Are you ready to spend even more time social networking?

How much of your marketing budget and/or time goes to Social Networking? Most businesses have some sort of presence on at least Facebook and LinkedIn. And maybe Twitter and YouTube.

Google + personal profiles have been out for a while but it was another month before business pages were launched. It’s going to take some time before we can tell what kind of social networking/marketing share this new service is going take from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but it’s Google so we can’t ignore it. A piece of advice I read recently in an article at Marketing Magazine UK is to not rush into building a Google+  Business Page until you have a clear strategy. Makes sense… So of course we did the opposite and just went ahead. For us, it’s okay not to have a strategy because the whole point is to learn more.  We do agree with the advice though and suggest you set up personal profile first to familiarize yourself with how it works.

There are plenty of resources about Google+ out there if you search. Many of the articles are great but technical or long.  We decided to begin our exploration of Google+ by comparing one of their new sharing features to Facebook’s. We were curious about these and thought it might be something you  be interested in. What I am talking about is the new +1 icons and g+ icons. We have them on our website home page sidebar if you would like to try them . And the Google Plus button below in this post works too.

There are similarities and differences. The Google +1 buttons that now appear around the Internet on Google searches and on websites are pretty similar to Facebook like buttons. If you click on one they behave the same way. If you are not logged into your Google account, Gmail for example, you will first be prompted do that and then your ‘like’, or ‘plus’ in this case is recorded for that web page.

The new buttons, like the one at the left, are called Google + Direct Connect buttons. When you click on one, you will be taken to the owner’s Google+ Page. You can view their feed, share, ‘+1′  and ‘follow’ the same as you would a Facebook feed. So it’s similar to having a Facebook icon on your site that connects to your Facebook profile. Our feeling is this is going to help your SEO efforts for being found in Google searches (maybe only in a small way but every little bit helps). It connects you directly to Google so it can’t hurt. Here’s an excerpt from a Web Pro Newsletter:

“Google+ has introduced a whole new realm of SEO possibilities based on getting found via Google’s own properties.

For one, Google ranks Google+ posts in search results, and they often appear on the first page.

The +1 button obviously helps your search visibility cause. Google made it clear from the beginning that this would be a search signal. If enough people like your content enough to give it a +1, it must be good right? Why not bump it up in the rankings. ”

The more of their tools you use and interconnect, the more visible and easier to find you will be in Google searches. Searchers will be able to find your + business page by using the + added to their search term. Here is how they explain it on their Direct Connect info page:

“Google+ Direct Connect lets you quickly navigate to a Google+ page (and even add that page to your circles) when using Google Search. For example, if you searched for the query ‘+youtube’ or ‘+pepsi,’ you could be immediately taken to the YouTube Google+ page, or the Pepsi Google+ page, and given the option to add the page to your circles.”

So having a Google+ Business Page is another way for folks to find you and follow you. Start thinking about it now, planning for it soon, and it’s very important, we feel, to begin considering what to name your Google + business page.

What is Frictionless Sharing?

When you visit a blog or website, if you’ve enabled an app access, FB (Facebook) can automatically post their content to your wall. No more clicking the ‘Like’ button. No more copying and pasting links. Depending on the app and the settings available, you will no longer have the of choice to share or not. When you visit their site to read an article, or listen to a tune (for example) the article you are reading or tune you are listening to will be shared automatically.

Different apps have different settings available and I have read that some allow more control than others. Some allow you to turn automatic sharing off. Unless an app gives me this option, it will be deleted. Certainly from a marketing point of view there is enthusiasm for ‘Frictionless Sharing’ with no waiting for ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ so many apps (I suspect) will not add the ‘off switch’ initially.

Privacy Concerns

If you do a search on ‘Frictionless Sharing’ you will find many folks have privacy concerns with this new feature.  Their concern is this is a new even higher level of intrusion of constant surveillance of our every move on the Internet. I personally share this concern and do not like the feature even though as a business we could find ways to take advantage of it.

Let’s face it, we are being tracked around the Internet already with cookies unless we browse using stealth mode. Everyone wants to know our buying habits, tastes, Geo location so they can serve us targeted content. It’s like going to a mall where they know what you bought on your last visit, change the ‘On Sale’ item to attract you based on your buying history, greet you by name and ask you if you plan on having a Taco at the ‘Food Fair’ again this visit…

Mmmm… Cookies are Good!

Cookies are not inherently bad. They help us do many things more easily on the Internet. It’s more about what a particular cookie is being used for. Discussing cookies more fully is beyond the scope of this topic but if you want to understand how much we rely on them, try turning them off in your web browser preferences or selecting the option to be prompted to accept a cookie instead of accepting them automatically. Have fun trying to get many of your favorite sites to open! Disabling cookies will seriously diminish your browsing enjoyment.

As I have mentioned, there is a ton of Buzz about this if you search the term ‘Frictionless Sharing Facebook’. This one at PC world was at the top of my search and I found it easier to understand than many of the more technical ones:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/240592/facebooks_frictionless_sharing_a_privacy_guide.html

A few thoughts to finish with

Bottom line is the best advice one can follow is to use due diligence prior making a decision to  install an app or not.  Do you really need this app? What does it add to my life? Does it want to take control of my webcam and record me lip-syncing badly to Adele — Rolling in the Deep, then post to comedy site?

More time worn and cliched advice… Read the fine print.

Last but not least. Log out of Facebook when you are browsing other sites. Doing so is no guarantee FB is not watching your every move, but at least it may not hit your wall.

When we have a client that needs a particular service that we use, and believe in, we tell our clients of this service and provide our affiliate link (with disclosure) assuming that we will get a commission for this offering if they choose to use that service.

Do you do this and think you will receive commission?

Think again.

We offered an affiliate link to a client for a service we highly recommend, and we use, which our client signed up for.  We discovered we were not paid commission and checked into it.  We were told:

If someone clicks on an affiliate link after yours then they get the commission. <quote> last affiliate link clicked is the one that gets the sale. <end quote>

This started me thinking.  So, you recommend a service to your client.  You explain the benefits, also explain that it is an affiliate link, and send them off. 

If they don’t sign up, so be it.  But if they do and you don’t get the commission then what happened.  Well here is some of my thinking from the quote above.

If you recommend a service and the client wants to check on reviews well they can land on a site that has embedded affiliate links (most don’t have disclosures).  Suppose they like the review and they click on the link of the service name. They may not even realize that their action of clicking on a simple link of the service name is going to delete your cookie. 

It sure never occurred to me,

So, do you offer affiliate links to your clients and assume you will be properly compensated for the referral IF the client signs up for the service? 

Think again.

Likely you have lost in commissions.

What can we do?  Not sure there is any answer at this point but wanted to alert you to this issue.

If I find any answers I will post them here.  If you have any suggestions please share.

This post talks about how to make your WordPress as secure as possible.

WordPress has good security built in. Their team of devoted and very talented programmers are constantly working to stay ahead of the bad guys. Even so, being such a popular software makes it a target so it’s important to be proactive in keeping your WordPress as safe as possible.

Be Vigilant

You can’t phone up an alarm company and have them put in motion detectors, door and window strips, so what do you do? There are several things you can do and plug-ins you can install or have your web person help you with.

• check your site’s security for vulnerabilites
• lock down your site as best you can
• monitor changes to your site that you have not made
• scan your site for malicious files (discussed in our last two posts)
• and also scan for viruses

A plug-in to check your site’s security for vulnerabilities

Ultimate Security Check

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ultimate-security-check/

This plug-in scans you site and makes recommendations then provides settings you can toggle on or off.

There are others plug-ins you can find and most require ‘settings’ decisions you might need help with. They generally have default settings you can safely apply without blowing up your site. But… There is never a guarantee you won’t encounter a problem because there are so many different web server configurations… So be careful! Always do a back-up first (another topic and another plug-in).

Lock down your site as best you can

Unless you are an advanced user, you will need help with this task and so I’m going to keep my explanation brief… Hackers often look for files and folders on your site with permission set to allow them to be edited. For example your footer file and other theme files. Removing ‘write’ permissions on these files will make it harder for hackers to inject code into your site. Explaining how to do this is beyond is beyond the scope of this post and if you don’t know how, we recommend you get help.

Locking down your theme files is a pain and not many folks go to this extreme but it does make your site more secure and you will have to judge yourself whether the extra work it causes is worth it.

This post is getting on the long side so I’ll stop here for now and discuss the other list items (above) another night…

Several of our clients had their WordPress blogs hacked. A malware Javascript was used to load bogus sites was injected into the page footers.

How can you tell if you have this problem on your WordPress site or blog?

This particular script, is easy to spot from how your site reacts even though it is not visible in the content. When you visit your site [or blog], instead landing at the top of the page where you would expect to start, the script immediately takes you to the bottom of the page instead. If it does this, then there is a strong likelihood you have this malware on your WordPress.

If you use Firefox for your web browser, you may get an ugly warning page that your site has been reported as an attack site. Not fun. You will not be able to access your site at all… anywhere. This can make it harder get to rid of the problem because you may not be able to access your site admin area. Internet Explorer did not block entry to the sites because of this particular malware.

What should you do if this has happened to your WordPress?

If you can access your WordPress admin area using your web browser, then it’s relatively easy to get rid of the malware script. This particular exploit only affects one file, named footer.php.

You can edit this by going to Appearance=>Themes=>Editor and opening this file in the editor pane. The files are all listed to the right hand side of the pane.

Now you edit the footer.php file to remove the script. It will look like this screenshot of the one we removed from several sites.

Screenshot of malware javascript

Select the entire script with your cursor being careful not to touch anything else. Delete it and save your changes. Your site is clean again.

WARNING: If you needed these instructions, you are not someone who should be doing this on your own and we so we wouldn’t normally recommend you even attempt this yourself. But it’s simple deletion so we thought we’d include it here. Even so, if there is any doubt in your mind about whether you should be doing this yourself, get help. If you don’t have a web person, contact us for help

If you are one of the unlucky ones who have been reported as an attack site, you will need to submit your site to Google for it to be declared clean otherwise visitors may not be able to access your site for some time.

It may be cleared without submitting it but it will definitely take much longer. Posting right away and each day for a few days will alert the search engines to spider your site and find a clean, malware free site.

Stay tuned for our next posts where we will discuss how to submit your site to Google Webmaster tools for review and what you can do make your WordPress more secure from this type of an attack.