Stop email attachment abuse!
I love my friends and family dearly. And I really like receiving funny emails and jokes from them. It shows they are thinking of me! They want to stay in touch!
But I run a business, and sometimes an email with a 10mg video attachment of sweet Aunt Sally’s cat can prevent me from getting fast access to more pressing business email.
photo credit: Conor Lawless
Email Attachment Abuse
For years, I’ve tried to re-train my “email attachment abusive” friends — with zero success.
In 2006, I even created a 5 minute audio podcast explaining email attachment netiquette. It worked for about 3 months.
Oh, I could always block abusers for their bad behavior — but I really DO want to keep the lines of communication open with Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob!
photo credit: ™bluhousworker
Some of my business pals suggest that I give out separate email addresses — just for my gravest abusers. But that makes me work extra hard. Further, this only enables their unwittingly bad email manners — and allows abusers to spread their abuse to others!
Stop Enabling Today!
So today, I’m trying something new. We’ll see how it works.
This is what I did, in two easy steps:
- I set up my inbox rules to automatically delete any email that hits my server that is over a certain size. (I’m not going to publish the size, because abusers can be sneaky — they might want to see just how much they can get away with!
- I also set my inbox rule to automatically reply with the following message:
I’m sorry, but the email you sent me contained a huge attachment, so I’m not accepting it.
If you want to share a huge file with me (or friends, family, and colleagues that you care about!) please consider using a free service like www.filemail.com instead of sending an attachment.
It’s not just safer — it’s also good 21st century “netiquette”.
Why is this practice more courteous than sending a big attachment?
1. Sending huge attachments chews up email server bandwidth. A huge file can block or delay urgent business email from getting through. Using a service like www.filemail.com converts your big attachment into a tiny link that I can click at my convenience.
2. Friends often want to send me huge “funny” videos and photos. I often don’t have time to view these “right away” — preferring to answer business emails first. When you upload your file to www.filemail.com — (or point to the same video at www.youtube.com for that matter!) — I get to experience your rich content when I have more time.
Thanks for understanding.
What do you think?
Will this work?
Will it end email attachment abuse?
Or will my email confuse and frighten Aunt Sally?
Internet Marketing: Grand Rapids meets Hollywood…
For the past few years, at least one of my websites comes up in the top ten at Google Local Search for the phrases “internet marketing Grand Rapids” or “web marketing Grand Rapids”. Take my Maniactive.com blog, for instance:
Now, this is a good thing. After all, I specialize in internet marketing. And I work in Grand Rapids, MI.
So why wouldn’t I (or any local business!) take advantage of a free & easy listing at Google Local?
(Note: quite a few of my local competitive colleagues aren’t there, which makes me skeptical about their online marketing abilities! Anyhoo…)
Here’s a fact: not too many people search for those particular terms. But the ones who do are usually pretty valuable to me. They’re looking for something very specific. And I get a few calls a month from this free listing, so it has a high ROI.
How times change! Earlier this year, I received a phone call from a local businessman who inquired about my web copy writing service. He told me he did a search for “internet marketing Grand Rapids” and up popped my name.
“Ah, Google,” I said.
“No, LinkedIn,” he said. “I’d never use Google to find a professional.”
What a quote! Turns out, by using LinkedIn, this businessman found out that “his people knew my people.” (How Hollywood!)
But my transparent personal and business connections increased his trust factor. Aside from my profile and recommendations, it was his personal connection to me that made him pick up the phone.
Conversely, by viewing his information and connections on LinkedIn, I quickly discovered that this was a person I wanted to meet.
We did lunch. (How Hollywood!)
LinkedIn works both ways, y’see.
Earlier this month, I wrote about the decline in search volume at Google for the term “real estate agents”. While this is a very general, non-local example, web findability trends for professional services are definitely changing.
Peer-to-peer and word-of-mouth recommendations are much more meaningful.
In 2008, instead of thinking SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” — think again.
Think “findability”.
Think “trust”.
Social media is changing your internet marketing mix.
How are you preparing for the change?
Why Hashtags at Twitter?
Hash is in the air!
Not only did I enjoy “Hippy Hash” at a local diner recently, I also discovered the joys of using hashtags at Twitter.
photo credit: ninjapoodles
What the? Why Hashtags?
Hashtags are a joyous way to track only certain Twitter posts. For example, if you’re at a conference, you might want to use a previously agreed upon hashtag in any Tweet that covers the conference. That’s what the attendees at the recent NAR conference did — you can actually follow the conference through their hashtagged Tweets at http://hashtags.org/tag/nar_midyear. Those of us who couldn’t attend the conference still felt like we were there!
Another example: yesterday, I started the #ATT_unwanted hashtag. I will only use this hashtag in my Tweets when I get yet another unwanted AT&T telephone solicitation. Instead of getting irritated with AT&T for continuing to plague me with unwanted phone calls, the hashtag is an easy way for me (and others!) to log the abuse. (If you keep getting unwanted AT&T calls, feel free to Tweet the details with the hashtag #ATT_unwanted.)
Backstory: for months, I’ve been getting an almost daily phone call from a person who claims to be an AT&T rep. When I tell the rep it’s the umpteenth time I’ve told them to put me on the “do not call” list, they all smugly say, “This is the first time I’ve personally called you.” One rep explained that when I tell each AT&T rep to put me on “donotcall” — they pass my number on to another AT&T rep. The rep said (nastily), “AT&T is a huge company. Ever hear of it? We found a way around the “donotcall” list by passing your number on to the next rep. We’re not going to stop calling until you buy from us. We’re way bigger and way more powerful than you’ll ever be. You might as well give up now: someone from AT&T will keep calling until you do.
Like I’d do business with a company with that kind of ‘tude!
As Twitter friend @phits said, “Lame!”
How to Hashtag
Hashtagging with Twitter is 4-step easy!
- First, get a free Twitter account, natch.
- Next, follow @hashtags
- Thirdly, in the appropriate Tweet, use the pound sign (#) followed by a unique & descriptive phrase (the hashtag)
- Finally, follow your hashtagged tweets at http://hashtags.org/tag/enter-your-hashtag-name-here
How to Give Your Hashtags Meat
If you’ve invented a new hashtag for an event and you want other Twitterers to participate and follow, you’re going to have to let them know what your hashtag is!
And by following hashtags organized around an interesting subject area — who know? You may find more Twitter friends to connect with!
What are some of your favorite hashtag uses at Twitter?
How One Executive Recruiter Uses LinkedIn…
Last week, I chatted with quite a few folks who use LinkedIn, the online networking tool.
Funny thing: the salespeople I talked to love it for making connections into target companies — but they couldn’t see how it would be helpful for anyone else! Then, I got the same story from two entrepreneurs, who also use LinkedIn primarily for business development.
Later in the week, I talked to a Minneapolis, Minnesota executive recruiter, Sandy Hull. Sandy told me that LinkedIn is an invaluable tool for both recruiters and job seekers.
Go figure — with over 20 million resumes and transparent networking connections online — of course LinkedIn has fast become an absolute must for recruiters and job hunters!
With over 386 connections, I thought it might be helpful to ask Sandy for her perspective on how she uses LinkedIn. Here’s our (much abridged!) discussion:
What’s on your Google Log? Who’s on your Social Media Profile?
Keep a simple log for one week.
Call it “My Google Search Log”. Just jot down all the searches you did at Google for a one week period.
Now, let’s say your week has passed by. (My, that was fast!)
What’s on your log?
photo credit: vice48sr5005
Dozens of searches phrases? Hundreds maybe?
Now scan the list.
How many times did you approach Google with the idea of buying something?
(Not very many, I’ll guess.)
Most of the time, I reckon you went to Google looking for information.
And when you went to the sites that Google served up as plausible answers to your question — how’d that work out for you? And just how relevant were the answers you received?
A few days ago, the TechCrunch blog noted that keyword search is hitting the breaking point in terms of usefulness.
Glance at your Google log, and think about it.
How relevant is search for your company’s particular market niche? How well are those visitors converting into conversations?
Another quick exercise: go to Google Trends, and enter your company’s most precious keyword phrase. For an example, I’m going to enter “real estate agents“.
You’ll note that the search volume for this phrase — at Google alone — has gone down over 100% (from 2004 to 2008). In four years!
That’s a dramatic decline! If you’re a real estate agent, you can’t afford to rely on search alone to develop leads in a declining market.
The online audience looking for Realtors isn’t using “Search Engines” as much as they were in 2004. And they won’t be coming back anytime soon!
So, where might the search audience have gone?
Well, you might argue that in this economy, hardly anyone is looking for a Realtor anymore. (It’s not true, but if you want to argue, go ahead.)
So those who DO want to find a Realtor — why aren’t they using search engines?
I can think of two reasons –
- Many real estate sites worked on building their online brands and marketing systems when search WAS hot. They did not squander their search capital! Once you found a solid agent site through the search engine, the agent and their marketing approach made themselves memorable. They provided you with a great experience and service. The next time you needed an agent, you didn’t go to the search engines — you went straight to the source that hooked you up with a great agent.
- Search engines don’t do a satisfactory job of answering relationship questions. You’re not just searching for a “Grand Rapids real estate agent” — you’re searching for one you can trust! Social media plays like FaceBook and LinkedIn answer the relationship, referral, and trust questions — much better than search engines can. The Real Estate Zebra posts that real estate agents who don’t invest in social media will quickly become irrelevant. The same is true for any service professional.
You still have time. Search isn’t irrelevant — yet.
When people visit your site, ask yourself 3 questions:
- What are you doing to make your company memorable?
- How are you building trust and relationships?
- And what are you doing to continue the conversation with your visitors?
Don’t squander your search audience!
SPF Protection for Email
photo credit: kweezy mcG
What’s SPF? When you hear “SPF” you might be thinking “Sun Protection Factor”. (Especially now that it’s spring!)
But last week, I set up SPF email protection for two clients.
When it comes to the internet, SPF stands for “Sender Policy Framework“.
What’s SPF do?
Basically, it tries to keep you from getting burned by email spoofers!
In a brief, SPF — or Sender Policy Framework — helps to cut down on “From Line” spamming. Its aim is to stop the havoc spammers wreak when they decide to put YOUR email address in the “From Line” of their spam.
Last week, one of my clients started to get swamped with “bounces” and “undelivered” emails. A spammer decided to use his email address in the from line. Aggravating!
Fortunately, my client did not have a catchall account — so we shut down the one, lone email account in question for a day, and asked clients to use an alternate email address that we set up until we resolved the situation.
Next, we set up SPF for his mail server using the open SPF Wizard — to help prevent any further email spoofing. Then, we re-opened his email account.
It’s only been 4 days — but both clients have reported a significant reduction in spam since we implemented SPF email protection.
So far, so good…
But how does SPF perform for the long term?
It didn’t take long to set up the SPF setting — a half hour for two clients.
Was it worth the time?
Just Say No to Catchall Email!
For every piece of legitimate email you receive, how many pieces of spam do you filter?
Sadly, the spam/legitimate ratio is frequently +1. And growing.
Sigh.
That’s why I was surprised to see that a few small business folks I hold in high regard still have catchall email enabled at their servers.
Catchall email is a terrible idea. When spammers find out you have a catchall email account (and it usually doesn’t take very long), you can expect an exponential increase in spam. And of course, catchall email account settings can dramatically decrease your efficiency and productivity.
Nonetheless, my colleagues defended their catchall email practice, erroneously believing it a) helps reduce spam and b) increases efficiency! Here are two examples of the flawed thinking behind catchall accounts:
- “Well, when I sign up for various online accounts, I have to give them an email address. So if I sign up for a Google account, say, I tell ‘em I’m google @ mydomain.com . Or facebook @ mydomain.com. Or whatever. I have zillions of email names. That way, I know if I start getting spam at one of the names, then that’s the company that sold my domain name. I’ll know that they are a bad business, and I’ll block their emails, and report them as spammers.”
- “And when I create all kinds of email names, I’m more efficient. I set up my inbox to automatically file every piece of email that comes in by email name into different inbox folders.”
Oi. What misconceptions! Let’s clear ‘em up….
Middle Aged, Cranky, and Loving Web Usability
I love the work of usability expert Jakob Nielson. I really do.
His latest UseIt Alerts are must-reads.
One alert takes a cranky old man’s slap at bad web design. Bad content, bad navigation, big bad badness.
Another discusses middle-aged folks and our declining web performance.
Both contain awesome analyses. Couldn’t agree more.
But keep two things in mind:
1. Criticizing is always easier than creating. Spotting bad design is easy. Creating great design (or content or navigation or anything, for that matter) is tougher. (And more rewarding.)
2. I’m middle-aged. I know how fun it can be to criticize the work of others. Especially whippersnappers.
So please do enjoy and appreciate Mr. N’s work — and his unique style of presenting it!
Double Your Subscriber Numbers Overnight!
Every month, I trash at least 4 or 5 magazines — without reading them.
They arrive in the mail. I stopped subscribing to them ages ago.
photo credit: bravenewtraveler
I’m sure I’m not alone. A number of friends of mine were just grousing about this annoying issue last week. It’s not just a waste of paper. It’s needless clutter. I have to pay to have unwanted periodicals hauled away. And it’s all a huge waste of my time.
But magazine publishers need to keep their subscriber numbers artificially elevated to keep their advertising prices artificially elevated. Pull the plug on your magazine subscription, and 50% of the time, the monthlies keep coming, anyway. The other 50% of the time, you’ll get swamped with sales letters that beg you to re-subscribe — at rock-bottom prices.
Quality of subscriber? Not important.
Quantity? That’s what these flailing magazine publishers are after.
What’s this have to do with your social media subscriptions? I was a little surprised to hear two internet marketing colleagues whine about their paltry number of “subscribers” this week — and the desperate measures they were considering to increase their numbers. One considered a crazy scheme to increase blog subscriber numbers, and another felt like a failure for having slightly less than 1,000 Twitter followers — after Twittering for a few days.
To me, this kind of needless fretting over subscriber numbers seems like a form of mental illness.
- Maybe it’s obsessive compulsiveness - “1 more, no, 10 more, no, 100 more, no, never enough!”
- Or an inferiority complex — “I must be popular, or I’m worthless”
- Or anxiety - “I must have the appearance of popularity, or I will lose face with my colleagues…”
Or perhaps all three?
In reality, the number of subscribers my cohorts have is irrelevant. Ironically, the quality of the relationships they have with their current subscribers — that’s actually very good! Their subscribers seem to love them — in spite of their neuroses! This camp of lovey-doviness should ensure the word-of-mouse (yeah, I meant mouse!) that will increase the quantity of subscriber numbers.
Over time.
But, my neurotic colleagues want instant results, and instant popularity. They measure their value not in the quality of their relationships, but the quantity. (I also suspect my colleagues are attracting an equally neurotic subscriber base, what with the law of attraction being universal and all.) I hope their quantity-quantity-quantity attitudes don’t make their current subscribers feel unappreciated — because that can surely impact long term goals!
Like John Lennon said, “Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You!”
Over the following weeks, I’ll share some of the unethical and neurotic ideas I’ve heard to increase your followers, connections, and subscribers. They’ll work like crazy all right — but I wouldn’t recommend a single one of these tactics!
You don’t want to be like a magazine, after all! Or develop a mental illness…
I’ll also share some ethical and humane ideas for increasing subscriber quantity — and quality.
First up: here is one completely legitimate way to increase your blog subscriber numbers — overnight!
Use the Feedburner FeedSmith Plugin. If you’re using WordPress to self-publish your blog and Feedburner to manager your Blog feed, be sure to use the FeedSmith Plugin for Wordpress. This plugin scoops up all the different ways someone might be subscribing to your feed, and re-directs them to Feedburner. You can keep track of every subscriber.
Now, my sensational headline “Double Your Subscriber Numbers Overnight” is about as true as any headline you’ll see on any woman’s magazine in the checkout stand. You actually already HAVE these subscribers — you just aren’t SHOWING all your subscribers NUMBERS in your Feedburner subscriber counts without this plugin. You can’t brag effectively without it!
And if you’re subscriber-quantity neurotic, seeing a higher number will make you feel better.
For about a second.
(Results may vary. One WordPress user I know only saw a 50% increase. And it took two days, instead of overnight. But that justified the 5 minutes of work it took to download, upload, and activate the plugin. And yeah, bragging rights aside, accurate measurements are actually important!)
Pitching Bloggers: PR Malpractice v. PR Best Practice
Note to PR firms: Let’s say you’re being paid to garner niched blog publicity for your client.
Here’s something you should know about bloggers:
We’re not robots. We’re real human beings!
Let me share something personal with you:
Sometimes, I step away from the computer. I wander about in nature, unfettered by email, IM, and cell phone.
Take this weekend, for example. A fine example of a March spring in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I went for a long and pleasant walk through an old forest.
Twice.
I went shopping for a birthday present for my dad. I visited with family. Enjoyed some laughs over cocktails.
And a friend and I ventured north of town to Frederick Meijer Gardens, to see the Butterflies are Blooming exhibit. Lovely!
I tell you this to demonstrate the humanity behind the bits and scripts that make up this blog.
Now, let’s contrast my weekend with my Monday morning. This morning, I sip my coffee and open up my blog dashboard for the first time in two days. I scan the comments. I approve some, but am chagrined to see 6 identical comments from a PR firm that represents a very promising software company with an interesting new product.
Now, had I seen the first comment on Saturday afternoon, I might have approved it. But six times in two days — with the same trying-too-hard message? Good thing I stepped away from my blog for a few days! I might have let the first comment slide by out of pity!
I had to tell Askimet that the comments were all spam. And, of course, I won’t review the software.
I suspect that a number of other bloggers received the same shoddy treatment from this PR firm. Instead of garnering positive publicity by developing a relationship with a blogger, the PR firm chose to comment spam me. This firm did their client a great disservice.
In fact, comment spamming is PR malpractice. It destroys relationships. And it seriously damages the potential for developing powerful third-party testimonials.
Contrast this PR approach with another software firm that approached me last week. Their marketing guy sent me a short email, telling me that he reads my blog and that his software might be of interest to my readers. He tells me (briefly!) what his software does, points me to his firm’s site, and gives me his complete contact information, including email and phone number.
Now, this sounds like a real human being! And he seems to appreciate that I, too, am a human! Because his email is courteous and professional, I visit his site. Intrigued by his product and his pitch, I write to tell him I am interested in reviewing his product. He responds that he will send me the software via FedEx.
As promised, his software arrived via FedEx this Monday morning — just as I was informing Askimet of the other PR firm’s blog spam. Ah, sweet juxtaposition!
I’m a blogger who likes celebrating butterflies and birthdays. I appreciate conversations. I nurture my human relationships. I want to see good people with good products succeed.
PR firms – please realize that blogs are more than bits and bots.
Blogs are opportunities for starting the conversations that can build valuable, human relationships.
Please respect my humanity, as I respect yours!
