Ripoff Report's Extortionist Business Practices

If you haven't heard of them, ripoffreport.com seems to provide a valuable service, but in reality they're only providing an opportunity for them to get rich blackmailing businesses.

I actually posted a ripoff report about ripoffreport.com on their website and they have yet to post it on their site. 

So much for transparency and fairness.

This is the report I wrote about them:

Ripoff Report seems to be providing a valuable service to help people come to resolution on a problem; however, posting a complaint anonymously is only an opportunity for someone to rant and rave and air their grievance, real or imagined. 

The company being attacked can't defend themselves as the person posted anonymously so it's hard to respond without having all the details. 

And there's no way to reach out to work with the person.
Ripoff Report will allow you to contact the person for a FEE. And they do offer arbitration for a FEE. So it amounts to extortion. 

Just do a Google search for "Ripoff Report" and there are lots of sites that talk about how bad their business practices are and there are even other companies that have started solely for the purpose of combating ripoff reports. 

If you have a grievance, contact the company directly or contact your local Better Business Bureau.

Your Customers are Listening to WiiFM. Are You?

There's a popular radio station out there called WiiFM. 

(And it's not broadcast by Nintendo.)

Your customers are listening to it all the time. And if you aren't broadcasting on this station your messages won't be heard and your customers won't take the intended action you want.

The call letters WiiFM stand for What's in it FOR ME.

Your customers are always listening to find out what's in it for them when they see or hear your message. If your message is all about you and your company your customer will tune you out.

To ensure you're always on the same channel as your customer find out what's important to them and ensure you address how your product or service will help them with meet that need.

To do this, use "you" language, not "me", "we" or "I". 

Continually tuning to WiiFM will ensure your customer is tuned in and receptive to your messaging and the action you want them to take (that will help them).

Content is (Still) King. Just ask Coca-Cola.

Good article on the consumer is now in charge and marketing needs to reinvent itself to meet the changing needs of consumers.

It's all about the content

Creating original, engaging, on-brand content that consumers will happily engage with and pay for (either in hard cash or precious time) is what really matters.

Even Coca-Cola’s advertising strategy is to “move from creative excellence to content excellence.”

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue

Just thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and promote an Infographic.

check out the Copyblogger post, http://www.copyblogger.com/create-content-ideas/ for more tips.

Don’t Be a Wall Flower in Your Marketing

Marketing is like attending a party. All the other attendees at the party are your potential customers. If all you do is decorate the wall, you are limiting that potential customer base to just the handful of people in your immediate vicinity.

Until you start mingling and working the room, you aren’t going to broaden your reach. But there’s more to it than just walking the room. If all you do is walk around looking at the floor, no one is going to notice you or converse with you.

It’s the same for your business. Just being there; having a website, having a profile on social media sites; isn’t going to help you grow your business. You need to make it easy for your customers to converse with you and you need to respond back. Start the dialogue and keep it going.

The same as at a party, once you’ve started that dialogue, a person is going to stick around you if you show interest in them and not just focus the conversation on you.

The same goes for your website and your social media discussions. Don’t make it all about you and what you have to offer.

Talk to your customers to find out what is important to them; develop the relationship and the rapport – the trust. Then you can mention how your product or service can help meet their needs and goals.

And if you help your clients and make their life easier, they are going to want to help you by continuing the relationship with repeat business and referrals.

You’re going to have more fun at the party if you put yourself out there and ask people what’s important to them rather than tell them what’s important to you.

Tips on Marketing on Twitter and Facebook

Writing for Facebook and Twitter isn't that different from other web writing. It's likened to micro blogging.

Writing a tweet is similar to writing a good headline - action words, leave out the articles (a, an, the) and start with the specific key words.

LinkedIn is more B2B, where as Facebook is more B2C when it comes to companies using it.

Using Facebook and Twitter for marketing always has to be for the customer, not the company. The customer is always listening to WiiFM (what's in it for me?).

So, tweets and wall posts always have to provide a benefit for the customer or provide for their needs not be marketing the latest product or service for the company.

You can get away with that occasionally provided there's lots of other stuff for the customer.

If you're not already on Twitter, I'd suggest signing up and searching for "social media" for people to follow and learn from them. Follow me on Twitter @jason_clements

Copyblogger (http://www.copyblogger.com/) is a good place to learn about writing titles and blog posts.

Have any other tips on writing for Twitter and Facebook?

7 LinkedIn Profile Tips and Tricks

The profile you present on social media sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is your personal brand and needs to be managed effectively.

Here are some tips to ensure you're presenting your best self online

1. Headline: Don't just put your job title. Target this to your benefit statement or 30-second commercial
2. Profile Photo: Don't leave as default. Use a professional head shot of yourself.
3. Websites: Use "Other" to create your own label with keywords for your site(s)
4. Public Profile URL: Edit to create a URL with your name
5. Add Skills, Certifications, Publications: Include keywords
6. Education: If your diploma/degree was a long time ago you can omit grad year by selecting " - " for years.
7. Groups: Join a few of the larger groups to quickly expand your network.

Bonus Tip: If you're doing a number of edits to your profile, turn off your activity broadcasts under Settings until your last edit.

These tips are specific to LinkedIn, but are also relevant for other social media profiles. Consistency is also good with profile photos and descriptions.

How To Help Your Clients and Make More Sales Through Proper Web Writing

People don't read every word online like they do in print.

For the most part when you go to a website you have a particular task in mind and even specific words you're thinking about.

When you land on that page you are going to scan the page looking for some indication that that specific page is going to help you complete your task.

In the 8 seconds most people spend on a page, if they don't see the words that are in their head, they are going to hit the back button.

So, you need to think like your readers. 

• What words are important to your readers? 
• You need to make sure those words are on your web pages in easy to spot locations.

Jakob Nielsen has done eye tracking analysis to determine where the key locations are to catch your readers attention.

Basically it shows an F-pattern where readers look at headings and scan down the left side of the main body of text.

So, this is how your copy needs to look.

And it needs to be loaded with keywords in the headings and subheadings and at the start of paragraphs and bullet lists.

Good content doesn't need to be read. 

Tips to Help Your Readers Scan Your Pages OR 
How To Make More Sales and Get More Leads

• Relevant heading - put key terms at the top of the page, in headings
• Brief content summary or introduction
  - Use terms that your readers are familiar with and that they would use and think of, so when they’re scanning for a topic, they will see the words they’re looking for
• Focused subheadings
• Bundles of content and bulleted lists
• Reorder by importance -  keywords first in titles, subheads, bullet points
• Integrated and logical hyperlinks
• Hyperlinks stand out and distract the reader, taking them away from your page
• Put related links at the bottom of the document to move reader forward; call to action
• Don’t use underlining for headings or emphasis – underlining is reserved for hyperlinks

Learn more about the Jakob Nielsen's F-pattern: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

What are you "working forward to?"

I drove by a car dealership today and noticed a really nice red corvette sitting in the lot. I've never driven or ridden in a corvette, but have always thought of a corvette as my dream car. I turned to my wife and said I should go take one for a test drive.

She didn't think that would be a good idea as then I would want to buy one (sooner than later).

In a bit of a tongue tied moment I said taking one for a test drive would be incentive as something "to work forward to." I had meant to say something to look forward to, but my mind mashed that together with something to work toward.

I thought that was a great new saying and had visions of trademarking it and writing a book and starting a whole motivational series; however, a quick google search showed I'm only one of over 200,000 people to come up with this saying.

Originality aside, it is still a great thing to think about. What are you working forward to?

It is so easy to get into a routine of getting up each morning, going to work and putting in your day, coming home, having supper, watching TV, going to bed, getting up in the morning, going to work...

If you don't know what you're working forward to, how are you going to move forward? You could wake up one morning and find your life has passed you by. Einstein said, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Everyone has dreams and looks forward to travelling; owning a corvette (insert your dream car); spending time with your family; ...

So often we have an attitude of entitlement and "look forward" to everything being handed to us when we retire, but what action are you taking to make that happen, to get ahead in life?

What are you working forward to? Think about this so when you wake up tomorrow morning you can start working toward achieving that.

Me, I'm working forward to having the time and money to travel, to buy that red corvette (sooner than later), to provide for my family... I would like to have the financial resources to allow me to go to Japan or some other disaster relief location.

Feel free to comment and share what you are working forward to.

Ultimate Guide to Facebook And Netiquette and tips for Twitter

Here's 2 great articles I came across today that I wanted to pass on:

The Ultimate Guide to Facebook (from Gizmodo)

So I’ve set up my Twitter account: now what? Netiquette and tips for Twitter

I've already set up Twitter Feed, so (cross my fingers) you may have actually ended up here from my auto tweet.

A note on Facebook, privacy, the article is really long, but I really encourage you to take a look at your privacy settings. And the ability to set up groups for your friends so, for instance, your grandma doesn't see this weekends party photos, is a really good idea.

(Though when I tried to go into my privacy settings it hung and the page wouldn't load. I guess loading the 1300 page privacy policy was hanging things up.)

Marketing Tactic / Scam Warning

I was watching a marketing webinar the other day and it brought to mind thoughts of a shady/slimey salesman.

The idea is to register a domain name that starts with com.  Something like com-customersurvey.us. Then you can have a subdirectory like walmart or microsoft or whatever.  You would then end up with addresses like walmart.com-customersurvey.us and microsoft.com-customersurvey.us

On the webinar it even said to avoid registering something with  .com domain extension because people may notice it. And to register long, even nonsense domains, like com-11–survey11.us, to distance the com at the front from the end domain extension.

So, this whole marketing strategy is designed to trick people into thinking they're on Microsoft's or Walmart's website to gain their confidence so you can get them to fill out a survey of buy a product thinking it's from or endorsed by a reputable company.

In today's world of social media and online conversations and openness is this not bound to backfire? If/when people realised you tricked them I'm sure they would want a refund.

Not to mention the chances of this getting in the wrong hands and someone sending you an email saying your bank account may have been hacked and ask you to log into something like yourbank.com-fraudalert.us

The guy on the webinar even said to quickly register com- domains because he didn't know how long they would allow them to be registered.

Now what does everyone think of this?

If you aren't using QR Codes yet, why not?

Your magazine ad or billboard relies on your customers to take note of your phone number, email address, website or other action you want them to take and then the customer has to actually take action by phoning, emailing or visiting your website.

With a QR code in your ad they just grab their smartphone and scan the QR code and your contact information or calendar event is automaticallly added to their phone. Or they could be redirected to your website or product page.

Get a QR Code That You Can Change
Most QR code generators that you find online are one time things. You create it, you print it and your customers take the same action every time.

You can get more bang from your marketing if you subscribe to something like QR Jumps or ScanLife. These sites provide stats on the use of your QR codes and also allow you to change the action.

QRJumps is free, ScanLife is free for individual use, but there's a cost for commercial use.

The benefit of being able to change the action is that you can promote whatever contest or promotion you have on at any given time.

What is a QR code?
If you don't know what a QR code is, chances are you've likely seen them in magazines and maybe even on billboards.

QR stands for quick read and is a two dimensional image similar to a bar code and has information encoded into it.

There are various apps that can be downloaded to your smartphone to read QR codes. ScanLife has their own app available for all smartphones.

Mortgage Rules Miss the Mark by a Mile

The new mortgage rules are meant to reduce Canadian household debt*, but I think there are lots of other things that Flaherty could do that would actually be helpful in achieving this.

Mortgages changes effective March 18

• Shorten maximum amortization period to 30 years from 35 years
  
• Lower the maximum amount homeowners can borrow against the value of their homes t0 85% from 90%
  
• Withdraw insurance on home-equity lines of credit (effective April 18)

In many cases the purchase of a home could be the largest financial transaction a person makes in their lifetime. Although I believe that owning your own home shouldn't be considered an investment, there are financial benefits to building equity in a home.

Benefits to Equity in Your Home
The equity can be used to refinance and pay off credit cards and other debt that carries a much larger interest rate. That equity can also be used to provide capital for investing, such as purchasing investment properties,  or starting a business.

These new mortgage changes, in addition to last year's changes, make it even harder for people to buy a home. With the deadline looking for these changes it could actually encourage some people to recklessly rush into buying a home before the March deadline; perhaps a home that they can't afford or that isn't suited to their family and lifestyle.

Yellow Signs on Every Corner
I think there are many other things that the Canadian government should be focusing on. There has been changes to credit card regulations, but the glaring problem that isn't addressed is those yellow signs that are becoming like Tim Hortons or Starbucks with one on every corner. I'm talking about the payday loan stores.

Most people are living pay cheque to pay cheque. If an unforeseen event occurs requiring them to get an advance on their pay, these loan stores can (legally) charge up to 60% interest!

How is someone already living pay cheque to pay cheque going to survive on 60% less pay? They will be forced to go back to the loan centre before their next pay and it will start a vicious downward-spiraling cycle that they will never get out of.

What is the government doing to address this?

*Household debt was at 148 percent of disposable income in the third quarter last year according to Statistics Canada data.

The Superbowl for Hollywood

The Oscars are Sunday night and everyone is trying to take advantage of the captive audience at this live event.

"Marketers are paying $1.75 million for each 30-second slot on ABC's Sunday night telecast."

With big names like Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Cindy Crawford, marketers are betting on the audience using Twitter, Facebook and other social media to get even more bang for their commercial dollars.

Procter & Gamble has already seen it's Facebook membership increase 25% since announcing Jennifer Lopez as the star of an Oscar spot.

And Best Buy actually made the Superbowl connection with an online vote to pick an alternate ending to it's Justin Bieber Super Bowl ad. The new ending will air Sunday night during the Oscars.

And I'm sure many of these big-name commercials will end up on YouTube very soon after if they aren't there already for more exposure and sharing.

How a Topic Trends on Twitter

Interesting article linked from this Gizmodo post.

I'll admit that the format it was posted in is not very readable and the whole academic aspect of it turned me off. So, I didn't read the whole article, but the Gizmodo post is a good enough synopsis to explain it.

Basically if a tweet originated from a news agency then it is more likely to be picked up and retweeted. Also the resonance the topic has with people helps.

The report also reaffirms how fleeting it can all be and that even though something is picked up and retweeted a lot it isn't going to stick around for long.

I'm sure the six degrees of separation is fairly evident on Twitter so it wouldn't take long for something to make the rounds.

Lose the Hero Shot

This is a great article by Gerry McGovern explaining how you will gain more trust and your visitors will put more faith in your website and your content if you remove any hero shots of smiling people.

Also avoid large buttons that look like banners or else fall prey to banner poisoning.

Your copy competes with the large images
Lots of times you see a large image across the top of the webpage and this just causes more work for your customers having to scroll down each time they visit a page to get at the actual content.

So, lose the hero shot and you have an effective and meaningful website that helps your clients get answers and take action.

Contact me for a comprehensive review of your website that includes Information Architecture, Online Content, Website Navigation, and Usability.

Fear of Commitment

It's a common theme in movies today. The hero or heroine has gone through life single and enjoying many short-term relationships. Then along comes "the one" and the person does everything they can to sabotage the relationship.

It usually falls to the best friend in the movie to point out the good points of the new love interest and help the hero/heroine see that this person is the one.

Businesses can be like the hero only going half way or doing something to sabotage the relationship with their customers, like starting a blog but turning off comments. The blog then becomes like every other newspaper or TV ad with the message pushed to an audience and no way to get feedback.

Social media specialists need to be like the best friend to the businesses that we work with. We need to talk up the benefits of social media and the benefits of the two-way communication with customers.

Social media is great, it's like running a focus group where you're getting feedback from your entire customer base not just some small (hopefully) representative sample base. Like when GAP put out a new logo. They listened to their customers and quickly scrapped the new logo when customer feedback was negative toward it.

Too often companies are stuck in the traditional, familiar mind-set when it comes to marketing and dictate to the customer what the business thinks the customer needs.

Like any relationship, there needs to be a two-way communication with your customers and social media can help facilitate this.

What do you think? What are some benefits that we can highlight to companies to show them the benefits of social media and the two-way communication?

Social Media Needs to be a Part of Your Communication Strategy

"Social media is part of our communications strategy so, ... we didn't have a big powwow about it saying, 'oh, we need to get out the message via social media'. It is already assumed that is one of the channels we want to use," says WestJet emerging media advisor Greg Hounslow.

This quote totally sums it up.

Marketing special report: Social media by Mary Kirby is a great article discussing how airlines are using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to get their messages out.

"Social media isn't the way of the future - it's now," says Jessica Green of Greenwin property management.

Mobile phones (and even cars now) give your customers easy access to social media and the online discussions are immediate.

You don't have time to debate about a response, so a social media policy needs to be in place and the people monitoring them need to have the authority to respond immediately.

Why do companies prevent staff from being effective!?!

I could go on and on about the benefits of letting employees have access to the Internet and social media, but this is a really good post and the commenters also have some great feedback.

So rather than me ranting and raving, just check out this post by LaDonna Coy.

Life Events

There are few events in life that can really affect you.

There's the good: new job, marriage, birth of a child.

And then there's the bad: loss of job, divorce, death of a loved one.

It's easy to prepare for the expected events such as marriage or birth of a child, but often times the unexpected, bad events can really throw you for a loop.

I've learned that having an open relationship and communication along with financial planning can help you get through those unexpected events. (I would think thought that having an open relationship and communication could actually prevent one of those tragedies.)