I Saved Time When I Found@Catchfriday.com

Getting the most out of business networking.

2012-03-20T13:54:48Z

Working a room in networking can be quite daunting, can't it? Have you ever wondered that out of this online blogging platform, you are invited to an event where you are meeting people for the first time. You may be quite nervous and you need to look for a friendly face. Focus on Getting the Best out of Networking When you meet someone you need to listen to what they are saying, and look at their name badge, and repeat their name. Ask for a business card if you can't remember the name.

Is networking selling or not selling? What really is networking - most people hate the sales pitch. Networking is part of the marketing mix.

There are times when you turn up and there is a window, then you might be able to make a pitch, but this is distinctly remote. Therefore you need to have a higher strategy, particularly that it is unlikely that you will do business with them in one month. The fastest Heather White has converted a cold contact is under three days, but it could be three, six, nine twelve months and under two years. Networking allows you to find the contact and establish some rapport, and then to hear some opportunities, it could be that you you might have to meet sometimes a person two, four, six, ten times before that window appears.

One of the reasons networking does not work for some people is that they do not understand about the buying cycles and the buying cultures. It may take up to a year to do business, so you need to make sure that you are on the list of whoever they are thinking about when that moment arises.

The word of mouth is going to sell your services, and you are not going to sell at that event.

The first thing you need to do is to think if this is the right event you are going to, and what are your reasons for going to it. What is your strategy to go to one particular event?

Have you made contact with the host, because your host knows you, they can make contacts for you. Walk away with three to four business contacts that you can talk to the next day, and meet for coffee afterwards, not necessarily about doing business with.

CatchFriday.com © Catch Friday Media Limited 2012

Market America Brand Hits the UK

2012-03-13T13:39:13Z

Americans appear to use Facebook much more than we do in the UK, and sometime ago I added a circle of internet marketers and out of dame I was connected to, I met her other half Robert Jenkins, and was their first point of call when he landed with his friend in London.

I bought his friend his first pint of real ale - Brakespears, and he was real pleased about that.

They are both in town for the big event, being J R Ridinger the dude behind Market America that has decided to launch three free events in London for Shop.com in multi-level marketing / network marketing. J R's marketing slogans 'We succeed by helping others succeed, think big because you'll never be bigger than your dreams, the only way to fail is to quit or simply not try, we are the social shopping company of the future'.

I wonder what category I would put myself in - perhaps the only way to fail is to quit or simply not try, because I'm not particularly interested in taking part, but are you? What side of the fence would you put yourself on?

Shop.com present their opportunity as the UnFranchise Business Presentation, and to buy into this opportunity I was told it would only cost $399 bucks got have a shopping cart. However to make the real money as a distributor you have to buy in for $3999 or you can pay monthly for something like £123, but is this a real opportunity? A glance at the Market America site suggests that there are trillions to make in commission, but is it real?

Rob told me that shop.com wants to rival Amazon, but can they? Their prices appeared more expensive, but they were offering 25% cash back, but would anyone want to buy?

JR Ridinger's web site is filled with a guy jumping for joy, no doubt on a roller coaster. and I notice that he has KLOUT - good luck to him!

Will Market America's hoof print make a mark on the UK, or will he just be one cowboy riding through?

Time will tell, but with the finance coming out of Asia, and more specifically out of Taiwan where Market America's headquarters are, they are no doubt gambling that they could be a big hit in the UK.

Suspended on Google+ - Customer Service Crap!

2012-03-09T11:10:31Z

The power of Google beggars belief, coupled with their wealth.

Slowly we are being taken over by the internet, and corporations like Google want to control what we read, and Chrome wants to control more, to the point that Google will be launching a bank next year.

Just where is this all going? Certainly they want to control our pocket, and dictate how we should use our money, but is it healthy?

The manipulation of power, makes Google Corporation as something of an ogre, especially when it's effect on you, can spell out problems for your business, identity and much more.

Today I was suspended and my account is being reviewed. Some mindless bureaucrat has decided that I am dangerous? A despot or something more.

The only way to get to the heart of the organisation is to complain, to fight, and to publicize what is wrong.

Somehow though I think they don't care, and this mindless hypocrisy has to stop now!

Google quite clearly does not understand 'Customer Engagement' and in not providing a helpline, is clearly demonstrating intolerance.

I do not even get an email - just instant suspension - there is something wrong with how Google communicates it would appear to me. Google does not understand the power of 1 person to take them out.

Why should they particularly care about one person? They are a massive conglomerate with so much wealth and power that there is something wrong.

Why would 1 person make a difference, could a customer's complaint effect their share price - do we need angry customers?

What is SEO and why should a website owner use it?

2012-03-08T18:25:35Z

Lawrence Perry puts the spotlight on SEO

Search engine optimization is about getting your web site to the top of Google, and increasing your audience in a nutshell.

It is not an instant fix and takes between six to nine months to achieve and sometimes longer. It is about interaction and engagement, demonstrated albeit slightly poorly in the Ecademy score.

In my time I've been to number 6 (before I decided not to show my score anymore), but if you post quantity in articles, comments and likes on Ecademy everyday you will go higher. I've heard it said that community is king, but I would also suggest that content is king!

Google loves fresh content, and social media is so important for getting your message across. If you engage a virtual writer they can certainly write blogs for you, that can feed in your website everyday, and can push your site up the rankings. If you engage a virtual personal assistant they could run your social media for you, and even manage your Ecademy account, and it's all allowed in safe networking on this platform, and legitimate. There are lots of people who do it. The fact that I can openly talk about it - just about says it all, doesn't it?

You like I need to make business work, and not spend too much time where it doesn't add value to what you do.

Getting back to SEO, having happy friendly staff working for you is half the battle, or a good SEO company, and this video behind the scenes talk about the dedication that link builders can make for you.

Having a bunch of virtual people working in a team makes all the difference to your success, and getting you there.

Creating backlinks and submitting articles all drawing back to your sites.

CatchFriday.com © Catch Friday Media Limited 2012

More Sales More Potential Through SEO

2012-02-09T10:25:27Z

Getting your site seen on Google is an important way that businesses can have visibility to potential new clients searching for a solution. If you are first on the list you will receive at least ten or more fresh inquiries everyday depending on the popularity of your business plan.

Adsense is one way of assuring that your company can be seen, and is the quickest way for you to get to the top of the search engines on your chosen keywords, but is it efficient? Well it will depend how much your budget is, and I know small companies that are shelling out £1500 a month and more to get noticed.

SEO Search Engine Optimization can offer you huge savings on your budget if you are willing for long term results, rather than short. You can get for a few hundred pounds to the top of Google, but below the Adsense paid advertising within six to nine months on all your keywords if you are willing to use an outsourced company.

There are a lot of firms that boast making a large number of backlinks, blog commenting, press releases, bookmarking on sites like Delicious and article writing, and you have the choice. The problems that you may get maybe related to broken promises, and lack of control. However outsourcing companies that are local to your area, may be able to offer a better solution, and some can offer you your own back office, where you can select your staff yourselves using their facilities.

The advantages of this are that you have staff working for you, who you have selected and will brand with your business. This marks a totally different approach where you have total control as opposed to no control – you only pay the outsourcing company, who deal with all the admin and red tape. You also can change staff easily if they do not perform well.

You are the customer and your needs come first, and whether you pay a £1000 a month for twenty targeting press releases across social media, or less for more quantity from SMEs. The choice is yours.

Your Web Site has gone - Reality!

2012-02-01T10:51:18Z

My Virtual Personal Assistant told me last Monday morning that my website Catch Friday Media was down.

At the time I was on a train from London to Colchester to see my lawyer, and thought I would not get on Godaddy to the evening........ Frustrating enough, but website repair is not a one second fix, is it?

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /media/ on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.catchfriday.com Port 80

That evening I logged into Godaddy and since I only know the rudiments of programming - my back end staff do it all, don't yours?

Phoned Godaddy and spoke to them in the Arizona afternoon, and was told that my site had been hacked, and the website had been deleted. Fortunately I know that my IT back office at Ultro Digital our Call Center in the Philippines has everything backed up, but I guess not everybody may have that back up.

I have been with Godaddy since 2005, and loved there 24 hour service and technical staff, but what the heck had happened and what kind of customer service is this? On the spur of the moment I purchased an SSL Certificate for five sites and a Website Protection Site Scanner, but I cancelled these twelve hours later.

Upon review our security discovered that your website was compromised on or before Jan 28th via unknown means. The index scripts that were mentioned as being defaced were due to another malicious script being used by an attacker in the webdev/affiliate/admin/dump/ directory. However, that script no longer exists, nor was it backed up in our nightly backups. Therefore it is not possible to grab a timestamp on that file to determine its time of origin. I recommend that you modify all passwords on the hosting account, web application, database etc and then update all web applciations to the latest vendor supplied versions as well as any plugins they may be using.

I now am hosting my site with Ultro Digital in Davao Philippines, through a server in California.

This is the first time that this has ever been a problem for me, and I have learned a hard lesson from Godaddy that it doesn't matter how good a relationship can be - it was lost in a day. I still use Godaddy, and I host another site with them, but that's it - you know what I mean, don't you?

My confidence is in my back office in the Philippines with the Catch Friday Team.

I should have followed the advice of Gerard, Guus and James earlier, and taken the hosting out of Godaddy.

Thanks so much James Pitt and Guus Ellenkamp - appreciated!

Do you like Stand-Up Comedians?

2012-01-22T17:02:51Z

Can Women Trust Jeff Leach again?

Jeff has a list of 299 women that he went out with, were you one of them? If so how long has it taken for you to get over being dumped by Jeff?

If you are wondering who Jeff Leach is - he is a self-confessed sex addict, and I wonder if you
know someone who is?

Could Jeff be described as a predator, or someone carrying a craving who needs treatment?

Let's look at who Jeff Leach really is? Website or Brand? Effective blog

Could Jeff's blog find a place on Ecademy?

Jeff is an entrepreneur with a business - the guy is a male hooker, would there be a girl out there who is attracted to him?

Jeff sometimes wears masks....

Oh and yes Jeff is a Stand-Up Comic!

"We Provide Media That Get's You Noticed"

Tweet Hijack

2012-01-22T16:17:00Z

Your innocent tweet hijacked to attack US Government Websites, and even if you don't know about it you can go to jail.

On Twitter Hacker group Anonymous have 249,000 followers, are you one of them or is one of your children?

Watching TV and movies on the net has become acceptable to a vast number of people across the world, and file sharing is common place, but is it legal?

Is it really healthy that the US Feds want to rule the world, or is this solely about copyright?

Then how come the latest movies are available through the web, and who put them there? In the old days they were on films, so why are they freely available?

The Feds go one more they want to arrest hackers in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere and put them in prison for years, but are they dealing with this properly, or is US Justice crossing borders and where do they stop?

Meanwhile Anonymous are apparently tapping into twitter accounts and using them according to Sophos as part of their attacks on the US government and the anti-piracy organizations, with ordinary links which launch cyber attacks from the PC you are on, without you knowing it.

This threat may be happening right now on your PC without you knowing it, and you could be woken by a knock on your door in the middle of the night, are you ready for it?

According to the Daily Mail (2012)

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos has stated that he is not sure if participants would get away with claiming that they innocently clicked on links by mistake,'
'I'm not sure if participants in this instance would get away with claiming that they innocently clicked on links by mistake,' says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, and this means ' that internet users need to be extremely careful when clicking on unknown URLs or they could unwittingly be joining this latest zombie army. If you participate in such an attack, you could find yourself receiving a lengthy jail sentence'.

Be Warned

"We Provide Media That Get's You Noticed"

Getting Media attention and High Ranking

2012-01-21T21:58:01Z

True media placed correctly brings results.

We placed this media on Ecademy and it rose to number one spot on Google out of 50,800,000 results, and had 2406 views, and 63 comments. The impact of the blog resulted on the public coming onto Ecademy via twitter and facebook, and talking about their stories. The net result was that the offending website was taken down, and the police were advised through the information given to the public. The telephone number was also taken down on the offending site.
Scammed Recently on Flight Tickets?
by Lawrence Perry [67.29:6] on 12-Dec-11 7:32pm
Likes (6)

I just had a friend text me about LE FLIGHT BOOKER LIMITED who run the website cheapticketsgo.co.uk which purports to sell discounted phone tickets.

She booked a flight for herself and her children to fly from London to Lagos for £2150, and so did a friend of hers - she was supposed to fly on the 10th December and she fills down and devastated because her flight was not booked.

Looking up Who Is on nominet the url is registered to Ms A. C. Man - Companies House reveals the registered office as
LE FLIGHT BOOKER LIMITED
41 LONDON ROAD
REIGATE
SURREY
RH2 9RJ
Company No. 07819655

Accounting Reference Date: 31/10
Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED)
Next Accounts Due: 21/07/2013
Last Return Made Up To:
Next Return Due: 18/11/2012

The phone number on the site is 020 88199 195 which sounds like a foreign number doesn't it?

So they opened their company in Companies House, and started their website on the 3rd November 2011, and they then changed their address on 08/12/2011 FROM
154 CUMBERLAND ROAD
READING
RG1 3JY
UNITED KINGDOM

They opened their company with £1.

I just phoned her and she tells me that the people manning the line are Indian students.

I suggest if you buy an air ticket you should pay through an IATA agent.

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Media Splash: Thomas Power hits six!

2012-01-21T21:46:16Z

Getting the best out of raw social media

Focusing on the Ecademy Scoring System brought Catch Friday Media into the top ten rank of Ecademy, and within three weeks of using one of our social media virtual personal assistants, we as a media group went from number 42009 to rank 6 in three weeks.

Rank		Organisation	Score
1	Thomas Power	Ecademy	112.79
2	William Buist	Abelard Management Services Limited	103.79
3	Mike Morrison	RapidBI - making a RAPID difference to businesses	96.66
4	Georgina Lester	Specialist Social Media and Marketing Consultancy	76.11
5	jet rotmans	art express	74.08
6	Lawrence Perry	Catch Friday Media Ltd	67.29
7	Lucas Wyrsch	Swiss Business Club, TGC-Consultants, Future Power	66.22
8	Emma James	www.emmajames.co.uk	66.22
9	Penny Power	Ecademy	64.50
10	Andreas Wiedow	arow-biz - Das Weiterbildungsportal - anders weite	64.12

Rapidbi and Catch Friday Media threw crap on this race, and we posted this blog below which has been liked 138 times, with 135 comments and 1718 views.

This demonstrates the power of media.

Community : How long can Thomas Power stay No 1 on Ecademy?

by Lawrence Perry [67.29:6] on 9-Jan-12 12:47am

SoapBox: Can You Accept the Ecademy Challenge

It's like watching a horse race to watch the ups and downs of Ecademy score, an algorithm that Thomas Power outsourced.

Mathematically the programme may be flawed, but Thomas doesn't feel threatened, but who knows No 3 could pull him out of position.

Thomas Power suggested it was all a game, but who really knows on this soap that is playing out on Ecademy.

Mike Morrison threw down the gauntlet when he went from No 4296 to No 3 in three weeks, which goes to show that there is a real race unfolding before your very eyes.

Can Thomas survive with the pressure?

"We Provide Media That Get's You Noticed"

Your Virtual Personal Assistants

Read the Virtual Assistant

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[ Lawrence Perry's blog ] [ 135 comments ] [ comment likes (138) ] [ Alert Contacts ] [ 1718 views ] [ More Like this ] [ # ] [ Edit ]

Maximizing the Use of Ecademy for Business

2012-01-09T17:15:37Z

Ecademy is a business and social network started in the UK by Thomas and Penny Power et al.

It is quite popular with start up businesses, entrepreneurs and SMEs, and has a good blogging platform and some useful SEO links, a Google Page rank of 6/10 and other goodies. The SEO ranking is reason enough that anyone should consider joining Ecademy to propel their blogs on subject matter to the top of Google and get noticed. There is no hype in this ideal - it actually works!

The secret of Ecademy that makes it rock is that it is user friendly, and quite addictive to a degree that draws an advertising revenue for using it. Instant feedback provides lessons in blogging, and increases SEO score.

On top of that the platform has it's own score that you can collect from engaging with real businesses, high level of learning in communication techniques, which can turn into real business opportunities and collaboration.

The Add your post goes out to hundreds of links.

In the past there were a lot more meetings which were free and easy to join, these days any networking event costs and thus attendance is limited. Recent marketing encouraged boardrooms, so-called events that brought a brand of networking into mastermind groups - a brilliant and outstanding method of collecting wealth. Though I have not yet been invited to such an event, time is never on your side - would it be worth it? - not sold on the idea...are you?

If I want a 1 to 1 I will just phone up the person I want to meet and book one.

What about you - would you have time for Ecademy?

Or would you rather safe network - quote from the rule book: "Ecademy accepts that members will from time to time use secretaries or virtual personal assistants to operate their account on their behalf. In such a case the account holder is simply acting through that secretary or p.a. and no intention to mislead or deceive is present. Only the account holder is responsibility for the actions on their account."