An interesting case at work today, where a website owner got targeted by a company/individual who had registered a number of domain names relevant to them and was trying to sell them at £3000 a pop. As you can imagine, the website owner was quite concerned about this behaviour and wouldn’t you be? It’s a technique called cybersquatting (or domain name squatting) and is more of an annoyance than a real threat to a business.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say I own a domain called http://www.owencutajar.com. Mr Domain Extortionist comes along and registers the following domains:

• www.owen-cutajar.com (extra dash)
• www.owencutajar.net  (different TLD)
• www.owncutajar.com (misspelling)
• www.owencutajarROCKS.com (derivative name)

Mr Extortionist then emails me and tries to sell me the domains (for many times the price he paid for them). They can use the carrot approach: “It would be a good opportunity to attract more search engine traffic, be relevant to other markets etc” or the stick approach “If you don’t buy the domain, I’ll sell it to your competitor/to a porn site etc”. The initial outlay is pretty low for him, possibly around $5 a domain name, but usually he’ll try and sell them for thousands of pounds each. If he can just sell one, he can easily recoup his costs and make a tidy profit.

So, how should an organisation handle this threat? Here’s some advice:

1. Under no circumstance should you buy any of the domains the squatter is holding. As outlined above, the squatter need only sell 1 domain name and he can recoup the cost of the investment (and then some). This will also trigger off a repeat cycle where the squatter buys more domain names and ransoms it off again. It’s the same thinking behind the “We don’t negotiate with terrorists” approach. Giving in to their demand provides positive reinforcement for their actions and only triggers off a repeat cycle.
2. Realise that this threat won’t go away. The number of combinations that the squatter can register are limitless, so you don’t really have the option of pre-empting the situation by buying up all the permutations before the squatter comes along. It would be immensely expensive and a nightmare to manage. Instead, familiarise yourself with the risks and demonstrate that you will not bow to pressure.
3. Take action. If you are based in the U.S. and the squatter is infringing your trademark, you can take the domain away from them. 15 U.S.C. § 1129(1)(A) states: “Any person who registers a domain name that consists of the name of another living person, or a name substantially and confusingly similar thereto, without that person’s consent, with the specific intent to profit from such name by selling the domain name for financial gain to that person or any third party, shall be liable in a civil action by such person.”. If you’re not based in the U.S., you can notify the Office of Fair Trading or equivalent body that the company that has approached you is seeking to extort money from you using unethical practices. If the situation escalates, you may even want to involve your local Fraud Squad.
4. Alternatively, do nothing! There’s nothing you can technically do to prevent people from registering domain names and the vast majority of squatted domains will just sit there doing nothing and eventually expire. It takes effort from a squatter to register domains and try and sell them, and if they don’t get any traction, they will head off and seek another victim. Non-engagement is a valid technique to deploy in this case, but make sure your own domain is well established and people know where to find you.

I’d be interested to hear from others who have had to face the situation and how you dealt with it. Just drop a comment below.

Don’t discount the first few minutes of the video, Perry talks through the basics of social media, then puts together a flow of how the Marketing side of it works. He compares social networking websites to a Party, your blog as your Home. When you go to a party you don’t ram what you do down people’s throats. Rather you are nice to people, you may even invite them to your home and possibly tell them what you do. The people you meet will remember you for this and recommend you to their friends, extending your reach way beyong the few social contacts you have made.

Moral of the story: Be Cool .. interesting concept.

Allan sent me link to some advice by Dave Briggs recommending how Local Councils can start setting involved in social media. The great thing about it is that you could really apply this to anyone making a start in this environment. Here’s what it says:

First, start listening. Stop relying on Google Alerts and start using RSS. Maybe iGoogle, Pageflakes or Netvibes to start with. Subscribe to searches, but also to feeds for Flickr tags and groups related to your area, to delicious bookmarks that are appropriately tagged, likewise YouTube and other video sites. Start checking the local forums and noting where the Council comes in for criticism or even praise. Look on Facebook to see if there are any groups or pages formed around the area – if they are public then you can see what’s being said without having to join at this stage. Identify the people with an obvious love for the area, with genuine enthusiasm and commitment.

Next, start acknowledging and responding. Respond where appropriate in blog comments and in forums. Make sure that the Council’s message is being heard where people want to hear it, don’t rely on them checking your website for press releases or news items, or reading the local paper cover-to-cover. Make use of creative commons licenced images on flickr on your own website, and make sure you include a crediting link. Link from your site to those containing some good news, related to the local area.

Thirdly, start to engage yourself. Start public blogs for big council projects, so that people can be kept in the know – if they want to be – and can leave comments or ask questions, and then make sure someone responds to them. Maybe senior managers should blog too, to help get messages out that people can read without them first going through the filter of the local press. How about creating a blog to publicise the services that the council provides, by having a different team blog every couple of weeks about what they do. Create video content and make it shareable on YouTube, etc, encouraging others to display council content on their sites. Make the copyright on council content as relaxed as possible so that others can use it however they choose. Put meetings online, even if it isn’t live streamed, make them available as podcasts, put any slides on services like SlideShare

Where should this all be done? Try and use existing services where you can. Don’t try and recreate existing networks where they are already working. If people are happy uploading to a flickr group, let them, don’t try and force them to use an online photo gallery you have just developed. In fact, rather than developing it, spend the money showing folk who don’t know about flickr how to use it. Likewise with blogs – you need a really good argument, in my opinion, not to just use WordPress.com. It’s just so quick and easy – and free.

Who should be doing this? In terms of listening, everyone in the Council. If that’s unrealistic, then at least someone in each team should be monitoring what’s going on, not just communications departments. In terms of acknowledging and responding, then officers with responsibility for what is being discussed should feel empowered to state the council’s position on relevant issues online – again they shouldn’t feel the need to leave it to the communications officer. As for enagaging, then anyone with an enthusiasm for connecting locally online should be provided with the tools to do so. Nobody should be forced into it, but those with a passion to spread the word about the good work they, and other council officers, do should be empowered to do so.

Another important point to make is that social media doesn’t take the place of other forms of communication and enagagement, and really ought to be considered an “as well as”. You’ll still need to do your newsletters and stuff, bu you might be able to integrate the two – maybe by putting links to your online content in your newsletters, for instance. It also mean that you still need to use face to face means of consulting – whilst online social methods can bring great results, it is vital to blend in the offline too, so as to ensure that you are not excluding anyone, and so that as many different voices can be heard.

What is clear is that this stuff is not the responsibility of the web team, nor the comms team. It should be in service teams that the ideas should be produced and the comms and web folk should just provide the means for that idea to flourish. You do need to have the boss onside though, which is where notes from Cabinet Office ministers come into play.

That’s most of it, but you can contribute on the topic here

photo credit: Nikita Kashner

Great post down at NetStrife talking about Things to Look for in WordPress Themes. There’s lots of good advice in there which you can really apply to any technology that has stand-alone themes, not just WordPress. So, what does the article recommend? Here’s a quick list:

• Fast Loading Time: You don’t want your blog to feel like a snail, so try to go for a lightweight theme that you can load your own add-ons into.
• Widget-ready: Widgets make it really easy to add your own bits to different sections of the blog. Without these you have to mess with code and that’s not always something users can manage.
• Search-engine optimized: I’m pretty sure that how you rank in search engines is important for you, so try and pick a theme that is optimized for search engines.
• Valid markup: Some may argue that this isn’t necessary especially as widgets you introduce may break your validity, but it’s always good to start from a valid position if you can, making your site as accessible as possible
• Prominent advertisement spots: If you’re planning on selling advertising on your blog, make sure the new theme has allocated a good position for these slots as this is what advertisers will be looking for.
• Clean design and layout: The easier your blog is to read, the more traction it will have with your audience resulting in higher visit rates and lower bounce rates
• Colours that suit your blog topic: This one is easily overlooked. It’s important for your blog’s colour to suit the theme of your  blog. For example, pink wouldn’t suit a live event video streaming website, but would look great on website about your love life.

I’ve started getting my themes from FreshPress themes because they score highly on all the points above, but there are quite a few themes out there that will work too.

There’s much more on the post, so pop down and read it.

I got a really interesting report from The Wiki Artist today which talks about what organisations need to look for when planning ahead for the next 5 years. Here are the main highlights that companies need to watch out for:

• Customer-driven innovation will become mainstream
• Online communities will proliferate
• Maintaining the privacy of customers and the security of intellectual property will be paramount
• Technology will give wings to customisation
• Customer interaction will take place far more frequently over mobile devices

And here are 5 steps how companies can prepare for the technology-wuse customer of 2013:

• Start researching and testing now
• Think multi-channel
• Be ready to open up … and protect
• Revisit privacy and security policies
• Matching IT to customer demand

It’s an extremely interesting report. Read it here

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“Enterprises must learn how to be less dependent on the shrinking number of folks who are well versed in the applications running the business like COBOL, PowerBuilder, and Oracle Forms,” … “Most CIOs won’t admit it, but not only do many of them not know how these applications work, they don’t know if these applications work. All they know is they’ve got 30 million lines of COBOL code and no COBOL programmers, institutional knowledge, or documentation. They need to go in and liberate their intellectual property from the bowels of legacy systems.”

Does that strike a chord? It’s a quite taken from a post on InfoWorld entitled 7 things IT should be doing which talks about a number of problems organisations face today and gives some advice as to how companies should be dealing with them. Here are the main points:

1. Follow your users: Find out what your users really do in their day job. Share their pain and let them help you tailor what you’re offering them.
2. Embrace Web 2.0: Your users have high standards as to what applications are supposed to do nowadays. Letting them down will alienate them.
3. Tame the data monster: Bad data means that people can’t do their job effectively. Make data cleansing one of your top priorities.
4. Flirt with disaster: Disaster planning is only the first step of making sure you can cope with foreseeable problems. Make sure they’re tested and up to date.
5. Capture old knowledge: Use toolkits like ITIL to capture and store old knowledge. ITIL Mangement will be a key differentiator for you in the future.
6. Plug data leaks: If you don’t have a data security policy and don’t police it, your data could end up in the wrong hands. Make sure you know what needs to be protected and what doesn’t.
7. Follow the money: Senior management in the IT department need to have more than a basic grasp of the business drivers of the company. This will help the whole department function effectively.

There’s some great stuff in there, ranging from technical issues to business issues, read the complete article here

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I’ve just noticed that AskOwen has hit a total of 100 posts. I’m pretty pleased with how it’s going, especially as it hit an all-time high of 600 page views this week after Scoble commented on one of the posts on FriendFeed. Here are the posts that went up these last few days:

• How do I upgrade my WordPress blog with Fantastico?
• How can I get a Gmail user’s Full Name?
• Is there a market for “trial-run” websites?
• How can I receive faxes for free?
• How can I protect my blog from getting hacked?

That last one was the one that got me lots of traffic. Worth a read if you use WordPress as your blogging platform. Check them out

A customer is standing by the vacuum cleaner display. The Sales assistant approaches the customer and ask “are you looking for a upright or cylinder?”

Which letter best describes the selling skills?

• Product knowledge know what you are selling.
• Acknowledge customer- make eye contact
• You now establish the customers need & wants
• Match the products to the needs & wants
• Ensure the customer is satisfied.
• Now close the sale
• Take the money!

Great post from Leo’s Blog. That’s a great acronym to remember what you need to do.

Here are some key takeaways I picked up at the session:

• Service is the differentiator that transforms organisations from “Box Shifters” to “Business Partners”
• Getting real data immediately in the field improves accuracy and reliability that has knock on benefits on the whole of the supply chain
• Don’t assume that scaling doesn’t requires re-tuning
• The more you analyse your data, the more effective you can be in making your services attractive to your customer (example excessive break-down rates per year should prompt a service review to keep customer sweet)
• What is simple and elementary in one industry may be “rocket science” in another

Was a great talk, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

• Create link clusters within your blog
• Rework HTML title tags of trafficked posts
• Invite your readers to connect with you on StumbleUpon and Facebook
• Save your best posts for the best times of the week
• Edit your post one more time
• Stop writing about yourself. Start solving problems
• Subscribe to the feeds of your industry’s major players
• Give a great post to a prominent blog
• Go to the store
• Answer your email and comment questions

Some good suggestions there, which should improve your blogging game better than a set of Callaway irons. The points above are just a summary. Check out the whole post.