When I decided to buy a kitten for my kids Christmas gift, the last thing on my mind was electronic payments. It all seemed simple enough. We found the perfect fur ball in an online ad and went to check her out. I paid the Cat Lady with a check and arranged to be back on Christmas Eve to pick her up. A few days later, the Cat lady called to say that the wind had blown the check from her hands and she couldn’t catch it.
Great. I immediately stopped payment on it. But the check being cashed was the least of my worries. I knew that there was a piece of paper with my bank account number, Routing & Transit number, my address and signature literally floating around somewhere in Southeastern Michigan. Anyone could pick it up and go on a shopping spree online.
Fortunately, a friend of the Cat Lady found the check and returned it to her. Amazing luck.
The whole ordeal made me long for the whole P2P (Person to Person) electronic payment adoption to take hold. In case you’re wondering what’s happening in the P2P space, here are a few resources and articles to check out:
P2P Payments are coming and the Credit Card Companies won’t like it
Consumer Survey Finds Increasing Demand for P2P Payments
TwitPay
PayPal App Now Lets You ‘bump’ to Send Money
Where do you stand on P2P? Would you use it? Please leave a comment and let us know.
Denise Bahs, is an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) and a member of The Payments Authority Marketing team. She is a regular contributor to the association’s blog and the face of the organization on Twitter (@denise_atTPA). For more information on payments, visit www.thepaymentsauthority.org.
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Aug 10
20
Social Media For Non-Profits
Social Media For Non-profits
Social Media has become a great resource for non profit agencies to remain in touch with their contributors and to reach out to people with their message.
A Facebook page is a great way to highlight the property and have your visitors share their experiences working with your organization. You can also post exciting developments for your cause on it, and share links to press releases, etc. It is also a great way to promote upcoming events and fundraising efforts. It is also very easy for people to “share” your Facebook posts with their friends, increasing the visibility of your cause and traffic to your site.
Twitter can also be very effective – esp. in terms of reminding people of upcoming events, or specials (for example, if you had a last minute cancellation or an unsold week, you could Tweet a “last minute special”). Twitter also opens you up to a whole new network of users – many of whom connect largely through mobile devices. Here again, you can post links to press that you get and announce awards, grants, etc. By Twittering these developments you are likely to increase your exposure and web traffic, as Twitter users may search for the newspaper, foundation, or group you are featured by – thereby bringing you users that may have been unaware of your work.
Ultimately, social media will allow you to have continued connection with your clients, donors, and customers. It allows you to have a fresh message on a fairly regular basis without having to update your website. The other huge advantage for non-profits is it allows you to remain in contact with your previous donors and customers. This is critical, as many people are finding it hard to be as generous as they have been in the past during this economic downturn. However, you are able to remain in a dialogue with them – and hopefully, as things improve, they will feel engaged and think of you for donations and vacation planning. Social Media can allow you to maintain a fresh “list” of potential donors and customers, even if they are not in a position to help right now.
Social Media, when used effectively, should increase your Search Engine Recognition – as it allows you the opportunity to keep getting a fresh message out on the web. It also allows you to establish a variety of different topics that users can find your site through searches. In other words, by getting new information out regularly, internet users will have more opportunity to find your site when searching the web. You can also use Social Media to expand your message for seasonal or current information, here again increasing the likelihood that you will be found in internet searches.
Lastly, Social Media can be very efficient and cost effective. With limited time investment, you can potentially reach a wide audience – and hopefully, your message will be passed along by your friends and followers. It is an extremely effective and efficient way to coordinate volunteers and communicate updates on events your group is planning. And, once again, social media allows your supporters to share information with their friends and colleges.
Below is a link to a recent article from the Wall Street Journal on this subject.
Can #social media save the world? Some nonprofits give it a try.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2010/0805/Can-social-media-save-the-world-Some-nonprofits-give-it-a-try
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Fraud has a frightening role in banking these days, so I thought it might be helpful to revisit the bios of some classic bad guys and introduce you to a new cast of characters.
Botnet: A bot, short for robot, is an automated software program that can execute certain commands. A botnet, short for robot network, is an aggregation of compromised computers that are connected to a central “controller.”
Click Fraud: Inflating the number of clicks on a site for financial gain.
Flashing: The scammer tries to convince the victim money has arrived in the victim’s bank account to stay, when really it is only paying a passing visit. The scammer tells the victim he is making a direct transfer into the victim’s account using cash or a cashier’s check or some other secure payment method. The victim will see the proceeds in a couple of days, but actually the scammer has paid with a fake check. When the financial institution realizes it’s bad, it will debit the account, leaving the victim out of pocket if he has sent on the proceeds.
Mule: Consumers who’ve been lured into fake work-at-home scams (or similar), in which their employment involves receiving money transfers and then forwarding the funds overseas, either directly or through other mules.
Phishing: The act of sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate financial institution or company in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.
Ponzi Scheme: A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud in which the operator promises high financial returns or dividends that are not available through traditional investments. Instead of investing victims’ funds, the operator pays “dividends” to initial investors using the principle amounts “invested” by subsequent investors. The scheme generally falls apart when the operator flees with all of the proceeds, or when a sufficient number of new investors cannot be found to allow the continued payment of “dividends.”
Smurfing: The act of using numerous individuals to perform multiple financial transactions to avoid the currency reporting requirements (such as Currency Transaction Reports CTR and Suspicious Activity Report SAR). The individuals are the ‘Smurfs’, named after the little blue characters that moved around their village doing a lot of mindless work.
Trojan Horse: Online, a Trojan horse is a form of malware that once installed on a computer, gives cyber-criminals unauthorized access to that computer.
Zombie: A compromised computer, usually unbeknownst to the owner. Zombie computers often comprise a botnet, and are leveraged to wage attacks, propagate spam, log keystrokes, and perpetrate click fraud.
For more information on how to avoid financial and internet scams, check these sites regularly:
www.fbi.gov
www.lookstoogoodtobetrue.com
www.consumeraction.gov
www.ftc.gov/bcp/consumer.shtm
Denise Bahs, is an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) and a member of The Payments Authority Marketing team. She is a regular contributor to the association’s blog and the face of the organization on Twitter (@denise_atTPA). For more information on payments, visit www.thepaymentsauthority.org.
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Jun 10
26
Selecting the Right Financial Institution for Your Company and automating your payment processes
When a friend of mine, Barb, got word that her bank was closing, she called me in a panic. Barb owns a retail business and didn’t have a clue where to start looking for a new financial institution. Choosing the right bank or credit union for a business is more challenging than for a consumer. It all depends on the needs of the business.
Here are a few things to consider:
1. Identify Your Needs
Look at your current process of collecting money or making payments.
- From whom do you receive payments? Consumers, companies, etc.
- How many checks do you take in or write?
- What is the average value of each item?
- Transportation: does it make sense to pay Mary $10 per hour to run to the bank every day to make deposits.
- What are your current bank fees?
- What is your funds availability?
- Do you know exactly what is in your account every day?
2. Banking Applications that will streamline your process
Direct Deposit is an electronic payment made directly to the checking or savings account of your employees, retirees, taxpayers, or shareholders. Businesses of all sizes can use Direct Deposit for payroll, pension and annuity payments, interest payments, expense and travel reimbursements, dividend payments, and bonuses.
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We contacted or survey How Do You Connect To Social Networks(Mobile vs. PC). We received over 802 responses. Here are some the figures we received.
Morgan Stanley predicting that within the next five years “more users will connect to the Internet over mobile devices than desktop PCs.”
%54 of people connect to social networks through a mobile device compared to %46 through a desktop.
%35 connect through both a Pc and Mobile.
We asked users which they use more.
A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones
According to Meeker, adoption of the Apple devices is taking place more than 11 times faster that of AOL, and several times as fast as that of Netscape. This driving the growth of the mobile user.
91% of mobile phone users go online to socialize compared to only 79% of traditional desktop users.
It appears the mobile platform is better to socialize then the PC.
It is our believe small bussinesses need to start building their sites that are mobile friendly.Small business needs to start taking advantage of these numbers and begin to come up with a Mobile Marketing Strategy. The key is to engage the mobile user with content that is easy to access and use.
Mobile advertising presents a unique opportunity to take advantage of high engagement levels and less clutter on the pages.
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Twitter has grown a great deal over the last year and has become the hot social networking service, it becomes more useful. Twitter enables better customer service to easier job searches, and is very useful tool to engage the customer. We have found Twitter more beneficial, though, if you use it to connect with people in your local area.Twitter has become a great tool to communicate with your market.
We have clients that only want to connect to local users of Twitter. Today, we going to go over the tools we use for them.Any questions ,please leave in the comment section.
Finding local Twitter users to connect with is great for networking, but also for getting relevant, real-time, local information about things like jobs, news, politics, weather, food, and more. People in Paris can not help you find a good restaurants in NYC or help with the weather.The best way to get local information is to connect with local users.Here are some ways to locate Twitter users in your town to help you get the most out of Twitter.
Going Local On Twitter:
http://geofollow.com/index.php?s=atlanta%2Cga
Find Twitter People in Your Twitter Neighborhood:
http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood/
The TwellowHood is a local directory of Twitter users from the site Twellow (Twellow). Twellow is a sort of yellow pages directory for Twitter, allowing you to search for Twitter users by topic or name.
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Jun 10
26
Twitter Strategy, Tactics, and Tools
This article is based on Radio Interview with Brian Braker as a guest on Lisa Mininni Blog Talk Radio-Navigating Change. www.excellerateassociates.com
To learn more about our new Twitter Business Application to help you manage Twitter campaigns and reach followers who want to hear your message. Save time, so you can spend it building relationships.
Learn more and Demo our software: http://www.mbconsultingnj.com/twitter application.php
You can listen Here:
1. How have the changes in the Internet impacted how companies should approach Social Media and Twitter?
I would have to say that the most important change is that the advent of social media has made the Internet truly interactive. Suddenly, companies have this extremly powerful tool at their disposal – they are able to interact with their webusers, their clients, and their customer base. Companies need to learn how to capitalize on these newly emerging resources, such as Twitter not only to engage their clients but to gage and react to the trends that are indicated. Really, that is the power of sites like Twitter – that the feedback is in real time.
2. So, clearly, Twitter has emerged as a social media powerhouse, and the market has had to change to adapt to it. How does your Twitter Application fit into a overall Twitter strategy?
As with all Social Media – but with Twitter in particular – to be effective your account must be active. Unlike some traditional marketing, Social Media must be interactive to be effective, and requires a account. Our application enables the user to grow their following based on keywords found in Users Bio. If someone uses words in their BIO, you can assume it defines them..their interests.
3. So, effectively, are you saying that the vast changes in the Internet demand that companies rethink how they market their websites, and in fact how their websites are designed?
Yes, one thing that has clearly emerged with the new search engine technology and Social Media sites is that dynamic content is important. Companies can no longer afford to publish a site and let it become stagnant. In order to stay ahead of the SEO curve, it is critical to update and refresh the content of the site – and more importantly, to make certain it is unique and relevant.
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The answer to this question will determine the effectiveness of your on line campaign. For this reason,we encourage our clients to think very seriously about hiring a professional content writer to help with your SEO and content development.
As the venues for cost effective advertising shift to accomodate the present market, companies need to reevaluate the way they are allocating their advertising dollars. Just as with print media, SEO and on- line marketing requires a directed, concise, and cohesive campaign.
SEO marketing is not unlike traditional marketing, as it relies on branding and consistency of message. However, unlike traditional marketing, SEO marketing requires some very specific details to maximize its effectiveness. To succeed with your SEO campaign, you must be certain that your website is ready – with full optimization, and clean and unique content on each page. More importantly, effective SEO requires that your site remain dynamic, with fresh content uploaded regularly.
Search engine optimization is an inside-out practice. You need to make sure the site is optimized and the code is clean. This provides the framework in which to build out SEO campaigns.
In my experience, these are the most important questions for you to ask as a way to evaluate SEO companies:
1.) What experience do you have with SEO. How many components of SEO is your company well versed in, and which would you recommend for us?
2.) Ask for very specific pricing information and what exactly you can expect to receive for that money.
3.)What is the process they approach SEO? It is very important that they focus on Keyword Research,Develop new optimized content, have a link Building Strategy, and Social Media Strategy.
4.) What type of reporting will you be getting? You need to able to quantify your results.
5.) Ask what is the timeline they expect for your to see results. Remember that anyone who tells you that your site will rank #1 on Google overnight (or even within a week) is not being realistic – and may not be as expert as they are claiming.
6.) Ask for references – not just for companies but for specific campaigns. Do the research – and find out what the results for these campaigns are.
7.) SEO is long term – ask what their specific plans are to maintain your SEO ranking once it is improved. Remember, SEO has to be constantly maintained and modified in order to maintain its effectiveness.
In our experience it is very important to have metrics so you can determine the success or failure of the SEO efforts.You need to understand your ROI and attach reports to them.
We believe any successful SEO campaign starts and ends with producing high quality content.
Try to understand how the company achieves the seo results that have produced for past clients. It is vital the company follows ethical SEO pratices or you may find your site flagged in the future. It is very important that you determine what goals are for any SEO Campaign? Then what types of metrics are going to be used to determine if these goals have been reached?
Not every SEO company does everything well so find out what their strengths and weaknesses are?If there is area we are not strong in, we have partners to fill the gaps.Success and ranking does not occur overnight. Any company that promises you these things is a company you want to avoid.A honest company can demonstrate results, and guarantee behavior and activity is a process that takes time and commitment.
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Jun 10
26
SES Conference NYC Day 2
Having had some time to wade through all the new technology and applications being offered at this year’s conference, we were excited to attend some of the workshops being offered by our colleges. Without question, this conference has reinforced the importance of networking and devoting time to newly emerging technology.
No matter how busy we may be on a day to day basis, no company will remain busy without keeping abreast of new technology and business innovations. More importantly, we can never know what our existing or new clients may need next, so it is imperative that we are able to offer a variety of new and innovative solutions.
A perfect example is how quickly Social Media has emerged as a venerable force in today’s marketing. And, while many businesses are using applications such as Twitter, too few are using them effectively. The show featured a number of applications designed to make Business use of Social Media tools such as Twitter more effective. Without question, some of these applications offer effective solutions to allow Businesses to maximize investment in tools such as Twitter, both in time and advertising dollars.
There is no question that in order to use Twitter effectively, businesses need to implement these new applications in order to guarantee a return on investment. Indeed, we attended a workshop on Automating Twitter and were impressed by the innovations that can allow businesses to minimize the time and money expended, while maximizing the results of their Twitter engagement. We have personally been on this bandwagon for some time, as you can see from our front page http://www.mbconsultingnj.com/twitter%20application.php
We also attended a workshop on SEO Supertools. While no one from Marvel showed up to facilitate, the seminar was still standing room only. It was well worth it for the information imparted, including some great webmaster tools, as well as information on Google AdWords Keywords, phrase match to identify long tail opportunities, Google Trends, and much more.
Here are some great new tools we recommend:
• SEO SpyGlass – great for small businesses.
• Majestic SEO – a good way to compare your backlinks with competitors..
• Syntryx – an indispensable tool quickly to unravel competitor affiliates, media buys, seo campaigns, and email channels.
• SEOmoz tool set – includes over twenty SEO tools designed to help with every aspect of search engine optimization.
• Raven Tools – to manage your SEO and Social Media – indispensable for every SeoTool Kit.
• TagCrowd – a great tool for visualizing keywords and generating tag clouds from any submitted text online.
How you use these SEO tools will determine your competitive edge. Everyone can access these tools. The trick is to master them to give you a competitive edge. Remember, information is only effective if you interpret it and implement it into your daily business practice.
We include a link to the presentation for those who were not able to attend – it is well worth the time!
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Jun 10
26
SES Conference NYC DAY 1
SES Conference NYC DAY 1
There is nothing like New York City in the Spring – even on a cold and rainy day – there is something completely exhilarating about it. We made our way to the Hilton, after fortifying ourselves with a breakfast at Cafe Metro and the trek through Times Square. We were not disappointed – and certainly impressed by the turnout of attendees, the quality of the presenters, and the innovative new products and services being showcased.
More importantly, it was exciting to see all of the new technology available to provide innovative solutions in the ever evolving market of SEO. Our goal was to understand as many of these newly emerging SEO techniques, tools, and processes in order to continue to provide effective solutions for our clients and their varied needs. There are some fantastic new solutions out there, and it is really exciting to see how the industry is growing.
In addition to pursuing all of the vendor booths, we have attended very informative conferences. Over the next few days, we will impart the knowledge we have gained for those who were not able to attend in person. We have attached one link – one for the Keynote Address and Live coverage from the conference.Specifically, we attended seminars on SEO Performance Marketing and Meaningful SEO Metrics. We will be sharing what we learned at these, and other, seminars this week.
It was hilarious to visit the Facebook Kiosk just as their entire system crashed, and we must thank the Bing representatives who were gracious enough to invite us to the Welcome Cocktail party – certainly a fantastic networking experience.
Check back tomorrow for more news from the SES Front.
Link to live coverage of the Keynote – Avicenna Ashikaga, Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist, Google from the SES New York conference.
http://www.seroundtable.com
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