Marc Guberti

Why Do Spam And Phishing Attempts Always Have To Be So Boring?

June 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A few months ago, I would have been annoyed to receive spam or a phishing attempts in my inbox. At this time, I would simply come across the email, wonder if this person contemplated life, think about that for a few more minutes, and then delete the message. However, this method is such a boring process with no gain. When I started to get more spam and phishing attempts in my inbox, I decided to be creative.

One day, I got a message from the Facebook Award team saying that on behalf of the United Kingdom, they are giving me 1 million British pounds (hooray for me, right). All I needed to do to get the money was enter my name, address, phone number, age, country, and occupation (but Facebook already knows all of these things). Finally, I had to send this information to an email that had no relationship to Facebook whatsoever (the email address was daniel_moor@live.com. If spammers and phishers are going to try to see my private information and possibly share that private information with the world, then two can play at that game). Let’s not forget to mention that they left me their warmest regards.

The person hiding behind the email address made an earnest attempt to take away my personal information. Although I usually delete emails like this, I somewhat appreciated this person’s efforts. I decided to give this person all of my information:

Full name: Johnny Appleseed

Address: 123456789 Cedar Lane (that’s a lot of numbers)

Phone number: 777-7777-7777 (I am not responsible for anything that happens if anyone calls this number)

Age: 101 (not a teenager)

Country: Planet Earth (try to find me now!)

Occupation: I forgot my occupation (next time, I’ll say that I plant seeds all day)

Then, I simply had to end in style:

Thanks Facebook rewards team. You guys are the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Regards,

Johnny Appleseed

I have been doing this ever since. I got another email where Optimum (my email provider) was going to shut down my account in 48 hours unless I gave them my password. These people were a little smarter using the email address customerservices1@safe-mail.net, but I still knew it wasn’t Optimum. The password I sent to them was “NotGonnaHappen.”

Phishers try so hard to take people’s private information. That’s how people get hacked. I take the time of day to respond to these people’s emails, but then the phishers never bother to respond to my emails that I spend so much time on. I wonder why.

These are some of the things I am considering to do for the next person who sends me one of these emails:

Send over some interview questions about why this person spams other people.
If I get another message about some Facebook rewards team, I’ll tell the person that I work for Facebook.
I’ll send over the definitions of 10 words so the phisher can brush up on his/her vocabulary.

The possibilities are endless. Maybe this entire thinking process is the teenager part of me talking, but I have a lot of fun sending out these kinds of emails.

3 Ways To Establish A Powerful Presence On The Web

June 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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We all dream of getting 100,000 visitors every month and having over 100,000 social media followers. However, it takes a long time to establish a powerful presence on the web. Some people quit when they realize it will take several months or even years to reach these standards. Most of these people quit because they do not know how to grow a powerful presence on the web. Whether you are considering quitting for this reason or never had any intention of quitting, it is important to grow your presence. Growing your presence will result in more visibility, but it will also make you feel more confident about what you are doing. These are the three ways to establish a powerful presence on the web.

Focus on one niche. In the beginning, you will want to pay attention to multiple niches. However, you need to find your groove–the one niche–that you are going to establish a presence for yourself in. If you want to establish your presence in 10 different, unrelated niche, a lot of people are going to be confused. If you want to establish your presence in 1 niche, then people who learn about you (from your blog, social networks, and other methods) will immediately know what you are all about.
Build a targeted following for that niche. Once you identify your main niche, you need to build a targeted following for that niche. Having big numbers is not enough. Those big numbers have to be targeted. Targeted people are the ones who are interested in your niche before you come into the picture. When you come into the picture, your new targeted followers will enjoy what you have to offer. If you want to learn how to grow a targeted following on Twitter, read this article too 🙂.
Get those targeted followers to visit your blog. Once you get the targeted followers, you need to get those targeted followers to visit your blog. As you get more of your targeted followers to visit your blog, the search engines will start to kick in and get you more visitors. Some of the visitors on your blog will subscribe to your blog and buy your products. As more people subscribe and buy your products, you will get more reviews. In addition, more of those reviews will be good ones as you get more customers who are already subscribed to and reading your blog.

Those are the three ways to establish a powerful presence for yourself on the web. Remember that although Rome was not built in a day, it was built. Although your powerful presence on the web may not be established just yet, it will be established with hard work and perseverance.

4 Reasons Why You Must Use Twitter

June 1, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Although there are over 255 million active users on Twitter, some people do not have their own Twitter accounts. In addition, some people are inactive on Twitter and do not get to unlock the social network’s potential. Twitter is a social network that becomes harder to ignore as the days go by. Whether you are inactive on Twitter or don’t have an account, you must be on Twitter. These are the four reasons why you have to do that.

Twitter allows you to connect with others. On Twitter, you can develop strong connections with targeted followers. Some of your targeted followers will end up buying your products. A larger percentage of your followers will visit your blog and subscribe for updates.
Twitter 140 character limit makes you have longer conversation threads. On other social networks, the character limit is either nonexistent or much higher than Twitter’s 140 character limit. As a result, you and the person you are talking to will have to send more tweets to each other in order to get the same message across with 1 Facebook post. By making the conversation thread longer, you will be able to develop a strong connection with the person who you are talking to.
You can talk with experts in your niche. If you have a question for an expert in your niche, Twitter is the ideal social network to ask those questions. Since you are limited to 140 characters, experts in your niche are more likely to respond to your questions. Since Twitter is a social network of simplicity, it won’t take a large amount of time for an expert to give you his answer.
Twitter is a network of simplicity. The third reason that you should be on Twitter gave a short summary of why simplicity makes Twitter the go-to social network. The reason people are getting trapped on Facebook is because it is not a simple social network. You can use more than 140 characters. In fact, Facebook posts can go over 1,000 characters. That’s too many characters for a social media post. Twitter allows you to quickly read posts and then move on to your notifications or trending topics. While the average person spends almost 7 hours on Facebook every month, the average person is spending less than 30 minutes every day on Twitter. That will save you a lot of time, and the more time you save, the more you will be able to get done.

Those are the four reasons why you must be on Twitter. If your account is inactive, then start tweeting. If you don’t have an account on Twitter yet, then you know what to do. What are your thoughts on the list? Are you on Twitter for any additional reasons? Please share your thoughts below.

Why It Is Important To Focus On SEO Even When Small Results Come In

June 1, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Focus On SEO

SEO is overrated, and there’s no question about it. Many people think of SEO as a way of getting a very noticeable increase of traffic in a very short amount of time. When quick results don’t come in, many people give up on SEO. Little do these people know that SEO is a critical part towards having a successful blog in the long-term.

There are many examples of how blogs went from under 50 visitors every month to getting well over 50 visitors every day. The statistics above are from this blog. Although Twitter has played a big role in those statistics, search engines started to become more significant as soon as traffic from Twitter went up. When I first created this blog (and several months after it was created), this blog got little to no visitors from SEO. I remember jumping up and down with joy if my blog got 5 visitors from search engines.

I am sure there are people who are still not sure about SEO. Some people need the traffic now, and SEO is not a great way to get immediate traffic. Although you may not see your efforts pay off in the first few weeks, rest assured that you will start to see your efforts pay off 6-12 months later. If you plan to turn blogging into your full-time job, then you need to have SEO as a part of your strategy. One of the reasons my WordPress statistics spiked upward is because of SEO. Although it took a very long time to get the spike, the spike did come, and now this blog gets over 100,000 visitors every year.

5 Easy Ways To Boost Your SEO

May 31, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

No matter how much you are boosting your SEO, it takes a long time to see the results. In addition, some methods of boosting SEO are more challenging than others. Even if your blog is not getting the full benefits of SEO, it is still important to optimize on it so you see the results come in later on. If you are not getting the best results from SEO, chances are you will want to improve your SEO in a few minutes. These are 5 easy ways to boost your SEO, and they all take about 1 minute each to implement.

Add tags to your blog posts. Tags are what people search on Google to find your blog post. If you want people to search for “How to get more blog traffic” to find your blog on Google, that entire phrase needs to be one of your tags. The ideal tag is 2-6 words long. You want the tag to be long enough to break away from some of the competition but not too long to the point where no one will search for that particular tag. People aren’t entering “How do I get more blog traffic super fast at one of the fastest rates in history” into Google’s search engine.
Include links to your older blog posts in your new ones. Just look at some of your older blog posts and see which ones you can incorporate into your new blog posts. This reduces your blog’s bounce rate.
Add social sharing buttons at the bottom of your blog posts. When people share your blog posts on their social networks, that also increases your SEO. This is one of the simplest ways to get search engines to notice about your blog. All you have to do after that is create content worth sharing.
Write about Google. That’s an easy way to get more traffic which boosts your SEO and gives you more visibility. You will be amazed with what happens when you write about Google.
Use your social networks often. This last one takes more than a minute to implement, but chances are you were already using social networks before reading this blog post. If you use HootSuite Pro to schedule your posts on your social networks, it will save you a lot of time.

Those are five easy ways to boost your SEO. These tactics are easy to implement and will have a powerful effect on your SEO. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional advice? Please share your thoughts below.

7 Ways To Tell Whether Someone Is A Newbie On Twitter

May 31, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are obvious signs of a new driver. If the car in front of you makes a left turn with the right blinker on, stops and starts often, and is making bad turns, then you know the person behind the wheel is new to driving (I start the entire process this summer). There are also obvious signs that someone just started to use Twitter. These are seven of them:

The person does not have a lot of tweets. If someone has less than 1,000 tweets, then that person is definitely a newbie on Twitter. People with over 1,000 tweets, are not newbies.
The egg avatar. Some people have thousands of followers but still have the egg avatar. Those accounts are the exceptions, not the rule. If someone has the egg avatar, that person is probably new to Twitter. If someone has the egg avatar and has thousands of followers, then that account may be a spam account (this does not always happen, but it is common).
Statuses that do not flow. If you feel awkward reading most of someone’s statuses (awkward in the way that reading them sounds), then that person probably just joined Twitter. In the beginning, people experiment with tweets and have no idea what creates the perfect tweet.
A really bad follower to following ratio. An obvious sign of a new account is one with 100 followers that is following 1,987 people because that account currently cannot follow over 2,000 people. The people behind these accounts heard that following a lot of people to get follow backs is a great idea, but these people took it a bit too far.
These people only talk to celebrities. Celebrities almost never respond to other people’s tweets. If you sent a tweet to your favorite celebrity, then you know that I mean. Some people go on Twitter just to follow celebrities and hope that one day, their favorite celebrity will respond to one of their tweets. The people who are thriving on Twitter decided to go from talking to celebrities to talking with their own followers.
Asking for the shout out. With over 50 million followers on Twitter, Katy Perry will not be asking for a shout out anytime soon. If you are a part of the large majority, you don’t have 50 million followers. In fact, the majority of Twitter users have under 1,000 followers. These people ask for shout outs because they think that if someone with 100,000 followers gave them a shout out and they only gained 1% of those followers, that person would gain 1,000 followers. The problem is that it never happens that way. Less than 10% of those 100,000 followers will see the tweet. Then, less than 10% of those people will read the entire tweet. Then, less than 5% of the people will follow the account. Mathematically, that would still be 50 followers, but that won’t happen. Asking for and getting shout outs is the most overrated way to get more followers. Twitter users who have been tweeting for a while know that this is true.
Two tweets to relay 1 message. Some newbies will need more than 140 characters to relay their message. Instead of using less characters to relay the message, some newbies will send out the first tweet and then send out a second tweet which is a continuation for the first tweet. While continuations work very effectively in reality TV shows, they do not work well with tweets.

Those are the seven ways to tell whether someone is a newbie on Twitter or not. What are your thoughts on the list? Is there another method you use to tell whether someone is a newbie or not? Please share your thoughts and methods below.