Sunday, December 2, 2012

Why Social Media Privacy Is Important for a Business Owner

A business owner should always aim to have privacy. Especially if their business does a fair amount of business, this is because a business that does well is going to find enemies. These enemies could be other businesses or it could be former clients. Whatever the case may be, the owner needs to protect themselves from the attacks from other people or businesses.

A business is not necessarily in the business of making enemies. However, the acquisition of such a thing is inevitable. There are people who will feel slighted with the amount of service they received from the business. Many of these people are vindictive and a business owner can find themselves in a bad situation if they are caught in the same area with these people. Therefore, social media privacy is a must for an owner who has had any kind of success.

Let us not forget that a business owner can have enemies in the industry. While not as likely to physically attack a person, a business owner is likely to experience character attacks by a business competitor. Some business competitors feel as if they should discredit and attack the business owner themselves. This means that a business competitor may be one of the most dangerous attackers that a person can have against them.

A person or business can easily be attacked on the social media systems. It happens all the time too. However, a person may take this further and attack the character of a business owner on the social media systems. All a person has to do is release some assets (videos, web pages, or sometimes pdf's) that can reach the first page of a search engine to attack someone's character. It is just that easy.

The truth is that online reputation management has become a big business and a business that is necessary. This is because there are a lot of these attacks on the internet and a person may or may not know about them before they acquire some age. An asset that acquires age on the internet is a difficult thing to knock off the search engine results. Therefore, a person should always monitor their own name and business name to make sure they can protect their identity and reputation especially, if they are a business owner that has a reputation at stake on the internet.

In conclusion, a business owner must be wary of their privacy on the internet; this is because one slip up could cost them everything on the internet. A business owner can easily cause themselves more pain and suffering than they should have if they are not careful with what information they release on the social media systems. An owner must be very careful because they will generate enemies. These enemies will attack them personally and sometimes physically. Therefore, it is smart for a business owner to never let their location be disclosed on social media systems and to make sure that their social profiles do not contain anything that could be used against them in the future.

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Why Use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is now one of the highest used social networking platforms for professionals. LinkedIn is a powerful online business tool to use for social networking and allows people to connect and communicate with like-minded driven and ambitious business individuals.

It seems unbelievable for those of us who remember walking around with our CVs under our arms, just how much easier making these connections are by building a complete professional profile on LinkedIn. This is because if you build a complete professional profile those viewing you online can very easily see exactly what you offer, so make sure your profile is perfect and is kept updated. Don't be lazy - when you use LinkedIn make sure you do it properly!

Why Use LinkedIn profile as a tool to get that next big connection?

Your LinkedIn profile is like a quality landing page on a website. When someone visits your profile they want to find out key information about you quickly. They want to see where you have worked, your experience, your achievements and most of all how you can benefit them. Remember, people want to see how you might solve their problems so give them solutions! This works for people who are employed or are running their own business.

Your aim, whether in business or as an individual, is to make your social networking community grow, so you have as many connections as possible working for you. Plan to promote yourself positively.

Why Use LinkedIn groups?

LinkedIn groups can be used as a huge resource library. Your groups are all talking about the same interests and topics that you are. If you want to continuously learn from others, join the right groups. It is important to give back though, as you also want to show your expertise to others. This is because you could be referred to as an expert in your particular niche or just helping a fellow professional achieve their goals.

The answer to why use LinkedIn has many different parts due to the fact that there are many ways to connect and network within this ever-increasing social networking platform. Ever thought about finding answers to questions you needed clarification on or showing how you are the specialist in your area? It is like brainstorming online with people from all over the world.

What is LinkedIn Answers?

LinkedIn Answers is a category that gives people an opportunity to give and receive feedback, to participate within a transparent online community. You can share your knowledge and expertise and link to information that supports your expertise. When you think about why use LinkedIn and LinkedIn Answers you can easily find out what your potential marketplace is asking and then give them the best answer you can.

The business use of social networking sites like LinkedIn is you can show and express key messages and information that speed up the selection process dramatically.

How Are You Leveraging Your LinkedIn Groups to Build Your Empire?   How Online Social Networks Help Build Businesses   3 Drawbacks of Online Social Networking For Business   What Is Instagram?   Why A Business Should Have Access To Social Media At All Times   Social Internet Marketing The Right Way   

Why Is Fitness Marketing In Social Networking Sites Advantageous

A lot of people today are suffering and dying from chronic illnesses brought about by stress and unhealthy way of living. That is why there are a lot of men and women nowadays who are also trying their best to achieve a fit and healthy lifestyle in order to stay away from these unwanted ailments. And because of these, people who are into businesses have innovated their systems so as to meet the new and growing demands of people. Right now, green and organic menus as well as natural fruit shakes are available in a lot of fast foods and restaurants.

In addition to this, gyms and other health clubs have started showing in different locations since more and more people are eager to eliminate their stored fats and tone out their flabby muscles. Now there is nothing wrong in starting a gym business; however, with the multitude of them already existing, the competition between one gym to another is getting tougher. Thus, in order to stay afloat in this competitive world of business, gym owners and managers should come up with an effective fitness marketing plan to keep their fitness centres on the run.

Advertising a business is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, it needs a lot of logical thinking and intricate planning in order for it to be highly effective. And what better way there is to have a successful fitness marketing tactic than to have your very own list of ideas? Here are some important things to consider when you are planning to improve the sales of your business. It was mentioned before that having a plan is rather important since this is going to guide you in reaching your ultimate goal, which is to make your growing business big. Keep in mind that your scheme should be realistic and applicable to your location. And by this, it means that you should carefully analyse which particular group of audience you are going to target and how are you going to catch their attention.

One effective way of roping a crowd is to host an open house wherein potential clients can look around your place and be aware of the equipment and facilities you have. Other than that, you can also make use of the internet and post an advertisement. Facebook and other social networking sites are popular places to put an ad since you can practically reach out to anyone. What makes this even more amazing is that creating a Facebook page for your business is not going to cost you even a single cent.

These are only a few gym marketing ideas but all of these are very much effective. If you want to know more advertising tips, you can always do additional readings from different journals and internet sites.

How Are You Leveraging Your LinkedIn Groups to Build Your Empire?   How Online Social Networks Help Build Businesses   3 Drawbacks of Online Social Networking For Business   What Is Instagram?   Why A Business Should Have Access To Social Media At All Times   Social Internet Marketing The Right Way   

How Do You Build Your Twitter Follower Base

Next to Facebook, Twitter is another one of the most popular social networking websites anywhere. This popularity is evident in that it is almost mandatory for celebrities to have their own official Twitter account. In business, Twitter has also proven its fame again and again when it has helped catapult a small local business from being in the shadows and into the limelight.

A Brief Overview of Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging website in which you share thoughts and communicate with other people in 140 characters or less. It's like an online version of a cellular phone. Posts in Twitter are called "tweets." Yes, like the sound of a bird... if you log in to Twitter, you'll notice that the company uses a dove (or a pigeon?) as its logo.

Its ease of use is the main reason behind the popularity of the website. If you like a post, you can just simply "retweet" it with the use of a button instead of copying the post and pasting it on your input box just to reshare to your followers. Plus, it's also easy to build up a timeline and community in Twitter: most of the times, you can automatically "follow" a user without much hassle although some users would want to manually approve follow requests. You could see your follower base grow instantly as you sleep... provided that you're popular enough to warrant that.

So the question is: how do you make your Twitter account popular enough to warrant followers?

Follow People With Shared Interests

This is something that's called targeted Twitter marketing. You can use Twitter for marketing a blog, for instance. Who are the people that you would want to follow your blogs? Well, anybody, generally, but it's easier to market a blog to people who are interested in the same topic. It's not about getting the blog in the forefront, it's more about getting people to come back again and again to your blog... Twitter can help you out with that by giving you means to find people who share the same interests as you.

Let's take Cityville for example. If you want to build a Twitter account that focuses on Cityville, you should first follow the Cityville Twitter account. Once you've followed Cityville in Twitter, check out the account's followers. Follow 10 of Twitter's followers on the first day, then another 10 on the next day... don't overdo it as you might be flagged as spam.

Interact With Your Followers and the People You're Following

If you're a user of Twitter or any social networking site, would you trust someone who is not even active in his or her own account? I wouldn't. In order to gain followers, you must also interact with the people that you are following. Retweet their posts, for instance. If they are talking about their life in their status or if you find a tweet that you can relate to, reply! Some Twitter users will actually watch for your first post before they add you up, and will not hesitate to unfollow you if you are deemed inactive for some time.

Post Something Interesting

When you're posting, don't just post something that people can literally bypass. Posts like "It's a good day today" is not likely to get as much attention as a tweet that says "Hey, I just had a great breakfast today!" and other outrageous tweets. Talk about the latest news, talk about anything that's related to your mutual interests, things like that.

Log In To Your Twitter Regularly

It doesn't mean you'd have to religiously log in to your Twitter account everyday, but logging in for at least 2-3 times a week is already good enough. Don't leave your Twitter account inactive for a week, because some users will actually unfollow your account if you do that.

In a nutshell, the more active your Twitter account is, the more chances that you can grow your follower base.

How Are You Leveraging Your LinkedIn Groups to Build Your Empire?   How Online Social Networks Help Build Businesses   3 Drawbacks of Online Social Networking For Business   What Is Instagram?   

Why a Business Owner Should Evaluate Two Collaboration Tools At Once

Evaluating a collaboration system and figuring out what a business needs is not an easy thing to do. It is recommended that a business test two services out at the same time to find out the bugs in each system and learn what the business really needs in a collaboration system. This practice will reveal everything a business owner needs to know when trying to choose the right provider. Here are more reasons that a business should test two services at once and more about how evaluating two services exposes weaknesses and strengths in a business.

1. Why a business owner should evaluate two services at once

A smart business owner uses two services to find out what they can about an industry and what business solution they should use. In fact, selecting one provider right out of the gate is probably the wrong approach to selecting a provider. The right approach is testing as many solutions as allowed (it depends on if the business offers a free trial) and finding out what is missing from all of them and what is absolutely essential for a business to have to be able to do its work. In the end, this will give a business a better idea of what they need and what is absolutely essential for business success.

2. The evaluation should always be two trials. A business owner should never spend money on two services at the same time. (If this is true, then find a better service)

A business owner should never have to buy two collaboration tools, if this is true, then the business needs to find a better solution than the two they have. A good collaboration tool should allow the business owner to file share, communicate with employees and other businesses they work with, and keep contacts from seeing each other if it is not beneficial for the meeting (a business should keep their vendors private from their customers).

On the same token, a business should not have to make totally separate accounts to have different businesses represented on the tool. The tool should allow one profile but have other sub profiles that do not have to be related to the master profile. This is similar to how domains are hosted by the same hosting account, but they are all different websites. A well-made collaboration tool would have this feature automatically included instead of having to remake a new profile every time a business owner opened a new business.

3. Get a better price on one if you have a sales person selling it

Lastly, it is good for a business to have as many negotiation pieces as they can when they get a collaboration tool. It is similar to buying a car; a business person should not seem too interested in a system even though they are interested in that system. This allows the business owner to get the best price on the tool without too much fuss. This savings should be reinvested into the business for growth. However, testing two collaboration tools is extremely useful when it comes down to paying for one of the systems over the other.

In closing, using two collaboration tools is only smart when a business owner is in the testing phase. If a business owner is using two services that they paid for, then that business owner needs to cancel both of those services and find a better service to use. The best collaboration tools allow a business to do work without having problems with file sharing, contacts seeing each other that should not see each other, or communication problems. Lastly, a business that tests two services can use those services to get the best price on one of them. A business owner needs to be shrewd enough to negotiate on the price of the systems.

How Are You Leveraging Your LinkedIn Groups to Build Your Empire?   How Online Social Networks Help Build Businesses   3 Drawbacks of Online Social Networking For Business   What Is Instagram?   

Why Social Networks Influenced Collaboration Tools for Business

The history of collaboration tools for business is often mistakenly associated with social networks. The truth is that these tools existed before the first social networking site appeared. Collaboration tools have more in common with early chat programs than anything else does. It is these early chat programs that allowed collaboration tools to become as functional and popular as they are now.

1. Social networks - individual needs

Collaboration tools were influenced by social networks, most notably chat programs. These programs were generated to allow people to talk to each other and not necessarily for business purposes. However, smart business owners started to use the systems to communicate to their business partners because it was much easier than communicating by phone. The interruptions were also far less because the phone was not ringing. The chat systems only made noises when messages came in, then they stayed silent until the business owner was ready to answer them. The only way that they made an obnoxious noise is when someone "buzzed" another person (which meant that it was an important message that should not be ignored).

2. Sharing needed to happen on networks

What business owners found by using these systems is that they needed to share files. The old way of sharing files was to send them via e-mail. However, this did not always work because some files were too big to send via the e-mail. Business owners then turned to their own websites to upload the information. This did not help in the long run because the bandwidth of a server would be used up quickly and the amount of steps it took to upload the project to the website was far too much. This caused businesses to develop file sharing through the chat programs. This helped, but there were still problems (and sometimes persist until today) because the files would overwrite (accidently at times) the work that the business owner had done on the file when the other partner sent their version over. There was also the problem of both sides doing the same work at the same time. The newer systems have fail-safes to make sure that these problems no longer happen.

3. Further tweaks by users

Nowadays, there is persistent chat with file sharing. These systems have also learned from the social networking platforms. They have also implemented some of those systems in their offerings as well. The truth about the systems is that they are getting better and better over time because they are learning what business owners need to have when they work. They are still not optimized for the business experience (because these programs are developed by people who do not do business) but they are much better than the older forms of collaboration tools.

Collaboration tools were heavily influenced by the early chat programs. These programs allowed two people (or entities) to communicate and discuss how to work together. The businesses making the chat programs learned what the business owners needed and started to develop more custom build programs that would eventually become the collaboration tools we have today.

How Are You Leveraging Your LinkedIn Groups to Build Your Empire?   How Online Social Networks Help Build Businesses   3 Drawbacks of Online Social Networking For Business   What Is Instagram?   Why A Business Should Have Access To Social Media At All Times   

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