Viral Marketing, Social Media & Blogs: New UK Laws

Are you ever tempted to create a bogus blog, and pretend to be one of your own happy customers? Attracted by the chance to write some glowing online reviews of your own business? How about asking your staff or marketing agency to create phony evaluations of your products or services?

Big changes in the law covering business blogging, social media and viral marketing techniques means businesses need to think twice before pretending to be the "voice of the people."

The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations bans 31 unfair commercial practices designed to protect consumers from misleading, aggressive or unfair practices.

In particular, the legislation outlaws any marketing that is in fact a disguised commercial message.

In the online marketing world, banned activities for businesses include:

• writing fake reviews on sites like TripAdvisor or Google Maps
• creating fake blogs
• asking questions on Q&A sites, and then answering the question yourself
  
• editing Wikipedia entries under a false identity
• imitating a consumer
• falsely advertising on social media sites

The use of false Internet marketing techniques has spawned a whole new vocabulary:

Flogs or "fake blogs" posing as a consumer, but created by professionals with the aim of selling products. One of the best known phony flogs is "All I Want for Christmas is a PSP" - created by a marketing agency called on behalf of Sony; Walmart has done a fake blog and been caught and shamed, and so have L'Oreal and lots more.

Astroturfing or fake grassroots campaigns, such as those used during political campaigns.

The penalty if you break the law? A little visit from Trading Standards, followed by fines up to £5,000, and up to two years in prison for individual directors or senior managers who are guilty of "consenting, conniving or negligently" breaking the rules.

Blogger Tips: Future Dated Posting

This blog is powered by Blogger, the freely available software provided by our friends at Google.

A new feature of Blogger is the ability to future date your posts; write your article now and then schedule it to get published automatically on the date of your choosing.

This is a very useful trick for time-strapped small business owners: just sit down one Sunday evening and write a few blog postings. Your new articles will appear magically at the appointed time, updating your website and feeding content into the search engine network.



Almost exactly a year ago I wrote an article on How I Would Improve Blogger, and this feature was one of the three things on my wish list.

My blog is now well over 3 years old now, and Blogger continues to add features to keep it on a par with the other major players like WordPress and TextPattern.

Blogger: if you are listening, here is what is on my wish list this year:

1. Insert images where I expect them to go. At the moment, every image I insert is placed by default at the top of the posting, instead of where my cursor is. I have to manually drag the image into the right position. Annoying, or what?

2. Provide some stats in my Blogger account that tells me my most popular postings, most commented, most linked to, and the like. I know integration of Analytics and Blogger is in beta, but just hurry up, OK?

3. Give me more choices of which posts to display, not just my most recent posts. At the moment I have to manually insert links to my most popular posts.

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Looking to read more about blogging? Try these articles & resources:

Blogging gets your content into Google... Fast!

Reusing your blog as a email newsletter

Your blog comment policy

Desire lines and blogging: what do you readers want you to write about?

Protecting Your Copyright on the Web

A very nasty website was stealing my blog content - and I wasn't happy about it. Here was my successful plan of action to stop another website from stealing my content.

I used a two prong approach: the official process way, and the nasty get-it-where-it-hurts way. And I think it was the nasty way that got him to remove my content in the end.

First, the official process way. It is essential to copy the site owner in all the steps you are taking; I think it is the fear of prosecution and your evident determination to follow it through that might get them to stop stealing your content:

1. Make backup copies of your pages and their pages to keep as evidence in case they change it.
2. Write to the site owner, and ask them to remove the offending content. You may be able to find the street address of the site owner using the Whois database. State that they are infringing your copyright and demand that they remove the offending entry immediately failing which you will claim damages and an injunction together with costs
3. Write to the web hosting company explaining what the site is doing and demanding that they remove the offending entry immediately failing which you will claim damages and an injunction against them together with costs for copyright infringement. Copy the site owner in on the message. The Whois database will give you a good start in finding the details of the hosting company, and they'll usually have a form for making complaints.
   
4. Write to the local Trading Standards making a complaint, and again, copy the site owner in on the message.

Now, the powerful secret weapon actions:

The motive for stealing content is usually greed. Your content helps the nasty website's search engine positioning, and your content will typically be surrounded by Google AdSense advertising. Every click on an ad means pennies in the pocket of the thief.

These are are generally splog websites: spam blogs which are intentionally fake and are designed to get ad impressions and ad revenue.

The plan is to let Google know just what a lousy son of gun this website is and hit it where it hurts: his wallet. And make sure you tell the infringing site that you have reported him to the AdSense programme.


At the bottom of the Google AdSense advertising on the offending site is a little bit of text that says Ads by Google: click on it.


Then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the option to

Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw

You want to Report a Violation and say the site is infringing your copyright, as well as other possible Google AdSense Policy Violations:


In due course you will get an email back from Google AdSense asking you to write a letter with further details about the infringement. In my case it didn't need to go that far: the offender had already removed the content.

There may be other advertisers on the splog site: contact them in writing with copies of all your other correspondence with the culprit.

It may be that other sites are using your content without realising they are infringing your copyright, and maybe a friendly email might sort things out and give you a link in the process.

And of course prevention

If you want to read more about stopping copyright theft then I would recommend Lorelle's article on What to Do When Someone Steals Your Content.

And I'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to Gary Cousins and Alex Newson for their support and guidance.

Most Popular Posts of 2007

The New Year is a great time to review the performance of your website.

In terms of visitors, I must confess my posting about the John and Anne absconding to Panama had an extraordinary response, with more than 2,500 people reading it in the first 24 hour period. It shows the value of writing topical postings!

I'm evaluating the response to my blog articles in order to guide what I write next year. There are a number of different measures that I am considering:

• the number of times the blog posting was read by unique visitors
  
• the number of times the blog posting was a landing page meaning it was the first page people saw, for example from a Google search
• the response to my email newsletters
  

But in terms of my Internet marketing content, my most frequently read postings in 2007 were:

1. Analysis of the differences between American Google and UK Google
2. Google Analytics versus Web Trends for web statistics
3. Google Checkout's free credit card processing service
4. Free Web Tools
5. Writing for the web: readability tests (2006)

It was quite a different story if I look at the click through rate from readers of my email newsletter. Keep in mind these results will be skewed so that my recent articles will have higher click through rates because the number of subscribers grow month on month. The most popular postings for the newsletter subscribers were:

1. How to search engine optimise your PDFs
2. The importance of Meta Tags
3. Spammy Google Adword Advertising
4. My recommendation for the Best Internet Marketing book
5. A great keyword research tool

And finally, there are some older postings that reliably drive traffic to the site:

• Doodle for Google (2006)
• Internet Usage in the UK (2006)
• Networking via the mains (2006)
• The Google F Word (2005)
• Ten Top Blogging Mistakes (2005)

"Desire Lines" and Blogging

Desire lines are those well worn paths that get us to where we really want to go - in sheer defiance of the official paved route.

Blogs gives small businesses an easy way to rapidly adapt web content according your visitors' desire lines: what they actually want, rather than what we expect them to do.

I attended a presentation by Eileen Brown, Microsoft's Technology Evangelist, where she applied the idea of desire lines to blogging.

One common sense way to discover your visitors' "desire lines" is to review your web statistics and analytics. Your analytics can help you to learn about your audience:

• Which of your blog postings or web pages get the most hits from the search engines?
• Which of your recommended links do visitors follow most commonly?
• Which postings or pages hardly ever get viewed?
• What path do users most typically take through your site?
• And by extension, what do they really want?

Accommodating the your visitors "desire lines" in your blog is easily done and will provide satisfaction for those readers who want to go a different way, rather than being led:

• creating the types of content visitors most commonly read
• providing links to other credible sites
• tagging your content to faciliate discovery of related material
• comments from your readers with links to other interesting sites
  

On the one hand, blogging can be a powerful business tool to push key marketing messages to your readers.

But it can also act as a valuable instrument to learn more about those clients who want deviate off your planned route. Your visitors don't always want to follow the path (read: navigation) that we lay out for them, and they don't act the way we expect.

Learn more:

Peter Meholz (who invented the word "blog") explains Desire Lines

Internet marketing: what to read

Keeping up to date with latest trends in search marketing means a lot of reading. Here are some suggestions to help you burn the midnight oil:

If I only have time to read one thing, it is my Search Engine News subscription. It's a monthly update, comprehensive, authoritative, practical, of what's new in in the world of search engine marketing. I'm afraid it does cost real money, but with the dollar so weak, the price tag of US$144 for a whole year amounts to less than 80 squid. Warning: this website looks big time American cheesy spammy, but the quality of the subscription is excellent.


If you are looking for free info, then blogs has to be the way to go. The BigList of SEO and SEM blogs by TopRank lists more than 400 blogs. Awesome, in the literal sense of the word. It's arranged alphabetically which can make it difficult to get to grips with, but it is a great launch pad. It is interesting to note Danny Sullivan's Sphinn is the editor's pick; Sphinn is getting a lot of profile, but it wouldn't make my personal top 10.

Along the same lines, take a look at AdAge Power 150 media and marketing blogs.
You won't go far wrong if you pick a few to read out of the top dozen or so.

Happy reading!

Annoying Internet Buzzwords

RSS feeds. Wikis. Blogs. Pocasting. Social bookmarking. XML. Webinar. Cookie. Avatar. Web 2.0

How many of these Internet buzzwords can you say you really understand? And how many are you actually using for the benefit of your business?

Or are you irritated by all these Internet buzzwords?

Within Internet marketing, there is still a tendency to talk about the underlying technology, rather than the benefits the technology brings. There is a residue of geekiness that puts normal people off.

And as a result there is resistance on the part of businesses to adopt these new technologies. Business owners don't understand the jargon, and frankly, they just don't care.

But when these technologies are demonstrated in a real live working environment, then the penny drops for many business owners. They can see what the technology can actually do for their business.

They understand the benefits.

They may think the word blog sounds vaguely rude, but they are very interested in telling people what's going on in their business in a cost effective way.

They may not care what Web 2.0 is, but they want to convert more sales on their website.

Internet marketing is still at a stage where the jargon and geekiness is still hindering adoption.

And as a result, so many small businesses are not reaping the rewards of relatively cheap, easy to implement solutions.

Blog Comment Policy

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I've re-enabled the Comments facility on this blog.

Once upon a time I allowed comments, but the nasty blog spammers filled it with adverts and horrible self-serving links to their own sites. And so I turned Comments off.

But I have had a number of requests from genuine readers of this blog asking for the ability to contribute to the conversation, and stop it being a one-way stream of verbage from me.

So, comments are back on, but in the interest of protecting my own business and sanity, I've resorted to creating my blog comment policy.

• I welcome comments because they are the heart and soul of blogging space. Please feel free to join into the conversation.

• I always delete spam and am forced to moderate your messages by hand because Blogger does not offer a proper anti-spam tool. This means your comments may take some time to appear on the site.

• I reserve the right to edit or delete comments that I consider to be offensive, rude, off-topic, hateful, or using bad language.

• Go ahead and include links in your postings; relevant links improve the conversation and help us all to keep learning.

• Links in comments will not add to your inbound linking campaigns; all links will automagically use the rel="nofollow" tag, so they'll receive no PageRank boost in an effort to stop blog comment spam

I'll be working on the layout of the blog to improve comment legibility, and your comments and suggestions for layout would be most welcome.

How fast is Google?

How long does it take for your site to make an impact on the Google search results?

3 hours.

Last week's little experiment optimising for the phrase SEO Lincolnshire Rutland gave some rather outstanding results. It has been a very interesting example of the efficiency of Google spidering.

The blog posting was ranking in third position in Google within three hours, and took top position within 24 hours.

As of today, just one week later, seven of the top 10 positions are occupied with various scrapings and permutations of the posting. An interesting technique for crowding out the competition. Although I'm not very happy about the scrapers.

Nevertheless, do NOT lose site of the fact this is not a great phrase to optimise for, nor is it a competitive phrase that requires a lot of hard work.

But I do have had other anecdotal reports from clients who see just how fast the Google results can change, including this lovely testimonial from Caricaturist Richard Ellis:

I would just like to thank you for the advice given at your course.
I have to admit it took me a little while to getting the job done,
but once I had put some of your suggestions into practice,
my site soared from page 6 to page 1 of the Google organic rankings
in the space of three days!
This has to be one of the best investments I have ever made.

And many thanks to Guy Gregory who let me know just how quickly the blog posting was being picked up by Google.

Support for Women Owned Businesses

I'm pleased to be involved in the Women 4 Women programme, offering women-owned businesses in the East Midlands free mentoring and subsidised marketing support. The programme aims to boost women's enterprise for start ups, new businesses, or women seeking to further develop their business.

To be eligible you must be located in an Objective 2 area and you can check your postcode eligibility here. The business must be at least 50% woman owned, and fit the usual SME requirements.

I'll be mentoring women in the Lincolnshire area, but my Internet marketing training and support is eligible for support across the entire East Midlands Objective 2 region.

Get in touch if you'd like to know more.

Search Marketing Blogs

If you are interested in search marketing, which blogs should you be reading?

What other people are reading might be a good signpost, so take a look at Top Rank's listing of the most popular search marketing blogs as measured by Feedburner's RSS feed with subscriber information.

Sadly, my own blog doesn't rank up there, but you might like to take a look at:

• John Batelle's Searchblog (67,450 readers)
• Search Engine Watch (23,294 readers)

So much to read, so little time!

Blogging Risks

A recent research report from ScanSafe warns that up to 80% of blogs contain offensive content.
The risks range from adult language to pornographic images; and up to 6% of blogs contain malware and other unwanted content.

The risk to small businesses, of course, is that your members of staff could be visiting these sites and exposing your business to viruses, or loss of sensitive business information.

More importantly, you need to ensure your business has the proper safeguards in place to ensure your staff members aren't contributing to this wave of offensive material using your own business resources.

Read the full ScanSafe Global Threat Report (PDF)

Better Blogging

Email subscribers to my blog will see a change this week; I've decided to convert my blog into a weekly e-newsletter, complete with branding and formatting. Feel free to send me comments and suggestions.

We already know blogging is a very powerful Internet marketing tool. A well designed blog:

• delivers rich content that can rank highly in the search engines. For example, see how my blog postings ranks well in Google for the new statutory requirements for business websites.
  
• provides fresh updates on your website which search engine spiders love
• establishes you as an authority on your subject
• keeps you in touch with your clients and prospective clients.

But another benefit of blogging is re-usability. By that I mean "write once, publish many."

I've decided to "re-use" my blog as my email marketing newsletter. I've been using the FeedBlitz service to maintain email subscribers, and from today I'm using Feedblitz compile and broadcast my blog postings on a weekly basis.

The benefits?

• I won't annoy my readers with an individual message every time I write a blog posting, instead they'll get a weekly round up. If I'm in the mood one morning to write 3 postings then no worries about deluging my clients with messages.
  
• The e-newsletter has all the Hallam branding and logos
• It gets sent out automatically on the day of my choice (Thursday) even if I'm busy doing something else

The best Internet marketing is always a case of "Test -- Learn -- Test" and so I'll keep you posted of tweaks that I make to deliver better blogging.

The Business of Blogging

There are many benefits to blogging: keeping in touch with your client base, creating fresh content for your website, raising your company's visibility in the search engines, raising your own corporate profile.

But how about making money from your blog? The buzzword is "monetising."

Placing Google AdSense advertising on your blog has been one source of revenue for quite a while now. People click on the ads, you get the money.

Here's another way to make money from your blog: paid for reviews.

I've registered my blog with ReviewMe and advertisers can buy a review on my blog, essentially paying cash for my esteemed opinion of their product or service. And of course, they're also buying a valuable link from my website.

You can use the ReviewMe service either to buy links to your own site, or to sell links and earn a little extra money.

Now, I know you don't want to be deluged with advertorial, but if e-marketing trends interest you, then you will want to read the Advertisement:

Basiclink.com, a web hosting company in San Diego, are trialling a marketing campaign where they are offering 11 lucky customers 50% off the price of their Shopsite Pro E-Commerce Hosting on Monday, 11 December at 11:00.

This promotion is capitalising on Amazon's latest marketing campaign Vote for Deal where customers can vote for one of four cheap deals on offer. The deal with the most votes wins, and a few randomly selected folk who were lucky enough to vote for the winning deal are then sent a claim code to purchase the deal.

Basiclink.com are introducing this B2C concept to the B2B marketplace, and they claim to be leading on a trend that may set the tone for future business promotions.

What's also interesting is that Basiclink.com are a local player, serving specifically the San Diego small business community. They're using international e-marketing techniques to target their niche market. It's a multi-pronged campaign; they pushed out online press releases, purchased inbound links from blogs, promoting the offering on their website, and I'm sure they've got email marketing in the mix.

So there's an example of small business marketing lessons to be learnt from our SME cousins on the other side of the pond.

Business blogging: new free resources

Small businesses seem to be slow on the uptake in using blogging as part of their overall online marketing strategy.

Why might this be the case?

Because "blogging" is such an ugly, techno-geek word?

Because web designers are not promoting it as part of their web design service?

Because marketing and PR professionals aren't aware of its benefits?

Blogging:

• provides fresh, updated content on your website
• is a low cost (free) web publishing tool
  
• delivers higher search engine rankings
• builds community with your existing customers and new prospects
• gets round the email marketing "spam trap"
  
• can be used in the same way as other promotional and communications channels
  

If you're thinking about starting a blog, then you might find these new business blogging resources in the Library section of the website helpful.

How I would improve Blogger

I use Blogger to power this section of my website. Blogger seemed like a good choice: it is owned by Google, it's free, and it's easy to use.

But I have a few gripes about Blogger.

It's missing some pretty basic things that I think blog software should offer, no brainer.

My top 3 gripes:

• I want to be able to categorise my listings, so you could click on an index link and find everything I wrote, say, about Press Releases or SEO.
• I want to be able to write an article, and then have it automatically published at some date in the future. So, I can sit down, write a bunch of stuff, and then have it drip feed into my blog automatically.
• And I want you to be able to choose which themes you want to subscribe to. Only interested in Online PR? Then you should be able to get only those articles.

Are these serious enough faults to switch to different blogging software, like TypePad or WordPress? Maybe....

Blogs and SEO

You're writing a blog, now how to help the search engine discover it?

There are a number of weblog directories with excellent page rank which might link to your blog, helping to drive traffic as well as contributing to that all important inbound linkage strategy.

Why not try submitting your blog to:

• Blog Search Engine
• TopSites Sublime Directory
• All Blogs

Best blogs of 2005

Just out of interest, Search Engine Journal nominated the best SEO blogs of 2005. The winner was Matt Cutts and runners up were: Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Roundtable, Technorati, JenSense and the Official Google Blog.

Blogs: Top Ten Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen is back at it again, this time summarising the top ten usability mistakes made by bloggers. Blogs should be an important part of many companies' marketing strategies - both for SEO as well as other marketing tactics.

Summary: Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.

Search Engines Love Blogs

If you are looking to drive traffic to your business website, then creating a blog (from weblog) could be a great way to get the search engine's attention.

Why do search engines love blogs? Your blog will be rich with the keywords that form part of your web marketing tactics (Ed: hey, they're my keywords... what a coincidence...) And its alot quicker and easier for your to create blog pages suitable for your internet marketing plan (ibid) instead of rebuilding your whole site.

Search engines love pages with regularly updated content, and that is the whole point of your blog. It's quick and easy to add new content, and the software is free. On the other hand, if you can't commit to the updates, well then...

Blogs encourage a regular community of readership, which translates into traffic to your site. And these are readers who keep coming back to your site, and who might even have a look at your other pages. All this adds up to traffic, and we all know what traffic means.