Dear Friend,

Have you connected with our Spokesdog Keebler yet?

We are having fun looking for new lighthearted ways to connect with customers and prospects and Keebler has been the perfect fun way to do just that.

We invite you to read more in this issue about Keebler and to find out what we have in store for her and you.

Best Regards,

Nancy McCord

 

Connect with me online on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Plaxo | Naymz | Our Blog

Keebler our Spokesdog | Don't False Advertise | Selling by Video

Introducing our Spokedog Keebler

We would like you to meet our spokesdog Keebler. Keebler is the McCord family pet and our new fun way to connect with dog lovers, business colleagues, and people just interested in knowing more about blogging, AdWords, SEO, and social media.

Keebler was adopted on October 2009 as an adult dog from the Northern Virginia Sheltie Rescue. Although Keebler is not a pure bred Sheltie, she had enough of the "Sheltie look" to qualify for the rescue group to take her in from a shelter. Keebler is actually a Sheltie-Corgi mix. She has the Sheltie look with the cute short legs and long body of a Corgi.

The wonderful people at the Northern Virginia Sheltie Rescue find, then adopt and foster, many needy and older dogs from shelters or from direct family donation, right in their own homes. They are serious about the dogs and look to find the very best adoptive home match for the dog and family.

Keebler had been a street dog and then had been adopted twice by families. She had not been able to get along with other dogs in the family and had been returned for re-placement. The Rescue group loved her, but found her difficult to place, until we came along. What we saw was a great dog who needed to be the “queen” of the household and be a part of a high energy family. It has turned out to be an excellent match for us, a one dog family, and for Keebler.

Our spokesdog’s best features are her wonderful smile and bubbly personality. Although adopting an adult dog can be a challenge sometimes, our family welcomed Keebler to her new forever home with open arms. We fondly say that our dog has a mental illness when it comes to squirrels. She hates them and tries to chase them in the yard, then she will run circles around the kitchen table to work off her anxious energy until stopped. We have learned that our high energy dog just needs a bit of special loving help when squirrels are in our yard.

There are a few ways you can connect with Keebler. She has her own Facebook page, she has her own Twitter account called AskKeebler, and she regularly interacts to answer questions on the McCord Web Service Facebook Business Page. If you want to join in the fun, ask web visibility questions, see funny videos that are silly yet viral, you need to connect with our spokesdog Keebler. It is all done in fun!

If you want candid answers to your web related business questions, have a light hearted laugh, want to share dog pictures, or ask about how to promote your business on the Web, you need to just Ask Keebler!

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It is False Advertising To Create Fake Reviews for Google Places

You may not have realized this, but it is illegal to create fake reviews and testimonials about your products, services, or business on Google Places, Google Hotpot, your blog, your website, and even on Amazon.com. As a business owner you should know that there are some serious penalties that can be assessed if you are doing this or even  unknowingly involved in these activities.

How so? In November 2009 the FTC, that is the Federal Trade Commission, released advertising guidelines that impact all advertising efforts, even including the Web and blogging. In a nutshell, the rules state that you can not write as if you have used a product or service when you have not. If you are paid to write a piece about a product you must have used it and you must state in your piece that you are paid to write the piece. You can read all the gory details and gobbledygook the feds write to spell out a concept from the FTC website.

The bottom line is this, in the FTC's own words for bloggers and online publishers:

• Endorsements must be truthful and not misleading.
  
  
• If the advertiser doesn't have proof that the endorser's experience represents what consumers will achieve by using the product, the ad must clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results in the depicted circumstances, and
  
  
• If there's a connection between the endorser and the marketer of the product that would affect how people evaluate the endorsement, it should be disclosed.

There are penalties spelled out for violations and the FTC makes it easy to report a violation with their online complaint site.

The reason for my article in this issue is to mention that creating fake reviews on Google Hotpot, Google Places, and other online review services would also fall into the category as false advertising and could get you and your business in a pickle with the FTC.

I mention this as there are several Google Places firms, based overseas, that are promoting such illegal reviews as part of their business packages. You, as a business owner, need to know that these review placement and review writing services are illegal and could get YOU in trouble.

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Soft Selling Your Services in Video

Short home-made videos can be a great way to connect and sell your services. You don't have to spend a ton of money to get a potential customer's attention. In fact, the more humorous your video the more "viral" it may become; being shared widely on Facebook or on Twitter.

Here is just one example of a video that we have done recently that we feel uses a lighthearted approach, was fun to make, and took all of 10 minutes to film, and has gotten the attention of many of our readers and followers.

Keebler Fetches Google AdWords Customers- as seen on our blog, Twitter, Facebook Business Page, and YouTube Channel.

For my firm and my family, we had fun featuring our new spokesdog, Keebler, in her very first video. Our dog will do just about anything for salami!

Our upcoming videos will feature puppet interviews with Keebler, talking hands, Keebler's language lesson, and Keebler's take on Twitter and Facebook (she likes them). We'll keep you posted when our next video is out and about the fun that we and our customers are having on Facebook with Keebler. Make sure to "like" our business page on Facebook to join in the fun with Keebler.

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