Beware: You May Get Slammed

The Internet is a funny place. People think they have license to do anything. Egos run rife. And ethical behaviour is often lacking.

Take a recent example.

I was surfing the web the other week and found a useful article. From reading that article I did a Google search and found the original article on a a great blog site. There were two articles that were great teaching tools so, rather than not attributing them as the original article failed to do, I included the article pretty much intact and quoted the source of the article with the link back to the original blog and article.

Compared to all the advice I receive (which is just steal the article and rewrite it a bit to make it your own) I believed it more ethical to attribute it.

So the owner of the original blog article leaves a terse comment on the 2 articles I attributed demanding the copyrighted articles be removed immediately.

No problem. I removed the posts, and asked how we could use their articles more appropriately.

The response? He referred me to a post supposedly about blogging protocols. Great – a responsive colleague. But no, he pointed me to a post he wrote slamming me for “stealing” his work and then flaming my editorial capabilities.

Now if you asked me if I’d be happy to find some of my work on someone else’s site then heck no. But if they were responsive and requested how to do business better then I think I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.

But then, I don’t have the ego some others do.

So here’s the deal.

If you want to use someone else’s article, ask them first. Even though most IM types will say just steal it and rewrite it as your own, I don’t agree with that. There’s too much shonky stuff being done on the web already – ever notice those sites that are full of badly written articles you see on many other sites or comments that are so canned they bear no relationship to the post they are commenting!

Me? I don’t believe in trashing other people. I’m all for assuming people are trying to do the right thing and I’m happy to help those who are prepared to learn.

Help Needed – Consider It Closely

From time to time, we get bad news in our lives. Occasionally, that news can be catastrophic and totally rock your world.

Young Cam Fulton is a budding Internet Marketer I work with whose family has been suffering like many in Christchurch New Zealand from a thousand earthquakes and tremors in recent times. The place is a mess and unlikely to return to its former quaint charm.

To top it off for Cam and his family, his mother was recently diagnosed with cancer and will not be covered by her insurance.

The family is in strife.

Please share this link as much as you can. Take a read of the page and you will understand why. Help Cam and his family. A tweet, a like, a comment, a donation – anything will help their spirits and their massive bills for surgery.

http://createwithcam.com/help-my-mum-debbie/

Heck, even consider it a valentine gift for Debbie.

This is genuine and not a trick or a spam. It’s a real ‘one of us’ who needs our help. I’m sure there are others. But Cam has reached out. It’s up to us to reach back and help him and his family through.

The Customer is King

Seems not in the online world where ‘content is king’ resounds more strongly.

Had a great example of this recently.

I’m spending time with some young guns to learn more about internet marketing – there’s always something else to learn in this game. I’m paying a hundred bucks a month to access their knowledge, tools and lessons. So, as any customer of mine would expect, I’m expecting regular content and activity as promised in their marketing materials.

For ten days I’ve had nothing but sales letters from their autoresponder.

No updates to their site. No feedback from comments on the blog. No responses to questions. No new content. No feedback on ‘assignments’.

So I sent an email and queried this. For all I knew I may have been inadvertently disabled in their course system. I also pointed out it was a good lesson to learn – to keep in touch with your paying customers in terms of their content expectations (not just through constant sales letters). Continue reading →

Seagate in Australia

I’ve had a Seagate external hard disk drive for years and it still works well – the only problem I had was I accidentally threw out the power cable (doh!) and had great difficulty with the folk at Seagate to understand the product I had and whether they had a replacement cable.

Then I had a Maxtor One Touch III which still works fault-free today. I use it when I’m travelling to take a lot of my work files with me. It’s only 80gb (that was big when new!) but does the job.

Earlier this year I upgraded the external hard drive I use for backups to a 1TB Maxtor. And it’s already making a very sick sound. Searching the internet I decided to stop trying to make it work by hooking it up to other computers as this may be causing damage. So, in my travels I found a news item that said Seagate had introduced Data Recovery Services to Australia a few years ago.

I don’t want to lose the data on my drive and I’ve waited a couple weeks to see if I need what’s on there. Turns out I do! Next step – find Seagate in Australia.

Boy, has it been hard to find Seagate in Australia!

I followed a number of web links to track them down, including the yellow pages, and after dialling about 7 numbers, finally ended up overseas.

Fact is, it seems Seagate no longer has a physical presence in Australia .

So, to make a warranty claim you need to go online at seagate.com/warranty and if you need to get data recovery completed, obviously Seagate no longer do that here and have no recommended partner. The good news is that by having a Data Recovery expert open up the box and try to retrieve what is on the drive will not void the warranty itself – you just need to get a letter from the Data Recovery Centre to go with any warranty claim.

As at July 2011 the number to contact Seagate is 1800 147 201.

Good luck!

ps moral of the story is – always have TWO backups – one on your HDD and one off site, maybe in the cloud for business critical data.

Red Hot Internet Marketing

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Category Archives: Service

Beware: You May Get Slammed

Help Needed – Consider It Closely

The Customer is King

Seagate in Australia