Earlier I posted What have you bought for me lately story here on my blog. My good friend, Tom Breur, Principal of XLNT Consulting in the Netherlands was quick to point out the following fascinating facts. Here is what Tom emailed me and I am publishing it here with his permission. Thanks Tom.

That story actually serves multiple purposes, depending on which point I
am making.

World wide, about 100 Million transactions per day, 50 Billion transaction per year are being screeened online
for fraud, using a Neural Network model (in combination with business
rules). The market leader is Falcon, owned by Fair Isaac, formerly HNC.

Learning points:

1 – Because of the huge volume, the learning is remarkably precise.
Conversely, you need sufficient volume to tease out the signal from the
noise.

2 – You need the “feedback recording” of events in order to make such data
capture a sustainable organisatiopnal activity: credit card companies
“know” when they hit a false positive (they call, and then pass the transaction),
the false negatives are claimed (disputed) after the client receives their
statements. These data are fed back in to the application ot make it
“adaptive”

3 – There are costs for false positives (spoiled surpises, like yours – that’s what everybody expects if you tell the story right which makes it
so much better), and false negatives, fraudylent transations that were
accepted. If you put those in the equation, you get “better” models, that
is, better tuned to the business needs. (another example of asymetric mis
classification costs I always use is credit cards: when accepted +$200
profit, when defaulting -$5000 write-off, therefore you cannot afford to
err very often).

Here is an example of web site from Poole Resources that unfortunately was not a project my company worked on. Part of the strategy of this web site was an attempt to incorporate and build an online community attracting the company’s customers to interact with each other and the owner of the company. The attempt was not only a failure but it is actually a continuing disaster. Let me explain:

Below is the screen capture of the home page. Notice the “Fast Forum Access” option on the right hand side to enable you to click on in order to access the online community forum. So far so good. (Click on images to enlarge):

When entering the first forum page (screen capture below) notice the very few number of posts at the top right of the screen. Not only are there meager 13 posts, they are all from three years ago and showing no activity since. This alone should have been a strong enough reason to realize this strategy is not working and to either research it further or take the forum down and remove any reference to it on the web site.

When paging down (next screen below) I was amazed to see 5826 registered users. Something did not add up for me. How could you have thousands of users with so few posts?

I scrolled back to the top (screen capture below) and clicked on “Memberlist” and then sort by “Joined Date” in “Descending” order. When I clicked on the “Sort” button, the amazing devastating answer became clear to me. This forum registration page is being spammed by despicable porn sites and similar other web sites. Just reviewing the “Username” is enough to tell the story, but when clicking on the “Website” option … oh my!

I have tried contacting the owner of this site a couple of times in the past 2 years. I emailed her to contact me immediately and stated that I have some critical information about her sites that is potentially harming her reputation. No reply from her yet.

What are you thinking of?

It was almost 10PM and I was standing there at the Tel Aviv airport in Israel waiting for the announcement that my flight to the US is boarding. So in order to kill some time I decided to visit the beautiful, duty free, H. Stern jewelry store.

“You sure have a great taste” said the lovely sales lady, commenting on the gorgeous bracelet I was looking at.

“Thank you” I said.
“For a special lady I assume?” she asked.
“My beautiful wife of course” I said.
“Would you like me to check on the price for this?” She asked.
“Why not, it couldn’t hurt” I said.
“$18,000!” she said.
“EIGHTEEN THOUSAND?” I yelled. (Oh, did it hurt)

Probably noticing the nice Hublot watch I was wearing she continued: “May I show you something else?”
“Ok” I said.
She pulled out this beautiful watch that I immediately fell in love with. How did she know? And she even told me that it looked great on me. (Yes, it was a man’s watch and I believed her)

Unknowingly, several minutes later, the phone rang at my home in the US and it was 5 AM. My wife, still sleeping, answered and heard a friendly gentleman voice.
“Mrs. Barr?” he asked.
“Yes, and who is this?” she asked.
“This is John from the fraud department at MBNA. I just wanted to make sure you knew that a large purchase was just made overseas with your husband’s personal credit card.” He said.
“Where was it?” asked my wife.
“At the Tel Aviv airport in Israel.” He answered.
“Oh, that is fine said my wife. It is my husband I am sure buying me a surprise present.”
“I am so sorry.” He said. “I just ruined the surprise your husband was planning on for you.”

Several hours later, I was greeted by my wife, who came to pick me up at the Cleveland airport. With a huge smile she asked: “How was your trip and did you buy anything special?” I replied: “Great, and I got myself a little present at the airport. So do you like my new watch?”

It was a quite ride home that day.

(Note: Please see the note from my colleague Tom Breur from Holland regarding this story)

I am thrilled to announce the new site we have developed for our dear client, a great friend and colleague, Libby Wagner, President of Influencing Options. Libby and the many trainers associated with her company have been focusing on helping organizations develop the proper influencing skills, reduce conflicts, increase market share and improve performance, trust, morale and retention.

I encourage you to check out her new web site and explore this very smart individual with a great commitment, passion and energy to her clients and her business. Click here to view her new site.

(Click image to enlarge)

Site Objectives:
1. Strong and clear Value Proposition
2. Provocative questions to engage visitors
3. In your face, clean design and clear navigation
4. Calls to action on all pages
5. Testimonials and client results for credibility
6. Big Blocks to promote main products and services
7. Passive income products
8. Visitor registration to electronic newsletters
9. Less is more. Reduced text on home page

Early this week I submitted a proposal (among several others) to a prospect interested in our web site development. Shortly after I sent the proposal the prospect emailed me and asked me to further articulate what I mean in the proposal by suggesting to incorporate strong call-to-action techniques on all site pages. I thanked the prospect and suggested the answer is clearly articulated in a previous post on my blog: “what’s your call to action” and I then suggested they might find several other articles on my web site and blog to be of value:
How the 3 strikes rule applies to your web strategy
The importance of web site evolution
Blogging in the new year

So what are some simple and basic ideas of marketing your blog?
1. Include it in your email signature file.
2. Print it on your business card.
3. Verbally mention it in your discussions and presentations.
4. Mention it when writing your articles.
5. Leverage in your emails especially using my idea above of driving direct value to your current and future clients.

This prospect is not a dear new client.

A question was asked on one of the online forums we implemented and I help moderate: “How often does one need to add a new entry to a blog? How long or short should a typical entry be?” Here is my answer:

This is one of the topics I study, track, research, write about, consult others and help develop. So let me share my bias with you.

I am writing an article for my blog with the title of: “The slow death of blogs” and please don’t misunderstand me, blogs are a powerful business tools and are here to stay and evolve. I am referring to individuals that were convinced by someone or thought it is a good idea to start a blog. But they rarely post on it. Not only is it a poor reflection on them but it is also a sad underutilization and a waste of this powerful tool. Their blogs are doomed by google and more importantly by their possible readers and will eventually close down – It’s only a matter of time. Unfortunately, some are members of this forum and some I personally reached out to and recommended they start posting on their own blog. Well guess what, they did for a short while and then stopped. They may get their last minute of fame and get featured in my article.

So if you are thinking of starting a blog here are some pointers:

1. Minimum 3 posts per week but if you missed a week here and there, not a big deal.


2. Length of each post from one sentence to an article length (1.5 page) although I recommend you keep it short and with bullet points. Write effectively and don’t over think this point.


3. You can always break your posts into sections or to be continued which may create anticipation.


4. The key is INTERESTING and VALUABLE stuff. But you already knew that I am sure.


5. The other key is that there is much more to putting together a successful blog than just starting to blog.


6. A blog is a tool for rapid publishing giving 100% of the control to the author of the blog enabling you to basically fire your web master (well not quite but almost.)


7. Finally, the power in creating a rich experience for the user is by combining text, images, audio Podcasts and videos on your blog. See Alan Weiss for a great example of a fascinating blog. Mine is another of course.

There are other members on the forum that have interesting blogs. Ed Poll, Aviv Shahar, Dan Coughlin, Pam Harper and Michael Harrison among others.

Here are some articles I wrote that you may find of value before you make your final decision:

Blogging in the new year
How to make your blog posts more interesting
The importance of web site evolution
How to improve your marketing exposure

I am so pleased to welcome our new client from down under, Michael Harrison who runs his successful consulting company, Strategies + Plus in North Adelaide, Australia. Michael focuses on helping business owners and executives to grow their business and increase their profits. He is a fascinating thought leader with an impressive background. Click here, to visit his new blog we have just implemented and launched.

(Click image to enlarge)

My colleague, Dan Janal, runs a great operation with his company PRLEADS. His company focuses on helping individuals get quoted in top-notch publications. I know many people that use Dan’s company and get great results and are quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Business Week to just name a few. I met Dan and he does run a great operation that provides terrific value.

Some time ago, Dan started a new blog by the name of: Cool Book of the Day, which actually is a great idea, allowing authors to feature their books. However, I have two key issues with this blog:

The first is Dan’s decision to use Google ads in an attempt to possibly make money. Please look at the first two screen shots (click on the images to enlarge) and tell me how are ads about losing belly fat, quitting your job, and pushing hard the love button, help in establish strong business credibility about the book, the author or Dan’s blog. I believe it ruins everyone’s credibility. Realize that the two screen are capturing the same identical blog page but demonstrate how Google controls changing these ads at different times.

(First google ad)

(Same screen a couple of seconds later with a different google ad)

I read blogs using a blog reader, which allows me to review multiple blogs instantaneously to quickly pick and choose the entry I may be interested in reading. It also saves me the time it would otherwise take to visit each blog in order to check if any of them has anything new to read. The concept has been there for a while and it uses RSS technology, but that is for another article. The reader I happen to use is the popular Google reader. Take a look at the screen shot below, which shows the same identical blog above through my Google Reader. Notice that it does NOT show the Google Ads. This is a huge consideration if you are thinking of utilizing Google Ads in your blog.

(Same screen of above blog page displayed in Google Reader

The second issue I have is more about the content. It seems to me that the author of each book had to simply answer several questions about their book rather than Dan interviewing them and writing his own review. But that would probably take some work.

Finally, his blog uses the Amazon affiliate program. This means that you are able to click on a book, which will then take you directly to the proper Amazon page. If you are then interested in ordering it online, the blog owner (most likely Dan) will earn some dollars. I do not have a key issue with this concept since I do the same on my own blog. The difference is that I believe you need to have a disclaimer about this in order to create credibility. Mine is at the bottom of the “About Chad Barr” page, which states that I will donate 100% of the affiliate program income to my favorite charities.

This article is intended to demonstrate how some decisions have the potential to ruin your credibility utilizing the wrong Internet tools and concepts.