How to avoid Social Media shocks

Social media is becoming integral part of one's life and what you post becomes reflection of you/your organization. Unauthorized access to the social media accounts by threat actors like hackers or other adversaries, at times may result in public embarrassment, reputational damage (Personal/Organizational), Law & Order situation etc.

Following is the advisory issued from the office of Sp.IGP Cyber & PAW, Brijesh Singh, IPS – Govt of Maharashtra.

Here are a few steps you can take to keep your Social media account safe:

Avoid shocks, follow simple rules!

1. Enable login verification (e.g. two factor authentication). This is the single best action you can take to increase your account security immediately.

2. Use a strong password (with numbers, characters, capitals, non dictionary word) that you don’t reuse on other websites/accounts. Change your password on a periodic basis (at least once a month).

3. More the number of people having access to your company’s social accounts, greater is the chance that those accounts may be compromised. Use social media management system where you can grant your employees access to your social accounts without disclosing sensitive account information to them.

4. Use a password manager to make sure you’re using strong, unique passwords everywhere.

5. Social media accounts are sometimes handled by multiple users. If the feature of authorizing each post is available, enable them.

6. While using your social media accounts from public computers, do take care to log off on use. Preferably do not login from public computers (cybercafes, Airport terminals).

7. Avoid using social media accounts containing personal information from public WiFi.

Disruption is way of life - and how

By Rajasekar K S

Reproduced from http://www.socialsamosa.com/

Social media, mobile and apps have chipped away at the foundation of traditional behaviour. The way we work and how we live is impacted by new technology. People are adapting and evolving continuously to technology disruptions.

Sharing cabs with strangers

As children we were all taught not to speak to strangers, leave alone meet anyone we didn’t know before. Today, young girls and guys confidently share their travel with complete strangers on ride-share services like OLA. And they don’t seem to have any complaints.

Renting our Rooms

On Airbnb, we rent a part of our home to total strangers. We see several listings on the site where all-women homes and elders-only homes let out a room in their homes, on daily rent and even serve meals for a fee.

Selling stuff

Years ago, we were sceptical, sometimes suspicious of the gas wala, postman or the courier guy who rang our doorbell. On OLX and Quickr, we sell stuff and strangers come home to see them, have a coffee and buy the stuff.

Leaving our secrets online

We dare to speak our minds on politics, social issues and even leave a trail of our personality online. While privacy was a concern in the old world, the brave new world is oblivious of privacy issues “checking in” wherever they are, announcing travel plans and sometimes even leaving behind details of their holiday resort for the world to see.

Saving our private photos on a cloud

Not long ago, we’d be careful to privately store our pictures, letters and videos of family events. All that has changed as we use Google Drive and DropBox like services to upload our family content online and leave it in the cloud.

Exposing our vulnerabilities

Not so long ago, people generally revealed less about their fears and doubts online. But the communication paradigm has changed today where we see CEOs talk about their anxieties, sporting greats reveal their nervousness before a major meet and cancer patients documenting their last days on a hospital bed.

Permissions to peek into our phones

The way we view our privacy offline is completely varied with online privacy, although the trace we leave on social networks is permanent. Our notions of privacy and confidentiality have undergone drastic changes like never before in history. We hardly hesitate when an app asks for permission to access our phone list and even send messages to them.

At the same time the alternative “dark social” movement is visible with the shift to private conversations on WhatsApp and SnapChat. These are more to keep away from the repercussions of public data from advertisers, marketers, activists, governments and parents.

The author

This is sometimes surprising and at times scary. But, these are exciting times. Guess digital natives are revealing new behaviours that defy the best of psychologists and sociology researchers. One thing is sure, privacy may in future may be a major issue for governments and the people. But until then, I’m using the Bla Bla car and agreeing to all the terms and conditions of my torch app.

*Rajasekar KS is a content and social media strategist who works as GM – Marketing at BharatMatrimony and tweets at @positivemantra. When he's not playing with his family of one loving wife and two caring daughters, he blogs at www.positivemantra.com. He travels to connect to himself and the universe. Views here expressed are personal.

Instant Media – Constant Challenge: BNK's E4M Column

Instant Media – Constant Challenge

It is just not enough to use the modern communication tools for spreading messages. It is much more important to keep an eye on what others do with those tools since negative postings get picked up and spread faster than forest fire, writes B N Kumar, Executive Director of Concept PR & National President, PRCI.

Anybody with a smart phone in hand is a potential journalist. While journalists do post development related to the news, other smart phone holders post what they see, hear and experience. For a smart (pun intended) phone holder it does  not require even 140 characters to post something nasty like “JJ Flyover sucks” and the message goes viral in no time. Negative postings get picked up and spread faster than forest fire. No one viralises posts like “I love India”. Sad but true, trolls get noticed.

Read the thought provoking column here:

http://www.exchange4media.com/digital/guest-columninstant-media---constant-challenge-b-n-kumar-concept-pr_65003.html

Should Your Business Be On Instagram? - A PRapport special

By Julia Spence-McCoy *

Social media is a great tool when it comes to marketing online, and there are many excellent platforms out there. One of these, Instagram, is something many people consider but aren’t sure if it will work for their company. Some might not know just what the social channel is for and others might not know if it will have the same sort of positive impact like Facebook or Twitter. I am going to take a look at Instagram, if you should use it, and give a few great tips for those who decide to!
How Does Instagram Really Work?

Instagram has long been a social media channel that is popular with Millennials and younger individuals. It is a great platform to share your favorite photos from your day, whether the photos are of cats, books, selfies or a beautiful sunset. Instagram is a great place for people to share visual aspects from their lives for their friends to interact with. It is an awesome visual tool, and many businesses are starting to notice its importance. It provides a unique ability to market to a younger crowd, and can give businesses an incredible competitive edge if Instagram is used correctly. There are currently several brands that have an incredible Instagram presence, which can give you inspiration if you decide your business needs an account, as well.

Should Your Company Be On It?

Since Instagram markets to a younger crowd and is so visually driven, many people wonder just what type of companies should use it. In fact, the reason you’re reading this is to learn if your business needs it or not, right? I am going to look at a few things a business needs to consider before setting up an Instagram account.

Do You Have Visual Marketing?
One of the first things you need to look at is if you utilize or need visual marketing. Instagram gives you the chance to utilize visual marketing to your advantage, and there are multiple things you can do to maximize the impact. However, you first need to make sure that you have products that are great for visual marketing, as well as creating and sharing photos that promote engagement with your followers. You don’t want to share bland photos, as those are likely not to get engagement.

Are Your Clients on It?

This is a pretty obvious question that some tend to overlook. If your clients aren’t on Instagram, it is likely that you won’t be able to reach as many people as you’d like to. Sure, you might get a few, but you need to be where your clients are because the audience you want to reach will be there, too. If your clients aren’t on Instagram, you might want to reconsider using it or you can ask your clients if they’d be willing to join Instagram if your company sets up a page. In fact, you can hold a contest and giveaway to encourage people to get on and follow your account.

Are Your Competitors on It? 

Now, you might not have many clients on Instagram, but you need to look to see if your competitors are. You should also check to see if they have any engagement and how well it is helping them. If you see engagement on their photos, chances are you will have engagement on your photos, as well. You don’t want to be left in the dust by your competitors, and if they have a successful Instagram campaign, it is time to set one up and get to work.

How Can You Use Instagram for Your Business?

Now that you know a few questions to ask yourself, you’ll need tips on how to use Instagram for your business. I gathered a few great points to help you get started!
Utilize Hashtags on Your Photographs. Hashtags are an important aspect of social media, especially when it comes to Instagram. This will help you combine your photos with other trendy hashtags, which will give you the chance to be found by new readers and customers. Don’t shy away from using a few hashtags, either. Adding more can help broaden your reach significantly.

Fill Out Your Profile to Make it Powerful.

 Just like with any other social media channel, you need to fill out your profile to optimize it and make it powerful. This will help people know your Instagram is an official one and not spam, convincing them that your account is safe to follow. Instilling trust is an important aspect for every business.

Know Your Age Demographic. 

When you start your Instagram account and create a campaign, you need to know what your demographic is. Are they young or old? What things do they like? Are there any memes that they’ll appreciate more? All of this can help you create a great Instagram presence. In fact, knowing your age demographic is vital for any social media campaign.

Know How to Work Instagram For Business. 

Instagram is much like Facebook and Twitter in the fact that it does try to help businesses out. Before you get started with Instagram for your business, make sure you get acquainted with Instagram for Business to get the best results possible! You can also find other businesses on Instagram to gain inspiration from them and see just how they approach using the social site.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Instagram can be a powerful tool for some companies, providing more access to clients and sharing excellent photos with them. While not all companies, like small, local businesses, might benefit, there are several things people can do with social media to get the most out of it. If you are looking for a way to maximize your social media content for the best impact, contact Express Writers, today! We have excellent social media services, providing you with excellent content to share with your followers. Will you be trying Instagram for your business or have you already? What are some things you’ve learned from using it?
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*Julia Spence-McCoy is the CEO of Express Writers, an online copywriting agency that began in 2011 with thousands of web content pages written to date and more than 50 talented writers on the team. Her passion is copywriting and all that pertains, including the ever-changing game of Google algorithm updates.



http://www.sitepronews.com/2015/05/01/should-your-business-be-on-instagram/

A PRapport Special: 12 Free Social Media Management and Marketing Tools to Boost Your Social Media Presence

By Jessica Davis in Marketing Social Media Social Media Marketing

(By arrangement with SiteProNews)

Businesses simply cannot afford to ignore the power of social media in boosting brand value. Social media allows you to connect with your target audience in a way that was not possible with traditional media. However, to reap the benefits of social media marketing, audience engagement has to be consistent. You must also pay attention to what your audience is saying about you and use those insights to improve your overall business.

However, this can’t be achieved by just opening an account on Twitter or Facebook and posting content erratically without a clear strategy. There is so much more to social media marketing and that’s why you need social media tools to help you out. Here are the top 12 free social media tools to boost your social media marketing efforts.

SocialMention

SocialMention monitors the number of mentions you receive on a social media platform. This tool works with platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and a host of others. SocialMention carries out monitoring based on four metrics and they are strength, sentiment, passion and reach.

DrumUp

DrumUp curates relevant content for your social media profiles on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook using several NLP algorithms. It allows you to edit queued content and even add customized posts. Another great feature is that it prioritizes fresh content, which means you get the advantage of posting the latest content before anyone else. This gives you a shot at being the first in line to go viral.

TweetDeck

The tool is optimized for Twitter and allows you to manage and monitor every single detail of your Twitter account using a single interface. You can even use it to customize your display. For example, you can choose whether to display a particular column or not.

Twitter Showdown

This free tool actually allows you to compare your Twitter performance with other Twitter accounts. Though it might seem like an app meant purely for entertainment and fun, it can actually help you gain insights on how you are performing against your competitors. You can look at data such as number of mentions, tweet timings, follower to following ratios, and the engagement level of your tweets. The data collected can be compared with a competitor.

SumAll

SumAll is designed exclusively for small business owners. Apart from helping you measure and mange your social media profile on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, it also connects you to services such as PayPal, Google Analytics and 42 others at no cost whatsoever. Updates are usually e-mailed to you.

Rapportive

Rapportive is a very unique tool that allows you to view the LinkedIn profile of the message sender/recepient on your Gmail account. It shows you details such as geographical location, job title, and name of organization from the person’s LinkedIn profile. You can even follow people’s Facebook statuses or tweets. The purpose of this tool is to help you expand your network by connecting with people who share similar interests.

Twazzup

This is the perfect tool if you happen to be an amateur at social media. Twazzup helps you monitor the top influencers on Twitter. All you have to do is enter the name and Twazzup does the rest. You can also get real time updates on them.

HowSociable

HowSociable lets you monitor your social media presence as well as your competitors’. The free-to-use tool allows you to access up to 12 platforms that include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest. It even provides you with scores for each social media account, so that you can decide which one is working better for you.

Postific

A relatively new social media management tool, Postific is perfect for beginners. It has an auto-posting function for LinkedIn and lets you operate multiple social media accounts through a single interface, which is quite rare in other tools.

Topsy

Topsy is a great social media management tool that helps you search for useful and relevant content on the Web. You can even sort the content on various parameters to identify how influential an article or blog is. It even has access to Twitter’s data stream, which means you can access data all the way back from 2006. There is also a robust analytics feature that allows you to determine how often you’ve been searched in comparison to your competitors.

CircleCount

This tool is exclusively developed for Google+. You can access continuous reports and statistics on the performance of your profile and also on the level of influence you have. You can track down high ranking profiles, pages, communities, and also identify posts that have been reshared or +1ed the most. It even allows you to see the various circles that you have been included in.

Commun.it

Commun.it allows you to create a network of influencers, supporters, and possible customers. It tracks your followers and your interaction to accumulate performance, which is then displayed on a dashboard. You can study the data on the dashboard and decide on what action is to be taken, such as responding to or thanking a customer. It also calculates the number of interactions you’ve had and identifies followers whom you interact with the most.

(Jessica Davis has a keen interest in social media and content marketing, and writes extensively about it. She represents Godot Media, a leading content marketing firm.)

http://www.sitepronews.com/2015/04/24/12-free-social-media-management-and-marketing-tools-to-boost-your-social-media-presence/

WhatsApp Continues Rapid Growth, Sitting at 800M Active Users

By SPN Staff Writers in Breaking News Social Media

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is boasting it now has 800 million monthly active users.

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum made the announcement in a Facebook post: “WhatsApp — now serving 800,000,000 monthly active users. Reminder for the press out there: active and registered users are not the same thing.”

The mobile messaging service has been enjoying rapid growth for months.

In January, Koum announced it had more than 700 million monthly active users sending more than 30 billion messages a day.
Facebook officially took ownership of WhatsApp in October, but the firm has continued on as a separate entity from the social media site.
Facebook was originally set to pay $19 billion for the popular app, forking over $4 billion in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares. The deal was also to include $3 billion in restricted stock units for WhatsApp’s founders and employees that will vest over four years. Facebook stock, however, increased from the time the terms of the deal were originally discussed, meaning the social network actually paid out about $21.8 billion.
It may be a colossal amount of money, but it appears it was money well spent given the ever-increasing popularity of WhatsApp. In fact, it’s user growth in the five years since its launch has easily surpassed that of Facebook, Gmail, Twitter and Skype — all of which are extremely popular Internet services or networks. (By arrangement with Site Pro News, Canada)

http://www.sitepronews.com/2015/04/20/whatsapp-continues-rapid-growth-sitting-at-800m-active-users/

Future shock for media! Social Media overtaking fast

Narendra None

Introducing a column by S. Narendra* ((Former PIO and ex-adviser to Govt. of Karnataka)

Who's there? I, so and so (with a given name), that's how we identify ourselves all our life. .But in the next decade, the world's virtual population will exceed the population of the Earth. People's multiple virtual identities will overlap their physical identities, such as given names. At another level, where we get our information and what (information and news) sources we trust will have a profound impact on our future identities. What's in store for news on Internet is known and the battles over information monetization strategies and content syndication will continue. But as entry barriers for new information and news providers and their aggregators get lower, how will it affect the media landscape?

It is clear that mainstream media, such as news channels, newspapers and news agencies, will always be a step behind in reporting news. The world's breaking news will continually come from platforms like Twitter, and its competitors: open networks that facilitate information sharing instantly, widely and in accessible packages.

As more and more people use data enabled devices, who breaks the news is a matter of chance. Unknowingly, a civilian live tweeted the killing of Osama bin Laden from Abbotabad.

The lag time before the mainstream media can get the story will alter the nature of audiences and their loyalty, as they seek more immediate methods of information delivery. Every generation will be able to produce and consume more information than the previous generation. This will lead to splitting of loyalty between new platforms for breaking news and the established organisation for the rest of the story.

News organizations will remain an important and integral part of society but many outlets will not survive in their current form. The effect of having so many new actors involved in news reporting through a range of online platforms into the great, diffuse media system, is that major outlets will report less and validate more.

Reporting duties will become more widely distributed, while expanding the scope of coverage but probably reduce the quality on a net level. The role of mainstream media will primarily be one of a credibility filter. But competition for being first with breaking news is diluting the role of filters. So also the wide presence of hand held devices enables thousand of sources to contribute to the pile of breaking news. Here, particularly for the elite - validation and cogent analysis will be important. The strength of open, unregulated information sharing platforms is their responsiveness, not their insight or depth.

Mainstream media will have to find ways to integrate all of the new global voices they can reach, a challenging but necessary task. The business of Journalism will become less extractive and more collaborative. Of course, chances of errors may also rise.

Global connectivity will introduce entirely new contributors to the supply chain. One new subcategory to emerge will be a network of local technical encryption specialists who deal exclusively in encryption keys. They will provide the necessary confidentiality mechanism between parties. In the Middle East, several VPNs or virtual private networks have come up and accessed by locals and international news outlets. Stringers serve such networks. 

As part of cost cutting, mainstream media reduced their staff for foreign news coverage and began to rely more on stringers. In New Delhi, for example, most foreign correspondents working for newspapers and other outlets are stringers, who are paid a retainer plus a payment on contribution basis. Another type of stringers had emerged in India during the height of militancy and violence in Punjab and J&K.Foreign agencies paid stringers for tipping them off about violence, including barbaric killings by militants in remote rural areas. 

The Author: S Narendra

Sometimes even militants themselves had turned stringers to gain international coverage for their acts. Mostly they were using the then latest technology, STD. For increasing coverage of hinterland, AIR uses dozens of stringers.

In the same way, a new type of Stringers will emerge. The latter risk their lives and offer digital content and online sources of news. But media outlets will have to exercise greater caution and seek validation for their news from such sources.

When people find the mainstream media failing to cover conflicts or other such developments, celebrities or even ordinary people, may start their own online portals.  Mainstream media will find such new serious competitors in the future. Many will still favour and support the established media outlets out of loyalty and trust in institutions and the serious work of journalism. There will always be demand for not so serious tabloid variety of content.

Just as they do today, with charities and business (even governments) ventures, celebrities will look to starting their own media outlets as a logical extension of their 'brand'. Not only technology is enabling this but also it does not involve much investment. Loyalties are fickle when it comes to media. That trend will get exacerbated when the field is crowded. If errors in content occur, that will further erode the audience loyalty.

Expanded connectivity promises more than just challenges for media outlets. It offers new possibilities for the role of media particularly in countries where the media is not free. Connectivity helps upend control over media by corrupt regimes, especially where local encryption facilities crop up and NGOs become active. Assisted by NGOs outside the country, the local ones find their voices. This kind of disaggregated, mutually anonymous news gathering system would not be difficult to build. Two new trends are-""safer reporting backed by encryptiop" and a wider readership, 

international, due to gains in connectivity ' would challenge oppressive or corrupt regimes. Green activists (even non-five star ones) have used the new information platforms very effectively to network and challenge administrations and businesses that ignore environmental and health safety considerations). *(Based on New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen)

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About the author

S Narendra has been Information adviser to the PM, Principal Information Officer to Govt Of India and Government Spokesperson. Has worked in both public and private sectors in the fields of Advertising, PR, Journalism, Communication Research.

Now, heads own Communication Consultancy. Has been associated with Communication projects of UNICEF, UNAIDS, World Bank, Gates Foundation, UNFPA, EU etc.,