Hashtags Are A Double-Edged Sword I’m just going to come out and say it: hashtags are not ownable. Period. I’ll say it again: you cannot own a hashtag. But guess what brands are constantly doing? They’ve come up with a hashtag to promote their business or product or ongoing campaign. Sound familiar? In the context of all this, a lot of people ask me, “Gary, how do I get my hashtag known? My answer is always the same. You need to understand that anybody, regardless of whether they have anything to do with your campaign or not, will be able to walk in and use that hashtag. It still happens today. However, hashtag culture is very important, especially to Instagram and Twitter. Flip the idea upside down. Instead of trying to own or establish a hashtag for a campaign, look at hashtags that are trending and very popular on the two main platforms already. The only reason I use the #AskGaryVee hashtag is to find the questions to answer. Ride the wave.
15 tips for protecting your privacy online Canada's privacy commissioner released a statement on Dec. 5 saying that web users should always be able to opt out of online tracking used by companies to provide them with targeted advertising. Some web users are "extremely uncomfortable with the notion of their online activities being tracked. People’s choices must be respected," Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a statement while releasing new guidelines on online behavioural advertising. More and more consumers are using the internet for shopping, banking and other personal transactions, which has only increased the interest of web companies in tracking people's movements. Here is some advice for maintaining your privacy online. Don’t accept free cookies. Check all security settings. Clear your cache. Use a firewall. Install a link scanner. Be smart about passwords. Don’t rely on a computer to remember your passwords. Don’t use public computers. Create a separate email account. Use fake information where possible.
5 Tools to Boost Your Social Media Productivity « Social Media Examiner Are you overwhelmed with your social media responsibilities? Looking for ways to perform tasks more efficiently? Staying on top of social activities can be challenging, but there are tools that can save you time and make your job a little easier. In this article you’ll discover five social media tools to improve productivity. Discover 5 tools to boost your social media productivity. #1: Resize Social Images Photos trigger better social media engagement. This is where Social Media Image Maker comes in. Social Media Image Maker makes it easy to resize your images for fifteen different social platforms. Using Social Media Image Maker helps make the process of resizing and retouching your images much less labor-intensive. #2: Monitor Analytics in One Dashboard To make sure your social marketing efforts are paying off, you need to measure their impact and track ROI. Cyfe gives you a detailed look at your presence across various social networks. #3: Identify Influencers #5: Automate Scheduling
How to (almost) hide your tech gadgets from being tracked The recent leak of documents to the CBC showing that the Canadian Security Establishment Agency used the free Wi-Fi service to track travellers in a major Canadian airport — even after they left the terminal — is the latest example of how valuable location data increasingly is, and how it can be captured without your consent. Here’s how you can minimize your exposure to tracking. Turn off WiFi or Bluetooth on your device Whenever you turn on these capabilities on your smartphone or laptop, it puts out a signal as it tries to connect. Don’t use free WiFi Once you use free WiFi, at say a major Canadian airport or coffee shop, that allows the router itself or any other sensors in the area to detect your MAC address. Avoid smartphone apps Many smartphone apps, whether its the game Angry Birds or a retailer loyalty points app, can gather data on your whereabouts. Remember, many devices have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Opt out from tracking Turn off your phone, take the battery out
Facebook’s Plan To Take On Twitter’s Stream Twitter’s real-time stream made it the de facto place to discuss world events. But Facebook’s VP Of Media Partnerships believes his company has two big advantages in the battle to be the digital water cooler: audience size and real identity. It will need a lot more than that to wrestle public discussion away from Twitter, though. Several of these efforts come to fruition through new partnerships. Facebook’s goal with these partnerships is to convince people that Facebook is where they should be talking about current events. For any of that to work, though, Facebook has to beat Twitter. While I post more touchy-feely life updates on Facebook, Twitter is where I go to talk about big sports matches, TV shows and world news. That’s because Twitter’s unfiltered, real-time feed means that when I post something urgent about that last play, last scene or latest breaking news, I know it gets seen immediately while it’s still relevant.
How to make it harder for hackers to assemble your personal information. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Thinkstock. It is nearly impossible to participate in modern society without entrusting your most sensitive personal information to countless Internet-based systems. At the same time, even the most well-resourced organizations are being hammered by sophisticated digital attacks, making it difficult to trust that any of these systems will keep our information safe. So the question debated at the highest levels of government, and by dozens of industries, thousands of companies, and millions of consumers, is: How can you keep your personal information secure while continuing to participate in a society powered by the extensive sharing of personal information? However, that’s probably not the question we should be asking. To address the challenges posed by the always-on sharing economy, we need to shift the way we think about personal security. So what, then, can people to do safeguard their online accounts, reputations, and identities?
How to Maximize Your LinkedIn Endorsements Are people endorsing you for the wrong skills on LinkedIn? Do you want to know how to fix that? It’s frustrating to be endorsed for skills that aren’t relevant to you or your networking goals. But hope is not lost! In this article I’ll show you three ways you can guide people into endorsing you for relevant skills. Why Manage LinkedIn Endorsements? LinkedIn endorsements are meant to provide credibility and networking opportunities. Has LinkedIn ever notified you that someone has endorsed you for skills and expertise that have absolutely nothing to do with your actual skills? Sometimes people are endorsing you so you’ll see the notification and they’ll be on your radar. Either way, if people are endorsing you for the wrong skills, then your real skills are being overlooked. #1: Set Your Skills and Endorsements If you want to control which skills are most prominent on your LinkedIn profile, set up the Skills & Endorsements section of your LinkedIn profile. #2: Manage Endorsements inShare922
Laptop Security in 7 Simple Steps Imagine that tomorrow you wake up to find out a virus has infected your laptop and all your files have vanished. Your family photos, your spreadsheet of online passwords (a major security faux pas) and that report you need for a meeting later today — all gone. Scratch that. What if a burglar broke in and stole your laptop (as well as a few other parting gifts)? So how can you protect yourself and your company from such threats? Take proactive steps to secure your investment and personal and business information with these seven laptop security tips: 1.) Never use your name, username, company name, pet’s name or birthday as your password — these are commonly used and easily guessed. 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) But what is the most dangerous place to leave your laptop unattended? Want to really lock down your device? 7.) The hard drive should then be securely stored in a fireproof safe. For more information on cybersecurity and identity theft, please visit FightingIdentityCrimes.com.
The Future of Social Media: 60 Experts Share Their 2014 Predictions Social media has been undergoing some major changes this past year. Twitter filed for IPO, Facebook launched video ads, and Snapchat threatens to change the landscape as the next big thing in social media. As more companies begin to leverage social media for personalized, real-time marketing initiatives, it’s imperative to stay ahead of the curve and identify future trends in this space. We asked experts to share their predictions on the future of social media and the ways in which it will impact businesses. The Future of Social Media: How Will It Impact Marketing, Sales and Customer Service? 1. Social Media will continue to grow as a sales and customer service tool, although the impact on marketing may become less as established social networks make changes to encourage paid promotion. 2. I think everyone is finally admit that social media has to be a part of their marketing strategy but I think 2014 will bring a real focus on ROI. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
Encrypting Your Laptop Like You Mean It Time and again, people are told there is one obvious way to mitigate privacy threats of all sorts, from mass government surveillance to pervasive online tracking to cybercriminals: Encryption. As President Obama put it earlier this year, speaking in between his administration’s attacks on encryption, “There’s no scenario in which we don’t want really strong encryption.” Even after helping expose all the ways the government can get its hands on your data, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden still maintained, “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.” But how can ordinary people get started using encryption? If you want to encrypt your hard disk and have it truly help protect your data, you shouldn’t just flip it on; you should know the basics of what disk encryption protects, what it doesn’t protect, and how to avoid common mistakes that could let an attacker easily bypass your encryption. What disk encryption guards against
5 Reasons People Favourite Tweets on Twitter With approximately 500 million users and an average of 400 million tweets sent per day, Twitter is undoubtedly one of the most popular social media platforms. Increasingly so in recent years, brands have been embracing it for customer service, nurturing relationships with their customers, product feedback, promotion of their products and services, and generally boosting their online reputation. From a consumer perspective, it seems that many have also grown used to disclosing a lot of personal information on Twitter. Users retweet or reply to anything that particular resonates with them, that they find intriguing or that arouses interest in one way or another. That’s why we thought it might be fun to take a look something we think is not as well understood in terms of functionality: the ‘favourite’. What does it mean and how do people use it? Is it some way of saying “I kinda like your post, but not enough to retweet it or to reply to it”? 1) Bookmarking 2) Attracting new followers
How To Password-Protect A USB Drive Nowadays, USB drives are capable of storing huge amount of data, even up to 1TB! With access to such capacity, we prefer to keep all our important data on USB sticks to keep it with us all the time. However, such portability of important data also raises protection concern. USB drives are portable and very small in size and manufacturers are aiming for making them even smaller with each evolution, which means you can easily lose huge amounts of data in an instant. If access to your information is not protected, anyone can easily use it for the wrong purpose. However, encrypting a whole drive is not always the answer to protecting your data on a USB drive. In this tutorial, we are going to list simple to complex methods to password-protect a USB drive, you can select the one that fits your needs best. Method #1: Password Protect Individual Data on a USB drive Many programs come with built-in password protection feature, such as Adobe’s PDF or Microsoft Office.