Bullying and scandals involving Australian Facebook users have been a hot topic in the media lately. Every day some form of negative feedback or article reaches the newspapers and television. From children being bullied, celebrities making ignorant comments about each other, even unflattering party photos surfacing ending a career – Facebook and other social networking sites seem to be causing more harm than good in the eyes of many.

Keith Nallawalla is a Social Media Consultant for Train SEM, a Melbourne based Digital Training company specialising in Online Marketing and Social Media.

If you are interested in finding out more, head along to his half day course.

More information can be found on the website.

We have assembled five big name Rock n’ Bloggers to follow in 2012.

Darren Rowse
He’s the author of 31 days to build a better blog and the man behind Problogger, Darren Rowse. Darren is a full time blogger making a living rocking the worldwide web with over 3500 articles online.

In 2002 Rowse stumbled upon an article about ‘Blogging’, not realising that moment would change his life forever. In 24 hours Darren had written his own blog, and has since built his blogging obsession into a income source enabling him to become a full time blogger – a ProBlogger. Darrens main site Problogger is dedicated to helping fellow bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.

Other sites belonging to this Social Media Rockstar worth taking a look at include DPS, Feel Gooder and Twitip.

Rowse’s knowledge of the Social Media is simply rockin! Connect with Darren on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Some posts that ROCKED my world!

• The Complete Bloggers Guide to Facebook Marketing
• How I Overlooked a 1000 Visitor a Day Source of Traffic
• 5 Ways I’m Using LinkedIn – to Drive Traffic, Build Community, Generate Sales and Build Influence

Gavin Heaton
Sydney’s Gavin Heaton rocks the world of Social Media with leading marketing blogs, a collaborative marketing book series The Age of Conversation, and actively participating providing input and advice to the Social Media community.

Each month, Google actively works to improve users Analytics experience. This month Google have not only introduced new tools, but have also amended existing tools.

Site Speed Reports

The Site Speed report measures the page load speed, so you can now learn which pages on your site are taking longer to load than others. Site speed can be viewed across different categories such as; content, traffic sources, visitor and technology. Slow loading pages often cause visitors to leave in frustration. To prevent this, view the report in the “Content” sector of the “Standard Reporting” tab.

Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics

You can now import information from Google Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics to help you understand more about your sites performance. This information will gives SEO insights and an understanding of how your site drives user engagement from search. This may be the queries users typed to reach your site, the number of impressions of your websites URLs in search results pages, and the number of clicks on your websites URLs from search result pages.

Expanded Support for 40 Languages

Google Analytics supports 40 languages, with 9 additional languages now available. These include Arabic, Hebrew, Croatian, Hindi, Latvian, Romanian, Slovenian, Serbian and Ukrainian.

Facebook has begin rolling out a new feature which allows brands to directly communicate with users through their ‘Private Messaging’ system, which was previously only a feature of ‘individual’ accounts.

The new feature allows brands to send and receive private messages from their fans on the social network.

It remains to be seen how tight a reign that Facebook will place on the new system. We cant help but think of Twitter Direct Messaging, and how that system has been overrun by spam messages from individuals and companies alike.

What do you think about the new features? Will it help you run your page and Facebook campaigns more effectively?

Original Source

The price is listed at AUD$34.95/year. Reportedly, majority of this subscription fee is going right back to record companies.

You can access the sign up page but logging in to the ‘iTunes Store‘ on the left of the iTunes interface, then clicking on your email on the top right and selecting Account. From here you can purchase the iTunes Match service:

Once you sign up (you might need to log out and log back in a couple of times), you will receive a confirmation email from Apple.

Once you log back in to your iTunes account, you will notice the shiny new iTunes Match in your sidebar:

If you go back to your music, you will see a dotted cloud icon which shows which albums you have stored in your iCloud:

You can also right click and ‘Add to iCloud’ selected songs:

Unfortunately this is as far as you can get. Apple just throws an error at you. More to follow as iTunes Match officially becomes live in Australia!

Update (16th December 2011): It iTunes Match now live in Australia!

It is looking a little similar to Facebook’s new ‘Cover’ photo. The header image will be 835 x 90 pixels.

There will also be a few new cool features to maximise your audience’s engagement with your profile such as a (Free) Promoted Tweet; you will be able to highlight a tweet to the top of your timeline as the first thing viewers will read when they enter. This could be your latest product special, or important news etc.

The enhanced profiles are currently being selectively rolled out to a chosen few. Then will be rolled out to the public in the coming weeks to months.

Over the holidays, I invite you to spend a little time on some easy but valuable improvements to breathe life into your online marketing.

Get REALLY good at social media
Connect with your customers like never before by leading your market in the use of social media (look no further than Twitter, Facebook and blogging). Most businesses don’t dedicate the resources to social media that it deserves (I admit, we’re guilty of that as well), but brands that use social media to it’s fullest are the some of the most popular, referrable and engaging around.

Rebrand your newsletter
Most of us are so used to mundane newsletters that we automatically tune the word out out. Put an interesting spin on your newsletter by rebranding it. A named newsletter is more easily referable, stands out and gives your online marketing a bit of extra personality.

Brush up on your SEO
Just getting a few key things right in Search Engine Optimisation can have a dramatic effect on your SEO. If you don’t have the budget to invest in hiring a SEO agency to get the most out of your search engine rankings, then at the very least take the time to learn some yourself and implement what you can. If you’re not ranking well, you have nothing to lose and an incredible amount to gain.

Improve your website content
Evaluate your website through the eyes of a critical customer. Does it easily answer the main questions that your customers have? Does it look and feel like your other marketing activities? Does it have clear calls to action or does it struggle to convert visitors into customers?

Cut down on your AdWords spend
Did you know that a significant portion of most AdWords budgets is wasted? Adding a variety of negative keywords helps you to eliminate costly clicks from customers who aren’t looking to make a purchase.

Mike Halligan is the founder and chief marketer at Engage Marketing, small business marketing specialists to businesses around Australia.

He consults and blogs on marketing ideas that are low on cost and high on creativity.

With over 2000 attendees, amazing speakers from around the world, and a world class venue, as an SEO Company, it’s an event we just could not afford to miss.

We went to a wide variety of sessions, and leanrt way more than we could have imagined.

We would have loved to bring you all with us, but we only had a 20KG luggage allowance, so we’ve done the next best thing-here is a list of our favourite 10 session summaries from Pubcon 2011.

154 Awesome Pubcon 2011 Takeaways Tips & Tweets
Kevin Gibbons, founder of SEOptimise had put together a great resource of his top takeaways form pubcon. If you need a quick summary of all the key learnings, you have found it!
Read full post

24 Takeaways from the Matt Cutts keynote
At the second day of Pubcon, Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal, two key members of Google’s search team, took the stage to talk about Google search, and answer questions from web masters.
Read full post

Pubcon Vegas 2011 Presentations online
What better way to relive Pubcon 2011 than to browse through the presentations online-it will be like you are actually there! Here is a great cllection of the known presentation online.
Read full post

Pubcon Catchup by SEJ
Search Engine Journal has put together a great resource of everything available online from Pubcon Vegas 2011. From presentations to slides, they have a great selection.
Read full post

PubCon: Latest SEO Topics & Trends with Greg Boser
Greg Boser, the SVP of Search for BlueGlass Interactive and former president of 3 Dog Media, spoke about latest SEO trends.
Read full post

Smart Organic Keyword Research
How do you narrow down the keywords you want to target from thousands of options? And most of all-which ones convert? Wil Reynolds, Mark Barrera, Craig Paddock, and Carolyn Shelby all spoke about this at Pubcon 2011.
Read full post

SEO for E-commerce Sites
E-commerce sites, are all about conversions and sales. How can you use SEO effectively to boost results. Rob Snell and Ethan Giffin spoke at length about this at Pubcon.
Read full post

Building Links with maximum benefit and minimum risk
Loren Baker, the VP of marketing at BlueGlass Interactive and founder of Search Engine Journal, spoke on a panel focused on building links for maximum benefit.
Read full post

Landing Page Optimisation Tips from Joanna Lord
Joanna Lord, Director of Customer Acquisition at SEOmoz.org, discussed how to produce the most from your landing pages.
Read full post

27 Key Takeaways from Pubcon 2011
Some great points from Search Rank on 27 best takeaways from the conference covering SEO, Social, and link building.
Read full post

Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting some of our notes from the event, so stay tuned. One thing we have already decided-we’ll be going back next year! Pubcon Vegas 2012!

It was a great night for all with great beer, great food, and great company.

Big thanks to Coopers 62 for putting on the drinks for the night, and everyone for coming along and making it a great night.

Stay tuned for the next drinks on our blog and Facebook Page. Its on us!

A few hours ago, we receive an email from Backify stating:

“Dear Daniel,

First of all, we would like to thank you for using Backify. We hope you really liked our service and enjoyed using it.

We regret to inform you that we can not provide free backup services anymore. All free Backify accounts will be closed on November 22, 2011.

In order to prevent your account from deletion, please login into your account and update your Billing Details.

Update Billing Details
Once again, we thank you for using Backify. Please update your billing details before November 22, 2011 to continue using the service.

Thanks,
Backify Team”

Then a few hours later we received this email from LiveDrive who are the supplier for Backify:

“Dear Daniel

We are writing to you regarding BACKIFY.COM who you recently created an online backup account with.

BACKIFY.COM was a reseller of Livedrive (http://www.livedrive.com). Livedrive provided the technology and service behind the product offered to you by BACKIFY.COM.

We are writing to inform you that BACKIFY.COM is no longer a Livedrive reseller and the services that they purchased from our company on your behalf have been terminated. If you are using a service provided by BACKIFY.COM and powered by Livedrive then this service will now have stopped working.

We would also like to advise you that we have received a number of complaints about BACKIFY.COM from their customers and from industry organizations. We would like to advise you not to provide any credit card information to BACKIFY.COM. If you have provided credit card information to BACKIFY.COM then we would suggest contacting your card provider and informing them that your card may be used fraudulently. If BACKIFY.COM have charged your card for services not provided you should contact your card provider and ask them to initiate a chargeback procedure.

Please note that this advisory is being sent to you in good faith because we feel you should be informed that BACKIFY.COM is no longer a Livedrive reseller and of the complaints we have become aware of. No contract exists between yourself and Livedrive and we are not able to assist further in any dispute you may have with BACKIFY.COM.

If you have installed the online backup software provided by BACKIFY.COM we highly recommend you uninstall it from your computer by following the steps below:

On Windows:
Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel and select Add/Remove Programs (or ‘Programs and settings’), select Livedrive and select uninstall.

On Mac:
Go to Finder > Applications and delete the Livedrive application.

Please note that any data you backed up using BACKIFY.COM cannot be retrieved and we recommend you establish an alternative backup service immediately.

Livedrive does provide a very similar online backup service to the one provided by BACKIFY.COM and you can read more details and, if you wish, signup for a trial on our website at http://www.livedrive.com. Please note however that we do not provide a free service as BACKIFY.COM did.

Other online backup vendors you may wish to consider include:
Carbonite.com
iDrive.com
Mozy.com

We are sorry for the inconvenience this situation may have caused you.

Kind Regards

Livedrive Limited”

This really goes to show when relying on online backups, you need to stick with a reputable company, not a fly-by-nighter with an offer too good to be true.

If you feel like sending Backify some friendly emails, it’s not hard to work out who is behind Backify if you do a quick Whois search on his domain

UPDATE (18th November 2011) :

Backify is putting the blame back on LiveDrive. Here is the email we just received:

Dear Daniel,

We are writing to you in regards to the recent action taken by LiveDrive to close your backup/briefcase account.

Backify used to be a reseller for LiveDrive.com’s services. Recently we were having some issues with their serive and they were literally unable to provide a solution to our problems. More information about these issues can be read on our homepage at www.backify.com. Tired of the service provided by LiveDrive, we asked them to close our reseller account. It may be noted that at no point did we ask them to close the accounts of our customers. But they went ahead and shut down the accounts of every Backify customer.

For every customer’s account, we have paid in advance a full year’s fee. So, the step taken by LiveDrive to close our customers’ accounts without refunding us is totally illegal, and we are considering our legal options at this time. Since your account was already paid fully for one year in advance, we request you to get in touch with LiveDrive and ask them to restore your service. Their customer support email address is support@livedrivesupport.com

Additionally, we understand that you may have spent considerable time/effort/bandwidth to upload your files to LiveDrive’s servers and by deleting your files/data without any notice they may have violated several laws. We also advice you to get legal help in case you suffered losses due to this sudden termination of service by LiveDrive.

Thanks,
Backify Team