Aug 15, 2012
Bike Talk from Nevada County Faire replaced Zentech on 8/8/12. Next Zentech show scheduled for 8/15/12
Free Audio Books : Public Domain.
Cell Use Pay As You Go IS Cheaper – but you have to pay up-front, not On Credit.
Fraud, F.U.D. or just misleading?? "Free Power" Banner Ads.
Free as in what? Beer? or Air?
Additonal notes
Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart.
– They're tagged with #Zentech.
– When what's said is unclear to me (or I'm unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (" ") verbatim.
– Editor's comments are delimited by < >
Remember, Zentech is scheduled to air the next 2 Wednesdays: the 22nd & 29th
Paul & Glenn had Coryon Redd on the show today. He talked about internet marketing. It's all about getting people to find your business on the internet. Coryon has done several shows. To find them, you can go to zen.kvmr.com and do a search for the word: coryon
First up, hotmail.com is now outlook.com. The change came about a week and a half ago. You can go claim your <account> name <before someone else does>. Coryon got his: coryon at outlook dot com
Coryon's business contact is at coryon.com
His blog is here: coryon.com/blog
Coryon said there's a company that buys domain names with family names (last names) and then sells email service to those with that last name. <If you're John Smith you can have the email address john@smith.com>
Paul read somewhere that 3-letter domain names <xyz.com> were used up some time ago. Then 4-letter names were exhausted. Now most 5-letter names as well as words from the dictionary, with the .com ending) are used up.
Paul asked Coryon if there's an advantage to using the top-level domains .us .biz. He said no. Coryon also said stay away from long or hyphenated names <like business-consultant.com>, they're too hard to remember.
Coryon said it might be a good idea for a business to buy domain names that are similar. In his case he bought batteriesforless.com because his company is at batteries4less.com.
Glenn invited listeners to become KVMR subscribers.
Coryon mentioned free software called Hootsuite that helps you manage and schedule your social media messages. You can send tweets, Facebook updates and Google plus messages from one place. Paul noted that Google is getting smart about recognizing link farms and other questionable sites that attempt to get a higher Google ranking. But using Hootsuite won't be a red flag to Google causing it to lower your ranking in the search results <Google won't think you're using shady techniques>. In fact, Coryon said, one of the ways Google is getting smarter is that it pays attention to social media content that becomes popular: video that goes viral, tweets that get retweeted, etc.
Coryon said what makes a big difference <in Google ranking> is quality links: links to your site showing up on "related, relevant, quality sites". Google has implemented the Penguin algorithm, which determines what sites links come from. If they come from low quality sites like link farms, they get demoted in the search results.
Coryon noted that Google allows you to rate sites that you get in the search results using Plus 1 (+1, a button next to the search result). A few months after Plus 1 became available, Google launched Google Plus, a social network, that has nothing to do with Plus 1.
He said you used to be able to do a Google search using text that's quoted, to indicate the words should occur together <e.g. "Of Mice and Men" will search for the title>, or use + before a word, to indicate it's mandatory that the word occur on a page. But they had trouble with how people were searching for Google Plus and the "+" symbol, so these search tricks are no longer available. <However, I haven't found this to be true. I dunno, maybe it's because I do my searches with Javascript turned off.>
Coryon mentioned the service called Pinterest where you can create boards <categories, I guess> of special interest and post related content: pictures, articles, video, etc. He said Pinterest a bigger player in social marketing than Google Plus, at this time, but if you continue to use Google Plus to promote your business, it will eventually effect the search raking of your business. He said Google Plus has some interesting features like making it easy to organize your contacts, and it integrates with your blog posts.
About 6 months ago Google notified users about a change in the terms of service. It unified the terms across many of its services (Youtube, Gmail, Google Plus, etc.). Coryon seemed sanguine about the change because it helps personalize your experience and he was confident that Google will keep your personal info private.
Paul mentioned a technical writer, Mat Honan, whose iCloud account was hacked, which then gave the perpetrator access to the writer's other accounts and eventually led to the his data being deleted. It started when the last 4 digits of a credit card were discovered.
<From a recent On the Media show you'll find audio of the Mat describing what happened.
The Wired article by Mat Honan: How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking j.mp/Ty1DRl
A recent article on How to prevent your own 'epic hack' with a 60-minute security makeover>
– He said if your email gets hacked, your bank can be deceived into thinking the perpetrator is you. Some banks use your email address as a way to authenticate its customers.
– Glenn said he's often asked which email service is better. He thought they are all vulnerable to being hacked and misused in the way just mentioned.
– With Google, Paul said, there is a trade-off between security & convenience. If you enable the 2-stage authentication and there's a problem with the login process, Google will send a text (txt) message to your phone to initiate the second stage of the login. It's more secure, but is more inconvenient to use.
– Coryon said he read an article that compared the cost in productivity of managing and changing passwords vs. the cost of what's stolen. The conclusion was that the extra security wasn't worth the effort.
– Paul thought there may be some value to disguise your profile, if you're concerned about privacy. His Facebook page has him as a female from Kyrgyzstan who's living in Cambodia.
– Coryon said, just limit the info you make public. He thought Paul's deception is silly.
Coryon returned to the subject of marketing and the fundamentals of SEO.
– Know your business, know the keywords you're going after and build content into your website.
– Make sure your website isn't slow. Google will rank a slow site lower.
– Get people to spend more time on your website. Google knows how long people spend on a website before coming back to do another search.
– Use social media to promote your website. Get other, quality websites to link to yours.
– As mentioned above, avoid using questionable SEO services and link farms. Google will notice and will lower your ranking. The Penguin algorithm was mentioned again and Paul found a good Wikipedia article about it. <And an article about it here.>
Coryon is teaching an introductory marketing class Monday night in Auburn at 6 o'clock. More info at coryon.com/classes. You can register for the class at SEDCorp.
He encouraged the local business community to get involved with a local group called Nevada County Online. They have a speaker once a month on marketing topics. They meet on the 4th Tuesday at 11 AM at the Courtyard Suites in Grass Valley. Joshua Sandstrom is scheduled for the 28th to discuss e-commerce. Nevada County Online members get a discount from SEDCorp, if they ask for it.
Paul said he'd like to get Catherine Scholz on the show to talk about WordPress, a blogging & web design software. coryon.com is designed with WordPress.
Coryon told the story of woman who sells decorative pins featuring draft horses to illustrate the need to know your market. Bottom line is no one is going to search for such an item, so optimizing for search engines isn't going to help. And educating the market about such a product is a "pain in the butt" requiring a big budget.
Coryon has marketing videos at coryon.com/video.
His site also has tutorials.
There are 2 main area to focus on if you want to rank high in search results…
– 50% is getting reputable sites to link to your website. Use social media to get the word out.
– 50% is what happens on your site. Make sure it's keyword focused. Make sure you have a good title and headers for your web page. Make it easy to navigate and use alt tags for your images.
– You can educate yourself about this if you search Google with the words: seo tutorial
Paul said he read an article about how Google is getting better at identifying images. <Here are a couple of articles (maybe not one he read)…
In a Big Network of Computers, Evidence of Machine Learning nyti.ms/KzLLrB
Google team: Self-teaching computers recognize cats tw.phys.org/259938943>
Coryon talked about a cell phone app called Google Goggles. You can take a picture of something (works best with a product) and the app identifies what it is. When it first came out he demonstrated it to class he was teaching by have it identify a painting hanging on a nearby wall.
Paul said there's an app called LeafSnap <maybe only for iPhone> that can identify a plant after you take a picture of its leaf.
Glenn said Facebook can identify peoples faces. Picasa has that ability too.
The disclaimer:
The views & opinions expressed on this show are of the speakers only and not necessarily those of KVMR its board, management, staff, contributors or others.
Paul said that AT&T has switched from DSL to U-verse. <called Uverse in the notes for other shows>
– Old DSL modems no longer work.
– The new service is what's known as ADSL 2 Plus.
– It can handle more data.
– The new service has no dialtone. Phone service is provided using voice over IP (VOIP) using U-verse.
– You can tell if you have the newer modem by looking at its side. The wireless ID begins with the letters "ATT" (ATT619, for example) instead of "2 wire".
– Not available in the Nevada City area, as yet, is the ability to stream video on demand using U-verse.
– Today is the last day you can chose a different provider <different from AT&T, I guess> and still use DSL <the old DSL, I guess>.
– The new service costs less for 1-year contract.
Paul said you can get free public domain audiobooks. See the above link.
Coryon mentioned another free audio book that talks about business innovation. It's called "Free. The Future of A Radical Price". You can get it at Audible. The 7-hour version is free, the 3-hour edited version is $7.
Paul said the podcast of this show will be on the KVMR website in the next 48 ours. Go to KVMR and click where it says "podcast".
Last updated: 10:27 PM 8/23/2012