| LED Digest 2525: Advertising in Email Lists |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. October 31, 2007 Issue no. 2525 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== <Moderator Comment> ~ On "Experts" --== Advertising in Ezines & Newsletters ==-- ~ Stan Zeidenberg "...very few of the better ones accept advertising. Those that do, charge fairly high rates." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Content Copied by Another Designer ==-- ~ Barry S Mills "...I think you should take it pretty seriously." ~ Mark Frank "Now I go directly to the hosting service." --== Social Media - What's the Point? ==-- ~ Maty Matyszak "LED is indeed a social media site..." <Moderator Comment> ~ Beth Ann Earle "...is it possible to be too cutting edge for a specific client base?" --== The (Non) Usability of Registration Forms ==-- ~ Brett Atkin "[Don't] use common naming conventions for your form fields." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> There are a lot of spillover posts from the inaugural Ask the Experts issue, which I'm glad to see. I'll add those threads into the discussions the rest of the week. I've also got a few more posts to publish on led-digest.com in the coming days from the answers our volunteers kindly provided. Speaking of... I've had several comments from LEDers asking about the whole "experts" thing. Why is this list featuring contributors in this way? It's a valid question. I want to address that and also provide a quick summary of the idea behind it. In many ways it's antithetical to the sensibility of the list. The LED has never been about a bunch of experts tooting their horns and pretending to know it all (at least I hope not). To me it's much more of a "roll up your sleeves" kind of list where we exchange important information about online marketing and ecommerce -- not for the sake of information itself but for the sake of improving our businesses, corporate jobs, side projects, or whatever. I get a lot of emails with great questions every week, but from people who would like to remain anonymous. Sometimes you just don't want to tell 40,000 people you don't know about something! Although we do allow some anonymous posts, I don't think that's what people really want. (I actually think they want me to answer them, and I try... but I can't always find the time.) The Ask the Experts idea allows LEDers to present helpful questions directly to professional internet marketers, or to amateurs who have learned it all through their own websites or projects. It's like tapping into a live knowledge base, free of charge. Yesterday's issue is proof that this isn't about a bunch of experts blowing their own horns. The contributions from our panel were very giving and unselfish, and I hope, very helpful for people on the list. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Best wishes, Adam ---------------------- From: Stan Zeidenberg Subject: Ezines for Creating Awarenes of Web Site I have been looking for a cost efficient way of creating awareness of my website. My page presents reference and resource links in a unique and systematic way. From my research I learned that eZines were supposed to be a good media within which to advertise. In essence, the message was that one could reach a lot of people at a very low cost. Having spent considerable time researching eZines, I have found that most are of poor quality in the first place, and very few of the better ones accept advertising. Those that do, charge fairly high rates. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions that subscribers to this digest might offer. Stan Zeidenberg http://www.firstport.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Barry Mills Subject: Copied content > [A competitor] has copied my packages and price > list, which include search phrases, word for word, > and he is now moving up in Google for the same... > search terms which I'm sure is due to copying my content. - Sarah Hayes, LED Digest 2523 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1936/190/ Hi Sarah, I run a UK based digital agency, and although it hasn't happened to us, it's happened to clients and I think you should take it pretty seriously. I wouldn't worry too much about your Google rankings, it's very unlikely that a duplicate will overtake the original, not sustainably anyway, and if Google spots that it's a duplicate, it will most likely drop it completely. However I would worry about clients seeing it, even if he's lower down (but visible) in the rankings. I don't agree that clients seeing both would know he'd copied yours. Web designers seeing both probably would, but clients aren't always that smart, and if they spotted that the two were similar, who's to say they won't think youve copied him! I think you have three options. You can contact him yourself as you suggest, get a lawyer to do it for you, or you could contact Google. Contacting him yourself is cheap and easy, but I think the least likely to get results. Reporting to Google is free and has a good chance of success imho. If you report the site as being a duplicate and Google agree, they will drop it and that probably solves your problem. Trouble is, it's likely to take a few months to reach a conclusion, they don't generally act very quickly on this type of thing. I think I'd go down the route of consulting a solicitor, but asking them to keep it cheap and probably just send a "cease and desist letter". Depending on the legal advise, you may also get away with demanding that he hands over the domain name. It's likely that this will scare the culprit into complying -- he hasn't done what he's done because he's a large sophisticated corporation with its own legal team! Make sure you use a proper IP lawyer, not just any old solicitor, in case you need / want to take matters further. If you think you've lost business as a result of his actions, you may also have a claim for damages. Barry S Mills Chairman Netstep Corporate Communications http://www.netstep.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Frank Subject: Copied content Sarah, The theft of copyrighted information is very common in our industry. Most of us have had context and images copied. One designer copied my entire website -- even the About Us page. The only change was the contact information. If you look, you will almost certainly find that your clients' websites are being copied as well. Fortunately, we have dealt with this topic on LED Digest before. Pull up issue 2024 ( http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1084/190/ ) from the LED Digest archives. There is a letter that you can send to the offenders hosting company. It has proven to be remarkably effective. I would recommend one change though. The post in issue 2024 recommends that you contact the offender first. Having gone through this on several occasions, I've stopped wasting my time trying to be considerate to people who are stealing from me (and from my clients). Now I go directly to the hosting service. It's really not the way I prefer to do things, but it gets better results. If you send emails to the offending site, many will be ignored, or worse, you will get very, very nasty emails back. Let the hosting company resolve the problem. They can do it quickly, and without bringing you into the process. As soon as they are satisfied that a copyright violation has occurred, they will take the offending site off line. It may seem brutal, but negotiating with people who are stealing from you is not a good use of your time. Let the proper authorities enforce rules. And trust me, after the fourth or fifth time, you will no longer feel guilty or uncomfortable about do this. Before you send the letter to the hosting company, gather as much documentation as possible to prove that you are the originator. The more the better. You don't want to be in a position where the offender can claim to be the originator. Start at www.archive.org to prove your prior claim. Good luck Mark Frank http://www.WebsiteDesignBiz.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Who *DID* Put The Jolly In Ol' St Nick? Santa's copywriter, of course! How incredible has that person's work been for the past four or five centuries? For SEO'd web content that's fresh as a Christmas rose and relevant as a reindeer, visit http://www.GetWebContet.com/LED today! ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Maty Matyszak Subject: Social media > My question is - just how would pursuing some > kind of involvement in "social media" sites benefit > our business? Maybe I am just an old geezer, but > I don't see the point. - Anonymous, from Ask the Experts, Vol. 1 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1938/190/ There's a certain irony, which I am sure others will pick up on, about posting a query about social media on the LED. Social media does not need YouTube videos or the latest buzzwords. It's an internet place where the users generate the content - and their chosen medium can be text. LED is indeed a social media site, albeit one for a community with specific interests. And in that sense it was doing 'web 2.0' stuff while web 1.0 was still in diapers. So Adam, sites with user-generated content. What's the point? You tell us. Maty Matyszak www.knowyourcat.info <Moderator Comment> I agree with what you're saying (and what Thomas Schmitz said in the last issue). Social media = online communities. Where the "new" social media separates itself from formats like this is in interactivity, real-time communication, and a host of other technology-driven things. I think the biggest factors making the interval between discussion lists and social sites ever wider are the following: - Faster response time - Slicker interfaces - More freedom and choices - More current technology - More popularity, appeal - More content (with more noise too) At the core of it all is community members shaping the site, or list, or forum, whatever. Where I think this list shines is in the high signal compared to a lot of the mainstream community sites. Digg, for example, is famous for its grumpy, sophomoric user base. Lists like the LED (are there any lists like the LED?) will always find a place for more serious-minded folks who like a strong signal and don't mind the low-tech presentation. -adam ps. Just another quick thought. New social sites also reflect the "all about me" theme gaining steam in mainstream culture, particularly the US. Facebook is a prime example, where some people invest a lot of time into creating a profile (persona) and then building up friends (fans) to share themselves with. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Social media Love the Experts format! The inaugural issue is quite useful, since it touches on two topics I've been mulling recently: article marketing and the whole social media thing. It's good to know article marketing still has a place -- that seems like an area where our company can continue to provide a useful service for our clients. But ... the whole social media thing ... for our client base, I'm still not sold, despite the persuasive information provided by Mssrs. Kirlew and Schmitz (although I try to stay up on reading about social media so as not to seem *completely* like the anti-MRI doctor). Our clients are mostly b2b manufacturers, smallish sized companies that don't even have one person tasked with marketing, let alone a marketing "department" of any kind. They're the kind of people you can't even get to check their traffic stats regularly or to look at their web sites to make sure the data is still current. To suggest widely published videos or on-line networking to them would probably make us look out of touch with their version of reality. Michael sort of hints at it, but is it possible to be too cutting edge for a specific client base? Or do we just do a bad job of selecting clients and educating them? (this is beginning to worry me more) But, regardless of any internal changes here, I have to say that social media just isn't right for every client. With the best regards to LED'ers everywhere, Beth Ann Earle www.pilotfishseo.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brett Atkin Subject: Registration forms > I had to remove a registration process from one > of my sites because it was being hounded by > spammers. I would like to reinstate the registration > form... What kind of work-arounds are there? - Marsha Kopan, LED Digest 2522 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1935/190/ Marsha, I think we've all experienced that joy... Anyway, here is what I've done with repeated success. Say you're asking for First, Last and Email. On the confirmation page, before you do form processing and assuming your form validation rejected any submissions with incomplete data, compare the values of those three fields. If any of them have duplicate content, your form was spammed. I've taken this a step further in some cases and added a simple "Are You Human?" question to the form (not a captcha - some of those are impossible) such as "1+1=" or the "Current Year is...". Then check for a valid answer. Depending on the client and the web site, this may not be appropriate, but it works. The final thing is to not use common naming conventions for your form fields. For example, don't call your email address field "email_address". Call it something like "led_em". I know some spambots run through the code and check for form variables that have common naming conventions to help them place the appropriate form data. Give it a shot and see if that helps. Brett Atkin http://www.BrettAtkin.com (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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