Archive for category social media
Dumb-ass WP hackers…
Posted by admin in WordPress, blogging, marketing sense, social media, writing on March 19th, 2010
I had one of my WordPress blogs hacked last week and whilst I did not lose too much – dumb asses hacked a blog that made about $0.03 a year – it did get me thinking about how you can prevent it.
Okay, wrong phrase. You can’t prevent it.
If they can hack into the Pentagon and the White House security records, my blog is never going to be too difficult.
But here are some steps you can take to make it more difficult, maybe to the extent that for $0.3, it’s no longer worth it. Course, you’re blog might earn $0.04…
Anyway, this is what you do:
- Make sure that you always upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. When you log into the wp-admin area, it’ll always tell you if you should upgrade and there’s a free plugin that makes doing so a breeze.
- Resist the temptation to use your name as the ‘username’ and ‘admin’ is even worse. I know you love your name, but don’t do it.
- The password should be 12 characters and a mix of upper and lower case as well as numbers and keyboard characters (e.g. *,# etc). Don’t use two characters that are next to each other on the keyboard together either.
- Install the following free plugins to provide a decent level of protection:
- Antivirus
- Paranoid911
- Secure WordPress
- WP Security Scan
One more plugin to use. Install WP-DB-Backup so that if everything does go bums up, you have your main database (and anything else you choose to save) backed-up. Hence, you can delete everything and start again fairly easily and quickly.
Finally, I’ve heard suggestions that if you use Filezilla as your FTP program of choice, it makes you more vulnerable to hacking. People I’ve heard this from have changed to a different FTP and never had a problem again so it’s one to think about.
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Why being Alert pays!
Posted by admin in Other - Internet, People, marketing sense, social media on March 11th, 2010
I know that Google are not always everyone’s cup of tea, especially when they start doing things like closing AdWords accounts seemingly at random.
On the other hand, they do provide an awful lot of excellent resources completely free, one of which you should definitely start taking advantage of if you are not already doing so.
This is Google Alerts, a service where Google will monitor any keyword term you want to keep an eye on and deliver information about when it is used to your e-mail inbox.
For example, if you wanted to track ‘linkbuilding’ and every time it is searched, you would enter the word on the Alerts homepage, click the link, confirm the request in the e-mail that Google send and that’s it. Now, every time someone uses ‘linkbuilding’ to search for information, Google will tell you all about it.
This is a superb resource (completely free as well) which you can obviously use in many different ways. However, I would recommend using it to keep an eye on when people are searching for information about you by name.
This is very convenient because it not only lets you see when people are saying nice things about you, but also when they are being less pleasant.
Knowing when people are ‘having a go’ is crucially important for your online business activities, because if someone is criticizing you or your business, it could cause irreparable damage to the reputation of one, the other or both.
Consequently, being able to pick derogatory comments and criticisms as quickly as possible allows you to get to the root of the problem before any real damage has been caused.
As an example, if a customer is complaining about your customer service, it could very quickly get out of hand but if you step in to prevent this happening, you avoid a small problem becoming a much larger crisis.
It takes about 30 seconds to set Google Alerts up, which for the amount of protection it provides for your good name in business is time extremely well spent. If you’re not already tracking what people are saying about you on the net, you should start doing so right now.
When credibility matters…
Posted by admin in People, Twiitter, marketing sense, social media on March 3rd, 2010
As a ghostwriter, I’ve created hundreds of top quality online marketing products for some of the biggest names in the business. This is not a boast, merely a fact – if they weren’t top quality, they would have been slung back at me.
Hasn’t happened yet, hence my confidence…
And one of the things that I’ve learned during this time is that consistency is massively important no matter what it is you’re doing on the net.
A couple of examples will explain why.
If you use Facebook or Twitter to market a product or service, the site users that you are promoting to must trust you. If you are not consistent, how can they?
Even if you are not promoting or marketing, your ‘followers’ need to trust and respect you. Again, if they do not, how can you expect them to believe a word you say?
So it’s been quite unnerving recently that so many marketers seem to be forgetting this.
For my sins, I am on almost every mailing list you can think of. This is not because I’m a masochist, or at least I don’t think so. But I do need to keep up with what is going on to make sure that today’s new product is not based on yesterday’s ideas and concepts.
And what I am seeing is information that is becoming less and less consistent (and therefore believable) by the day.
As an example, a few days ago, I received a video where a marketer I have actually worked for was pushing this great new ‘technique’ for making money using AdWords (a product that costs $49). Not a week later, I get another video for the same guy’s latest product which absolutely pans AdWords as the worst thing ever!
Total (almost moronic) inconsistency = complete lack of credibility from this point on…
It’s an object lesson in how not to ‘sell’ anything (a product, service or even yourself) on the net. What you post online is the only point of contact your readers have with you, hence, this is the ‘you’ that they know.
If you want to lose your credibility, changing your stance from ‘white’ to ‘black’ and back again is just about one of the quickest ways I know of doing so.
When credibility is important, you must be consistent, it’s as simple as that.
+++++++++++++++
What do you think?
Agree? Disagree? Think that I must be a masochist?
Let me know – I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Stop wasting your Twitter time…
Posted by admin in People, Twiitter, social media on February 23rd, 2010
Here’s an odd thing I’ve noticed over the past week or two.
I’ve had one of my periodical Twitter blasts where I follow a bunch of new people and many of them of course reciprocate.
So, here’s my question/query/beef.
I’ve got loads of people following me now who have lots of followers, they follow lots of people and yet they have posted a miniscule number of ‘Tweets’.
Can anyone tell me what the point of this is?
Twitter is a social networking site after all, so what is going on here?
What is the point of accumulating nearly 2k followers if you don’t want to communicate with them, pweeple (made up word…)?
Okay, I understand that everyone uses social sites in their own way.
But is it only me that thinks that folks like this are wasting their time and (more importantly), the time of others as well as site resources?
Build one way links from .edu sites, courtesy of Google
Posted by admin in Business Making Money Online, Howto, Search Engine Optimization, Seo, Twiitter, social media, webiste visitors on July 24th, 2009
Further to the last post where I explained how Yahoo! can help you find both .edu and .gov sites that will link to you, try this one with Google. Run a standard search using variations of this string as your search parameters (make sure the spacing is correct):-
site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”you must be logged in” -”comment posting closed” -”comment closed” “<your keyword term>”
Do this and Google returns all of the .edu university and college blogs to which you can submit your comments to generate a link. It is probably a good idea to ping his/her blog after your comment is added to the post to make certain it gets picked up too.
Of course, you must ensure that the links are followable before posting a helpful and thoughtful comment. Install either the Google toolbar or the excellent (and free) Search Status Firefox add-on to simplify this latter task.
The Incredible Effectiveness of Social Marketing
Posted by admin in Business Making Money Online, People, blogging, social media on February 18th, 2009
Social marketing has evolved into a VERY influential type medium whose effects are felt both on and off the internet today. From our recent presidential election, to the public opinion of the Californ…
Journalism faces an uphill battle
Posted by admin in Business Making Money Online, People, blogging, social media on February 18th, 2009
audiences once attached to traditional media outlets. There is a lot of attention these days being paid to social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter and various internet blogs. But again, the audience for most individual sites (Barack Obama aside)
Let a Blog Enhance Your Work or Business Productivity!
Posted by admin in Business Making Money Online, People, blogging, social media on February 18th, 2009
Within the blogosphere, there is a new trend called microblogging. These microblogs will help you grow and maintain your business or enhance your productivity.
Microblogs are a new form of social m…
Web 3.0: Death of the Website
Posted by admin in Business Making Money Online, People, blogging, social media on February 18th, 2009
Hard to believe it was just a decade ago when we had to rely on phone books, newspapers and advice from friends to figure almost anything out. Today, the Internet is our bank, encyclopedia, store, adv…
Social Media Marketing | Perry Belcher
Posted by admin in Education, Twiitter, blogging, social media on January 27th, 2009
http://www.perrybelcher.net Perry Belcher demonstrates how YOU can use social media in business without being a jerk.