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Are you really secure online? or Do you just think you are?

By Lissa Duty

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

Are you secure online? or Do you just think you are?

In teaching social media training sessions, I discuss online security and safety. I especially discuss sharing personal information and privacy settings on Facebook and other social networking sites, i.e. LinkedIn and Twitter.

More often than not, clients and attendees are absolutely convinced their social media profiles are safe and secure. I immediately have them check a few Facebook settings. Then they start to listen closer and start making adjustments to their privacy settings. I haven’t found anyone that doesn’t have at least one thing they should be doing differently. A new set of eyes can provide a perspective and insight you hadn’t thought about.

Before I get started, I need to recognize Michelle Ketterman of The Inventory Experts. Her company inventories residents and business property, furnishings, equipment and valuables. In case of theft, fire, flood, tornado, etc …. Her clients will be able to quickly get their inventory to their insurance company and get all their damaged inventoried items replaced promptly and at a the right value. As Michelle says, “a picture can be worth literally a $1000.” Every time I hear her say this I snicker. What a tagline …. that is another whole blog post! LOL!

While Michelle’s focus is on offline security, she suggested I write a blog post about online security, specifically relating to social media because like many others, she thought her profiles security settings were configured correctly. Needless to say, she realized how unsecure her settings actually were after only 10 minutes of reviewing basic settings with me. With the seemingly constant changes, as part of her normal business, Michelle now has me regularly double check her social media security settings.

I couldn’t cover everything one post, but the following are the most common security threats:

Facebook

Date of Birth. Facebook requires your date of birth, and often people have it set to visible to their Facebook friends. Change this setting to make the year of birth not visible. Several of my clients use a fake year making them a few years younger or older.
Address. Don’t list your physical address on Facebook and don’t share your real city if you live in a small town. i.e. Frisco, Rockwall, Royse City, Allen, etc…. List a major metroplex area like Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, San Francisco. You get the idea. Yes, again, they could probably go out to Google and find your exact address, but let’s not make it easy on them for Pete’s sake!
Information your friends are allowed to share about you. See One of My Facebook Secrets for details how to view and correct this issue.
Friends. Restrict who can see your friend list to at those that are at least your friends already. You can even break this list down further and make it so they can only see mutual friends.

Passwords

Check Microsoft’s website for a strength test on your password .
Still want more on passwords – read this blog post – How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords by John Pozadzides

Do you need a Facebook Privacy Tune Up? In one hour I show you hands-on techniques to optimize your Facebook Privacy Settings (order the Social Media Evaluation). This social media consulting session can focus on what you choose to discuss from Facebook Privacy to content to share on Twitter. You can also get a Tune Up of your Facebook Profile and Privacy settings that I complete independently. Contact me for details Lissa@LissaDuty.com.

In my consulting sessions, the client tells me their needs and the training is focused on those areas. Yes, you read that RIGHT, a social media consultant that will teach you what you want to learn, vs. what they think you need to LEARN!

Now it’s your turn – share a tip below regarding something you learned about your online security and how you fixed it! Look forward to hearing from you!

Categories : Social Media

Tags : facebook, John Pozadzides, linkedin, Lissa Duty, Michelle Ketterman, networking sites, online security, privacy settings, security settings, Social Marketing, Social Media, social media coaching, social media consultant, social media evaluation, social media marketing, social media training, The Inventory Exports, twitter

Is this photo of you? Are you protecting your digital footprint?

By Lissa Duty

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Is this photo of you? Are you protecting your digital footprint?

When you post a photograph online do you realize how easy it is for someone to save it to their own computer? Do you realize that in the Terms and Agreement of Services for many photo sites like Flickr and Picassa, you are giving your rights to the photograph to the site? Do you know that when you text someone a photo of you they can email it to themselves and then publish it online?

Yesterday I was researching a client’s online presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the other social networking sites, checking his completed social media profiles, photos, etc … I surprisingly came across a picture of him uploaded about two and half years ago. Wow, was I surprised! It was a very provocative photo, but not part of the image he wanted to portray online any longer.

I immediately removed the photo, and of course had several laughs about it with him! He was embarrassed and explained that it was uploaded as a joke several years ago and he had forgotten about it.

I couldn’t resist explaining the importance of your online presence and digital footprint. I saved the picture to my hard drive and emailed it to him. I wanted to show him how easy it was for someone to save and modify it; changing it to suit their needs. Jokingly, I said that we should keep an eye out for it on a future ad for getting rid of belly fat! LOL! I believe I got my point across and he probably won’t upload those type of photos again, even as a joke.

Ask yourself these questions about your online photos:

Are you willing to share it with the world?
Would you mind seeing it at your high school graduation, wedding, etc…. on a video screen?
Would you be embarrassed if your boss, client, or mother saw it?
Would you have objections if your child shared a similar photo of themselves on or offline?

All photos of me must pass the above screening process before I upload or allow anyone to take my photo. You can’t control every photo or even know every time a photo is taken of you, but you can be aware of your surroundings and observe when others are taking photographs. Ask the person taking the photographs to please let you see them before posting online, try and put your back or side profile to the photographer, it will be a little harder for you to be recognized online.

Being seen at social events is an important part of branding and your online presence, but the photos need to be photos you would share with the world. Not a photograph you would regret later. Taking crazy photographs with your friends can be fun, but they can also have an impact later.

Try to limit being snapped in these photos:

Drinking what would appear to be an alcoholic beverage.
Talking with your hands making certain gestures.
Photos with your tongue sticking out, making crazy eyes, rabbit ears, etc…

These are all fun for now, but I promise there is a very strong possibility that those fun pictures can be damaging to you in the future. Your client might decide you are not serious enough, or perhaps drinking is a NO-NO in their book. I had a photo snapped of me where I was talking with my hands (as I often do) and it appeared from the angle of the photo I was grabbing the chest of the person next. Of course, I knew the photo was innocent, but everyone that would have seen it online would not have known that!

Here is your assignment, if you haven’t already done so:

Login to each one of your social networking sites, even the old ones (Myspace, etc…) that you don’t use anymore.
Read through your profile and remove anything that could be offensive, misleading or misinterpreted.
Check each photograph of you, ones you uploaded and ones you are tagged in. Remove anything questionable; always play it safe when in doubt. If the photos of you aren’t ones you uploaded and you can’t remove them, ask the account owner to kindly remove them. If they refuse, you could report the photo as spam on many social networking sites.
Think back to social events you attended and recall someone taking photos. Email the photographer and ask them to see the photographers. Ask if the photos are stored online and ask for the link. You want to see them online also.

Now, let us have some fun! Do you have a crazy photo story you want to share with the readers of this post? Tell us about a time when you had something happened to you online that you didn’t expect. Tell us how you resolved the situation. We all need to make sure our online presence is top quality, and sharing scenarios will help all of us!

As always, looking forward to your comments!

Categories : Social Media

Are you Influencing your Social Network?

By Lissa Duty

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

I was reading a blog post by one of the branding greats, Chris Brogan about influence and it inspired me to think about and write the following ….

Are you Influencing your social network?

I think influence is about not only who knows you, who you know, but of those that do know you … how do they think of you? Do they recommend you? Do they immediately think of you when they hear a certain word or phrase. This all relates back to branding and influence both ….

Are you their go to expert for your industry?
Are you branding yourself effectively?

These are the questions I think of relating to my influence and online presence:

Do I let my audience know I specialize in social media marketing?
Do I talk enough about Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?
Do I talk too much about Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?
Do I share information that allows my audience to connect with with me on a professional and personal level?
Do my connections recommend me to their network because of my expertise?
Do those connections turn into emails, phone conversations and clients?

I challenge you to write down a minimum of 5 questions to ask your social networks, inner circle of friends, strategic partners and your family. Find out if you are influencing them! If not, your influence is not where you need it to be and your branding focus needs to be put back on track!

If you think you could use some help in this area, do check out my Social Media Marketing Coaching specials I have running thru December 31st. I would be glad to help you increase your influence and expand your brand awareness globally!

Please share who influences you, the questions you would ask of your network about your influence and share what you would want us to know about you. Your comments and feedback helps all of us to grow and learn.

Categories : Branding

Tags : branding, facebook, influence, influencing your network, linkedin, Lissa Duty, marketing, Social Marketing, Social Media, social media coaching, social media marketing, twitter

One of My Facebook Secrets

By Lissa Duty

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Do you want to know one of my Facebook secrets that I only share in my Facebook training class? First you are going to have to read some background and inspiration for this blog post before I give you my secret. I know . . .I know …. I am so pushy! LOL!

I teach Facebook using the phone/Skype and remote connection software to teach my clients how to use and customize their Facebook accounts hands on. I also teach Facebook in a classroom environment. Facebook users from all skill levels take my class and they always learn something new; even long-time users. I have to admit I love, LOVE, love it every time and it does good for my ego!

Last week I was talking with my friend on the phone, Jane Doe (she will remain anonymous in this blog post)! She is quite social media savvy, on Facebook and Twitter both. We were discussing Facebook lists, fan pages, etc … I asked her this simple question:

“Have you customized your privacy settings on Facebook?”

Of course, her response was yes.

I followed up with “Have you gone into Applications & Websites and customized the settings to limit what information your Facebook friends can share about you?”

She responded yes, but I could tell she wasn’t quite sure of the question I was asking.

I walked her through checking her settings and we found that she hadn’t tweaked this area. According to her current settings, her Facebook friends were allowed to share everything about her with third party applications (i.e. games, websites, etc …)

She hadn’t even seen this area before, just as many times in many other conversations I have had, others haven’t either. Of course, we fixed her settings and she is nice and protected now!

Have I tortured you long enough to share the secret yet? Here are the instructions and screen shots to show you how to check your settings for this area and fix them.

Log into your Facebook account
Click on Account on the right hand side
Click Privacy Settings

Click Edit Your Settings under where it says Applications and Websites. It’s on the bottom left hand side.

Click Edit Settings

I recommend deselecting all boxes, except your Website, Education and Work.

I figure if third party apps want to know my website and share it somewhere, more the power! I also welcome them to share the name of my business, since I am self employed.

Of course, click Save Changes! This is important!

I recommend you look through each of the areas on this page and customize your settings. It is important you understand what you are sharing with Facebook, but also with all social networking platforms I pay close attention and detail in all my training sessions what each item means and how to determine what you want to share.

Now that I have shared one of my Facebook training secrets with you, share with me! Ask yourself these questions:

Do I really understand Facebook? Do I know the difference between a Status Update, Wall-to-Wall update and a private message? Do I feel vulnerable when I am online?
Do I know how to customize my status updates by targeting lists? When I share something personal about my family am I sharing it with everyone? What kind of risks am I exposing myself to? Also, what about your friends & family? What are you allowing others to know about your Facebook friends?
Do I have my photo album settings set so that I only share what I want and with whom I want?

If you answered NO to any of these questions, check out the details for my Facebook Coaching session.

Get the social media help you need TODAY …. Before you REGRET it in the FUTURE! You might not even realize you need it until we talk! Feel free to email me any questions.

Friends, I would ask one last thing: Please share will me if you feel comfortable, did you have this setting already adjusted properly? If so, did you find it on your own or did someone tell you to look for it? Do you have a Facebook secret you want to share? Comment away …..

Categories : Facebook

Tags : facebook, Facebook secrets, Facebook training, linkedin, Lissa Duty, lissaduty, Social Media, social media training, twitter

Is your Social Media in the RED or the BLACK? #BlackFriday

By Lissa Duty

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Is your Social Media in the RED or the BLACK? #BlackFriday

Every year I go shopping on Black Friday and I have been planning my route and purchases, it got me thinking about my clients’ social media and what I do to help them get out of the RED and into the BLACK. I decided I am going to share some information to help YOU get out of the RED and into the BLACK. First, let me give you a little background on BLACK Friday.

BLACK Friday has many meanings. The one that triggered this blog post is the one for retailers. The Friday after Thanksgiving is known to be one of the largest shopping days each year and many stores run huge sales and open extra early to encourage extra foot traffic. It got the name BLACK Friday because many retailers that were running in the RED often sell enough merchandise to put them in the BLACK on this day and throughout the remainder of the holiday shopping season that follows up to Dec. 24^th.

I want to ask you to read the following and consider is your social media in the RED or the BLACK?

1. Do you log into your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account because you feel obligated? Do you think to yourself I have to go in and post a status update/send a Tweet because I haven’t done it today, this week or this month? Are you only doing enough to get by?

If you are using social media as a strategy to grow your business, consulting practice, sell books, websites, whatever your business may be and you are posting status updates because you feel obligated – STOP! If all you are doing to work your social media is an obligatory daily, weekly or maybe even monthly update DON’T bother. For social media to work for you and your business you need to have a presence ONLINE on a repeat basis. Remember, customers do business with those they “Like, Know and Trust”. You are not achieving this goal with your obligatory updates. You are wasting your time and energy. (Sorry to be so direct, but part of my relationship with my readers is based on honesty and forthrightness!)

You need a structured plan, great content, ideas and a presence that one update will not get you. You need to be using groups, discussion boards, chats, conversation and comments to establish a relationship with your connections and a rapport that you can not achieve with an obligatory update.

2. Do you tweet on Twitter, post status updates to Facebook, or LinkedIn, etc…. on a regular basis, but only have 20 people following/friends/connections? Do you get any “Shares”, “Likes”, “Comments” or “Retweets”?

Part of social media is a numbers game. I am not saying you need to have 10,000 etc… connected to you online for social media to work, but you do have to have an audience, i.e. when on Twitter your Tweets are seen by those following you. A new person to Twitter doesn’t always understand/realize that if you only have 20 followers only 20 people are seeing your Tweets, maybe. If they are not online when you send the Tweet they may never see it. I will see many times someone on Twitter sharing great content, but have no audience. I immediately realize (1) they don’t understand this concept or (2) don’t know how to get more followers.

Shares, Likes, Comments and Retweets: This is a great way to know and see if (1) people are actually seeing your updates and (2) see if you are sharing the kind of content your followers/friends/connections are interested in reading. If you don’t know what I mean when I say “Shares”, “Likes”, “Comments” or “Retweets”, or ever get them, your social media is in the RED.

3. Are you still logging into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc… via a web browser? i.e. Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc…. to view and post status updates.

Using the web browser to access your Twitter account is good for some things, however there are better tools available to help you manage your social media accounts. Tweetdeck is my favorite! Hootsuite is another popular tool for this purpose. There are many to choose from. You can actually use Tweetdeck to view Tweets of those your are following, and the Facebook and LinkedIn updates of your friends/connections.

You can use a Tweetdeck to post updates to your Twitter, Facebook Profile, Fan Page and LinkedIn accounts. You can select which accounts get which updates and you can even schedule them in advance. It’s important to have activity on your social media accounts throughout the day at peak times, not just when you have the opportunity to be online.

I hardly every log into Twitter through the web browser, Tweetdeck has integrated all most all of the features available on Twitter through the browser to work with the Tweetdeck. You still will log into your Facebook and LinkedIn for important aspects of social media. I actually just teach/coach on using the Tweetdeck to schedule updates to Facebook and LinkedIn. Everything else within these social media networks you will do through the browser for the most part.

4. Have you heard of the tools I mentioned above and you keep thinking to yourself I need to learn about them and be using them more? Or are their names Greek to you? Have you tried to use these tools and they confuse you?

Ask for help!!! Ask friends using these tools to teach you, go to YouTube and search for tutorial videos others have made on how to use them. You may find the best and most cost effective route in the long run, when you consider your time, energy and frustration is to hire a social media professional to teach you.

As part of the social media coaching services I offer training on Tweetdeck. I coach my clients on how to create a presence on social media, how to use each social media tool and understand whatever thing means. We focus on marketing strategy and maintenance, which can be performed mostly through a Tweetdeck, one centralized area.

5. Have you claimed your business listing on Yahoo Local, Google Places, Bing Local, etc …? Are you using Ping.Fm, Google Reader, Social Oomph and Twellow? Do you even know what these sites/tools are?

If you aren’t REGISTERED on them this is a sure sign your social media is in the RED.

Does this blog post trigger more questions for you? I am going to stop here and close with this advice:

Learn the best way!
Increase your followers/friends/connections!
Stop with the obligatory updates!
Share tips, content and resources!
Ask for help!

If you want to get your social media out of the RED and into the BLACK use the acronym above as a guide!

I look forward to your comments, feedback and tips! It’s an important part of learning for all of us! So comment away! Thanks in advance for “Commenting”, “Liking”, “Sharing” and “Retweeting”! LOL!

Categories : Social Media

Tags : #BlackFriday, Black Friday, branding, facebook, linkedin, Lissa Duty, marketing, media marketing, mentions, retweets, Social Marketing, Social Media, social media coaching, social media marketing, social media tools, status updates, Tweetdeck, tweets, twitter

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