Holy smokes I was thin back in the day... This was April 2010, when we won the FWA award for launching F Cancer's brand and web site.
Like it or not, we are all Internet marketers now.
Chances are you own a domain name or two and even host a web site for your business, hobby or personal brand.
About five years ago, I set up a shared server to help a few family, friends and non-profits host web sites.
One of those sites, a little used blog for my Mom, became the victim of a DDOS attack recently whereby a virus took over her site and started using it to do its bidding.
We were subsequently hit with over $4000 USD in overage charges before we picked up on the attack.
Fortunately, the good people at Mediatemple netted these fees down to $1000.
This was especially generous considering I hadn’t updated my contact information since my IT guy set up the server in 2010, causing me to miss the overage warning emails.
Lesson learned: make sure your domain and hosting provider have the latest contact information for you on file, because you could wake up to a nasty surprise. This is why it's probably wise to use an actual web hosting service like HostiServer, if they had gotten attacked (VERY unlikely due to HIGH security measures) the employees at HostiServer would have gotten right onto the attack and found a solution. As an extra precaution, you should also make sure to check out a site like websafetyadvice.com for more information about to stay safe online.
Bots and fake traffic
The bot that took over my mother’s site likely used her name and server bandwidth to drive traffic to other websites.
This isn’t real, quality traffic, but it’s the stuff that builds top line advertising numbers for publishers.
This is the same traffic you can buy by Googling things like “Buy 1000 Youtube Views” or “Buy 10,000 Page Views.” There are countless service providers in this line of work, and it’s cheap: these campaigns often just cost a couple of dollars.
The arbitrage comes when fraudsters start blending that fake traffic with real traffic and charging their customers as if it’s all the good stuff.
Economist magazine says this is now a multi-billion industry, with phony traffic now accounting for 30% of Internet use.
Read: A dark corner of the digital-advertising business needs cleaning up
Where should you advertise?
IR Departments, are you using Linkedin ads yet? A new report says 9/10 investment advisors are on Linkedin, ½ on Facebook, and ¼ on Twitter.
Read: Advisors Overwhelmingly Prefer LinkedIn Over Facebook, Twitter
On content length
Finally, is your brand rambling on? The ideal length of a Youtube video is 3 minutes, and a Slideshare presentation is just 6 minutes, according to this social media infographic.
In short, watch your web security closely, scrutinize the traffic you are paying for, consider advertising on Linkedin, and whatever else you do, keep your messaging brief and to the point.
Really happy that we could help out with this. You know we’re always here 24/7 if you need anything! Keep fighting the good fight, and thank you for the great piece. *ML