I just received this email:

I am Mrs Irina Gutavo a Cancer patient, i was informed by my doctor that i have a few weeks to live, I hereby give to you my £20 Million Pounds to set up a Charity Organization to help people that are in needs.

Please respond for further instructions.

Sincerely.
Mrs Irina Gutavo.

Admittedly, I receive these kinds of emails all the time, but this time I got to wondering…. ‘Do people really fall for this stuff?’. I mean, they must if I keep receiving email after email after email telling me that I have inherited vast wads of cash and that I’ve been carefully selected to take up the most lucrative investment opportunity of all time.

Then I remembered… I was nearly caught out once. I had advertised my car on carsguide.com.au and got a bite from a prospective buyer who seemed legit. We traded emails (his was a Hotmail account) and we got to the point where the deal seemed signed and sealed. As what seemed like a bit of an afterthought, the buyer contacted me to ask  if I could arrange a transfer of $400 through Western Union to pay a representative to pick up the car as the buyer said he was overseas and the person he has initially arranged to pick it up was unavailable – okay, fair enough. In the interim, he sent me details of his payment through Paypal and asked if I could wire the $400 to the representative before his money hit my account. It was at this stage that I (thankfully) spotted the scam. The Paypal remittance looked authentic but was sent from an odd-looking email address, so I looked up ‘carsguide scam’ and found that I was one of countless people who had been (or nearly been) swindled.

Cyberthieves are getting more and more sophisticated all the time and it can be difficult to spot the scams, so here’s a bit of info to help you identify the most common scams and assess whether or not an email is dodgy.

Common scams (according to The Australian Communications and Media Authority)

Common scams to beware of and avoid include:

1. ‘Nigerian’ scams – which appear to come from overseas and ask you to send money in return for a large lump sum being transferred to your bank account
2. ‘pump ‘n’ dump’ stock scams – which are sent as spam emails claiming to be from a successful investor who has made huge profits investing in a particular stock, and needs to offload some of it
3. ‘internet dumping’ – where some ‘free’ adult sites download automatic internet diallers that clock up a huge phone bill without your knowledge
4. work-at-home schemes, lottery wins and prizes that require you to send money before claiming them
5. pharmaceutical scams – offering ‘amazing’ products that claim to boost your health, appearance or virility.
6. phishing emails that are sent from falsified or ’spoofed’ email addresses. Many phishing emails often claim to be from a bank, online retailer or credit card company. These emails direct recipients to a website that looks like the real website of a retailer or financial institution, which is designed to encourage the visitor to reveal financial details such as credit card numbers, account names and passwords or other personal information.

How to assess if you’re the recipient of a dodgy email:

1. If the email is from a ‘free’ email account (hotmail.com, live.com, yahoo.com) treat it with suspicion. In the example I opened the article with, the name given was Lady Irina Gutavo, but the email given was gutavodynasty@live.ru (Windows Live, Russia). In fact, the sender’s email address is usually the first sign that somethings not quite right. If an organisation is emailing you, be mindful that legitimate institutions that send out emails to their customers generally send them from an email address that’s associated with their website.
2. Be wary of an email that tells you to forward the correspondence to everyone in your address book.
3. Look for a name and contact details. Is there  a phone number for someone you can reach out to to discuss whatever the email is offering you?
4. Is the sender SCREAMING AT YOU or adding lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? If so, it could be very well be dodgy as legitimate businesses don’t tend to communicate this way.
5. Is the email more persuasive than informative?
6. Is it offering something that’s too good to be true?
7. Is there a sense or urgency or high priority to the email, i.e. limited offer, important information, act now, get rich quick or was it sent as ‘High Importance’?
8. Is there an offer of free money in exchange for personal information? – If so, you’re likely to have a scam on your hands.
9. Hover over any links that are provided – does the URL matches what’s displayed in the email? If not, it may be a case of link manipulation, a tactic used by phishers to create bogus (and often very convincing) sites for the purposes of stealing your personal information.

A few more useful tips:

1. Ensure you don’t fall prey to a phishing scam by checking off the list of tell tale scam signs above before you click any links!
2. Virtually any email chain letter you receive (i.e., any message forwarded multiple times before it got to you) is more likely to be false than true. You should automatically be skeptical of chain letters.
3. Do a search to see if the organisation they are purporting to be from exists and if the claims they’re making are factual.
4. Hoaxers usually try every means available to make their lies believable — e.g., mimicking a journalistic style, attributing the text to a ‘legitimate’ source, or implying that powerful corporate or government interests have tried to keep the information from you.

Take that, Mrs Irina Gutavo! (unless, of course, you really do have 20million pounds to give me…)

Sarah

Times have changed. I’m not weighing in to a gender debate, but we ladies have a lot on our plates. We’re busy building a career, making a home, raising kids, nurturing our relationships with our friends and family, trying to fit in some exercise (or spending time feeling guilty about not doing any), dabbling in our hobbies, trying to contribute to our communities and fitting in some sleep (most of the time).

As a general rule, we enjoy the juggle and relish in our many and varied different roles, but one casualty of the circus act has been the traditional construct of ‘community’. Often we’re too busy to really engage with the other families that live on our street, we’ve moved away from our parents and, as much as we’d love to help out, much of the voluntary work we once did (manning the canteen, working on community projects) is gradually being outsourced due to dwindling numbers of mums who are available to lend a hand.

But we’re resilient creatures. We find ways of making it work. And one of the ways we’ve managed to stay connected is through our social media networks. According to ‘Reaching Empowered Women Through Social Media’ released by Forrester in April 2009 (NB: Empowered women are women ages 25 to 54 who feel that the Internet helps them manage their family life):

“One-third of empowered women use social networking sites mainly for communication compared with 23% of all online adults. Nearly one-third (32%) of empowered women will actively go to friends’ pages on social networking sites to keep in touch, compared with only 21% of all online adults.”

As women, we like to share and we yearn to be connected, so we have created new communities to fill the void. Social media mums are not desperate housewives. We’re busy people looking to engage with our friends and families and meet new, like-minded people.

For marketers, it is crucial to take heed of this. You’re not a voice on TV in the background while we’re doing the ironing and making dinner. Often, we’re logging on to Facebook in the slivers of downtime we get during the day and tweeting while we’re on the bus to and from work. We write posts on our blogs when the kids have gone to bed to share our experiences and promote conversation with our network. And we’re doing this for one simple reason.
To engage.

If you want to promote your product to us, it must be relevant. Shout at us, and we’ll regard you with disdain. In fact, it would be no different to someone approaching a group of women at a cafe at lunchtime and asking if they would like to see a demonstration of your new vacuum. Bah-bum. We’re sooooo not interested.

Here’s a good example of effective marketing to social media mums. Finish Quantum recently ran a sponsored spot on the uber-popular social media mum Mia Freedman’s (@miafreedman) blog, Mamamia. All they did was offer her readers a sample of their new product, but they did it by weighing in on a topic that has many social media mums buzzing (and furiously tweeting) at the moment – MasterChef. What was posted what nothing short of a well-written, press release that showed insight into the behaviour and interests of the audience. Mia’s followers were musing over their messy kitchen, how they wash their dishes (if they’re a ‘rinser’, or they simply dump the dirty dish in the machine and hit go), who will take out the MasterChef title… The most interesting thing though is that they were also were falling all over themselves to claim their sample.

The key for marketers is to spend time to get to know their audience and to make your communication with that audience as relevant as possible. Participate. Join in. You never know, you might even have some fun.

You will win the hearts of social media mums if you can enrich our online experience by helping us connect with like-minded people: provide platforms for us to share what we know, learn what we don’t and give us ways to help us manage our busy lives.

It’s worth the time, patience and effort. Remember, more often than not, we’re the ones buying the groceries!

Simply… put our needs before yours, and you’ll see results.

Cheers,

Sarah (@SassieqQ)

* Image sourced from: workitmom.com

Well done, guys!

There’s an on going debate about how much businesses should be using social media channels like Twitter to promote themselves, well if your thinking like this, then stop! You’re already in the wrong mindset- the fact you want to ‘promote’ your company is the wrong tack, instead think of your company sharing knowledge and advice around your profession and that might not all involve around your company on that I picked this up early this morning via Chris Brogan this is all your business needs to know about using social media in particular Twitter, my personal opinion on using Twitter for business is it’s vital, without it you can’t reach out to your customers in an engaging manner, it’s also a valuable channel as a source of research, so here’s the first steps in building your business further:

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediately start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetbluegives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepotdoes it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the others, too.

Stereomood can take you there. I think this is really cool idea. The premise the site is built on is that ‘behind every song there’s an emotion’, so it groups songs into playlists based on those emotions (and activities too like ‘Doing the Housework’ , ‘Road Trip’ and ‘Let’s Knit’ – dubious as to how many plays that last one gets).

I love that, not only can I indulge my mood, it also exposes me to tracks and artists that I’ve never heard of before. You can also share, ‘ban’, like, shuffle, buy (Amazon or iTunes) and add tracks to create your library so you can create your own playlists. You can upload mp3’s as well.

All the tracks are submitted by users so the library is getting bigger as we speak.

Right… it’s 4.00pm, might tune in to the ‘Busy As a Bee’ list.

Enjoy!

Sarah

Bullseye worked with the natural health brand to implement Sitecore CMS software and Online Marketing Suite (OMS) solutions to build a digital platform that connects more personally with its customers. The new website is personalised to each individual who joins, and is designed to inspire, inform and educate Australians to achieve better health.

“We were thoroughly impressed with how Blackmores and Bullseye have built a website with Sitecore’s technology that has engaged their audiences by offering dynamic content and Enterprise 2.0 features and functionality,” said Kim Elsass, Chief Information Officer, Sitecore. “By creating such a strong and attractive community, Blackmores has become one of the top websites in Australia and New Zealand. We are proud to recognise and congratulate them.”

According to Jason Davey, Managing Director at Bullseye, “Consumers have little patience for irrelevant content, and everyone’s health and fitness outlook and experience is different. Using the intuitive features of leading edge technology, we have built a website for Blackmores that offers a totally personalised experience. It’s slick, clever and designed entirely to delight each individual visitor.”

Sitecore’s Site of the Year contest recognises customers who have leveraged Sitecore’s technology to develop the most outstanding websites. The Sitecore judges considered creativity, integration with rich data sources and applications, overall user experience and the ability to educate, inform and motivate an action.

This year was no different. Amongst all the speakers a few really stood out and definitely got me inspired to get out the old pencil and paper, or wacom and photoshop these days.

Frankie Magazine
http://www.frankie.com.au/
Although not exactly my sort of magazine, it was wonderful to hear from the editor Louise on how a small idea she had with friend/collague Lara turned into a hugely successful magazine. How they disregarded certain magazine rules (like never use green on the cover?) and the journey the magazine has taken and how it has still kept strong to their original idea. They even had the cutest little cook book “Afternoon Tea” plus a new version “Sweet Treats”. Beautiful work.

Travis Millard & Mel Kadel
http://www.fudgefactorycomics.com/, http://www.melkadel.com/
Absolute classics! Funniest speakers on the Friday. When one of the speakers starts by snapping open a six-pack of beers you know you are in for something interesting. This couple from LA are well known artists who talked about their love of drawing from an early age and how over the years found themselves always drawn back to illustration and were able to find a market for their passion. From a personal point, I loved the studio they had set up at their home, it seems all they do is draw all day and they have paper and art supplies strewn all over their house (or treehouse as they called it).

Ashley Gilbertson
http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/
The final speaker on the Friday and what a way to end off. A photo-journalist who has focused on the war in Iraq since 2002. From the way he spoke about his time there you could see how much it had affected him and how much emotion and passion he had invested into his work. He mentioned a story of one soldier who had given his life to save his whilst on assignment which is something that is really hard to grasp when you spend each day in an air-conditioned office. He spoke of the soldiers he met and worked with in the highest regard and felt that the general public doesn’t understand or respect the sacrifices these young man and women face and it was this that lead him to do a series of work detailing the rooms of dead soldiers back home. From each photo you could pick up so much about each soldier’s life and the collection was extremely emotional. Truly inspiring work.

Although all the speakers had their own style of presentation, one thing was clear. They all have a huge passion for what they do and even if the work was not to your taste it was hard not to walk out of there inspired. Unfortunately I couldn’t make Saturday, but heard from others that it was well worth going(there was free t-shirts, DAMM!).

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and start setting up my new studio

What are the incentives and disincentives of using the web as a business channel to market? And can the disincentives be overcome?

When doing business, customers are looking for a product or service that fulfills their needs, as well as value for money. Doing business online is a great way to drive buying decision-making and complete the sales and fulfillment process. So, what are the incentives for customers doing this and what will drive them away?

Incentives for customers to do business online:

• Availability and reach of information and services on the web – the internet never closes and isn’t subject to geographical boundaries.

• The range of search engines, specific sites that focus on key services (eg. iSelect, TrueLocal, eBay and ourbrisbane) and many well-known brand names allow customers to find the information they are after quickly and easily. Businesses should ensure that they are search engine friendly and have their website link listed on appropriate websites.

• Richness of information. Blackmores is a great example of a site that offers rich content, with specialist areas dedicated to women’s, men’s and children’s health, pregnancy, weight management and much more. Businesses should have as much of their content online as possible to assist the customer with their information needs. This will go some way to building up trust with the customer (subject to the information being objective) and assist with search engine results.

• Customers can do their research and, where relevant, buy and purchase online in their own time and in their own environment. Businesses should embrace this, and ensure there is adequate information on their site to inform the customer without the need for them to seek it out it elsewhere.

• Customers can be anonymous until they want to be identified. They can access information but engage the provider on their terms using online or traditional means (phone or direct). Businesses should provide a range of ways to engage website visitors online and offline by offering online subscriptions and membership options, easy-to-use electronic forms, click to call or click to chat tools, as well as providing a central phone number and your office details.

• Additional value from using the web that is not offered through traditional means, including: online functionality to assist with the buying process (eg. calculators or comparison tools), online discounts, honeymoon offers, bundling of products/services and loyalty programs that can only be accessed through the online channel. Businesses should look at what they can provide to drive customers to do business with them online. But it has to add value to their target customers to have the desired impact.

• Customers require information that is objective and as relevant as possible. TripAdvisor is a good example of a site that does this well, as travelers themselves generate the information. There are blogs and wikis that have threads relating to anything your customer wants to know. Businesses should at the very least use testimonials, references and case studies in support of their offering. Providing an online forum on their site and/or identifying where these forums of online conversation are taking place also needs to be considered. Whether your business is going to act on these conversations or just observe them will require some careful consideration.

Disincentives for customers to do business online:

• If the customer’s experience using the website is poor, they will be dissatisfied. This poor experience is likely to be due to uninspiring design, complex site architecture, a lack of intuitive navigation and/or lack of relevant and easily understood content. Businesses should ensure they invest wisely in building a website that matches their customer’s expectations, and fits with their business needs and position in the market place.

• Insufficient content or information to help a customer make a buying decision. If they can’t get it from your website, they will move on. Businesses need to achieve the right balance of information. They need to look at it from the customer’s eyes not from the business’s perspective. ‘What am I, as a customer, looking for on the website to assist me?’

• Too much selling; not enough value. Even if the sales process can only be fulfilled offline, the website can play a pivotal role in supporting the customer in making the decision. Buying a car is a very good example, where research is often gathered online so that when the customer is ready to go to the seller, all they want to do is kick the tyres and negotiate on the price. If you have genuinely assisted the customer with valuable information online, you are likely to get first chance at the sale. Businesses should ensure their website doesn’t act as just another cog of the sales process, but that it is a genuinely valuable tool that engages the consumer and assists them with their purchasing decision.

• Security is still a key aspect for customers. Customers need to be constantly reassured that their personal and financial information is safe. Business should use the appropriate functionality and tools that are consistent with industry standards and best practice.

• When buying online, there is generally a delay in the customer receiving the product/service and additional costs (eg. postage and handling). Customers want instant buying gratification – to use what they have bought there and then – and to purchase for the best price. Businesses need to provide as much information about their product and service as possible, and offer free or reasonably-priced postage so that the overall price is still less than if they bought it from a physical shop. Careful thought needs to go into the online segment of your business model and how it works with existing offline channels. You don’t want one channel cannibalising the other, or channel wars. But you do want to provide the customer with choices, otherwise they may get all the information from you but still buy elsewhere.

Using online as a channel is not the end-all to solving business problems or creating business opportunities, but it can certainly help. The online marketplace is booming and you’re missing out if your business doesn’t have a strong online presence. Just having a website is not enough these days. If it’s poorly delivered, it can do you more of a disservice than if you had no online presence at all. Just like a physical store or showroom, your space in the online world must be orderly, polished, informative and inviting to your customer to get results.

http://www.fubiz.net/2010/02/24/nokia-the-worlds-biggest-signpost/

Working with leading digital services agency, Bullseye, Blackmores has created a destination that is set to become Australia’s biggest online community dedicated to natural health. The new website is personalised to each individual who joins, and is designed to inspire, inform and educate Australians to better health.

Cassandra Brill, Blackmores’ Digital and Interactive Manager said: “We believe something truly revolutionary is happening with the way people are using the internet to learn about health and wellbeing.”

“We want to help people take control of their own health. No longer will we be telling our consumers what we think they’d like to know, we are using technology to allow them to tell us what is most important to them, then supporting that with informed and reliable information they can use themselves and share,” added Brill.

Concerned by trends highlighting Australia’s escalating health challenges such as its ageing population and high levels of obesity, Blackmores looked to its existing 288,000 Australian online members as well as trends from the social media boom to understand what Australians want to know about health and wellbeing.

In response, the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ website has been replaced with a site that can be personalised for each member. This is generated from each member’s nominated interests and interactions on the site. Users can also view and share updates on the most popular topics that have been read and discussed by the rest of the community, and access an array of health-related communities where they can chat about the topics that matter most to them.

Jason Davey, Bullseye’s Managing Director of Digital Marketing, said: “Consumers have little patience for irrelevant content, and everyone’s health and fitness outlook and experience is different. Using the intuitive features of leading-edge technology, we have built a website for Blackmores that offers a totally personalised user experience. It’s slick, clever and designed entirely to delight each individual visitor”.

The website aims to ‘get to know’ each member, and then intuitively interacts to guide them to topics of interest, community discussions and product information. Users can then access reliable natural health information and a selection of interactive tools, which include:

Communities
Blackmores has developed ten inspiring and informative health communities. In each one, consumers can find groups where they can research and discuss personal health concerns. These are:
• Women’s Health
• Men’s Health
• Digestion
• Weight Management
• Fitness and Energy
• Stress and Mental Performance
• Pregnancy, Preconception and Breast-Feeding
• Parenting and Children’s Health
• Healthy Ageing
• Cold, Flu, Allergies and Immunity

Virtual Wellness Centre
For free natural health advice, members can ‘ask a naturopath’ with options to chat online, send an email for a detailed, personalised response, or speak directly by phone to one of Blackmores’ Naturopathic Advisory Team members.

Health Topics
Blackmores ‘Health Topics’ cover causes, symptoms and natural therapies for more than one hundred common health conditions.

Learning Centre
Stocked with articles, videos and podcasts, and regularly updated, there is an extensive collection of material covering a range of topics like diet, nutrition, lifestyle and exercise.

Product Assistant
The ‘Product Assistant’ tool helps consumers find the products they are looking for – quickly and easily.

Wellbeing Blog
The ‘Wellbeing Blog’ boasts the latest news and updates from our natural health bloggers.

Shop Online
Exclusive to members only, Blackmores products are now available to purchase directly through the new Blackmores website.

To take a virtual tour and experience the new website, visit www.blackmores.com.au/sitetour.