Pitfalls of sending forum emails

I use the “mass email members” feature on forums very rarely.
Reason is simple - I don’t want to annoy the members.
And yet, somehow, I usually manage to cock things up most times.
This morning I sent out a mass email from the Platinax forums. It’s about the third mass email in two years, which is a […]

Moniker vs Platinax

Platinax is currently under sustained attack from a wave of automated blog comment spam, by what looks like one of the most aggressive amateurs I’ve ever had to deal with.
The automated comment spam is all promoting a raft of finance, pharma, and gambling affiliate sites registered - and hosted - with Moniker.com.
The size of the […]

Don’t run a mediocre forum

I know. I love forums. I think they have a more real sense of community than blogs anyday.
And in terms of marketing, offer far better potential.
But…the same principles of marketing apply to forums.
Creating Passionate Users runs an article called Don’t Give in To Feature Demands.
Although it’s aimed generically in terms of products/services, read the […]

Word of Mouth: the Marketing Figures

Church of the Customer highlights some interesting stats about Word of Mouth as an engine for business growth.
The figures come from a study by the London School of Economics:

* A 7% increase in positive word of mouth unlocks 1% additional company growth
* A 2% reduction in negative […]

Whatever happened to Adam Bosworth?

So I’m checking out some old blog subscriptions, when I find Adam Bosworth as a Google blogger recommended as worth reading, via Threadwatch last year.
But he apparently hasn’t posted since November 2005.
That’s a shame, because when you check out posts such as his presentation for Salesforce.com - in which he highlights the need for a […]

How to kill a sale quickly with your website

So I’m looking at a major ecommerce site redevelopment - it’s probably too big for me, so I ask for recommendations.
I call Rand in Seattle, and mentions a couple of people.
I check out one in London.
It’s a webdesign and development company. Only they’ve got some kind of spyware-esque link ads running all through their […]

Big backups can kill a server

So I thought to do a backup of one of my larger forums while I remembered…
A client on the same server called - their site was no longer responding.
I figured it must have been the forum database backup, so I killed the process and everything started to run fine again.
Note to self - only do […]

Google targeting of link networks

Jagger - revisited
The Jagger update in October 2005 was a major event - it had far reaching consequences that affected a lot of webmasters and SEO’s.
When the fall-out finally settled, it was observed that “authority” sites had better positioning, and that link exchanges appeared to be devalued.
I’m now coming to the speculative conclusion that what […]