Web Savvy Marketers

Stay safe on social networks

Is there a danger to accepting  unknown blog subscribers and Twitter followers?  The short answer is yes.  But if you have a blog and you are communicating via social networks, presumably one of your goals is to spread your business or organization’s message.  So where do you draw the line?

I received this TWITTER Question from a client: “Is there a danger to me in being Followed by someone who rarely tweets, follows a lot of people, has few followers? Do I need to block these people or is it sufficient to not follow them back. Sometimes, I can see that Twitter has suspended them for improper activity. What is the danger? What are they doing?”

If you suspect danger, trust your instincts.  You can set your Twitter settings to restrict access to only those people you approve. Consider how you use your Twitter account — if it is used to communicate with a business community and the goal is to build community you probably want to attract as many followers as possible.  If your account is of a more personal nature you probably don’t have the need to allow unknown followers access to your account.

If you see that Twitter has suspended someone for improper activity it means they have violated Twitter’s rules.  It could have involved impersonating someone else, spamming, threatening someone, copyright issues or any number of other issues that Twitter includes in their Rules.  I would probably block anyone that Twitter has suspended or that you suspect of being involved in any of these activities.

I’ve put together a list of basic safety tips to help you stay safe while communicating with virtual strangers online through your website, blog or social networks.

1.  Don’t give away personal information.

  1. Don’t provide home address or phone number on your website or in your profile
  2. Don’t tweet or post that you’re away from home — don’t post vacation photos until you return home — no need to inform the world that your house is vacant
  3. Don’t include personal information like your birth date in your profile.  Birth dates are helpful to idenity theives.

2. Be careful with social networking “apps”. When those Facebook applications tell you they need to access your personal profile in order to work — you might think twice about how important it is to use that application.  See Facebook Application Privacy for details and set your limits based on their information.

3. Watch out for “Phishing”.  Whether a social network post or an email, always assume that the identity of the poster could be an impostor–especially if the message seems out of the ordinary.  Be suspicious!  Assume any link that leads you to a login page to be suspect. See “Fraudsters Target Facebook With Phishing Scam”.  If you receive a message from a “friend” that you suspect is a “phishing scam”, both you and your friend should change your account passwords.

4. Do NOT use the same username/password combination on all your accounts.  If a thief obtains your username/password to your Facebook account, make sure it doesn’t also give him access to your bank account, Amazon or Paypal accounts.

5.  YOUR BLOG: Review your blog’s user and discussion settings.  If using WordPress the subscriber level by default allows them to read, comment and subscribe to your RSS feed.  There doesn’t seem to be too much danger in that.  However, I think it’s wise to review your subscriber list frequently and delete any suspicious addresses.

More information about online safety can be found at the following links.

Web site safety building safer websites

11 tips for social networking safety

Free Shipping Closes Sale

A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail Father’s Day reminder from a store where I’ve bought gifts from online before.  Since I typically put off holiday gift buying to the last minute and end up paying extra for shipping, I was grateful for the reminder.

Lesson one to online merchants: EMAIL MARKETING WORKS!

With over a week before Father’s day I thought the ample lead time would save me some cash on shipping. I clicked through to the website and browsed to find some sweet treats for dad. I quickly found a nice gift of sweet snacks at a reasonable price and clicked through to the checkout page.  Where I stopped.  The shipping charges nearly doubled the price of the goodies.  Call me cheap,  but if there’s one thing I learned from my dad growing up on his farm in Minnesota it’s the value of the dollar.

That reasonably priced gift now seemed tremendously overpriced. If I was going to spend that kind of money – it had to be a better gift. So I abandoned my shopping cart and Googled “Free Shipping Father’s Day gifts”.  Multiple stores came up and I quickly found a gift.  It was much nicer than the original gift.  I did end up spending the same as the other gift would have cost with it’s shipping charges,   but I now felt like the gift I was sending was worth the money I was spending.

Lesson two to online merchants – FREE SHIPPING WORKS! Consider the value of your product.   If shipping costs make your item seem extraordinarily overpriced you will lose sales.

Lesson three to online merchants.  CLOSE THE SALE! If your e-mail marketing campaign is driving traffic to your site but you’re not seeing corresponding sales, make sure you look at the value you’re offering to your customers.  It’s a shame when something like high shipping costs causes them abandon their shopping cart when you’ve successfully drawn them to your store with your e-mail marketing campaign.

SSL certificates explained

What SSL Certificates Do:

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology protect websites and make it easy for visitors to trust websites in three essential ways:

  1. An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive information during online transactions.
  2. Each SSL Certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner.
  3. A Certificate Authority verifies the identity of the certificate owner when it is issued.

Who needs an SSL Certificate?

If you, or your customers fit into any of the following categories, then an SSL Certificate is a must:

  • Operate an online store or accept online orders and credit cards
  • Offer a login or sign in on your site
  • Process sensitive data such as address, birth date, license, or ID numbers
  • Require compliance with privacy and security requirements
  • Value privacy and expect others to trust you.

How SSL Encryption Works

Imagine sending mail through the postal system in a clear envelope. Anyone with access to it can see the data. If it looks valuable, they might take it or change it. An SSL Certificate establishes a private communication channel between the browser and web server enabling encryption of the data during transmission. Encryption scrambles the data, essentially creating an envelope for message privacy.

Each SSL Certificate consists of a public key and a private key. The public key is used to encrypt information and the private key is used to decipher it. When a Web browser points to a secured domain, a Secure Sockets Layer handshake authenticates the server (the website) and the client (the web browser). An encryption method is established with a unique session key and secure transmission can begin. True 128-bit SSL Certificates enable every site visitor to experience the strongest SSL encryption available to them.

How Authentication Works

Imagine receiving an envelope with no return address and a form asking for your bank account number. In the case of organization- or Extended-validation certificates, every SSL Certificate is created for a particular server in a specific domain for a verified business entity. The validation process for EV certificates is quite extensive and provides fuller information about the website owner than a standard certificate. When the SSL handshake occurs, the browser requires authentication information from the server. By clicking the closed padlock in the browser window or certain SSL trust marks (such as the VeriSign Secured Seal or GeoTrust True Site Seal), the website visitor sees the authenticated organization name. In high-security browsers (IE7/8, Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.2+, Chrome and Opera 9.2+), the authenticated organization name is prominently displayed and the address bar turns green when an Extended Validation SSL Certificate is detected. If the information does not match or the certificate has expired, the browser displays an error message or warning.

A Matter of Trust

At the end of the day, SSL Certificates are all about trust. If you want to develop and instill a sense of trust with website visitors, an SSL Certificate is the way to do it. An SSL-protected site gives users the confidence to share personal information without having to worry about whether that data is safe as it travels around the Internet. And, the SSL Certificate provides further peace of mind to web users by offering verification that those in control of the web server are who the web surfer thinks they are.

If trust is important to the end users of your customers – and I’d venture a guess that it is – then they need to know that one of the best ways to build that trust is to secure their websites with an SSL Certificate along with a prominently displayed site seal that end users recognize and trust.

This information provided by OpenSRS.  cgwebhelp, llc is a reseller for OpenSRS.

WebSavvyMarketers.com launched

Last week a collaborative team of Web Savvy Marketers launched the new blog WebSavvyMarketers.com.  The team is made up of Rahna Barthelmess, Nancy Simonds, Beth Devine and me.  Our goal is to explore and discuss the numerous online marketing options availabe for businesses today.  Each of us operates our own marketing and web related business yet we all have different specialties.  Check out websavvymarketers.com and feel free to comment and ask questions.

Ten-Point Web Content Evaluation

Is your Web site an effective marketing tool?

The New Year is a perfect time to evaluate the effectiveness of your Web content. Use this checklist to review your written content on these ten important points:

  • Does the content clearly and honestly describe your product or service?

  • Have you presented your core message concisely and effectively?
  • Do you use meaningful page titles, sub-headings, and other techniques that help visitors find what they’re looking for as they scan the page?
  • Are your Web pages viewable in a couple of screen views, without too much scrolling down?
  • Does each page have a strong call to action?
  • Are there key words and phrases that help potential customers find you through a search engine?
  • Do you review your site statistics to see what page visitors enter on, what page they leave from, and whether or not they take any action?
  • Does the content match the design in terms of tone and personality?
  • Is the type in a size, style, and color that make it accessible to the widest possible audience?
  • Is your content free of grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors?

If you’re not sure whether your current Web content is clear, easily “scannable” by the visitor’s eye, and truly descriptive of your product and services, take advantage of our evaluation and consultation services.

10-Point Search Engine Optimization Checklist

Can your potential customers find you when they do an Internet search? In other words, is your web site optimized for search engine indexing? Use this checklist to evaluate your web site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

  1. Have you developed a key word list that contains words and phrases that describe your product or service?
  2. Does each page on your web site have a keyword-rich page title that accurately describes the content on that page?
  3. Does each page on your web site have a meta description tag that clearly describes the content on that page in one or two sentences?
  4. Do you use keywords within the content on your pages?
  5. Do you use keyword-rich alt tags for each image on every page?
  6. Do you use keywords in text links on your site?
  7. Do you update your site on a regular basis?
  8. Do you take advantage of industry- or regional-specific on-line directories to list your business, with a link to your web site?
  9. Do you use on-line PR services to submit articles related to your business that link to your web site?
  10. Do you have a blog, or participate in forums, blogs or on-line business networking services like Linked In, Facebook or Plaxo?

Search Engine Rank Less Important in 2009?

With the goal of making search engine results more relevant to users, Google continues to work on new methods to provide personalized results.  Users will have the opportunity to rank their own results and add comments when logged into their Google account.

What does this mean for SEO?  Strategies should focus less on attaining top rank but should focus on enticing the consumer to the site. Once there, the website should clearly present the material the user will need to take the action the site owner desires.  Focus needs to be on:

  • Writing good page titles, accurate yet enticing
  • Write a good meta description
  • Clear, action oriented content that clearly presents your message and invites users to take action.

FAQ: What can I do to make my site appear on the first page of search engine results for this set of terms?

Search engine optimization is an art and a science and there are many things you can do in addition to what was done during the site build to continue to improve your search engine ranking. But keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process and it can take time to get ranked and stay on the first page of a Search Engine.

Since search engines are trying to provide the most relevant search results to their clients, the best thing you can to do to improve your chance of ranking well is to build a content-rich, well organized website that is kept current with updated information.

Recommendations for keeping content fresh:

  1. Use a blog or user forum to make it easy to post new information and to encourage user participation
  2. Remove pages with outdated content, or pages without content.
  3. Use video – (customers and search engines like it)

Often you’ll notice that the sites that are coming up at the top of the SE list are directory sites.  They have a distinct advantage over an individual or small business site because in addition to having fresh content that is updated regularly, they provide multiple resources for someone searching – thus the SE’s consider them the most relevant result to the search.

Things you should do:

  1. Research your keyword phrases to determine the best terms to use and regularly add keyword rich content to the website.
  2. Ensure that keywords are used in page titles, meta tags, content and content headings.
  3. Get listed on appropriate online directories (professional directories, yellow pages, chambers of commerce, etc.)
  4. Submit press releases to online PR services
  5. Set-up a Google Adwords or other PPC program
  6. Review your site statistics or a program like Google Analytics to analyze what is working – what pages people are landing on and where they go once they get there. Make adjustments based on analysis
  7. Maximize your virtual network with professional networking sites like Linked In or Plaxo
  8. Participate on professional forums and offer your expertise
  9. Include privacy policy and terms of use pages on your site

Things to avoid:

  1. Pop-up windows
  2. Dead links
  3. Identical content posted in duplicate locations
  4. Overuse of Flash

Resources:

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