| LED Digest 2341: Using Customer Kudos Correctly |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 6, 2007 Issue no. 2341 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> --== Is My Computer a Spambot? ==-- ~ Donald Nelson "What do I do next?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Best Practices for Testimonials ==-- ~ Joel Anderson "Including a date also seems to be plus..." ~ Reid Neubert "It is *always* a good idea to contact the customer and get permission..." --== Personalized Search Results ==-- ~ Adam Audette "...Google announced that they'll be integrating personalized searching..." --== Profiting from Domains ==-- ~ Becky Neilson "...look at [the glass] as being half full of potential." ~ Anonymous "That day I quit making sites for clients and started making only sites for myself." --== Google's Daily Data Refresh ==-- ~ Kevin Condon "A wakeup if ever there was one!" ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, We've got a packed issue today, but I wanted to warn you that there are some long posts coming in the next few days. Looks like some LEDers have caught the prolix bug! (One of my college professors used to say that... and I promise never to say it again.) I'll split some of the extra-long into 2 parts, like I've done today with the Anonymous post on domains. That should make more room for other posts. Speaking of which... there may be a slight delay as I work through the backlog of posts this week. One more thing -- I've consolidated the threads "Profiting from Typed-in Domains" and "Domain Name Hoarders" into a single thread since they're covering similar ground. On with the show! Have a great week, Adam --------------------- From: Donald Nelson Subject: Is My Computer a Spambot? Dear all, Yesterday I was visiting Technorati, the blog search engine, and saw an article that looked interesting. When I tried to click on the link to the article I was sent to a page which said that my computer, identified by my IP number, had sent comment spam on two recent occasions, and that if I wanted to be taken off the spam list then I could contact them saying that I had used anti-virus measures to clean my computer. If you have a blog, you have probably received spam in the form of nonsensical comments that have nothing to do with the blog post, but do have a URL for which someone is trying to get a link. It's a nuisance, and apparently spammers are planting viruses and worms in other people's computers and the comments are being sent like that. Now my problem is that I did a live update of the Symantec anti-virus program and then scanned my computer and no viruses where found. What do I do next? Does anyone have an idea on how I can make sure my computer is not sending out spam? Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Donald Nelson www.a1-optimization.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Joel Anderson Subject: Testimonials > If we agree that more detailed customer information is > more likely to affect new customers, how much information > can we post without contacting the customer? - Chuck Donner, LED Digest 2340 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1736/55/ I agree the more specific about who wrote a testimonial is, the stronger it appears. On the other hand many of my customers do not want to be fully identified. I sell coins and for security reasons many customers do not want to be easily identified, so I always avoid using a first name, last name, city and state. Over the years I have tried various approaches of using various combinations of initials, first names only, or large geographic areas (large city, state or nation) and date on our Customer Comments page at http://www.joelscoins.com/comments.htm You will probably how various approaches were tried at different times. How I list a customer often depends on what information they include in their e-mail or letter. If they just use a first name, I just use a first name. If they do not include a city or state in the e-mail, I usually will not include a city or state. On the other hand if they provide a full name and address I will edit the information so they cannot be identified. Including a geographic area such as a state or nation, seems to be a big plus, particularly if you do business overseas. Overseas buyers particularly like to see if you have successfully done business with others in their country. Including a date also seems to be plus as buyers can see your track record of satisfied customers. On the other hand, if you include a date, you will need to keep adding new testimonials. If your newest testimonial is two years old they might wonder if you are still giving good service or even if you are still in business. Anyway, on a bad day it is sometimes fun to read the nice things people have said in the past. Joel Anderson Interesting World Coins & Paper Money http://www.joelscoins.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Reid Neubert Subject: Testimonials Chuck, It is *always* a good idea to contact the customer and get permission to use their testimonial. Think of it like a model release for a photograph. You wouldn't use someone's photo without a signed release from them, right? (Right.) Rarely will someone who took the time to write positive comments to you deny you permission to use it if you just ask them nicely. People can get upset, however, if you publish it without their permission. The only time I've experienced someone not giving permission to use a testimonial was a case where the person worked for a company whose policy it was not to give testimonials (this was a business-to- business situation). As far as what information about the customer to include, this is something you should definitely clear with the person when getting their permission. The attributions should be consistent, though, so if one person says you can only use their first name and city, that's what you should use for everyone. It helps to decide in advance what is appropriate for your type of business so you can ask each person for permission to identify them in that manner. Best regards, Reid Neubert www.neubertweb.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Adam Audette Subject: Personalized Search Not really a post, more of a heads up regarding Fred's timely point on Google personalized searches: > If you are logged into your Google account, and do a > search, you will get different search results from the > results you get when not logged in. Sometimes the > results can vary drastically. - Fred Kelley, LED Digest 2340 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1736/55/ Last Friday Google announced that they'll be integrating personalized searching with all Google accounts, by default. Here's the relevant info from their blog post: ---------------------- "Now, when you're signed in, you'll have access to a personalized Google -- one that combines personalized search results and a personalized homepage. "Keep in mind that personalization is subtle -- at first you may not notice any difference. But over time, as the search engine learns your preferences, you'll see it... If you don't want to see personalized results, just sign out of your Google Account." Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/personally-speaking.html ---------------------- If you're interested in all the gory details of this, Danny Sullivan has created a very thorough treatment of the issue at SearchEngineLand. His conclusions are that this is a positive move by Google. Here's a snip with some useful recommendations: ---------------------- "Don't fear the personal results! The change is good news for searchers. It's also good news for site owners with good content, who should get rewarded by visits. That's especially so if you try these tips: "Titles & Descriptions are crucial: You need the clickthrough more than ever. Clickthroughs get your site as seen as possibly important to a particular person's profile. "Get on the Google personalized homepages of searchers. That means offering them a feed or a gadget and encouraging take-up with an Add To Google buttons. "Put Google Bookmark buttons on your site, such as the one offered by AddThis. Getting bookmarked also helps you be seen as important." Source: http://searchengineland.com/070202-224617.php ---------------------- Best wishes, Adam Audette http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/40/79/ -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Becky Neilson Subject: Typed-in URLs & Domain Hording While some folks seem to be getting upset about all the domains they can't get they shouldn't complain because they weren't the first ones to get it. With so many business names we can't always get what we want. But we can try to be creative to find a domain name that is catchy and will fit our business. The domain name I really wanted was hansons.com for my business hansons leather but I missed it by 2 weeks and ended up with hansons.net instead. Has it killed my business, no. Would have been nice to get the one I wanted but I didn't and I just moved on. That was over 10 years ago. I am still in business and focus promoting my website with the name it has. It is a short easy to remember address and it works. In addition I have changed my business name to Hanson's Leather & Supply or H.L. Supply over the last 10 years so it hasn't hurt a bit. The first URL you pick may not be the best one for you, if the one you want is taken you may come up with a better one because you are forced to be more creative. It may even help you to create a whole new way to promote your business. Don't look at the glass as being half empty, look at it as being half full of potential. Becky Neilson H. L. Supply www.hansons.net -------- new post - same topic -------- [note: since this post is so long, we'll publish it in 2 parts; look for the 2nd (and final) installment in tomorrow's issue. this subscriber has asked to remain anonymous. -ed] -------------------- From: [ Name Withheld ] Subject: Typed in URLs, domain speculation, and more... The Other End of the Click - Part 1 of 2 Back in '98 / '99, I would do web design for clients. I would go to area "networking" clubs, run a yellow page ad and all those real world marketing activities which would capture nothing but people who were already off-line (and generally clueless). Easy business, but hard in that so much went into educating them about email, links, content writing, what is the web, how do you advertise, etc. Then when the site was done, they would be mad because they weren't listed first in Hotbot, Lycos or Yahoo. At the time, a hard way to earn $1,00 to $5,000 a site, but part of the business, I guess. Then I built a client for one site and I did all the ongoing maintenance. They asked me to do marketing for them as well, so I bought 20 niche domains to build out and get traffic and send the traffic to them. It was the biggest job I ever did, maybe $50,000 over the course of the year. I thought this was the real deal. One day I was meeting with the client I asked how the site(s) were doing and their head sales guy was there and blurted out, "We make $20,000 - 50,000 NET per DAY off these sites." Gosh, it took me a year to do that with this client, and the client does it EVERY DAY. I looked at my logs and saw I was getting a ton of traffic from the feeder sites that I created; and that I owned. That day I quit making sites for clients and started making only sites for myself. And I started buying GENERIC domains... thousands and thousands of them. I spent every extra dollar I had on domains. Many of these domains now receive lots of type-in direct navigation; many of them are not getting any traffic. As you know, you can't buy a decent name anymore as they are all gone, so people now contact me all the time so they can buy "their" domain. I had one guy email me and tell me that he had this idea "last week" and that I stole his idea since I had the domain already and he wanted "his" domain back. He accused me of hacking into his computer to steal the idea. I explained to him that I owned the domain for the last four years. > About 2 years ago I took over the management of an > international society. The previous administrator let go > kicking and screaming. One of her screw-ups was to > not renew the client's domain name. - Marsha Kopan, LED Digest 2336 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1730/55/ Sometimes, on rare occasion, a decent domain does become available because someone didn't renew it and I buy it. I had someone tell me that they used to own the domain and that they had made the payment but the registrar didn't renew it (actually, I have had probably 50-75 emails like that). Often it turns out that I have owned that domain for 3 months to two years by then and the person who is so in love with that domain, just found out they no longer owned the name. Then they accuse me of sitting on the domain or cybersquatting or whatever. I have learned that when I own "their" name, that I am cybersquatting. In short, I have learned to many people cybersquatting is a catch-all phrase meaning I have what they want. Cybersquatting is owning a name that someone else has trademark rights to; ie CocaCola.com, Microsoft.com and sometimes even the typo's of the trademarked domain CocaCloa.com, Microsft.com etc. > Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get > this guy to respond to my inquiry? I've even asked him > to tell me a purchase price and got no response. Whenever I get a domain request from someone threatening me, I check with the USPTO web site for trademark infringement and then do an archive look-up and if there is no case, I never respond. It is that simple - if someone bangs my cage too hard, I just ignore them - go rattle your own cage. I have been taken to UDRP about twice and I have won both of them. Surprisingly enough, I then sold the domain to the other party in both cases, once they saw they had no leg stand on, but wanted the domain... ** Stay tuned - Part 2 of this post is coming tomorrow! ** Anonymous -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Kevin Condon Subject: Data refresh Jazzles Update - from #1 for alphabet songs on Google, to can't even find it in Google, and back to #1 in 8 days effectively without changing anything. The difference between our cached page of the 21st and the Google respider of 29th January is the same other than 4 numbers on our shopping cart code. So this occassion, Michael Martinez, Rule 5 applied "This must be a glitch and all I have to do is wait!" Another of Michael's guidelines was don't rely on Google for more than 20% of your traffic [see issue 2337 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1731/55/ ]. Good advice. Since October or November, I find Google, at least for Jazzles, to be more temperamental than before. Fortunately we do well off Yahoo and reasonably off MSN, From Google giving us 50% of traffic down to 5% hurts the pride more than the bottom line! A wakeup if ever there was one! Best Kevin Condon ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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