The Web Credibility Project: Guidelines – Stanford University

Here are the researched and documented guidelines on how to make your site credible.

We have a saying at The Next Wave: Create Lust•Evoke Trust- in other words: have something people want, and make them trust you- it’s marketing in a tagline.

The most important part of staying at the top of search is to update your site often- which is one reason WordPress makes so much sense.

Let the Good Times Roll–by Guy Kawasaki: The Effective Emailer

So- you’ve been e-mailing for a long time- but, I hate to tell you- most of you suck at it.

Here are some guidelines from Guy Kawasaki- the former king of evangelism at Apple.

If you want the short version:

A good subject- ie. what the e-mail is about. No “Hi” or “no subject” – something like- “Follow up question on the seminar” or “The meeting on 3/4/06- agenda”

Quote the e-mail you are responding to. It always helps to have both sides of the conversation.

Have a signature- so people have your contact info- or better yet- use a vCard.

Most importantly- don’t forward anything with a cc list of people’s e-mails- Spammers love it when you send the mile long e-mail about how if you forward this e-mail Bill Gates will give you a Honda… and always bcc- if you must send things like this.

Best of all- check www.snopes.com before forwarding anything – so if it’s hogwash- you don’t look like an idiot.

With so many spam filters out there- the best way to get your e-mail through is to be an effective e-mailer- so read Guy’s post.

AOL and Yahoo may start charging commercial users fractions of a cent to deliver e-mail.

See stories here: Slashdot Clickz

And while you might think this is outrageous- it’s actually a good thing. The Can-Spam act has done virtually nothing to stop SPAM and to increase the effectiveness of direct marketing through e-mail, many people you’ve opted-in for mailings- have pushed way too much junk your into your inbox.

The solution is already here- it’s called RSS. I’ve written several posts about it already- most recently “A site without RSS is like a phone without a ringer.”

RSS allows your customers to choose when to see what new and interesting things you have on your site- and to visit at their leisure. Smart marketers will soon offer different RSS feeds to different types of customers- with different deals on different products. For now, the key is adding RSS to your site- no matter what (WordPress does this automatically).

To read some interesting views on how to make RSS simpler to use see:

Dave Winer “How RSS can bust through” 

Fred Wilson “E-mail vs RSS (Continued)”

While what I’ve read about AOL and Yahoo’s plans seems heavy handed, something has to be done to eliminate junk e-mail- and this is one option.  I remember seeing a proposal not long ago about requiring a secure type certificate for every e-mail server that would be revoked if too many spam complaints were lodged against that server. Earthlink implemented a barrier that would require a response to send e-mail to protected addresses that was highly effective during an outbreak of one really horrible virus a year or so ago. This is not the first time a radical solution has been suggested.

The best spam fighting solution I have seen is the Spam Karma 2 plug-in for WordPress that works through the collective wisdom of a shared knowledge base. It would seem that if implemented Internet wide- this type of Spam filter would quickly stop the current deluge.