Social Media Content Rights
Who Owns Rights To Your Social Media Content?
Occasionally we see those posts on Facebook where a user declares that they don’t have to abide by Facebook’s terms of service, having written a clause in a post. We all know this is a hoax. After all, you already agreed to their terms by making an account.
Even so, what is the nature of your media on someone else’s social media network? What are your social media content rights? It varies, and it’s murky.
Facebook:
Facebook’s terms are broad. Since their (and your) materials are hosted on various servers, their terms are written so that the data can be shared as desired or needed by them. According to Scoopshot, this does not end when you delete your account either. Your images may be hosted on one of their servers elsewhere.
Facebook says they have no intention of using these images for their own purposes, selling them, or otherwise distributing them. However, their legal terms are written so that they can.
Read Facebook’s Terms of Service
Don’t like it? Don’t host or post your media there.
Twitter:
Media you post on Twitter stays yours, says Twitter, but their terms specify that they can distribute the materials posted through them. Again, their terms are open-ended.
Twitter’s Terms of Service state “By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).”
Instagram:
Your material belongs to you on Instagram, with the usual warnings about network sharing. They can display those images as they see fit. You are also responsible for not hosting copyright materials belonging to someone else.
The terms of service for Instagram state “you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, subject to the Service’s Privacy Policy, available here including but not limited to Sections 3 (“Sharing of Your Information”), 4 (“How We Store Your Information”), and 5 (“Your Choices About Your Information”).”
Flickr:
Flickr is owned by Yahoo, and there has been a lot of fuss over who owns those images. Currently, Flickr claims that you own the rights to your images in their social media network.
Other social media networks state that you own your media with the usual server/host limitations. They also assume that you are acknowledging that you own the materials you upload.
Ultimately, social media networks are going to cover all their bases for the foreseeable future, and make sure they are covered legally. This generally means they will broadly define their own rights. The result may be that they are allowed rights to your media. Your option, then, is to think carefully about where you are posting your media.
How to Build A Web Presence
Have you noticed that some companies, small or large, seem to have it together when it comes to their web presence? Their website is set up and interactive, their social media is engaging and popular, their presence seems to permeate every corner of the web. From Yellow Pages to Yelp, you know exactly who they are. How do they build a web presence?
The Web Presence and the Website
A basic website is your first step towards establishing a web presence. Your website should be a home-base for all of your web content. It’s what should pop up first in a search for your business. Your website is where people should be able to find all of your content in one focused location.
A website does not need to be overly complex or cluttered with information – in fact, there are benefits to keeping it clean and easy to navigate. Visitors to your site should be able to find out what your business is and how to contact you with minimal effort.
Don’t think you can just build a website and forget it. Websites only thrive in search engine rankings if you are providing valuable content to people and updating it regularly. If you don’t have any knowledge to share, you can set up a “News” page and let people know what your business is up to. This kind of content keeps people engaged and gives them a reason to come back.
The Web Presence and Social Media
It’s hard to avoid social media; along with Facebook and Twitter, G+ is making its way onto the stage, along with dozens of other more specialized forms of social media.
Do you really need all that? Well, it certainly helps. Giving people more possibilities to land on information about your business means they will be more likely to choose your business when the time comes. If you are already making regular updates to your website, consider utilizing a program such as Hootsuite to easily update all of your social media outlets at once with topically similar information.
What social media should you be on? Facebook, Twitter, and G+ are the biggies. Beyond that, if you have lots of images to share, Pinterest or Tumblr might be welcome additions.
The Web Presence and Directory Sites
The goal of directory sites is to make your business available on any site someone might happen upon. Anywhere from Superpages to Bing to Yelp, your company should have a page. Sometimes these pages might already be created and you must claim them to correct and update the existing information. At other times, you will get to set everything up from scratch.
Plenty of for-pay services offer to fill in all directory sites in one fell swoop. There are also sites such as Moz which scans everything for you and presents a nice To Do list on what you still need to fill in. This gives you a little more control over which information gets entered on each individual directory.
While you’re at it, if you have a physical location, be sure to check it out on Google Maps to make sure your info is valid. This information may be tied to your G+ account, so if you’ve already set that up, it might already be accurate.
Final Thoughts
If this all seems a bit much and hard to keep up with, don’t throw your hands up and miss out on potential business. Contact Appletree Mediaworks. We will be more than happy to work with you and help boost your web presence.
What is Ello?
Ello?
Much of the tech or social-media sided web has discussed Ello. These conversations frequently come in the same breath as something disparaging about Facebook, which gives indicator that it is presumably, a competitor. But just what is Ello, and is it going to live up to the hype! Read on for some answers, and some noncommittal predictions.
The New Kid
To begin with, the obvious: Ello is a new social media platform. If Facebook and Twitter had a child, and that new-kid artsy hipster child was just a little too cool to hang out with Tumblr with its weird (and occasionally questionable) hobbies, and found G+ – product of influential parents – to be absurdly outgoing and trying way too hard? That might be Ello.
But Why?
Originally created by a group of designers and developers to be a private social network, Ello strives to be different right off the bat. And in a world of multiple social media platforms, it needs to. Ello caters to users who are burned out on Facebook’s unilateral decisions and catering to advertising, and to users who are disenfranchised with the notion of being a data-gathering product of Facebook. Ello’s big boast is that it does not collect and sell your data to advertisers, and never will. Instead, Ello claims that it will have special features which users can purchase if they want, and that is how the company intends to fund the platform. Will that be enough to support the massive number of invite-only users trying out the platform? Comments sections the internet over are on fire over this question.
The Platform
Visually, Ello is stark, and fairly easy to figure out because it is designed to be simple. White background, with blacks and grays – it looks the part of extreme minimalism and a courier –style typeface. You can customize your page and add a little color by giving yourself a header image, not unlike Twitter, and adding an avatar.
Adding friends is a little like following people on Twitter, and you can type @users to address someone in particular. The Omnibox is your basic post-box, people have the ability to comment, and you can upload media. There is no ‘like’ button, but Ello states that in the near future it will have a ‘Love’ button.
You have two options for following people – Friends, or Noise. Noise is @ello, and populated by photographers, designers and graphic artists at this time. Much like Tumblr, Ello is set up to accept animated GIFs and may find itself rapidly integrating with the same sorts of users that populate the more visual social media platforms. Friends, on the other hand, is the wall where you view people you have friended and the things that they post.
Beyond this, the ‘Discover’ area is where you get a search bar which, at this point, seems about clunky and less useful than it could be. Ello’s feature list promises to improve this, along with the addition of an emoji index, user blocking, audio integration, multimedia commenting, and mobile apps.
But will it last?
This remains to be seen. A number of social media platforms have popped up only to burn out rapidly through the years, and Ello’s pride is also its disadvantage: with no income from advertisers, the question on whether it could handle long term widespread popularity has been debated extensively. It could be a momentary fad, getting attention from people that want desperately to escape Facebook and its games only to die shortly after, it could fall into a particular niche audience, or perhaps it will prove to be a true alternative.
Time will tell, and Ello has time. The platform is still in beta, and still invite-only. It’s definitely worth watching.
Unions Need to Cover All Their Bases Online for a Grand Slam in Communications
Union Web Communication
First Base – a Website
Every local or organization needs a website to be the backbone and the known area for accessing information. Things move quickly through a social media page, but your membership will know it can always check the website for complete information on events and other local happenings.
Unions and organizations should be filling their website with the positive actions and photos of their membership. Big media prefers to post the negative about unions because it sells. So unions need to showcase their positive contributions. Your membership’s local action in giving back to the community should always be shared on your website. Every event, no matter how small should be shared on your website.
Always encourage participants to take pictures at events and ask them to email them to you or post them to your social media page so they can be transferred over to the website too. Website articles are more likely to be picked up by search engines than short social media posts. Writing articles doesn’t require a degree in journalism, just cover the who, what, where, why and when about the event and you’ll have a couple of paragraphs to go with your pictures. Putting a couple of minutes into Search Engine Optimization is worth it, too.
Posting articles to a website also shouldn’t require a college degree in web development. When we make a website for an organization we make it easy for their committees to post articles, even from their phones!
Second Base – Email Newsletters
Asking your membership to sign up for your email alerts should be a priority. Sending emails to your organization can be done for free using programs like Mail Chimp. Other low cost solutions include Vertical Response or Constant Contact. Emails are great for announcements and keeping your local up to date. Remember to keep emails short and your pictures small in size for your mobile readers. Instead of putting long articles in an email, offer an excerpt and a link to the article on your website.
A big win is that you can limit your email list to include only your membership, unlike most social media or a website where the public can view messages.
Third Base – Social Media
Right now, the top 5 Social Media Sites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. The trick to unions using social media is to create an article on your website, then share it on your social media outlets and watch it spread virally. A good website setup includes automatic “share” buttons, so once an article is posted, its just a matter of clicking a button to share the post out to your social media channels.
Home Run – Communication Management
Managing all these communication outlets can be overwhelming. We recommend having a specific staff member or officer be your communications leader, and then set up a general email box for your membership to send their news to. From there, website posts can be scheduled in programs like WordPress. Emails can be scheduled in programs like Vertical Response and social media can be scheduled using Hootsuite or other social media management platforms. There you have it – a grand slam in online communications, and none of these tools are costly, most of them are free. If you’re looking for more information on any of these communication tools or you’d like a quote on a website for your union or organization, the Appletree Mediaworks is ready to explore your needs in depth and build a plan to achieve your goals.
An Extra RBI:
Keep your eye on the new, fast growing social media sites that focus on people meeting new people with similar interests including Tagged, Meet Me, and Meetup. We’ve got our eye on Meetup where groups of people with similar interests in a local area can make plans to participate in their hobby together. This could be big for unions to come together in a local area to make a huge impact.
For more information on union web communication, contact us – we can answer any questions you have!
Ebizmba.com, (2014). Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites. [online] Available at: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites[Accessed 8 May. 2014].
Facebook Data Use Policy Updates
What is the Facebook Data Use Policy?
Facebook is updating its policies again, a move which will inevitably lead to another round of people declaring that the company is selling their 852 photos of Jr. and posting custom legalese on their timelines in an attempt to contradict whatever new policies the company has written.
Is Facebook using your private gallery in advertising? Will establishing your own copyrights in a post make any difference? The answers are no, but what really goes on behind the scenes regarding Facebook advertising, privacy, and its Data Use Policy can be a bit murky and complex, if not a little insidious. The current round of proposed updates includes more attempts at clarifying what already exists with new language so there’s not much new there. But just what are they doing, and how can you control your own data?
It Starts With You
First and foremost, as a Facebook user you must take control of your privacy settings. Facebook’s biggest crime is a tendency to make their users ‘opt out’ of sharing information, rather than opting in. It is up to an individual user to learn about privacy settings and who will be able to access and use their information. Facebook changes things around a lot, which makes keeping track of your permissions (and finding the settings) more complex than it has to be. Even so, Facebook will not share more than you allow – the trick is to knowing what you are allowing.
Public Information: Anyone can see your public information. It is what people use to search for others, and it’s what makes the social network social. Some information is always public, no matter how private you make your profile: your name, your profile picture and cover photos, your network, your gender, and your Username/ID. If you upload a picture of your kid as your own profile image or as your cover photo, that image WILL be visible to all.
Other Public Info vs. Private Info: From here, you choose whether to make your wall and other information public, shared with your friends, or customized. The little globe icon right next to the post button indicates that something is public, the icon of two people means ‘Friends’, and the gear means that a custom permission has been set (you can customize who sees what; for example, if you want to keep your family oblivious to your more off-the-wall hobbies). However, despite what you place as your settings, the publicity of your actions depends on what you do and where you post as well. If your friend makes a public post and you comment on it, then you should expect your response to be public. If you are posting to a public group, then other people may see it.
Your Friends
Your friends will see what you post to your wall, what you like, and what you share. Your friends may also affect the advertising you see, they can add you to groups, and they can affect your Facebook life in other ways – such as tagging awful pictures of you. Keep track of who you friend and how you plan to interact with that person. Sometimes the interaction can get out of hand in unexpected ways.
Likes Vs. Shares – And how Social Advertising Throws This Off
When you Share something on Facebook, you expect other people to see it and pass it along – this is a given. Facebook is social after all, and you want to share things you enjoy. Keep in mind, however, that when you Like something on Facebook, you are endorsing it – which may affect the way Facebook advertises to you. Your profile and image may also appear to your friends on that or other affiliated websites. Additionally, your endorsement may appear in the advertisements that your friends see in Facebook.
Did you click ‘like’ two years ago on a friend’s photography fan page? That photography page might show up in another friend’s news feed, endorsed by you – which could get awkward depending on the content of their photography, for example.
Social Advertising has the internet in a tizzy these days. While Snopes has put the rumor that Facebook is using your private images in public advertisements to rest, what you decide to share might very well be everybody’s business, depending on your privacy settings. Things you share and your likes will be shared with your friends. Likewise, the information that you allow apps to access will be sent to those 3rd party companies.
Data Mining
Even if Facebook is not stealing your images to use in public advertising (and your content DOES belong to you) Facebook’s data gathering is complicated, and may reach well beyond the scope that many people realize.
Everything you do on the Facebook platform is tracked – what you click on, what you like, the information you post about yourself, where you are, and your general behaviors. This information is intended to personalize the targeted advertising to you – it’s all about the ads. Say your public information states that you are a 28 year old male in Flint, that you like a given restaurant and you like ice hockey. Even with your personal identifiers are removed, that information is still highly detailed. If someone is looking to advertise a Flint Generals event at a given restaurant, you might fit into the demographic, sparking an oddly specific advertisement to appear on your news feed.
Even if you yourself rarely click a Like button, your friends can be used to fill in the gaps. (This is why we mentioned being careful about the people you are Friending.)
Beyond the Web
Data mining is not limited to Internet activity alone. Remember those little customer loyalty cards you scan at the store for discounts? The information gathered from these cards can be fed into one of several big data mining companies who can then associate it with your Facebook account (using a hashed email or phone number). If you purchase a car at a local dealership, you may be shown an advertisement for that car dealership on Facebook even if you never Liked anything related to it.
What to Do
Does this make you uncomfortable? If not, continue on your merry way. If so, however, there are steps that can be taken to minimize your use to advertisers in this way.
Update Privacy Settings: On Facebook you should regularly update your privacy settings and check out the new features. The little lock icon in the right hand corner of Facebook’s blue nav bar along the top will take you to the privacy page which allows you to manage everything from your timeline and tagging to deleting old apps and editing your Facebook Ads permissions. This is where you control social advertising.
Audit Your Likes: If you are worried about what might show up in advertising you can go through and delete old Likes, hide or delete wall posts, and otherwise clean up your account. Even if you’ve set your security to private, this can minimize future awkward advertising and associations, and avoid giving free advertising to companies that you don’t actually want to endorse.
Addon Help: Facebook utilizes cookies and browser storage. There are a variety of browser addons and extensions that will reduce your cookie tracks throughout the web, and there are also addons that will allow you to adjust what you see and use on Facebook.
Opting Out: The real-world data mining can be controlled to a degree as well. Using a different phone number (Google Voice offers secondary phone numbers) or an alternate email than the one used with Facebook can reduce the ability for companies to associate the two. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has written a guide on how to opt out of data mining for some of the big data companies.
Calling it Quits
If all this data mining combined with concerns over the NSA’s information gathering make you want to reach for your tinfoil hat, deleting your Facebook account is an option as well. This takes about a month to do and you may still have data in their servers for up to 90 days, but it is always an option to consider. While things you have posted on other peoples’ walls or comments may not entirely disappear, it will definitely reduce your digital footprint.
How To Write Great Website Content For Your Industry
Great content for your industry is more important than ever for your website to climb the ranks in Google’s search engine, to grow your business, to attract people for your business. And while it can seem painstaking to write out all that needed content for your own website, breaking down the process makes it manageable and much less time consuming.
1) Identify Your Audience and What They Want
Who is most apt to visit your website and just what is it they’re looking for? You can gather information to identify your target audience by looking for reader feedback and blog comments, setting up surveys, looking at reports or studies , or speaking with people at length.
Once you have your target audience identified, figure out what they want. Are they seeking specific information? What are their concerns? What questions are your audience always asking, that you would like them to know?
2) Find a Topic to Write On and Do Your Research
Take those commonly asked questions and concerns of your audience or better yet, combine them with keyword searches to find useful information for your content. From there do your research to become an expert if you are not already. And if you are? Dig a little deeper to get further insight into the topic.
It’s at this point you can take a look at what your competitors and associates are doing and learn what’s industry-standard if you have not already. While it may not make you stand out to do exactly what everyone else is doing, knowing what works in the industry and what does not can only benefit – even if you decide to break those rules later.
Internet readers like to be educated and like spending their time learning something of value, but tend to distrust a hard sale. Your website is more likely to maintain return readers and gain loyalty if the audience values your word as an expert, and feels that your website has something to come back to and share with social media.
3) Write for Your Audience
Use casual tone on the web for most industries, but don’t use excess jargon or slang unless it expressly gears toward your target audience. Keywords can be added to the content for SEO, but keep it organic and don’t force it.
Keep concise and organized in your writing, making sure to add headers and bullet points or lists to make text easily scanable. People on the internet do not expect to spend as much time reading as they would in print, so get to your point quickly to keep attention.
4) Create Content with a Call to Action
The internet is an active medium. People like to learn, share, interact, and feel like they’ve walked away from something more than passive information, so embrace this and give your readers something to do. Use active voice in your content and ultimately give readers a call to action, whether it be to interact with the website, call for an estimate, try out what they have learned on their own, or even click the ‘share’ button.
A static, unchanging website will fall by the wayside of active, continually updated sites no matter your industry, and Appletree Mediaworks LLC can work with you to create a dynamic website where creating and updating your own content is simple and takes little effort.
How to Promote Your Business With Viral Content
How to Promote Your Business With Viral Content
We see this happen all the time: an obscure or funny reference appears on a blog or Facebook post and suddenly it catches like wildfire, appearing anywhere from Facebook to Twitter to signature files in forums and the whole Internet over. These are the things that marketing dreams are made of. But is it possible to harness the quirky and seemingly random nature of the Internet and social media?
This has been an immense topic of study, and the experts on viral marketing say yes, this powerful marketing opportunity can be harnessed. Content can be designed to go viral when we keep a few simple rules and tips in mind.
Shareable vs. Likeable
When you are creating content for your viral marketing campaign, keep in mind the difference between “likeable” and “shareable” ideas. If your goal is to go viral, try to focus your efforts on creating shareable content. People may like or agree with your content, but simultaneously feel apprehensive about endorsing (sharing) it with others. Highly shareable posts, on the other hand, are those which affects or engages your audience while offering something universal. A shareable post might be inspirational, funny, amazing, or practical. People share content because they think it will be useful, helpful, or somehow raise their social standing.
Understand Your Brand and Know Your Audience
While creating the content you wish to go viral, it’s good to know what your angle is. What image do you want the business and brand to convey? Are you looking for something edgy or trustworthy? What is the target audience you are catering to? Playing it safe may not earn your content shares, but being too edgy or focusing on the wrong niche topic for your audience can result in missed opportunities.
Triggers
Studies have shown that people are most responsive to specific “triggers of fascination” and are most likely to share something if it raises a high level of emotion. The more excited someone is about content, the more likely they are to pass it along.
Examples of these triggers include: passion/lust, alarm, power, prestige, rebellion, or trust. When content hits on one of these triggers, especially for the appropriate audience, the content has a much higher chance of going viral.
Basic Rules for Going Viral
– Positive content is more apt to go viral than negative, though this is not universal and depends on whether or not it resonates with the reader.
– Positive shareable content is often surprising, amusing, or awe-inspiring.
– Negative shareable content is most often that which evokes anger or anxiety.
– People like to share for several reasons: to improve their social standing among other readers, to help others, and to appear useful or knowledgeable.
Creating viral content is almost as much an art as it is a science, but clarifying your target audience and focus, giving your content emotional appeal, and keeping the fascination level high enough that people would like to share it with their friends and associates is a means to take out some of the guesswork and randomness regarding viral content. Here at Appletree MediaWorks, we pay close attention to your audience and goals to make sure your content triggers interest in your customers.
Why Do People Buy Apps?
With the overwhelming influx of smart phones – tiny computers unto themselves – it’s no surprise that people enjoy customizing their phones. Apps, the myriad tiny programs designed especially for mobile devices, bring those devices all sorts of new uses. But why are people so enthralled with apps? Why do people buy apps? There are a number of reasons:
Dynamic Content
Apps by their nature are dynamic: they are games to play, maps to follow, GPS systems, art programs, means of communicating with friends, and more. The best apps give a user plenty of interaction and do not expect a passive observer.
Feature-Rich
Native apps – those designed especially for an iPod or Android tablet – are designed to use all of that device’s technology, giving it the best features available. Graphics, sounds, motion controls and GPS create a deeper level of interaction with the device. Native apps also tend to run smoother and faster, merging in with the device as if they belong with it. In contrast, web-based applications do not always integrate as smoothly.
Offline Usage
While many of an app’s features may be designed for online use, part of the beauty of a mobile device app is that depending on the app in question the user does not have to be continually online for its use. Many games and other apps are self-contained and will work just as well on a tablet outside of Wi-Fi range as they would a smart phone that’s always online.
Independent Developers
Another novelty of apps is that unlike many programs which take a lot of funding for creation and distribution, many independent developers have started to create apps. This gives an enormous range of options on what is available. The popular app stores provided by Apple, Amazon, and Google mean these apps are generally easy to find and accessible. Many are free, while others have a free version and a paid version with more options.
“New Thing”, Social Phenomenon
So much of what happens on the Internet and with mobile devices is social, and there is a very real social factor when it comes to apps for mobile devices. People like to discover new things and share them with their friends. Apps that are especially useful, unique, novel, or funny have a certain ‘cool factor’ and appeal to sharing with friends.
Whether native apps remain the norm, or html-5 general apps such as those offered for Google Chrome become mainstream, the use of apps on mobile devices is not only a novelty, but likely here to stay for some time to come. They fill a useful and enjoyable niche, and as smart mobile devices become more mainstream, so will their respective apps.
Why Labor Unions Need Social Media
Why Labor Unions Need the Internet
People under the age of 30 just don’t reach for the phone book anymore. Instead, they hop online with their smart phone to search with Google. If your union doesn’t have a website, you are missing out on a great opportunity to attract new members.
A regularly updated website linked to social media is an essential part of outreach and communication. Because the Internet allows unions to publish information to their members in real-time, it has become an essential tool for pulling members together in an increasingly vicious political climate. The Internet enables unions to mobilize more effectively than ever before. Labor unions stand to benefit immensely from embracing all that the newest technologies have to offer.
Your Website and Social Media
A website is your public face to prospective members. To have an outdated or utterly absent website is to lose out on both attracting new members and keeping current ones engaged. Modern websites have evolved into hubs of information and interaction, seamlessly utilizing the power of social media. Posts on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and even YouTube help to drive new traffic to and from your website. Once there, web forms and other types of communication help to establish contact with your visitors. Social media is one of the quickest and simplest forms of mass communication.
Websites are an excellent organizing tool as well. Many unions develop a ‘members only’ area that allows for discussion and conversation among members. Some also add private calendars, online dues payment systems, grievance reporting systems, and more. Offering your members the option to interact directly with the union helps to establish good will and solidarity.
Instant Information
Information moves fast – as politicians push anti labor bills through congress, it is up to union organizers to contact their membership in real time so that they can react and show up in solidarity at a moment’s notice. Having immediate access to your membership and to the public is essential. Technology has enabled savvy union organizers to stay on top of this game with impressive results.
The Future of Labor
At a time when hostile political fights have dwindled union membership, it is necessary for union leaders to stay on top of recruitment. The good news is that many younger workers are supportive of labor unions in general. Speaking their language is important. Presently, that language involves the use of social media, search engines, and online videos. Bringing this all together might seem overwhelming, but it is essential for the future of labor.
Appletree MediaWorks and Labor Unions
Appletree MediaWorks is a union company that specializes in union web development, design, and communication. With our wealth of experience, we can assist your union with every step of the online communication process. We even offer training for those not completely comfortable with all aspects of the technology. Contact us today and we can discuss your needs, get your web presence on its feet, and get your union up to where it needs to be. Labor unions need social media.
How to Secure Your Social Media
Social media has become an undeniable reaching out to the public, spreading news and info among thousands of fans. If one post can spread so rapidly, what happens when this pervading force in communication falls into the wrong hands? How can you be sure to secure your social media?
As social media security becomes essential to businesses, following basic guidelines will help circumvent the worst of the traps people fall into when it comes to keeping intruders out of their media and followers. These guidelines will also improve damage control if the worst does happen.
1) Strong Passwords
Believe it or not, many people still use ‘password’ or ‘1234’ as their password, even in business situations. Instead of the old standbys, complex passwords that include numbers, letters, and symbols are harder to crack. It’s rough keeping track of those complex passwords, especially in a business setting: that’s why a password manager like Keypass or LastPass can become essential. Not only does this take the guesswork out of creating a good strong password (both programs have features that will create passwords for you, including ‘pronounceable’ ones people can remember) but manage them so sensitive passwords are not visible to those who don’t need long-term access to sensitive information.
2) Education
Even big companies have fallen into the trap where one employee clicks on a bad link in a decoy email, where they submit valuable username and password data, only to lead to a security breach within the whole company. The easiest way to circumvent this problem is to sufficiently educate everyone on safe practices. These include:
– Be suspicious of clicking on links; if you’re not completely sure where they come from, they make take you to unexpected and invasive websites.
– Be watchful of official-sounding emails providing a link and asking you to update your info. When in doubt, type the url to the website you want by hand. Links can be cloaked to take you to unexpected websites.
– Do not open a suspicious or unknown attachment, even if it appears to be from someone you know. Ask first if you need to.
– Be cautious of questionable software and downloadable games which can contain malware that is quick to infect a system and difficult to get out again.
3) Utilize a Social Media Manager
Social Media Managers like Hootsuite not only keep track of and schedule media interaction but have software designed to look for misuse of links and posting. They act like an extra firewall, creating a buffer between you and intruders. Further, these Social Media Managers allow for permissions, requiring specific contributors to post drafts to be reviewed but only allowing administrators to approve final posts.
Centralizing social media accounts within your company helps prevent miss-posts and leaks. Also consider hiring an outside agency to manage your social media accounts, employees at Appletree MediaWorks, LLC are trained professionals that can help you with your social media maintenance. This also introduces a formality to social media for business, which employees might otherwise approach in a more casual way.
4) Review & Update
Assess and review your security on a regular basis. Who has access to passwords and social media accounts? Who has permissions to what? Do passwords or accounts need to be changed in the case of departing employees? Finally, ensuring that software is up to date on browsers, operating systems, and all virus/malware protection can keep software more secure.
5) Prepare for the Worst
If all goes well you will never have to resort to contingency plans for reclaiming hijacked accounts or covering for bad posts that have gone viral on the internet. However, making plans in the event of a crisis will make it a little more manageable. Preparing employees on what to do if they receive a cloaked email can halt a social media hijacking intrusion in its tracks. Keep an unassociated email as emergency to reach all employees or users if needed. A plan for damage control speeds up the process and reduces the damage that a security breach can cause to a business’s reputation.
We do hope that your company takes the tips above into consideration. Social media can be good for business when it is properly maintained and analyzed. Reach out to Appletree MediaWorks, LLC for more tips and to have a social media analysis done for your business today.
The Five Step Guide to Better Social Media Security”, MarketingProfs, http://www.marketingprofs.com/store/product/2183/the-five-step-guide-to-better-social-media-security
