessary for you to return the application form to me today so that we can have ground to submit the registration application for you, and later your can finish the payment on the basis of the invoice we send to you. You should know that we can not submit the application for you if we do not have your returning form. There is another possibility that company will register these names through other company if we delay them for long time, in that case, we also can not stop them. Looking forward to your response!

Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

Right, return it today….yikes…maybe if I sweeten the deal, I can keep him hanging on a little longer

Hi Jerry

On speaking more with Ken Ding, Phuk Yoo and his business associate, Yuu Pong, we’ve decided that it would probably be wise at this juncture to protect a number of other brands and domains on top of the original jimsdomains ones to protect some upcoming projects we have coming up. Therefore if you could send me an amended form with the following additional domains (in all the permatations you sent the original in) with updated costing before the close of business today

TingTongDingDoPingPongShow
businesssystems
domainscams
businesssoftware
BigDongForTingTong.com
iloveham
fakecompanywantstobuyyourdomains
businessintelligence
that would be great.

I look forward to receiving the updated form

kind regards

Jim

Thinking I may have pushed him too far with this, I didn’t hear from him for a while…until I got this:

Dear Jim Seward,

How are you?It has been delayed for long time, but i have not received your application form til now. accordingly, we can not delay for you too long. If no reversion comes to me in 2 working days, we will suppose that you make a waiver and the registration for that company will be finished immediately. For the possible confusion caused by these registration , we will bear no responsibility, because you have got my notification. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards,

Jerry Dong

by this point, we were 2 weeks past the deadlins, everyboi company would have bought all my domains and my network brand by now…..but wait….what’s this, they haven’t!!! What a reprieve! Time to end this I think

Hi Jerry

I never heard back from you with the additional domain brands we wanted to protect. Funnily enough, it’s nearly 2 weeks past your deadline now, and miraculously, the domains you originally stated were under dispute have still not been registered. How about that!!!! I’m assuming this is because “at the last minute” Everyboi Company decided not to buy them and not that this whole thing was some sort of scam to get us to buy overpriced worthless spammy domain names.

I consider myself very lucky that they have “changed their mind” *wink wink*

kind regards

Jim

All good fun, and I would like to thank Mr Jerry Ding for being such a wonderful scammer and I hope you enjoyed reading it

Domain spam….here’s how I deal with it! is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

Created by Digital Marketing Agency Koozai

it’s also a great infographic for those looking to learn SEO

Gotta catch em all….Koozaimon!

As an aside, you can play a great game with the good folk at koozai.

Each of their team has the company name in their Twitter ID for example @koozai_mike.

Start by following Mike above, then as you see other Koozai team members post, follow them too, see if you can catch the whole team in the wild and become a Koozaimon Master!

How to learn SEO is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward

Anyway, long since forgotten, after a tweet by @searchmartin about archive.org (a site I’m very familiar with) – I went looking and the whole wmv file was on there for download which really surprised me. This was made (if my memory is correct) on a Pentium 200 running Adobe Premiere with a Pinnacle breakout box and winamp

I truly wish I can take credit for the music, one of the best version’s of Pachabel’s Canon I’ve ever heard (and was done before Canon Rock before anybody points it out)

Anyway….enjoy

A video project I made in 1999 – Check it out! is a post from: SEO-Ward by Jim Seward