If you’re involved with emailing a list of subscribers on behalf of a business, you’ve no doubt had your own hurdles to deal with. Many of the hurdles boil down to one thing – making sure your email doesn’t portray a bag impression of your business. Poor impressions can come down to emails with problems like faulty imagery or layout, typos or incorrect dates in the text (please tell me we’ve all done that), incorrect merge-tag details (wrong name or location for example) but perhaps one of the biggest difficulties is ensuring your recipent doesn’t think your email is spam.

Actually, you can take that back a step. There’s a chance that your recipient won’t even get a chance to decide whether your email is spam or not as that decision may have been made for them by their email client – i.e. whatever email service they use to receive emails, be it an internal office set up or online services like Gmail, Hotmail, Xtra and Yahoo!

What is Spam?

This may seem obvious but before considering how to make sure your email gets through a spam filter, it’s important to understand what spam actually is. You could get stuck into suggesting things like “emails that contain pills for sexual organ enhancement” or “emails that inform you your great uncle Bilbo has died in Nigeria and you need to provide your account details so that you can claim your inheritance” but effectively spam is any email that your recipient doesn’t believe they should have received.

You may have spent thousands of dollars setting up a huge promotion on your website and even more money designing a fantastic email that looks so good you want to link it, and then spent hours putting together a list of people that you feel are best placed to enter the promo and become your next greatest customer, but the fact of the matter is that while you make think your email is worth a read, if your recipients don’t understand why they’re receiving your email, all that money could have gone to waste.

What’s the Risk?

Other than effectively closing a door to market your business to someone (many email providers don’t allow you to manually re-add a subscriber if that subscriber has unsubscribed or marked your email as spam), your whole email sending account could be at risk. That ‘Report Spam‘ button in Gmail or that innocent looking ‘Junk’ link in Hotmail has far more connotations than simply moving your email into the recipient’s bin. When those buttons are hit, a report is sent to The Internet and your email service provider receives a warning. If enough warnings are received, your provider may take no hesitation in suspending your account.

Worse again, New Zealand actually has even stricter email marketing rules than some other countries. You can check out our Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 which details the requirements when it comes to sending emails in New Zealand.

Two key intentions of the act are to encourage ethical email communications by:

• Requiring electronic messages to contain a functioning unsubscribe facility
• Ensuring electronic messages are sent only to customers who have consented to receiving it

The first is easy enough for an email marketing service to indentify. The second is trickier and can only really be determined after the fact, through looking at the abuse and even the bounce rates of your email campaign.

Don’t forget that this is all part of actual legislation – ignore the rules and you could put your business at risk of legal prosecution!

How to avoid being a spammer

So before your email even makes it to the recipient (who, of course, is someone who has specifically requested to receive your email or someone who you have a genuine reason to believe would be interested in the content that the email contains) you need to make it through the email client’s spam filter.

Spam filters are generally set up to recognise spam in a similar way to how a human might decide something is spam. So good ’common-sense’ design and text content is the way forward.

MailChimp, a popular email marketing provider, has put together some events that can trigger a spam filter. Avoid these and you greatly improve your chances of a successful email marketing campaign.

3 Spam Triggers

MailChimp used a service called ‘spam assassin’ to award points for content that triggered a spam filter. The more points, the worse the crime.

Some of those triggers were:

1. Using the phrase ‘extra inches’ (3.1 points). Hmm … quite an obvious one this. While it could easily be used elsewhere, spam filters believe that including this phrase in an email gives the email client a heads-up that your email is probably about penises. Ok it could also be about weight-loss – another common spam theme.

1. Using the phrase ‘stop further distribution’ as part of or alongside your unsubscribe link (3.1 points). Apparently this is just as spammy as ‘extra inches’. I guess if you’re going to provide people with an unsubscribe link, just straight out tell them it’s an unsubscribe link and forget the formal talk.

1. Starting with ‘Dear’ (2.7 points). Starting an email with Dear Steve or Dear Jane could be quite innocent and your intention could be to present a formal style, but the truth is that this is a phrase that kinda should stick to letters. Apparently enough spammy emails that have started with ‘Dear’ have been flagged by users to mean that this innocent introduction has been eternally blacklisted. Instead, just use ‘Hi Steve,’ or similar.

So it might be worth avoiding the above phrases in your content.

Above all, make sure you’re only sending permission-based emails. Adding someone as a recipent of your email should come naturally and the question “am I allowed to email this person?” shouldn’t even cross your mind.

Flickr photo credit: bunchofpants (charming)

Why am I rambling about Marmite? Well unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few days, you’ll have heard that New Zealand Marmite supplies are dwindling. The Christchurch factory (who knew it was only made in Christchurch?) has sustained enough earthquake-related damage to mean that it has had to shut down until repairs have been made. A spokesperson for Marmite has said that production may only re-start in July of this year.

In the meantime, the public has been flocking to supermarkets to stop up on the black gold. Many supermarkets are starting to run out. Countdown, bless ‘em, have said that people should buy Vegemite instead. That works for me (like I said, I’m fairly interchangeable), but for real Marmite fans, suggesting they buy Vegemite is like telling Holden fans to just support Ford, or Crusaders supporters to support the Blues … or even telling people that leave the toilet roll with the end facing front to leave it with the end facing the wall. Ok that last one could just be me and my wife.

Trade Me Auctions Commence

Auctions for Marmite on Trade Me have been cropping up all over the show. Many of them are even just for Marmite jars that are half-eaten and have breadcrumbs and traces of butter in them. I believe a 1.5kg jar has reached triple figures so far.

However! There is one Trade Me action that makes all others pale in comparison. And that auction is for … a 25kg BUCKET of Marmite! 25kg!! That’s the same weight as your average domestic bag of concrete and I’m not even joking!

Marmite Auction by Gilmours

Specifically, the auction is for a 175g tub of Marmite that happens to come with a 25kg bucket of the stuff, just so you can “refill your prized purchase within the comfort of your own home”. I think it’s a fantastic idea. Forget just filling your own tub, you’ll be able to keep your neighbourhood in supply with a bucket that size! The best before date is in August which means you should have a nice margin of safety for Marmite’s own production to start up again in July.

Unlike these other auctions, the profit from this auction will go to charity. Good on you, Gilmours (Gilmours are running the auction … did I mention that? They’re a wholesale food and beverage supplier on the north island).

Check out the auction on Trade Me

Alternatives to Marmite

Marmite not your thing? Well, one of the obvious alternatives is to head down the Vegemite track (seriously, this whole thing is fantastic publicity for both Marmite and Vegemite).

Another alternative is to buy the UK stuff. British Marmite can be bought in New Zealand but there was obviously a bit of a punch-up regarding the ‘Marmite’ name, and the  UK version lost (woot! Go New Zealand!). Check out this old Marmite TV ad that aired in England when I was growing up. Brilliant.

You can find the British stuff in the shops here under the name ‘Our Mate’, based on the British advertising campaign, ‘Our Mate, Marmite’. It seems a few people get the name mixed up with ‘My Mate’ (perhaps it was actually ‘My Mate, Marmite’??) but the below photo of the jar in question shows otherwise.

An imported jar of British Marmite thanks to my awesome sister-in-law:

Marmite in the UK

A jar of Our Mate on sale in a New Zealand supermarket:

What’s your favourite?

Powershop has been doing plenty of advertising since they launched a couple of years back and that’s helped to alert New Zealanders of the various options they have for supplier’s of their electricity. In fact, it even helps you to regularly switch power companies depending on who has the best deal.

If you’re as lazy as I am, you probably haven’t bothered with Powershop because it just feels like it takes a lot of effort. I’m sure you could just hook up with Powershop and then choose one power company and stick with them, but that sorta feels like you’re missing out and why include a third party between you and the power company that you pay your money to?

That’s pretty much why I was quite impressed when I came across Switchme (and this is totally legit, I swear I have personally used Switchme and have ended up on a much better deal than I was on before, which is why I’m pretty happy to recommend them).

Switchme is a funky and entirely New Zealand owned online service that allows you to very quickly compare electricity providers and then, if you see that there’s a much better deal, you can use Switchme to easily change to the new provider.

It really is that simple – there are no hidden catches. Switchme don’t add any extra payment into the process and it’s all very transparent.

As a resident of Christchurch, I was on Meridian’s customer list for years simply because I wasn’t really aware of any other power companies (specifically any other companies that provided power to Christchurch residents – I thought it was a ‘one per region’ kinda deal). Even if there were other providers, I’d thought they’d all be the same price anyway. I came across Switchme and found out that I’d actually be saving around $20 a month by switching to Genesis Energy. On top of that, Genesis also provided a loyalty points service (Switchme lets you know about those as well as any other bonuses).

You also may not have noticed how much your power prices have been rising. The Switchme news section shows an article that reported in February that…

Mercury Energy customers in Northland are to be hit with another power price rise for the third year in a row, this time some households will be paying as much as 12.7 per cent more.

So you can see that even if you’re happy with your current current provider (ha! See what I did there? With the current thing?), it’s worth giving the process a go just to see what’s going on with the other power companies in your region.

I was lucky enough to meet with Switchme’s founder, Scott O’Donnell. He told me a bit about how the idea came about and how much some of their users have saved.

Switchme was launched about 3 years ago and growth in the early days was fairly steady. However, in the last 12 months the success of the site has really kicked off. Due to recent large marketing campaigns, consumers are becoming a lot more aware of the number of options available and loyalty to a particular electricity company is becoming a thing of the past, especially when power prices are continually going up.

In some areas of NZ, the potential saving between the cheapest and the most expensive power companies can be over $60 a month for a standard household. Switchme offers a one stop shop for comparing power companies prices, seeing the results instantly and switching over to a new retailer all in one place. We’ve helped almost 30,000 households change energy providers already and the numbers are growing. Our switching process is painless and only takes about 3 minutes.

Scott says that since launching with residential power company comparisons, they’ve also launched a section specifically to compare business power prices:

After having so much success with residential comparisons, it makes sense to offer the same free service to New Zealand business. This new business power price comparison will be available to all commercial customers nationwide in a couple of months. It has the potential to collectively save kiwi companies millions on their power bills.

It’s hard not to love the idea behind Switchme. Electricity is something that we can’t do without and so big corporate power companies are safe in the knowledge that most people accept their power bill is simply a necessary expenditure that they can do nothing about. Switchme exposes the reality that there are other options available and makes it incredible easy for you by displaying the various options and prices all in one place.

To show how it works and prove just how easy it is, I did this for myself while writing this blog post. All you need to do this yourself is a copy of your power bill.

After entering a few details from my bill and including my region, Switchme provided 10 alternative options which included amongst other things:

• Provider’s name
• Estimated monthly bill
• Prompt payment discount amount (e.g. 10%)
• Whether there was a rewards points scheme
• If the supplier provides bills by email
• If the supplier also provides gas
• If the supplier has an online account management service

All of this is displayed in a simple table. In fact, I’ll just paste the screenshot below. Note that this is correct at time of writing but may later vary depending on the power companies.

As you can see, I’m already on the cheapest provider as I’ve used Switchme before. Give it a go yourself and you may well find there are plenty of cheaper options available.

It’s not like you get what you pay for either. Genesis Energy don’t have the smartest website around but at the end of the day, the electricity we have in our house tastes exactly the same as that which was provided by Meridian (disclaimer: kids, don’t taste electricty. It’s bad for you). Plus the act of changing from one company to another was really bloody simply. See that button that says ‘Switch’ in the above screenshot? Click that, fill in some details. Job’s pretty much done.

Pretty smart I reckon. And you’d be crazy not to give it a go.

P.S. For all the people who have considered Powershop, you’ll even note that Powershop appears in the above list. Swtichme basically takes their best offer for your region on the day that you run the test and then displays their price.

Not surprising considering Stephen Fry has almost 4 million followers on Twitter. It doesn’t take a genius to realise his Tweets have far reaching potential and can work wonders for anyone trying to make it big. He’s currently filming in New Zealand at the moment and has been saying some great stuff about Wellington city and even the humble New Zealand flat whites. That’s awesome product placement!

So how about if that power is used for evil as well as good? Wait, that’s far too strong a term. Pointing out issues/errors with a business’ service or products is far from evil. It really helps them to develop their core offering blah blah blah. But what if that information isn’t quite presented with all of the necessary details?

For those that don’t yet know, this morning Stephen Fry got out of bed on the wrong side and had a bit of a rant about both Telecom’s broadband services and their ‘contemptuous attitude to customers’. Mr. Fry’s rant began around 6am this morning with a couple of Tweets:

New Zealand so fine. It they have probably the worst. Broadband I’ve ever encountered. Turns itself off slows to a crawl. Pathetic.

— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) February 19, 2012

I meant “make (not male) a fortune and a fool of the complacent Telecomm and their contemptuous attitude to customers. Phew! Rant over.”

— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) February 19, 2012

These Tweets also feature on Stephen Fry’s website (a mighty PR6 blog). It’ll be interesting to see if he follows-up with a blog post on there.

His Tweets sparked plenty of follow-up responses both in support and against Stephen’s rant. One responder included a mention of the Telecom Twitter account which may have been what prompted Telecom to quickly get involved to help find a solution.

At this point, the story was picked up by the news networks (and I’m sure it’ll get a mention on the tele tonight). The NZ Herald’s story ran with the headline:

Fry slams ‘pathetic NZ’ broadband

Stuff.co.nz went with:

Fry calls for Kiwi broadband revolt

While the NBR rolled with:

New Zealand broadband bagged by Hobbit star

All fairly dramatic headlines. Stuff also included a poll which has so far attracted 6,516 votes with 91.8% of voters agreeing with ‘Stephen Fry’s view that New Zealand broadband is rubbish’.

The whole situation has dragged New Zealand broadband into the spot light and, in particular, Telecom’s services and attitude towards customers. But is the flak that Telecom NZ have received justified? Or are we all just too keen to join in with a rant against a service that’s so popular to criticise?

The reason I’m willing to defend Telecom on this one (in terms of this specific example – I haven’t studied the reasons for our poor broadband performance – or even if we do compare that badly with the world – in enough detail to write intelligently on it) is because Stephen Fry posted these original comments without any background information at all and without clarifying his issue. He does later mention that he was trying to upload a video for a charity gig he’s attending today, but provides no information on how he was connecting to the internet.

For all we know, the video file size could be huge and he could be trying to upload it from his cellphone in an area with a weak wireless signal.

Now, of course, there’s no problem with venting your frustration. Plenty of people do on Twitter. Everyone is entitled to have a rant. But when you are a huge international celebrity and have 4 million followers, do you have a duty to have more consideration and take more care when it comes to brand-bashing? Was Stephen Fry surprised about the attention his comments have received? His later Tweets suggest so. Should he have been?

He does seem to have a solid understanding of Twitter. Check out this interview in which he stands up for a fellow Twitter user.

Following the media attention, Stephen does go on to clarify his situation and to outline Telecom’s response to his issue. Over 10 Tweets, Stephen says (I’m just going to copy his exact text to avoid changing his meaning if I try and correct stuff. Sorry Mr. Fry!):

Well, seem to have stirred up a hornet’s nest. It seems I exceeded a d’load limit and had my BB throttled to a crawl: @TelecomNZ have put this right. Very quick and polite. But I wonder if everyone who complains gets this attention?

I think Comcast style throttling is a for the economy it’s disastrous, for visitors for everyone. It won’t stop illegal bit torrentinf. Makes as much sense as closing a lane of traffic because there’s congestion. Yes, kiwi land is remote, but if Avatar can be made here and MZ wants to keep its for being the loveable, easy-going, outdoorsy yet tech savvy place it is, then pressure @telecomNZ into offering better packages. Kiwis travel. A lot. They know 20MB is routine in Europe ( nothrottling) UK rolling out ultra fast fibreoptic. S Korea miles ahead

Come on New Zealand. You’re world champions at rugby & filmmaking. Pressure the providers to stop it being a digital embarrassment if I wants that kind of compromise. In all swift response, but unsdrstandbly. There was instant press interest. I’m no one special- I was offered mobile 3G SIMS in a stock as a replacement for the down home service. I could tether a PAYH local Vodafone phone

Your local customers should be special. They need choice, service, understanding and respect. Phew! That probably enough on that xx

Plus I got my part numbers muddled up & lots of typos. But doing this on the run in a short lunch break Hope you all see what I’m getting at

So the reason for Stephen’s very first rant was simply because he had exceeded a bandwidth limit. That makes a lot of sense when you look back at his first Tweet: “turns itself off, slows to a crawl”.

Stephen credits Telecom for putting this right but asks if everyone who complains gets this attention? Is that fair? If an everyday New Zealander had called Telecom customer service with the same problem and had given all of the necessary details … surely the call centre staff would respond to explain about the bandwidth limit and that would be it? Is it Telecom’s fault that whichever building’s network he was connected to (if that was the case) hadn’t communicated the bandwidth limit?

Sure it could be Telecom’s fault that they didn’t communicate this – but that’s the problem. We don’t know. We don’t know the full background but thousands of us were pretty eager to support him in blasting Telecom.

Interestingly, a fair few people have stood up for Telecom and New Zealand’s bandwidth issues in general. It could be said that many of these people are far better placed to comment on our nation’s internet access than a visiting celebrity. Some of the Tweets encouraged some heated debate.

That @NZStuff poll for @stephenfry‘s claims on NZ Broadband proves one thing. NZ’ders need to experience overseas broadband to compare.

— Courtney Sit (@CourtneySit) February 19, 2012

@gnat To be fair the Internet was unusable when we where in NZ in ’08, ’09, and ’10, it’s much, much better now. Like actually working.

— Thomas Fuchs (@thomasfuchs) February 19, 2012

Everyone says this is true but on the other hand my iphone’s 3G is far better in NZ than th UK. #NZbroadband

— Ellen Pickett (@ellen_pickett) February 19, 2012

Telecom and Chorus built a kick ass network. Many people are crippled because they are too cheap to pay for a professional DSL install.

— Steve Biddle (@stevebiddle) February 19, 2012

To wrap up, on the one hand New Zealand’s broadband services could be better. There’s no denying that. But, and again I haven’t looked into this fully, do we really stack up that badly on a world scale?

And, regardless, it really does seem like Stephen Fry’s issue was actually quite a minor one, and one that he perhaps should even have been aware of if he had understood the terms of his current broadband connection. But maybe Telecom could have communicated this better? Could there be some kind of pop-up to alert you as to why your connection speed has suddenly dropped? Who knows. Did this issue warrant the media attention it has had? I don’t think so.

Stephen Fry appears to be a pretty stand up guy (and I really am a fan – just last weekend I used him as a subject of this blog post on how to embed a tweet on a blog post *shameless self-plug*) and I’m sure he would have been aware of the attention his comment would receive and perhaps wouldn’t have published his Tweets if he had realised the issue was related to a simple limit of his current connection. That’s something you should always be aware of if you’re roaming in another country and are looking to upload large files to the internet.

Reason being, there are so many Social Media channels out there and the documentation that goes with each can be very lengthy and cumbersome (yes I spelt it right). So instead, I thought I’d address some of the very easy-to-do but easily missed functions of some of the more popular Social Media networks. Starting with Facebook.

Facebook can be one of the easiest Social Media channels to get into for your business, and yet the potential to get things wrong can be quite significant! Thousands of New Zealanders do – there are some horrific examples of Facebook Pages out there and there seems to be an absolutely sinful approach by some more traditional business owners in that they take extra care over getting their newspaper advert absolutely perfect … and then think it’s fine to throw any old/incorrect/mis-spelt/marketing-law-disgracing content at a Facebook Page!

If you’re one of those people that do actually care about your Facebook Page, here are 3 very simple tips to help you to get the most from it (update: plus 2 more advanced ones thrown in for fun).

1. Check Your Hidden Facebook Posts

Facebook kindly attempts to remove spam or irrelevant comments from the Wall of your Facebook Page. While this is often spot on, sometimes it’s a little over eager and can get it wrong. Despite this, I’d still rather Facebook erred on the side of caution rather than have spam comments displaying on my Page.

When Facebook marks a comment as spam, it moves it to a ‘Hidden Posts’ section which you can access by clicking on the link under your profile photo. If you see a comment that is not actually spam, you can choose to un-hide it so that it displays on your Wall again.

Typically you should be checking the hidden posts section at least once a week. If you have an active community on Facebook and your fans like to comment a lot, you’ll obviously need to check it a lot more – at least 3 times a week. Facebook users can get quite frustrated if they believe you are the one deleting their comments – as they are unlikely to realise they have been automatically hidden by Facebook.

What makes a hidden post?

Facebook doesn’t make it entirely clear as to what factors go into the decision to hide a comment. But some suggestions are:

• The comment contains links to suspect websites or to Facebook Pages that Facebook deems to be irrelevant or poor value
• The comment has been marked as abuse by another Facebook user
• The Facebook user has a history of abuse complaints against them and their comments already marked as spam by other Facebook users
• A combination of a badly written comment coupled with a low quality Facebook user profile (e.g. no details, no profile photo)

A chap called James Noble (of JamesTNoble.com) walks you through the process to deal with these hidden posts and discusses some of the reasons in his video:

2. Run Facebook Promotions (But Follow The Guidelines!)

As long as you have linked to your Facebook Page from your website (and perhaps in your printed marketing material and other marketing channels) the number of fans your Facebook Page has will naturally increase.

This can be quite a gradual process and is one that will hugely benefit from some well-run promotions that are targeted towards liking  your Page in some way.

Choosing a prize can be tricky. It really comes down to the value that you place on a Facebook fan and also the type of fans you’d like to get. One tried and tested way to get ‘mainstream’ fans is through dangling an iPad in front of them. I hate jumping on the bandwagon with this one but it really does seem to get results when done well.

However, to get more valuable fans – fans which will stay around longer, contribute to the value of your Page and even (heaven forbid) actually become your customer – you could try offering a Page which is significantly related to your business. Do you sell gardening products? Offer a garden make-over or a garden power-tool as a prize. Do you sell beauty products? How about offering a spa package or a voucher? It’s easy to see how these would reflect the sort of fans that you would accumulate through the promotion.

But here’s the key thing. Read the Facebook Promotional Guidelines and follow them by the letter! In fact, New Zealand-based Social Media Strategist, Cate Owen, has written a blog post that translates these guidelines into something that’s a lot easier to grasp in her post Facebook Competitions: Don’t Run One Till You’ve Read This. So read that too!

You may look at other promotions on Facebook and think that there are plenty of people running a simple ‘Like us and you’re in the draw’ promotion (that in its most basic format is against the rules), but the reality could be that there is some other functionality behind that process for their Facebook Page that means they are doing what they need to in order to comply with the guidelines.

It could also be the fact that they really are running a promotion that’s against the guidelines, in which case … more fool them! Facebook keeps a surprisingly long history of information related to your Facebook Profile and Facebook Page and you wouldn’t want to be the guy that set up that promotion when your Facebook Page is taken down, losing its 50,000 fans in a heartbeat!

If in doubt, run the promotion on your own website or Twitter account.

3. Claim Your Username

This is a very basic one but still one that many businesses miss. Your username is the text that appears after the final slash in ‘www.facebook.com/’. Without claiming this, the website address for your Facebook Page will be something horrendous, like www.facebook.com/pages/my-company-name-ltd-bollocks/012343543321321/.

If you claim your username, you can change this to something that is far more appealing to the eye, memorable and, last but not least, easy to write on your business card! For example: facebook.com/nzraw (don’t judge me by that – I don’t really have time to use it!), facebook.com/PAKnSAVE, facebook.com/brb, facebook.com/ASBBank, etc.

You can use fullstops in your username if you like. It’s also worth noting that the capital letters that you use will display in the final URL (as in the example for ASB) so feel free to match them to your branding. Some companies even make their username their website address – as is the case for facebook.com/Stuff.co.nz and (partly) facebook.com/NZScom.

To claim your username now, you’ll need a minimum of 25 fans (a great feature from Facebook – stops people squatting on all sorts of usernames) and then all you do is make sure you’re logged in as an admin of your Page and visit facebook.com/username. Just make sure you’re in the box that creates a username for your Page and not your personal profile! Once you set it, you can’t go back!

4. Post Engaging Updates 2 or 3 Times a Week

Ok I said I was only going to do 3 tips but this one really is fundamental if you’re going to be running a Facebook Page.

First off it’s important to realise that your Facebook Page is very different from your personal profile. You can’t simply post every time you find something interesting on the web, such as this video or those (bloody) photos.

Not only should you refrain from posting content that has no relation to your business, but you should also refrain from over-posting. Facebook’s own strategists recommend posting just 2 to 3 times a week. Any more than that and you risk ‘spamming’ your followers and causing them to unlike your Page. A marketing manager once balked at this and couldn’t understand how this was spamming. After all, we were posting the updates on our own wall. Remember – your Facebook Page posts will (hopefully!) be appearing in your fan’s news feeds. Take over their news feed with your frequent posts, therefore blocking out content from other Pages and friends that they are connected to, and they won’t thank you for it!

Secondly, it’s amazing how much your results will improve if you simply encourage participation from your audience. Not in the form of ‘If you like the sun today, hit like!’ While comments that ask people to like the comment will actually work in some scenarios if you’re onto it, in examples like this it’s totally transparent and reeks of desperation!

Instead, aim to more-often-than-not end your update with a question, or even an amusing challenge of some kind. For example, this update:

“We have a great special on tents this week. Get down to your local store for more details.”

… may receive some likes (people like the fact that you have a special on tents so ‘liking’ your status feels natural) but it’s unlikely to receive any comments or shares – it’s a combination of likes, comments and shares that will get your comment into more news feeds and in front of more people.

Instead, try:

“Now that summer’s here, we’ve dropped our prices on tents! Where’s your favourite place to go camping?”

or

“We have some big specials on tents for you this week! What 3 things can you not live without on your camping holiday?”

These comments have a much better chance of receiving some replies plus you’ll even be encouraging your fans to share some great tips with each other, thereby improving your Facebook community and boosting the value of your Facebook Page.

Note: It’s worth being careful when you’re posing these questions. Have a good think about what would happen if someone posted a dodgy answer. It may only take one person to post ‘that’ comment before everyone else joins in and your comment has to be removed for the sake of decency! For example, it might not be best to ask “Who would you most like to share a tent with?”

5. Avoid Deleting Comments

Ok screw it. I’ve already broken my 3 tip rule so I may as well do it properly. This one is quite important too. Don’t delete comments unless they meet one or more of these criteria:

• They contain offensive language (base the level on the audience of your Facebook Page)
• They insight violence or hatred towards any group or race
• They contain offensive images or links to objectionable content
• They contain obvious spam or irrelevant advertising

In the event of the above, it’s a good idea to have a separate tab with your ‘Facebook Policy’ clearly displayed, such as this one for PAK’nSAVE. You can always refer to that if a user posts again to ask why their comment was removed. This is also a good place to put your promotion guidelines statement juuuust in case you forget it for any promotion you run.

If you ever delete a comment that is simply a complaint about your store, products or services … shame on you! In some ways, these type of comments are fantastic for your business. They give you a unique opportunity to address an issue that may be affecting hundreds of others. Not only that, but they give you the ability to flex your customer-service-muscles and demonstrate to the world how well you handle complaints!

Here’s a secret tip though for those of you lucky enough to have a solid and loyal fan base. If the complaint is quite petty or ill-conceived, try leaving it for a short while. You may find that other fans will jump on board in your defence! Either way, end by leaving a comment to say that you’re sorry they’ve had a bad experience with your product or service, and ask them to contact you by email or fill in the contact form on your website so that you can address the issue. Others viewing this conversation will then see that you have addressed the issue.

Simply delete the comment and you could put yourself at risk of a whole world of trouble! The user will not be happy that you have dismissed them and will more than likely follow up with far more negative comments. Ban them and they’ll simply rant about your business on their own Facebook Profile. Their friends and family may even then start commenting on your wall in defence of their friend, unleashing a whirlwind of problems for you!

So there we go.  I hope those have helped you in some way. And apologies for the whole ’3 tips’ thing. Think of it as buy 3 tips get 2 tips free ;)

Like much of the city, I was at work when it happened and it was definitely another one that required getting under the desks. It was a 5.8 that hit us, 8km deep and approximately 20km NE of Lyttelton.

Driving home, it was obvious that liquefaction was going to be a problem again as the roads were just starting to flood in a few patches. Traffic lights were also out along Travis Road and Anzac Drive, making the drive home that bit more interesting.

Orion say that power has been out for over 26,000 people but hopefully will be back within hours rather that weeks and days like last time, thanks to their new set up. So long as the aftershocks start dying down – we’ve had 3 decent ones since I started writing this so that’s about 1 per paragraph!

Back in Aranui, liquefaction was apparent on the roads but didn’t really look like it was going to give us too many problems. Until the second big aftershock hit – a 6.0 about 80 minutes after the first, 6km deep and 10km north of Lyttelton. This one was big enough to break whatever barriers were holding the liquefaction back and the streets started to fill with that far too familiar grey silt.

Christchurch Earthquake Dog knows the rules. Thanks mate. Where am I supposed to go then?

Back in Sept 2010 (was it that long ago??) and both February and June of 2011, I’d taken a few casual photos of the liquefaction but no video. The photos drew the attention of the National Geographic (they’re making a documentary right now which includes some of my pics) and a professor of geo-activity (or something) in the US. He was keen to use the photos in a paper he was writing and said (and I more-or-less quote) “I’ve been to substantial earthquakes all over the world for the past 30 years and I haven’t seen liquefaction anywhere near as bad as it is in Christchurch. You guys are pretty interesting right now!”

In conversation with him, he was pretty keen to see if I had any video footage and seemed very disappointed to hear that I didn’t. So, just for that guy and all of the other non-Christchurch residents that aren’t yet sick of the sight of it, here’s some exciting footage of the new mess that’s being created in my street right now!

Stay safe Christchurch … and Merry Christmas!

Update 23-12-11 plus an hour or two:

Earthquake call centre line is now live: 03 941 8999. Further update on the news at 10:30pm tonight.

Update 24-12-11:

It’s the morning of the 24th. Christmas Eve. I’m tired! We’ve had approximately a zillion aftershocks since god-knows-when-o-clock. Check out the Twitter feed below from @nz_quake to view the latest 20 aftershocks.

Paradise is not everyone’s idea of fun. If you’re strictly the shopping/sipping latte type, go somewhere else. Unless…and it’s a significant ‘unless’…you enjoyed Lord of the Rings and are keenly awaiting The Hobbit. The area has several Rings locations, including Lothlorien Forest and The Slopes of Amon Hen, and has just been used by Peter Jackson for scenes in The Hobbit.

Queenstown to Glenorchy

Meanwhile, back to your Queenstown hotel and the start of your journey. Ideally, you’ll have a rental car at your disposal. Make sure your camera is handy, and that you’re not craving caffeine (there’s nothing available for the next 47 kilometres). Then set off on the first stage of your journey to Paradise: the Glenorchy road.

This is one of the most scenic drives in New Zealand, no question. Theoretically, it takes 30-40 minutes. Realistically, with so many beautiful views to admire, it’ll take a bit longer. But who cares?

The road winds along steep hillsides by the lake’s edge and, with many twists and turns, provides constantly changing, mind-blowing views. Cecil Peak and Walter Peak, two historic sheep stations, come into view on the opposite shores just 5km along the way. A third, Mount Nicholas, is visible nearer Glenorchy.

Eleven kilometres from Queenstown is Twelve Mile Delta – Ithilien Camp in Lord of the Rings, and, 3kms on there’s a chance to test the intriguing ‘seiche’ at Bob’s Cove. This is the 20-centimetre change in lake level, and it happens more often here than anywhere else. In Queenstown, it’s something like every 27 minutes; at Bob’s Cove, it’s more like every five. Stand a stick or stake in the water, then wait and see. If you’re in no hurry, there’s a nice nature walk with resident bellbirds and tui and an old limestone kiln. You don’t hear bellbirds everywhere in this country, so listen up.

Mt Nicholas Station comes into view as you approach one of the road’s highest points, around 19km from Queenstown. Another four to five kilometres on, you’ll encounter maybe the best sight of all: the lake’s head and three islands. Magnificent.

All too soon, you’ll cruise into Glenorchy: the ‘Gateway to Paradise’ – literally. Stop for coffee or lunch in this small, friendly village; it’s the only place where anything is available. Glenorchy is a centre for outdoor activities, and the starting point for some great walking tracks.

Glenorchy to Paradise

Leave Glenorchy on the Glenorchy-Paradise Road. Now you’re just 20km from Paradise! The first eight kilometres are sealed, but the last 12 are not. After crossing the Rees River and travelling through farmland you’ll enter Mt Aspiring National Park and a stretch of hauntingly beautiful beech forest, familiar to all Rings fans as Lothlorien. Soon you’ll see jewel-like Diamond Lake and ford the little Jordan River. You are now officially in Paradise, with views of romantic Arcadia homestead (not, repeat not, open to the public) – the star of several films. The area itself appeared as Path Galen in the Rings trilogy.

So…you’ve arrived. What do you do now? Simply enjoy being in Heaven on Earth. What more could you want?

Footnote: If you don’t want to drive to Paradise, check with your Queenstown hotel for tour options.

Perhaps to avoid the mad scramble for vanity URLs (i.e. website addresses that contain the brand name such as facebook.com/nzraw), Google appear to be identifying pages in the same way that they identify personal profiles – through a long string of unique numbers rather than any text content (e.g. plus.google.com/117301083128227203723).

This means that a user won’t be able to guess the website address of a Google+ Page which obviously places more emphasis on search and on linking to the Google+ Page from your own website and other social media content. Obviously both of those benefit Google in a big way.

Video Introduction to Google+ Pages

Google’s video introduction to the Google+ Pages service is not surprisingly highly people and ‘community’ focused, narrated by a business owner. Check it out:

Alongside the video, Google say:

In life we connect with all kinds of people, places and things. There’s friends and family, of course, but there’s also the sports teams we root for, the coffee shops we’re loyal to, and the TV shows we can’t stop watching (to name a few).

So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.

It’s great to see that the All Blacks marketing guys are already onto it and have created a page for their supporters. It’ll also be interesting to see if there’s any confusion around what exactly is the equivalent of a Facebook ‘fan’. As you can see in the screenshot below, the All Blacks page has 230 followers so far, but only 63 +1′s. The two are quite different – you can +1 a page simply to show your support and recommend it to your own community, but to actually subscribe to updates from a page you will need to add it to a circle.

This is quite different to Facebook Pages where ‘liking’ a page connects you to that business as one of their Facebook followers.

Enhancing Search with Google+ Page Results

Google look set to enhance Google search further by incorporating Google+ Pages into their search results, possibly in a similar way to that they incorporate Google+ profiles through their authorship tag. For Pages they’ll be using a service called ‘Google+ Direct Connect‘. This video shows it in use.

They say:

For websites that qualify, Direct Connect makes it easy for users to find your Google+ page from Google Search.

Through linking back to your Google+ Page from your website and using a ‘publisher’ tag, you increase the chance of your Google+ Page appearing in search suggestions in the future, as in the video, although this is likely to be the case only for the more popular Google+ Pages.

Creating a Google+ Page

Searchers will also be able to ‘shortcut’ to a Google+ Page by adding a plus sign to the beginning of their search term, like ‘+foursquare’ to search for the foursquare Google+ Page from Google.com. This looks to be a direct response to the fact that many people just search for ‘facebook’ rather than enter the website address ‘www.facebook.com’ (we’re pretty lazy huh?). Google say on their blog post that this currently works for the likes of +Google, +Pepsi and +Toyota, but my own testing on Google.com proves otherwise. Could just be a US thing for the moment.

Google+ also encourage you to link back to your Page through providing options for a Google+ badge or Google+ icon. Interestingly in doing this, they appear to be re-branding! While the +1 button is the same, their old black image doesn’t look like it’s in use any more. It’s been replaced by a simple red icon with a white ‘g’ and plus symbol. This also appears as the favicon for the website.

It’ll be great to see what Google+ do with this service and how well it takes off in direct competition with the highly successful Facebook Pages.

Oh and if you’re anything like me, the first thing you’ll try to do when visiting a Google+ Page from one of your favourite brands is to comment on their wall! Fail! That’s not Google+’s way. Head back to your own profile and post an update just to that Page and it will have the same affect … but then your own followers won’t see it as well … unless you post pit publically too. Circles huh? Gotta love ‘em.

You can read more about Google+ Pages or look at creating your own by clicking the button below.