Social Media Marketing Dude

An article on website host directory keyed me into this “little” happening

“According to GreenZap Vice President Linda Murphy, attempts made by GreenZap to communicate with the bloggers were met with malicious attacks. GreenZap’s counsel sent several letters to Liquid Web, Inc. requesting it voluntarily shut down one of its hosted websites due to its harmful and libelous content, but to no avail. The registered owners of the website, Vodien, Inc., have a Singapore address and have ignored GreenZap in spite of the company’s attempts. In addition to the hosting company, GreenZap has been able to identify several individual bloggers responsible for many of the postings and intends to add them to the action.”

Basically, they are trying to hold the hosting company liable ,the website that has the blog and the bloggers.

Now on the other hand In October 2006, a Florida jury awarded one Sue Scheff $11.3 million in an Internet defamation lawsuit. The article revealed that Scheff filed a lawsuit after a blogger called her a “crook,” “con artist” and a “fraud” on an Internet message board.

So what do you think? Should a company be able to demand the removal of a website from a host? And if the host does not comply are they liable?

With suing a blogger for sharing their thoughts that could really get out of hand.. Should you be afraid that if you publish your thoughts on a product or service that you can be sued?

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According to a email I got today from FURL they have upgraded the usability a little bit ( heh about time )
•    Revamped Design
•    Made it easier to create and find topics
•    Updated browser buttons and toolbar
Anyone see anything really exciting in this update?

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Reputation management is a fairly complicated task, yet is really of the utmost importance. Posts on blogs are coming online at a very rapid pace and consumers, customers; competitors are speaking their minds very freely. Blogs, forums, social media networking sites are generating buzz, positive and negative. These users may already be talking about your products and services, making good or bad claims. Left unchecked these statements can make or break your company. Part of Social Media Marketing is Reputation Management.

With a solid reputation management plan in place you can very effectively nudge the conversations in a positive way. Think of Reputation Management as a Interactive add-on to your existing PR strategy.  The step of any good reputation management campaign consists of the following:  

1. Researching where an what is currently being said about your company, your CEO, CTO and support or sales staff. Also discovering how you main competitors are being talked about isvery helpful.  

2. Create a strategy based upon your findings to create or enhance reputation through social networks and communication channels. Craft your online messaging and stick with it.  

3. Have a third party interact on a regular basis with your target social networks and anywhere your customers hang out online.  

4. Getting reviews, interviews, promote good will and cooperation  

5. Have a great Link Baiting campaign that ties into building Buzz, the stronger your reputation the more effective all you marketing and social marketing will be.  

6. Document all you actions and consistently follow up on them.

I would love to hear input from other professionals

Ben - aka SocialDude  

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A interesting take on what is happening with the new Google Domain names. 

http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com/art-google-domain-names-debut-38.html

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Today a friend of mine told me about Digg rolling out a new design. so I decided to go and take a look.

It appears there are quite a few significant changes that were made:

The Addition of Video’s (using AJAX to keep viewers on the site )

1. The Podcasts directory (beta, must be logged in to view)
2. Top Digg Users has been moved to the bottom of the page
3. Recently Popular changed to  Newly Popular, Top in 24 Hours, 7Days, 30 Days and 365 Days
4. Blog This and Email This were change to Blog It and Email It
5. The time that has lapsed since a post was submitted is now a bright Red
6. The Digg Store, from JINX
7. The Navigation bar at the top now has nested sub Categories

When asked, Greg Hartnett from Best Of The Web said “After celebrating their second birthday, the Digg team decided they needed to shift away from their news-centric model. The newest features include video and podcast feeds - clearly a shift towards new media. Additionally, they have added Top 10 stories to make users aware of the hottest stories in all topics - another move to attract the casual user. I think they have done a great job incorporating the new features, and the new layout seems more intuitive and aesthetically pleasing.

I don’t like how they removed the feature of letting a user see who has befriended him. While this won’t affect the average surfer, it hinders those who are looking to build their profile. Perhaps that’s why they did it…”

Neil Patel of Pro Net Advertising had this to say “Digg version 4 has many improvements compared to version 3. Overall I think they are good and will help reduce the amount of spam due to the removing of the “befriend” feature.” I will be adding more info as I find it.