Erik Qualman's Blog, page 475

More Small Businesses Scheduling Time with Social Media

Take a minute to stop and think about where your small business is at right now.

Is it moving full steam ahead or is it sputtering more times than not. If it is the latter, what do you plan on doing to fix that issue?

One way small businesses can be more impactful and expand their revenue streams is by turning to social media if they’ve not already.

Get Organized and Get Social

So, stop and ask yourself how can social media help your business and you become more successful?

To start with, social media takes time and effort. If you’re not willing to put both into the equation, don’t expect to get much in return.

With that being said, it doesn’t mean you have to be on social networking sites 24/7, but you do have to make a concerted effort to put the time and energy into it to get something in return.

So, where do you start if you’re not already socially active?

First begin with a mission statement.

What is your ultimate mission on social media as a small business owner? Are the goals you set achievable? Will you do all the work yourself or outsource (if you don’t have a dedicated social media specialist or team in-house) the social networking requirements?

Secondly, are you organized enough to do what is required of a winning social media plan?

Just as salon management software helps keep those in the salon business organized with customers or medical software allows doctors and clinics to know how many patients are slated to visit them on a given day, being organized on social media is a necessity.

How do you go about organizing your small business on social media?

Start by determining how many sites you will put your brand on.

For some businesses, it can seem a little overwhelming to be on one too many sites at a time. As a result, they will start slower and generally opt for the better-known sites like a Facebook or Twitter.

If you do go this route, look to see which site best fits your needs.

When it comes to Facebook, the world’s most popular social media site offers a slew of opportunities for small business owners.

You can not only post and share interesting tidbits about your brand and/or the industry you represent, but you can also run contests and more. If you choose to run a contest or two from time to time, this is a great means to draw-in potential customers, along with keeping the current ones interested in your products or services.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to promote your staff on Facebook (if you’re technically the only staff at your small business, the same applies to you).

Consumers like to know who they’re dealing with, especially if buying from a company that is not a walk-in type of business. Use Facebook to give consumers more of a feel of you and your brand.

Sharing is Caring

As for Twitter, this is yet another site that can open so many doors for you and your brand.

One of the keys here is making sure you retweet as many worthwhile tweets as possible.

For example, a small business owner in the hair salon industry should not hesitate to retweet any posts that involve personal care, beauty, issues related to women’s health etc. In turn, those you retweet are more likely to do in kind for your brand too.

Another site that should be on your radar if not already is Instagram.

The beauty industry (many others for that matter too) thrive on imagery.

With Instagram, your brand can project myriad of things to consumers. Once again, sharing such imagery is a way to increase your brand’s awareness on social networking sites.

Finally, don’t forget about the value of video in scheduling more time for your brand to get awareness on social media.

YouTube is a great means to shoot a 30-second or so video about what your brand is, what it offers consumers, and why it is better than anything the competition may have to offer.

With all that social media can do for your small business, isn’t about time you actually scheduled some time with it?

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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ESPN to Broadcast Drone Races

Drone Racing To Take Place

On your marks, get set, fly! Get your drones ready for the next up & coming sport – drone racing. Yes, you heard that correctly. ESPN announced that they will broadcast a 3 day drone racing event in New York August 5-7 ESPN is going all in by letting spectators enjoy a first person view through their own goggles, online, on tv, or in person. Will there be drug testing? (Source: ESPN)

Apple and FBI Clash Once Again

Will it ever end? Probably not. The FBI paid hackers to hack into the phone of a San Bernardino killer, the FBI won’t say any more. The hackers, none going by the name of Snowden, have ‘sole legal ownership of the method’ meaning that they don’t have to talk. This all comes after Apple refused to hack into the phone so the FBI decided to take it into their own hired hackers’ hands. Both parties return to Congress next week #awkward. (Source: Reuters)



Instagram Now Has Featured Channels

Just in time for the Coachella FOMO. Instagram is stepping it up a notch in their explore section, giving you the option to explore video channels now. Soon there will be a ‘featured’ channels which can show videos on specific topics to videos Instagram thinks you might like. The first featured channel is going to be Coachella because Instagram knows you don’t want to miss out. Insta is hoping for the change to provide media companies and brands with more opportunities (cough…paid) on the app and to make you feel left out of cool events. (Source: Mashable)

In Case You Missed It…

Last night Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders debated it out in New York. These quotes were seen on social media….

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/14/politic...

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Top Crowdfunding Platforms for Your Projects

One of the most basic challenges faced by any business, especially a startup, is how to raise money. Crowdfunding is emerging as a viable way for businesses to raise capital in a short time. There are now a wide variety of crowdfunding platforms, with more appearing every year. Let’s look at what crowdfunding is and how it can be a useful tool for raising money.

What is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a process where a business, venture or project is funded by a large number of people. While this can theoretically be done using any type of platform, it is usually done online, where it’s easy to reach a large audience.

Crowdfunding campaigns are usually run through popular platforms such as Gofundme, Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Successful crowdfunding campaigns usually entail a considerable amount of preparation and promotion on the part of the organizers. Crowdfunding companies take a fee, usually around 5 percent, of the total amount raised. Some take money directly out of donations.

What is a Crowdfunding Campaign?

When you want to crowdfund a project, the first step is to start a campaign. This can be done from your own website or other online or offline platform that you own or it can be done through a service such as GoFundMe, Kickstarter or one of the many others. There are a variety of rules for running campaigns and these vary from one platform to the next.

Different platforms are used for different purposes. Kickstarter, for example, only allows fundraising for projects it deems creative. GoFundMe, which is currently the largest crowdfunding platform, is more diverse and may be used for all types of purposes, including personal fundraising and raising money for businesses.

Is Crowdfunding Right For Your Business?

As popular as crowdfunding is, it’s not always the right solution for everyone. Before you start a campaign, you should first consider if crowdfunding is the right approach for you.

Are you prepared to promote your campaign? Setting up a crowdfunding campaign is only the first step. You will largely be responsible for getting traffic to your campaign site and doing a good job at explaining why people should invest in your business. If you don’t feel you have the time or expertise to do this, crowdfunding probably isn’t viable for you right now. Regardless of how you choose to raise money, it’s essential that you do plenty of research and preparation. You should also be skeptical of anyone who promises that funding your business will be easy or effortless.

The Top 5 Crowdfunding Platforms

Let’s take a look at some of the leading crowdfunding platforms for funding businesses.

Kickstarter

This is one of the best and oldest crowdfunding sites, having started in 2009, and still one of the largest. Kickstarter’s mission statement is “Our mission is to help bring creative projects to life.” Because of the focus on creative projects, this isn’t the appropriate platform for everyone. If you aren’t sure if your business fits their criteria, you should check their list of categories, which include art, design, fashion, photography, music and technology. The category “technology,” of course, allows many businesses to fit.

Kickstarter has a manual review process, so there’s no guarantee that any particular project will be approved. On the other hand, this gives the platform a certain credibility for those campaigns that are approved. Kickstarter has a 5 percent fee for all campaigns. Campaigns must be run using Amazon payments, which charges additional fees. Projects must meet their goal to be funded. In other words, if your target goal is $10,000 and your campaign only raises $5,000, you get nothing.Indiegogo

Indiegogo

Indiegogo is another very popular crowdfunding company that also launched in 2009. It’s much more lenient than Kickstarter when it comes to accepting projects. The review process is automated, which means that most projects are approved. The downside to this is that there’s less quality control than Kickstarter, which may make investors more skeptical.

Some advantages of Indiegogo include flexible payment options for investors, including PayPal and credit cards. Indiegogo offers two options for campaigns -Flexible and Fixed. Flexible means you keep any funds raised, even if you don’t meet your goal. Fixed means you must meet your goal. The fee for Flexible campaigns is 9 percent; for Fixed campaigns it’s 4 percent.

GoFundMe

GoFundMe has become the third major player in the crowdfunding world. It’s also the most diverse, with many campaigns started for purely personal reasons. Like Indiegogo, it has flexible funding where you can keep whatever funds you raise, even if you don’t meet your goal. And unlike Indiegogo, you won’t be charged a higher fee if you don’t meet your goal. GoFundMe charges a 5 percent fee from every donation. Although GoFundMe is perhaps best known for personal and creative campaigns, it actively encourages businesses and entrepreneurs to create campaigns.

Patreon

The name Patreon is based on the word “patron.” As this suggests, the site was created for the purpose of finding patrons -people who regularly send money to fund your activities. For this reason, the site is not the best choice for a startup that needs a large amount of cash right away. On the other hand, it can be useful if you want to find long-term investors who are willing to stick with you for a while.

Another unique feature of Patreon is that you aren’t allowed to charge the public for products or services that have been funded by patreons. The idea is that you are getting paid by your investors so you can supply your products for free. On the surface, this might make Patreon an unlikely choice for businesses who are thinking about selling their products. It can, however, be a good vehicle for individuals and businesses who want to build a following and receive guaranteed funding. There’s also the fact that you can charge for projects that are not directly funded by Patreon. So, it’s possible to build a following on this platform that can help you make sales elsewhere.

AngelList

AngelList is a crowdfunding site that is specifically geared for technology startups. Some of the companies that have used AngelList to raise money include Uber, Thumbtack and Postmates. This is one of the more exclusive crowdfunding services. You must submit a private application and fewer than 2 percent of applications are accepted. For anyone with a good business plan who is looking to connect with big investors, it can be worth applying to AngelList. Because of its exclusivity, however, it’s important to be well prepared before you apply.

Running a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

When it comes to the question of how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign, there are many factors to consider. First of all, you have to decide if crowdfunding is indeed the best choice for raising money for your endeavor. Then you have to choose the platform that will work best for your campaign. Finally, you must have a viable crowdfunding campaign strategy and put in plenty of effort at promoting your campaign. If you take these steps, crowdfunding can be an effective way to fund your business.

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Public Transportation of the Future

Public Transportation of the Future

Daimler owner of Mercedes-Benz and Car2Go is moving into the public transit and software sector with intentions of making public transportation seamless. Daimler is merging Austin-based RideScout and Portland’s GlobeSherpa to operate all under one roof called Moovel North America. The merger combines RideScout’s software technology and GlobeSherpa’s mobile ticketing system to as CEO of Moovel NA put it, “Remove the silos that people face in getting around.”

Moovel NA will contract with cities to create a mobile ticketing and payment product system for public transit use. Combine that with a development kit capable of deep linking to car, bike and ride-sharing services, Moovel NA will form one big integrated transportation system. Officially they’re moving from a car manufacturer to a mobility company of the future. Look out George Jetson. (Source: The Verge)

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

Want to know what your mirror is really thinking? Well, wait no longer. San Francisco based startup Naked Labs created a scale incorporated with a 3D body scanning system. The device is paired with a full-length Internet connected mirror, a rotating scale and a mobile app. Upon scanning your body, the app displays data and grayscale scans so you can better track your fitness progress.

The company uses Intel RealSense 3D depth sensors for quick 20 second scans to show you metrics like hip-to-waist ratio, symmetry, and circumference of thighs, calves and biceps. The company’s core focus is to keep people motivated on their fitness regimen by showing them the “naked truth”.  You can preorder your Snow White mirror, but shipping won’t begin till March of 2017. (Source: TechCrunch)

Selfie Sticks

The next selfie stick will be virtual. That’s right, Facebook hopes in the future all you have to do for your perfect 3D selfie is wave your phone or use an Oculus headset. Wanna see how it’ll work? TechCrunch shows the technology in this video and it’s completely mind blowing. (Source: TechCrunch)

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Make a Healthy Effort to Benefit from Social Media

With all the information that is out there in the online world, learning how to take better care of yourself and those you love should not be all that difficult.

Granted, any healthcare information found online must be taken at times with a grain of salt, especially when not coming from a recognized doctor, nurse, medical facility etc.

Having said that, there is much to learn on social media, healthcare information that ultimately could save your life or someone around you, be it a family member, friend, or even a stranger.

Socializing the Healthcare Process

In order to best benefit from what social media can offer you in terms of healthcare advice, keep these items fresh in your mind:

Know where to look – First and foremost, knowing where to go on social media for the best healthcare advice is of course important. From turning to sites like WebMD for myriad of healthcare tips to sites such as safenowcpr.com, giving you the latest in CPR information (heart attacks and heart disease remain leading killers nationwide), there is plenty to learn just by being more social. It also turns out that more medical professionals (especially physicians) are becoming active on social media. While they oftentimes can’t and/or won’t diagnose your symptoms online, they can provide you with important details about a whole host of medical terminology and current trends;
Turn to those you know – In many cases, you likely know one or more people that use social media rather frequently. As a result, they can help assist you in the event you are a little green with using social networking to your benefit. If you have no current presence on social media, take it slow in getting started. If you try and open up multiple accounts, you will likely get that feeling of being overwhelmed sooner rather than later. When that happens, you are more inclined to ignore or altogether ditch your social media initiatives. Start out with a popular site such as a Facebook or Twitter. Your family or friends that are active social media users can show you how to use such an account or accounts, guiding you slowly through the process until you become comfortable doing it on your own. Once that happens, you are better served adding another site or two to your collection;
Look for trending topics – It seems every few months there is an outbreak of this or a bad flu season etc. that dominates the national news. When you have questions about such problems, social media can be a good gateway to discovering how a particular illness can impact you and your loved ones. Twitter and Facebook both have trending topic areas on their respective sites, so it is rather easy (especially with Twitter) to get up to speed on what is presently going on here and around the world for that matter;
Don’t overlook insurance – As much as you may hate hearing the term health insurance, it is all but a necessity in your life and those around you. With the Obamacare mandates in recent years, those without health insurance are subject to being fined, with those fines increasing substantially from year to year. One way to keep your health insurance costs down is by leading a healthier life. In turning to social media to learn about being healthier, you can ultimately save yourself and/or your family money. When you are not a smoke or heavy drinker, you get regular physicals, you eat healthy and balance that off with regular exercise, you stand to avoid major medical bills. There are plenty of health insurance providers on social media, many of whom can tell you how to not only find the best insurance on the market, but also keep your premiums down.

In order for your life to be relatively free of regular illnesses and sizable medical bills, using social media is one of your better options.

Get more social and learn about as much medical knowledge as possible.

When you do that, you not only improve your own physical well-being, but you can also save money overtime, something which will certainly help your mental health.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

 

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5 Proven Social Media Growth Hacks

If you launched your online business in the last few months, you will have inevitably learned about the different aspects of growing your business online. The term online marketing frequents your radar. It’s likely that you have learned about growth hacking; taking innovative approaches towards growing an online following with the hope of yielding customers and exposure for your business. Social media opens the doors for sharing exciting and interesting content directly with your followers, who are also the same people you wish to convert into paying customers. When you are starting out with social media, it can feel like you’re talking to a non- existent audience. To build momentum you need your social media pages to grow steadily in numbers, followers, likes, and subscribers. I would like to share with you a list of 5 proven and tested growth hacking techniques that are going to steer you in the direction of social media success. There are many ways to define social media success, and one of them is constant engagement from followers with the content that you’re sharing.

1. Plan for Success

In any business venture you must plan for success. When planning for success in social media, it’s crucial to remember that to achieve a successful result, a certain amount of time and energy is going to have to be invested to build up momentum. Each effort we make, builds on top of the effort we made before, so essentially we are working towards the moment where all of our efforts begin to pay off by themselves. For example, a daily content sharing schedule for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is going to be much more rewarding, than having a weekly schedule. Of course, the quality of content is imperative, but if we can make the habit of sharing something insightful with our followers once a day, it means we are putting our business in front of our followers more frequently, which will naturally invoke engagement. This helps to build lasting momentum where new followers are finding your pages and profiles,and becoming a part of your daily content sharing.

2. Niche vs Broad Hashtags

All the big social media networks nowadays are heavily reliant on hashtags. It’s the new way of finding, curating, and promoting content. Even Facebook adapted to the idea, and I’m constantly seeing more and more business pages promote their content with the inclusion of hashtags. In order to benefit from them the most, we need to understand them thoroughly to reap the highest rewards. It’s one thing to write a post about “social media” and give it a hashtag of #socialmedia because there are thousands of people doing this already, and it is a very broad hashtag that doesn’t yield a very big engagement rate. You need to begin looking into hashtags that are less frequent, but have closely tied communities attached to them, where the engagement rate is much higher. How to go about this? The best way is to research. Take your time to dive deeper into the hashtags“market” and see if you can find hashtags that are less frequent, but with more engagement.

3. Credibility & Relationships

Getting social shares doesn’t just have to happen through the process of constantly sharing new social content, you can also explore the area of business relationships, and see for yourself how beneficial it can be when your content is exposed in front a new audience. Your end-goal for using social media is inevitably going to be leading people towards your website, where you can finalize a lead or sale. That’s why building content relationships with other businesses, media outlets and bloggers is so important for gaining a long-lasting credibility status quo. Backlinks themselves are a valuable currency when it comes to search marketing, and combined with the extra social media exposure that you get, it’s something worth planning ahead for. Start with socializing your guest posting efforts, it’s a great way to start building a portfolio of sites that you are going to be writing for.

4. Organic Promotion

Your website is the ultimate social platform in itself. You have the front-page of the website, which acts as the on-boarding process for new clients, and you have the content area, which usually means a blog. Your blog is where you connect with your customers and community, sharing insights, stories, and interesting data that your customers would find useful. In this case, you want to ensure that your content, but also your whole website, is easily shareable on social media, to achieve this result — employ social media buttons. WordPress users can benefit from a great range of social sharing plugins that allow you to create unique combinations of social icon alignments that will greatly increase the organic social sharing rate of your business, most notably — floating sharing icons seem to work great for being exposed to the reader 100% of the time. But if you are running a standalone website, there’s no shortage of HTML templates for social icons, all of whom are easy to plug into an existing HTML page. If the user doesn’t see social sharing buttons, he is likely going to avoid sharing your content and/or website on social media in the first place, but when the option is presented, and combined with good content, the chance of getting social shares organically goes up significantly.

5. Analyzing Social Media

One of your biggest advantages in growth hacking your social media strategy is the use of social media analytics tools. Knowing which topics and hashtags are trending can be useful in attracting a new crowd to your social pages, and having the ability to analyze the hourly performance of social shares can give you insight on the best times to share social content in the first place. If 70% of tweets are being read between the hours of 3pm and 6pm, there’s no real value in posting those tweets before those hours, and social media analytics tools can really help in this area. There are many alternatives to social analytics, as you will find in a previously published Socialnomics roundup. What steps will you take to ensure that your social media strategy continues to grow? We hope you found the above promoted content as entertaining and helpful as we did.

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Media Companies Compete for Yahoo

Media Companies Compete for Yahoo

The Hunger Games Yahoo edition is about to take place. Yahoo has been struggling recently and looking for a bit of help. They announced a few weeks back they would be selling their news and media properties. Well now media companies want in. Most recently British tabloid Daily Mail decided they want Yahoo. Buying Yahoo would help their U.S. presence and give them an extra revenue boost. It’s not going to be that easy though, because Verizon, CBS and InterActive Corp also have their eyes on Yahoooooooo! Let the games begin. (Source: CNBC)

We’re Going On a Trip In Our Favorite Rocketship…

Space is cool. Physicist Stephen Hawking, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and billionaire Yuri Milner are putting their genius minds together to start what might be the most ambitious space adventure. So for those keeping score at home we now have Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg in a space war … it’s sort of like a nerd version of MMA fighting.

The trio are behind a $100 million program that will send tiny spacecrafts to explore Alpha Centauri (our nearest star system). How are they going to do this you ask? The gameplan is to send hundreds of space probes carrying cameras, photon thrusters, navigation and communication equipment via laser beams to collect images, data, and see if there are any signs of life and report back to Earth. The estimated flight time is 20 years. We’ll be waiting. (Source: CNN)

Need a Shiny New Toy?

You’re in luck. The new Kindle Oasis is on pre-order beginning today. The Oasis is different than previous Kindle versions. The Oasis provides readers with months of battery life, a smaller & thinner frame, a brighter reading experience and a more costly purchase price. If you don’t feel like spending $290 on an e-reader, the Kindle Fire is still only $50.

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Netflix Increases Price Beginning May 2016

Netflix Increases Price Beginning May 2016

Spare another $2 in your budget for May. Netflix announced they’ll be upping their monthly subscription fee from $7.99 to $9.99 beginning May. New subscribers have been paying $9.99 since October but the streaming service let current subscribers keep the $7.99 price for a few extra months. So that Netflix and chill session is going to be costing you even more, sad face. (Source: The Verge)

F8 Convention

Today is kicking off with Facebook’s yearly F8 convention. The conference is getting started with a keynote from Zuckerberg and we can expect to hear A LOT about artificial intelligence, live-streaming video and chat bots. Chat bots are computer programs that simulate human conversation. Developers are extra excited considering the new cha tbot software will allow them to create specialized bots that give Facebook users access to services that usually require an additional app (like booking restaurant via OpenTable or travel reservations via Priceline).

As for live-streaming, we can expect plenty of demos and showoffs since just last week Facebook unveiled new features for Live. Regarding AI we’re biting our nails in suspense to learn the big picture plans for M, which is Facebook’s experimental assistant for messenger. Mashable is live streaming F8 so stay tuned. (Source: Mashable)

Dropbox Meets Facebook Messenger.

Dropbox is making it easier for your to upload and sync your files. If you have the Dropbox and Facebook messenger apps installed on your device, you can upload your files all in-app without having to copy and past links back and forth. Hallelujah. Just click the “more” feature button when chatting and you’ll see the Dropbox option. Facebook is rolling out the feature continuously so don’t fret if you don’t see it yet. (Source: TheNextWeb)

Tesla Recalls Model X #BadTiming

If you purchased a Tesla Model X Crossover before March 26th you might be in trouble. Tesla has recalled 2,700 Model X crossovers for the third row seats folding forward in a crash. Tesla tested this 15 times but failed the 16th test.  No one has been hurt from this making it a manufacturing defect rather than a design defect. (Source The Verge)

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Investing in Social Media is Financially Sound

No matter what the size of your business, social media definitely has a place for you.

With that being the case; what are you doing to take advantage of all social networking has to offer?

Most importantly, what are you doing to protect your investments in social media? Specifically, making sure you’re not opening the door to cyber criminals when using social networking sites and the Internet in general.

If your investment in social media and the web doesn’t involve protecting your brand’s assets, rethink that investment.

Cyber Security is a Must in Today’s Tech World

If your brand is a regular on the Internet, what are you doing to make sure your web investments are protected?

From cybercriminals on the outside to rogue employees on the inside, your brand needs to make sure it is protected online 24/7, including your time spent on social media.

With that being the case, do a double-take to make sure you’ve got these bases covered:

Social sites – Never give out usernames and passwords to your social sites. Only employees truly working on social media for you (if you have people working for you) should have access to such information. While some businesses encourage their employees to share and tweet on their behalf, it is important that usernames and passwords are not randomly passed around the office. The best scenario is to have one individual (or a selected team) in charge of your brand’s social networking activities. This way, the log-in information is held by one or just a select few;
Outsourcing – If you outsource some of your company’s work, it is crucial that you vet those doing the work for you. Make sure they can be trusted with access to your site. If they cease working for you, remove their accounts (including log-in information) so that they are not able to still access your admin page. As too many companies have unfortunately discovered over time, cyber-security is not just a buzzword, but a real thing. Without a true cyber-security plan in place, your business runs the risk of being exposed, something that can hurt your brand in both a public relations stance and of course financially over time;
In-house work – Although you’d like to believe you can trust those individuals you hire 100 percent, examples of this not being the case have rung true in the news in recent years. Employees stealing information (money for that matter too) from their employers is a bigger problem than many business owners realize. As you are careful when outsourcing work, make sure that you follow the same rules with in-house staff. Usernames and passwords should not be randomly tossed around the office; only those individuals that truly need them to post items on social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. should have access to them;
Dealing with consumer or former employee feedback – Face the facts that you will get some consumer feedback on social media regarding your products and/or services. As a result, it is important that you respond to such feedback in a positive manner. Not doing so could lead to some negative interactions with consumers, some of which can open your business up to cyber threats. If a consumer takes issue with you and/or your brand, they may resort to more drastic measures to make their point with you. The same can be said for a former employee that was fired under unpleasant circumstances. Always take the high road with customers and former employees, not giving them a reason to want to retaliate against you and your business.

The time and effort your business invests in social media can go a long way in determining just how successful you truly will be.

Social media opens up so many doors for your business, but you have to know how to walk through them and come out on the other side with success.

Take a step in the right direction by investing in social media the correct way.

That means guarding your brand against cyber-criminals from day one.

If you don’t, the demise of your business could be hastened, something that no business owner ever wants to think about.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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How Technology is Improving Education

Technology has had a huge impact upon the way that people live, work, and play. But it is also helping students of all levels achieve better results in the classroom. In fact, there are so many new tools that both students and their teachers can use to enhance the learning experience, regardless of what subject is being taught.

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Continue reading to learn more about a few of the many ways that technology is improving education for students of all ages.

Simulations Make Complex Subjects Easier to Understand

Teachers often find it difficult to teach certain abstract subjects, such as math and science, and students also find it hard to understand what’s being taught. But with technology, teachers can now use models and simulations to bring abstract ideas to life in a more concrete and easy-to-understand format. For example, models can show a student how molecules will behave in a variety of situations, or students can learn about science and engineering topics with greater ease when electronic models and simulations are incorporated into these lessons.

Interactive Technology Is Hands-On

Many students learn better when they are able to have a hands-on experience, and technology is now allowing for interactive learning in a variety of subjects. While it used to be only certain subjects could be taught in a hands-on way, things are different now, thanks to technology. Interactive chalkboards (known as Smart Boards), books, and software make it easy for students to understand a variety of topics, from English to History and everything in between.

Speaking of Smart Boards…

Interactive Smart Boards can now be found in classrooms all over the country, from elementary school all the way through high school. These replace traditional chalkboards and overhead projectors while incorporating the use of cutting-edge technology that kids and teachers enjoy using. There are many advantages to using these boards in the classroom, including:

Adding various media to any lesson easily. Teachers can project videos, games, graphs, maps, illustrations, photos, and much more on a Smart Board.
Teachers and students can use Smart Boards in a collaborative way, and all types of learners can benefit. Visual learners, for example, can view visual elements, while tactile learners can actually interact with the board by touching it and using its many features.
Teachers can also use Smart Boards to access the Internet and its many resources. That information can be used to answer questions for students and make lessons even more engaging, fun, and informative.

Prepare for Tests from Anywhere

Another way that technology is dramatically improving education is by giving students the opportunity to continue learning from home on their own computers. There are plenty of software programs, apps, and websites to choose from, and students can expand upon what they are learning in the classroom like never before. There are even websites that give students access to standards-aligned practice tests. Students can also prepare for stressful exams, such as the SATs, online and from the comfort of their own home so they can score higher on the real thing.

Online Learning Is Bigger Than Ever

Being able to learn remotely has never been easier for students of all ages. There are online learning websites with vast databases of courses that can be taken anywhere and on any device. This means that students can not only learn what is being taught in the classroom, but can also pursue topics of personal interest, such as arts and crafts, business, music, web development, and much more.

Many schools are also providing learning opportunities online that range from full-time programs to supplemental instruction. These online experiences can make everything from summer school programs to Advanced Placement and remediation courses available to all students who need to take core subjects or electives to graduate.

Training for Real-World Work

Epistemic games are another great form of technology for students who are interested in seeing what it is like to hold certain career positions. These games make it possible to solve real-world problems while playing roles like journalist, engineer, or city planner. By putting students into adult working environments, they can not only see if a potential career choice is right for them, but they can also hone their existing skills and learn other important concepts, as well as creative skills, that they won’t get from simply reading textbooks.

Technology has definitely helped students learn and achieve like never before, so it is no wonder that teachers worldwide are incorporating more technology into their classrooms. Learning is now interactive, engaging, and more fun, as well as less abstract, so students of all ages and levels can succeed.

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