I haven’t heard anything from the crew at WPN  since our interview, but woke up today to a picture text message from Mat Siltala today of my face on the video homepage of WPN (see http://videos.webpronews.com/).  Thanks Mat!

It appears that the production crew has added in some ancillary video and written a nice summary of our  interview. Feel free to check it out – David Mink on FTC Guidelines!

Watch the video here:

More WebProNews Videos

Dates for registration

From April 26 to June 10 registered trademark owners will have the exclusive ability to register the new .co TLD for their registered trademark. (Needless to say, if you own a protected term you will certainly want to register it during this period!) After that protected period general public registration of .co TLD’s will begin in July.

Summary

The .co opportunity = additional traffic and brand management.
The .co risk = a cybersquatter registering your company’s trade name or marks before your do.
The goal = securing your company’s .co opportunity.

Good luck!

Andrew Melchior and I spent about an hour presenting and taking Q & A.  You can find the slideshare presentation here:

Along with everything else that comes with the territory, both Mat and Dave will be speaking this year.  Here are the details and I suggest you don’t miss these sessions as they could change your life forever!

Wednesday Nov. 11 @ 2:55 pm
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Brand and Social Reputation Management
Location: Salon F

Reputation management is becoming more central to website marketing responsibilities. Whether you currently have reputation management issues to deal with, or you want to be proactive and keep reputation issues at bay, this session will teach you a lot. Want to have your own site reviewed live?

Give your business card to the moderator or any panelist at the beginning of the session.

Speakers:

Brian Chappell, Sr. Social Search Strategist, Ignite Social Media
Giovanni Gallucci, Social Media Ninja
Matt Siltala, Owner/Chief Media Officer, Dream Systems Media
Jennifer Laycock, Director of Marketing/Editor, SiteLogic/Search Engine Guide

Thursday Nov. 12 @ 1:30 pm
Competitive Intelligence: Know Thy Competitor Well
Location: Salon C

Competitive research is important in any business, so that you know what you’re up against. Competitive research online can reveal a wealth of valuable intelligence about not only your competition, but also the need-to-know activity in your industry. Learn all about the tools our experts use and the richness of the data they are able to collect.

Speakers:

Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service
Michael Streko, Co-Founder / CEO, KnowEm LLC
Matt Siltala, Owner/Chief Media Officer, Dream Systems Media
Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant, Marketing Pilgrim LLC

Thursday Nov. 12 @ 2:55 pm
Domain Names and Trademarks: Legal Issues
Location: Salon C

Trademarks, domain names, and click fraud are legal issues related to search engine marketing that marketers need to be aware of. This panel will look at the current state of trademarks, click fraud, and some privacy issues related to search engine marketing.

Speakers:

Deborah Wilcox, Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP
Clarke Walton, Founder, Walton Law Firm
David Mink, Co-Owner/Chief Legal Counsel, Dream Systems Media
Steve O’Brien, VP, Sales & Marketing, Click Forensics

Now you know where we’ll be for sure at those times and we hope to see you there too!

OK, so your not impressed and would like to know what SEO campaigns have to do with building chicken coops. The correlation has to do with being able to work both inside and outside of the blue prints.

So, let me tell you a little bit more about my weekend project. The chicken coop blueprint I was following called for both 3″ and 4″ wide pieces of lumber, however Lowes didn’t have any of either. I had to use 3.5″ and 4.5″ wide lumber and that meant that I ran into a snag when it came time to put on the doors. My doors were too big! I had been using 4.5″ pieces when the plan called for 4″. So, I had to improvise and leave the comfort zone of simply following the plan. I realized that a good chicken coop engineer (yes, I like that title) had to be able to work both inside and outside of the blueprint.

A good SEO has to do the same thing. Sure, you can try to simply get links from all of the same places your top ranking competitor has, but at the end of the day if you want to outrank that site you better be willing to get creative and find work arounds when you feel stuck. It seems to me the best SEO’s are great at using tried and true techniques, but even better at finding creative strategies for making the doors fit. So, if your SEO mojo feels like it’s in a rut go build a chicken coop for some creative inspiration.

If you follow this blog, you know that I’m a big NBA fan and am always looking for ways to tie basketball into my posts. So, I need to give a big thanks to Mr. Charlie Villanueva for being the first NBA player to be caught Tweeting during a professional game!

Charlie plays for the Milwaukee Bucks, which is a franchise that is currently fighting for the last of 8 playoff spots in the Eastern conference. Charlie also plays for a notoriously hard-nosed coach, Mr. Scott Skiles, who is the only point guard in history to ever get into a fight with @THE_REAL_SHAQ. (Literally Skiles at 6′ 2″ and 180 lbs tried to tangle with 7′ 1″ and 325 lbs Shaq). Apparently, Skiles reamed Charlie pretty good for his lack of discretion in jumping on Twitter during a game! I guess Charlie should consider himself lucky not to have been playing for Jerry Sloan. Jerry might have kicked him off the team or a few days.

So what exactly did Charlie do? During halftime of Sunday’s game against the Boston Celtics, Charlie sent the following Tweet: “In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We’re playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.” Coincidentally, Charlie had a team high point total of 19 and the Bucks won the game. Regardless of the positive outcome, Skiles was worried that Charlie’s Tweet sent a message of being unfocused. I tend to agree.

I love this story. I love that NBA players are becoming big Twitter users. I love that Charlie was crazy enough to send a Tweet during an actual game. And, I love that Skiles called him out for it, because Tweets often can and will bite you back.

A Twitter Case Study — Picture This Scenario:

Image by Brandon Buttars

You’re hired to manage a social media campaign for a client – a family fun center with several locations. You decide to test the social media waters with Twitter. So you recommend the following:

Send out a message via the family fun center Twitter account, tweeting something like:

“TODAY ONLY (3/5/09) FREE entry to skate rink and free skate rental. Please RT.”

What Happens Next:

Before you know it the tweet is spreading like wildfire. You are of course tracking the number of retweets and are astonished by the number of people retweeting the promotion. Initially, you are excited. You can’t help but think; “This is awesome, our business is getting exposed to tons of new potential customers.” You are also getting a little nervous… just how many freebies will you give away today? A couple hundred? More?

The only thing you can do is wait and see what exactly will happen. Throughout the day the number of tweets continues to grow and so does the line for FREE entry into your client’s business. By nightfall you have given freebies to literally thousands of people and some of your locations are experiencing over-crowd. What will your paying customers think? Are they going to be satisfied with their experience and wish to return? This scenario brings up the following questions:

1. Is giving away something FREE worth the price of potentially acquiring a new customer?
2. Will this particular cost of acquisition to be less than normal, considering that you had paying customers that were upset that they didn’t get in free, and might not return because of the frustration they experience having to pay and then the place being so packed?
3. Will this promotion actually lead to a true customer acquisition, considering the fact these people are not paying for anything.
4. How can you estimate the effect this Twitter campaign might have?
5. Will the locations be properly staffed?
6. Do the store managers know about the promotion? Will customers be questioned about the authenticity of the promotion?
7. Will there be enough skate rentals available?
8. Will the owners of the business be satisfied?
9. What is the expectation?

The list goes on and on.

Morals of the story: Pick one… Social media promotions can spread like wildfire, people like to get something for free, or something else???

Now considering this scenario described above; how could this promotion scenario be tweaked for better results? Here are a few suggestions we came up with:

1. If you are going to give away something for free, maybe you should require the taker do something simple in return.
2. You could require the customer do something. Give them options: 1) write a blog post about the promotion and link to the company website. 2) follow us on Twitter. 3) friend us on Facebook.
3. Or, require the customer to make some kind of purchase. “Free entry with skate rental purchase.” This can help hedge the cost.
4. Communication must be great. Every manager needs to know about the Twitter promotion. The locations need to be properly staffed for the potential influx of customers. You should have extra skates on hand and other products as well, and probably limit the amount of free entries to maybe like the first 500 or something.
5. Mostly their must be a measurable goal, agreed to beforehand by all involved.

Example:

For example, the agreed upon goal could be to get potential new customers exposed to the business by offering them free entry. This also creates some buzz about your business and might also give you an excellent opportunity for getting some press coverage. With those being the goals, you would then determine how to measure the success by maybe determine what average customer acquisition budget you need to hit to make the event a success.

Overall, we agreed that using Twitter as a promotional tool can be a great thing. In fact, we often recommend these promotions to our clients, but realize that the execution needs to be stellar or you might end up having a Twitter promotion nightmare. Any Twitter promotion attempt should be applauded and a signal that business owners are realizing the potential they have when marketing in the social media arena.

If you know of, have been involved with, or witnessed a Twitter promotion gone wild, please leave a comment with your story.

Note: This post has been updated from it’s original version.

The employee comes into the office Monday morning and reports, “Boss, I have some good news and some bad news. Which would you like first?” You opt for the good news – and he informs you that he is pretty sure that he broke the company record for sales. Now the bad news, he informs you that his laptop was stolen or lost sometime during the return trip. However, he says everything will be fine because he has all of the customer’s business cards and he is planning on calling each customer today to recover all of the lost data. Is everything “fine”?

It depends… but chances are high that you will have a few legal problems on your hands. If your business is like most, you do not have any company rules regarding encryption of sensitive personal information and stored in the laptop was a spreadsheet containing all of the customer names and credit card numbers for new customers acquired during the business trip to Boston.

What legal problems might you have on your hands?

1. For starters, over 40 states now have “security breach notification statutes” which obligate you to notify customers that their credit card information may have been compromised. You have a lot of explaining to do! (Note that most of these laws provide an exception to your obligation of providing notice if the sensitive personal information has been encrypted.)

2. On top of that your legal counsel informs you that Massachusetts has just adopted a law, which makes it illegal to store unencrypted sensitive personal information on a laptop. Additionally, your company was supposed to have a comprehensive written information security program in order to comply with the Massachusetts law.

Let’s briefly dissect this new Massachusetts law:

The law is aimed at protecting sensitive personal information (“SPI”). What exactly is SPI?

Typically this includes a person’s first and last name or first initial and last name plus a social security number, driver’s license number, credit card number (with or without a security code), or other financial account number.

The law requires that certain categories of information be encrypted. So what is mandatory encryption?

Massachusetts requires encryption of all sensitive personal information of a Massachusetts’s resident that is stored in portable devices or transmitted electronically.
(Please note that this requirement applies to all businesses.)

Requirements for implementing a Comprehensive Information Security Program:

Without getting into all of the specific requirements, let me just tell you that the law requires your security program contain 12 specific procedural elements and 8 specific technical elements.

In particular, businesses must now take “reasonable steps” to ensure and verify that all third-party service providers with access to your customer or employee sensitive personal information have the ability to protect that information. This includes written certification that the provider also has a written, comprehensive information security program.

So what are the risks of non-compliance?

Nobody really knows. The Massachusetts law simply states that the attorney general may bring an action for violation of the state’s requirements. IMO, this would most likely be a fine.

So, beyond guessing what the attorney general may or may not do – what are the practical consequences of non-compliance with this law?
In my opinion the real risk of non-compliance is the possible damage to your brand image.

So the question becomes, how valuable is your brand’s image? For many organizations it is the most valuable asset that you have. The funny thing about brand value is that it can only be built over the life span of a business, however it can be lost over night.

In today’s world of identify theft paranoia, your company’s ability to protect its customer and employee sensitive personal information greatly impacts your brand’s image. Simply put, handling people’s sensitive personal information is a high stakes venture.

I have often heard lawyers say that one of the chief purposes of business law is the allocation of risk. That statement is applicable here. One risk that a business can hope to allocate properly through practical legal planning is protection of its customers “sensitive personal information.” In other words, if you can protect their SPI you can protect your company’s brand image.

Privacy protection matters are a hot legal topic and in recent years there has been an expanding legal framework for the protection of sensitive personal information. Let me provide you with just three examples:

1. The Presidential Identity Theft Task Force (did you know we had such a group?) recently asked the FTC to explore identity theft issues. After a year of exploration the FTC has now developed the a lengthy list of recommendations and is expected to bring this list to Congress for action in the very near future, this list includes a recommendation for implementation of national standards for data protection and breach notification.

2. A Nevada law requiring encryption of customer personal information went into effect on October 1, 2008. This law requires “that businesses in this State (Nevada) shall not transfer any personal information of a customer through an electronic transmission other than a facsimile to a person outside of the secure system of the business unless the business uses encryption to ensure the security of electronic transmission.”

3. As of May 1, 2009 Massachusetts law requires that all businesses that own, license, store or maintain sensitive personal information concerning any Massachusetts resident must take comprehensive measures to protect that information from unauthorized access, disclosure, or misuse. This law includes a requirement to encrypt all sensitive personal information of Massachusetts’s residents that is stored on any portable device or that is transmitted over the Internet or by wireless connections.

So, what does all this mean for your business?

IMO, regardless of whether your business handles the sensitive personal information of Massachusetts residents or not, you cannot afford to ignore these privacy developments. A pattern is being established and you should evaluate your company procedures regarding safeguarding customer and employee sensitive personal information.

Please be aware that there are already a variety of federal and state laws that require businesses employ “reasonable safeguards” for the protection of SPI. Although, the phrase “reasonable safeguards” is still somewhat undefined, the Nevada and Massachusetts laws addressed today go a long way toward moving encryption from a mere recommended practice to an actual legal obligation.

Best Practices Checklist

1. Review the SPI information you are collecting.
2. Is it necessary to both collect and store the SPI?
3. If so, where do you store the SPI? Do you send the SPI to any third parties?
4. Review your Privacy Policy to make sure it is consistent with your business practice of collecting and storing data.
5. Take inventory of how the data is protected. Should it be encrypted?
6. Do you have a written “comprehensive information security plan?” Do the third parties with access to your SPI have a written security plan?

When it comes to whether you should use SEO tools you must consider both the good and the bad – like every other choice in life. Tools are good for gathering data. However, tools can be expensive, produce inherent errors, and have many limitations.

Scripts are tools that you create. Save time. Save money. Thomas recommends adapting your scripts from existing open source code.

Dave Wallace At SMX

David Wallace

Recommends having a routine that looks something like this:

1. Begin your day with email, bloglines, and Twitter. With Twitter just looks for DM’s and @replies.

2. Write your new blog posts.

3. Now do everything else. Deal with clients. Deal with business. Deal with finances. etc.

David says that he is really big on structuring his email. (Our own Andrew Melchior is a wizard with organizing email!) Develop a category structure.

David also says he relies heavily on bloglines rather than visiting individual blogs. He is very selective with social bookmarking. He uses www.socialmarker.com which allows you to submit to multiple social networks.

Jennifer Slegg

@jenstar ecommends using an old fashioned notebook, a personal voice recorder, dragon naturally speaking which converts spoken words into text, blackberries and iPhones, jott.coma phone message which allows you to leave a message which is transformed into an email sent to yourself. I really enjoyed her down to earth approach – nice job Jen!

Stephan Spencer

His talk was based on the idea of GTD – getting things done. For example he recommends making to do lists in different categories like – at home to do lists, at phone to do lists, at email to do lists. So, if you are in your email the idea is to pull up your email to do list. Remember the 2 minute rule, which is to simply knock the item off the list if it can be done in less than 2 minutes He also talked about a lot of other things that I am much too lazy to write!