Spam dominates email

According to a recent study by PandaLabs, only six percent (I said SIX PERCENT) of emails transmitted to businesses were actually business related.

For the love of god!

“The percentage of infected emails increased significantly in September, to more than double the levels that we had witnessed in previous months. This could be related to the financial crisis, as cyber-crooks step up attacks to enhance their chances of success and avoid the effects of the economic recession,” says Panda’s Ryan Sherstobitoff.

More from Blast Magazine:

PandaLabs found 91.77 percent of emails delivered to business inboxes were spam. This number peaked in August when more than 93 percent of mail traffic analyzed by Panda Security was cataloged as spam.

Much of this illicit traffic was sent from computers infected with bots, a type of malicious code that allows cyber-crooks to take remote control of compromised systems. Once a computer has been infected, it becomes what is colloquially known as a ‘zombie’. These ‘zombie’ computers, under the control of cybercriminals, are then networked together to form ‘botnets’ which are used for a range of malicious activities that includes sending spam. In the last three months alone, over 330,000 new zombies were activated each day.

Marketing Daily compares McCain/Obama in marketing terms

According to Marketing Daily, if one were to compare John McCain and Barack Obama in marketing terms, the former would be the well-established Diet Coke while the latter would be the new entry that is Nokia.

"It's one of those classic marketing dichotomies," says Ged Parton, CEO of the brand and communications practice at Synovate. "You can summarize these two brand strategies into 'you, you, you' and 'me, me, me'."

"McCain's strategy is based on him, his experience and his service to the country," Parton tells Marketing Daily. "[Obama's] whole articulation has been about what he's going to do."

Would Sarah Palin be Mud Gum?

It's always good to mix politics with business, so...

Here is a great political blog. I hate political blogs, but this is by far my favorite. Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic does his best to keep everything in the middle. No left or right slants, which I love. He calls it like he sees it regardless of whether it's for or against the left or the right.

That's here.

Good rules for companies using Twitter

From Flackme.com:

1. Don’t have your PR firm set up and be your Twitter account. That seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? But, well, I heard a story at BlogWorld Expo of a PR firm charging $7000 for a week of Twittering, and have heard other stories of astronomical figures on setting up and monitoring the Twitterverse. How is a PR firm supposed to respond if they have to go back to the client and get the okay first? Um, social media and quick time conversations like Twitter do not work that way.

2. Don’t follow everyone willy nilly. First, it makes no sense - if you follow someone, well, it does not matter unless they follow you back. Otherwise, you’re a corporate shill that is just talking to nobody. You’re talking to no one and it’s obvious that you just are doing it to do it. And, well, if that’s what you want, that’s great. I have a lot of the Zappos people follow me … but I so rarely wear shoes and they don’t sell Havaianas yet (come on guys, get on the stick). But, I like the company, and don’t follow all of them back. But, hey, they must like me enough to follow. My strategy? If someone follows the corporate account first, I follow back. If they Tweet about the company more than once, I follow. If they are a blog that I read that is in the corporate space (or a journalistic space), I follow to see what they are working on. Simple and easy.

3. Get Tweetdeck. At first, I was not a fan … but if you are in-house and doing Twitter for work, there is no greater tool. Not only do you get the stream, the replies and direct messages, but it keeps your global searches right there to reply. And, well, if you are doing a corporate Twitter account, scan for your name and other terms that refer to what your company does, and what its products serve. Seriously, it rocks. And, those that know me know that I’m stingy with the likes.

4. Be engaged. Be personable. Be responsive. There’s nothing worse than sending someone a direct message on Twitter … and hearing nothing back. You followed ME first, and yet you are unable to respond to a question? And, well, that’s just a direct message. If you are sent an @reply, and do not respond, do you REALLY want to be in the conversation, or you just glomming onto the next thing? If it’s glomming, well, you are not ready.

5. Be a person. The other day, I noted that I do not like corporate Twitter accounts with no name, but said in my more usual way. Seriously, this is supposed to be a conversation, and you want me to talk to someone with no name? No reference? No bio? Um, no thank you. No, really, go away.

6. Twitter is not for everyone. For another, longer post … social media is not for all corporations or entities. There are those that social media will NEVER be the right fit because of policies or legalities. Despite the mantra of the social media “experts”, social media is not a right fit for all companies. It’s a simple rule. In that, Twitter is not right for all groups - but that does not mean they should not be monitoring Twitter. You don’t even need to download Tweetdeck … you can use Filtrbox for Twitter searches (an added bonus to what is being said out there on blogs, and such).

Entrepreneur.com: The importance of PR

Entrepreneur.com has a great article on why PR is important.

"Because our garments were revolutionary, it was critical that we had PR; otherwise, who would know about us?" says Peg Feodoroff, owner of a high-end hospital garment company whose "desk sits" (meetings with editors and writers arranged by FactoryPR) resulted in coverage in The New York Times and Women's Wear Daily, Health and Elle magazines.

Read the whole article, it's worth it.

Google doesn't want you to be successful

Not in the sense that they don't want you to make money. They don't want you to be successful in cracking their algorithm. Hence, why they are so secretive about it.

“We don’t actually want you to be successful,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said. “The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance."

In short, Google doesn't want you showing up high in search results because you know how to beat their algorithm. Google wants you to basically just make your site worth a damn and then they'll find you.

This is why they constantly change the rules for their rankings and why SEO people get paid to do their job.

A Realtor Ad blog

This is kind of neat. A blog dedicated to realtor ads. It's called Keepin' it Realtor.

A lesson in branding: Tightwad Bank

How can a bank in Missouri with no website have accounts from California, New York and Saskatchewan, Canada? It's simple: clever branding.

That's right, Tightwad Bank in Tightwad, MO has used its name to leverage the country's current financial crisis and let people know that they are a safe bank to use.

"It's a difficult name to forget," chairman Don Higdon says. "You typically have two reactions: One is 'What? What is your name?' You're not going to get that customer. And the other [is] there's a smile on their face and they're just dying to open an account. I think that's the kind of excitement from a name that a lot of companies want to have."

We think it's a great branding idea.

"When you can get a measurable reaction simply from a name, your challenge of converting them to a customer is diminished substantially; then all you have to do is talk about price or size or location, and location just isn't an issue anymore."