Keith Shirley

I received this today via the IIA Newsletter:

IIA establish an International Strategy Working Group
Members sought for working group
The IIA have set up an International Strategy Working Group. The aim of the International Strategy Working Group is to assist Irish businesses in increasing revenues from Overseas markets through better use of the Internet.

This working group aims to achieve this by providing support to businesses on how they can achieve increased global reach, increased global market share and increased global revenues.

Topics covered by with group will include Localisation, Translation Services, Foreign Payment Methods, Legal and Taxation issues in other Jurisdictions.

If you are a member of the IIA and would like to work with the group please email Roseanne at members@iia.ie. 

Read more about the working group on IIA.ie  

From my own work with the Social Media Working Group I can warn you that it can involve a lot of work. It can also be very rewarding. For me personally it has rounded out my level of knowledge and exposed me to areas of Social Media that I normally don’t work with.

If you are in a business that has the potential for internationalisation (or of course if you have already done the legwork) then get in contact with Roseanne to find out who else is involved and how your experiences may fit in.

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Damien Mulley sent me an email last week with copies of his Online Marketing training notes and his Business Blogging notes. The good news is that he is making them available for everyone. Fair play to him for doing this – it’s a great way of spreading the word. He makes a good point when he says the value in training comes via the trainer and not the documentation. If the notes were the most valuable part we could just read a book.

I’m going to go through them in detail soon to see it there are any points I need to add to my own trainings. Maybe I’ll find something that I disagree with – Damien seems to like a good discussion. I’ll be seeing him at the Blog Awards but I’ll have to be very sure of my facts first.

If you download a copy of the notes from Damien – please make sure to leave him a comment.

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Why do some people freak out when they receive spam? There seems to be a weird kind of joy of the hunt within Irish web “guru” circles  when they receive a spam mail.

As an Irish business, God forbid that you should send a spam mail to any of the well known bloggers or twitter users. It might even be that the mail you send is relatively innocent but it probably won’t matter. You’ll be tarred and feathered in public from people on high horses.

I’m not saying it’s right to spam. The Irish government agrees that it’s an increasing problem and a recent news report talks about how the fines can now hit 250,000 Euro. The trouble with the new laws is that I doubt they will be enforced. What we need to do is help everyone understand what they can do to avoid sending spam:

• Get peoples permission to send them mail. Do it at the same time they sign up for an account if you can.
• If people sign up over the web – makes sure it’s really them by getting the software to send an automated mail asking for confirmation – This is called double opt-in
• Make it easy for them to be taken off your mailing lists. Make sure that they stay off
• If your customer database has not got email addresses or your customers permission to send them mails then phone them and ask them. Yes it’ll take ages BUT a real call will give you the opportunity to keep the communication channel open with your customers. Don’t be afraid to speak with your customers.
• Just because you don’t receive much spam does not mean that they don’t. Are you really going to be sending them information that is useful to them? Even with their permission – a boring sales pitch will just get deleted. Ask yourself why you want to send mails.

Update via Mulleynet - Denise Cox’s Blog has some great details on the new regulations.

Update2: They say when you look back on things you always have 20/20 vision. I’d like to point out that my link to Damiens blog was not meant to point the finger at him. In that particular post I agree with him – The PR company should have just apologised, removed him from their list and do better next time. When they try to convey the attitude that you should be greatful for being spammed they are damaging their own customers image.

I get 1000′s of spam messages a day and they do annoy me but the piles of junk mail that come through my letterbox at home annoy me more. Dan Sullivan has an interesting post on his blog about how people react differently depending on how they receive their spam.

Please make sure to read the comments for this post – there are a number of interesting answers.

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After my uncharacteristically negative comments about Webfusion – I wanted to highlight a shining example of good service that I’ve received.

A customer of mine has been using HelpDeskPilot for quite some time now. The are very happy with it and really missed it when their web server had problems. I was asked to help them restore the backup onto a new server.

The restore procedure and general setup of HelpDeskPilot is actually exceptionally easy. I had some issues with the hosting providers system and I can only say positive things about how helpful and patient the support at Helpdesk have been. They kept in regular contact and I knew they were working to fix it.

When I have problems – that’s what I want – to be able to trust that my supplier is really doing their best to get the problems solved and know that they will keep me updated.