Allegations that hackers hijacked the Fox News Twitter feed Monday and used it to tweet incorrectly that President Obama had been assassinated have showed the dark side of social media.

Imagine that?Hackers take control of the Fox News Twitter- a site everyone is sure to believe in and tweets this really bad news. What does this say about social media in general then? It definitely has its dark side.

No matter how useful it may be for your business or for keeping in touch with friends, the fact remains that you really are in danger online. Not only do these ‘criminals’ hack into sites but they post subtle messages and hide them in links to alleged funny videos.  But how do they do it?

Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital, said in a statement: “The network was not in control of the account once it was hacked, and Twitter was unreachable until late morning eastern time yesterday. The tweets were taken down as soon as Twitter gave back control of the account to the network.”

This shows the ‘sad’ truth-Twitter, Facebook and all other social networking sites really can’t stop these hackers. For users, everything you put out there has the potential to be hacked into. Lesson: BEWARE.

As for the social networking sites, well lets say people shouldn’t believe everything they see there. I mean look at Twitter, if hackers were able to hack into Fox News, whose to say they aren’t the ones behind whatever news you hear there!

Conclusion-it’s a risk entering these networks but you just have to make sure it’s a risk worth taking.

Read the entire article here.

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Let’s face it-KEEPING customers loyal to you is much harder than FINDING them. You may simply have been the people they came in contact with when they needed your services but it doesn’t really mean that they will close their doors on using your competitors as well. How can you get your customers to be loyal to you and only you?

Social media can be a huge help in this area. You can use your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all to make sure that  your customers stick to you.  Here’s why this will work.

1. If you have a brand on these sites and connect with your customers, they will likely share this with friends. In short, simply showing some appreciation and getting them to be connected will be all you need to get even more customers! It’ll be as good as ‘using’ them to market for you.
2. People will more likely choose their word over yours. Being a company, you will only sound like you are after more customers but from somebody who has tried your services, they are more likely to believe.

There you have it. With social media around, keeping your customers loyal to you doesn’t have to be  difficult. Simply create a page, get connected to keep them interested and even get them to share you with friends.

Read more here.

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Everyone knows just how useful Social media has proven to be in the business field. Then is the reason why practically everyone has an online profile somewhere-to connect with family and friends. It seems social networking is continuing to find more and more ways to be of use to people.Here is yet another triumph for social media.

The Washington Post reports that the FBI decided on its new strategy of blasting photos of Bulger and Catherine Elizabeth Greig on television screens and the social networking site Twitter on Tuesday. In a few short hours, the agency’s Los Angeles office received a call from someone living in the apartment complex where Bulger and Greig were living.

Whitey Bulger has been on the FBI’s “MOST WANTED” list from 1995- an astonishing 16 years! His crimes include 19 Killings in the Boston area and Drug-trafficking as well.

According to the report, the main reason for his not being able to be captured all these years is his ‘connections’ with some FBI agents. He was an informant of one of the ‘top’ agents and got protection in return.

This is probably where Social media will prove to shine. Using these networks to post photos of ‘wanted’ people, will allow justice to be served. No agency has control over these social sites. No government personal can try and ‘hide’ information on these sites and nobody can stop the news from spreading there.

Though many find the freedom of speech on these sites in a way ‘wrong’ considering the harm that may be done with verbal harassment on a global scale, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies surely will be glad to have Social  networks around.  Things that people may be hesitant to do with other mediums can be done online without worrying about privacy.

Social networking also makes reporting crimes very easy. A simple tweet or message sent to the authorities is not only easy to do but may be all they need to locate some criminal. Social media is the ‘Hottest’ and maybe even the most valuable ‘agent’ in town.

Read more here.

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“If it worked for them, It should work for me“. Is that your idea when it comes to using Social Media in marketing your business?

The truth is, this is absolutely FALSE.

There are so many factors that may affect the efficacy of social networking on your company. One of the obvious things to consider is the kind of business you have. True, you can advertise for anything on these sites but if your target audience isn’t likely to even have profiles on these accounts, it would really be useless trying to get your business in these networks.

How about if you know your kind of business should be easily marketed on these sites but you still fail. According to a survey conducted by emarketer.com, there are heavier reasons  behind your business’ failure in these sites.

The effectiveness of using social networking to market your business will depend on your location. Some countries don’t really have a high percentage of Social media users. This may be because of a reserved culture or simply because the popular social sites aren’t popular there. Here is what the survey revealed. (see chart below)

47% of businesses successfully used social networks for customer acquisition in 2011, a 7 percentage point increase over 2010. The US followed closely behind the average, at 43%.

You really shouldn’t expect much success if your country isn’t one of those ‘on top’ of the social media users. Like the chat shows though, generally speaking, businesses are increasing their use of social media in inceasing their revenue worldwide.

How are businesses that are not using social network for their marketing doing though? The chart below shows the facts

Read the original post  here.

The founders of today’s common social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn had absolutely no idea of the impact these social networking sites would have. What started out as a simple way for college students to keep in touch has become a worldwide network connecting not only individuals but businesses and organizations. This unexpected popularity has brought about a very important issue: SECURITY.

The ‘safety’ that users felt on these sites is slowly becoming questionable. These sites have become the places hackers and other ‘cyber criminals’ find their prey. The bottom line is everyone-moderators of these sites included must pay more attention to their online security.   You think your social networking site has done all they can to ‘ensure your safety?’

Security researcher Rishi Narang recently discovered a security flaw with LinkedIn’s use of cookies and, as a result, the site reduced the persistence of cookies it uses to identify users. Patches and updates from the social networks themselves occur on a daily basis in an effort to combat crucial security flaws. As of the writing of this article, in 2011, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have undergone updates 528 times, with over 50 updates occurring on Facebook alone.

The fact is no matter how hard owners of these sites may be trying, it will be hard to keep up to pace with hackers.  Apart from that is the problem of confidential information finding its way to wrong hands. An example of this is of  Scott McClellan, the chief technologist and interim vice president of engineering for HP’s new cloud services business. Scott ‘carelessly’ posted the company’s plans on his LinkedIn page which wasn’t supposed to go public yet.  Though the comment was later removed, the damage had clearly been done.

How can a ‘safer’ social networking site be created then? No doubt, these sites are doing all they can to try and update their settings. As users though, there is much that can be done to try and minimize the chances of becoming a victim of these cyber attacks.

Being careful before clicking on something our friends’ have posted will be a big step. We may be trusting by nature but clicking on unknown links may open the way for hackers to access our information.

Another factor has to do with confidentiality. Though you do have the right to rant and rave on your page, avoid mentioning things that you don’t have the ‘right’ to share. This is especially true when it comes to company policies or updates. Keep your personal social networking sites PERSONAL.

Keep yourself well-informed as to updates these sites have made security-wise.  You may have to update your profiles’ security settings to keep yourself protected.

For more information, read the source article.

taken from developsocially.com

If you are to use social media to find potential customers online or increase traffic to your blog or site, you would need to start by getting involved in the right sites. There are really a handful of sites that you can choose to use for your online marketing but knowing how you can use these to your advantage is the key.This depends mostly on the kind of business you have. If you are after getting people’s opinions to help you make good decisions, then Facebook and Twitter are your obvious choices. Here are some sites that can aren’t very popular but will be a great help:

Insidefacebook.com

Though this isn’t an official Facebook resource it can help you interpret what’s happening on your Facebook page. The site offers informative stats about your Facebook page and can help you understand it better.

Formulists.com

This is a site that goes with Twitter. It’s a list creation and management tool that can allow you to create and update customized Twitter lists that update constantly. You can easily expand and manage your network with this site.

KnowEm.com

This site is a great tool that can check your brand or product name in over 550 popular and merging social network sites. Why would you want to do that? Well, you will be making sure that nobody uses your name aside from yourself. It’s in a way ‘reserving’ your name on all these sites.

Addictomatic.com

Instead of searching all your favorite social networking sites for the latest news and updates on your business, this site allows you to do this search on a single site. Simply create your own ‘hot topic’ and you’ll be able to get results on all those sites! Bet you didn’t know such a site existed.

Brandtags.net

This is something you would be especially interested in if you are a brand. The site allows you to enter a brand and search for what’s being said about it. It’s a great way to see how your reputation is doing online.

Keeping up to date with all the social networking sites that you are connected to can be a hassle. These sites do all the hard work for you.

For a complete list, check this article.

Applying a blanket ban on social networking sites may seem an easy fix for risk-averse businesses. These days it’s utterly natural to fret over employees disclosing sensitive information with an ill-considered tweet or loose-fingered chat – or simply frittering away too much time cooing over baby photos on Facebook. No surprise, then, that more than half of companies are implementing exactly this kind of ban, according to new research by Towers Watson.

The predicament that many businesses find themesleves in. The fear that allowing their employees to have access to these social media sites would put some sensitive company information out there is the cause of this usually.

Blocking these sites however will also have a negative effect on the company. Employees will not be given the chance to voice out their concerns which they may not be able to do in person. The fact is social networking can be used to the company’s advantage if you know how.

The secret here is balance. Instead of completly blocking these sites, company’s could simply monitor their employees use of them. The fact is these sites are not going away soon and blinding youreself to their influence will be a bad decision.

Check the original article here.

At the 2011 WWDC held at San Francisco on Monday, Apple formally announced its official social-media
association with Twitter, leaving behind Facebook, the biggest social networking site in the world. With
Twitter having less than half the members as compared to Facebook, many speculate the reasons behind
this initiative.

The bottom line is they seem to have reached the point where they had different visions of the future. When their ambitions seemed to have clashed, it was in obvious that some changes have to be made.
This differing in interests brought Apple to choose Twitter instead as its official social media partner.

Apple has always wanted to maintain a good relationship with its consumers which seems not to be part of those of Facebook’s ambitions.

The new operating system will allow Apple users to access all that they want from pictures to tweets and videos with a single log in. This will save all the hassle that previously was experienced from having to log in every time you entered a different application.

How this shift will affect Facebook is still to be seen. For now, Twitter has found a very good partner and is surely happy about it.

For the complete article, check this site.

Watch this Twitter Marketing video now. Click to play.

There’s a Twitter marketing myth that’s really prevalent in the Twitter community, and it goes something like this:

“It’s about the quality of followers, not the quantity.”

Their rationale is, who cares if you got thousands of Twitter followers if nobody cares what you have to say.

I admit, there’s a grain of truth. If all you do is harvest followers, you’re nothing but a spammer. But here’s why this reasoning is flawed…

No matter how much so called quality Twitter followers you have, the dismal percentages remain the same.

2% click-through rate. 5% if you’re lucky.

Here’s 3 surprising reasons why:

1. There’s too much noise. Your followers follow hundreds of others. Hence  your tweets being lost in their tweet-stream as thy’re assaulted by noise.
2. Not everyone is on at the same time. The US has six different time zones. Then there’s the rest of the world. People wont see your tweet because they’re not online at that time.
3. Your followers are not targeted. People can follow you over a Chuck Norris Joke as much as sound marketing advice.

So here’s the deal, Guy Kawasaki says…

“Twitter is a numbers game.”

To overcome lower response rates, you need to get more followers to compensate that lack. And the good news is Twitter is phenomenal when it comes to generating leads really fast.

You see…

• The more followers you have, the more influence you wield.
• The more followers you have, the more chances of RTs.
• The more followers you have, the more SALES you make.

Here’s the simple answer that make pumping the numbers so much easier.

Hummingbird Twitter review

HUMMINGBIRD.

Honestly, I thought this Twitter app was a piece of crap a few months ago when I first bought it. It was so bad that I ended up doing my list building manually.

However, after I checked back a week ago, I was delightfully surprised that Hummingbird creators Mesiab Labs made massive improvements to this Twitter tool.

Hummingbird has truly become a push button solution.

With just one press of a button, and less than a minute’s work…

You can get up to 500 followers a day!

Skeptical? Here’s proof…

You saw right, since using Hummingbird over the past 7 days, I have got 2378 FOLLOWERS IN A WEEK.

So now, I’m unabashedly recommending Hummingbird to get big on Twitter fast. Put the massive lead generation and traffic generation of Twitter for your business right now.

Due to a special arrangement, your Hummingbird order can get a WHOPPING 15% DISCOUNT when you type the word RECESSION into the coupon section when you order.

Hummingbird guarantees you see results in as little as 3 days, so check it out now while this special offer remains:

Yes, I want 500 followers a day on Twitter now!

Obama has served 100 days in the White House.

A 100 days. "Success or failure?", the 2 camps are still debating.

A policy here. A ruling there. Intervention all around. Some people call the President’s moves brilliant. Others call it plain dumb.

Yes, the voices are crystal clear. The first 100 days are always forgivable ones. You need to get your feet wet, to clean up the mess of the previous administration, just to learn to juggle the various egos of the others in power.

The first 100 days are about research, and policy discussions, and rounds and rounds of meetings to fix what’s wrong about the country.

Yet, the same media voices claim the next 100 days are THE MOST CRUCIAL ONES to determine whether Obama succeeds as president  or is a flash in the pan.

You see, the next 100 days are about IMPLEMENTATION. To stop talking and take action. And the anticipated results will determine his destiny.

How have you spent the last 100 days?

Did you set your goals? New Years Resolution? A fierce determination to succeed and prevail through this difficult recession period?

Now, whether you see results or not, it’s crunch time.

Just like Obama, it’s your next 100 days that determine whether you sink or swim in this moment of crisis. Whether you make a comfortable living or become yet-another-statistic.

It depends on you.

And right now you want to take the street fighter route and use any weapon to not just survive, but thrive.

This is when Twitter comes in. A marketing channel that doesn’t cost money, yet has unprecedented opportunity. Oprah, Ashton, CNN… Twitter’s now mainstream baby, and it’s time to learn how to harness Twitter for maximum ROI.

Internet wealth specialist Stephen Pierce says that its far easier to dominate a marketing channel that it is a niche. In other words, you reap more profits from focusing on one channel than trying to challenge the existing Goliath’s in their niche.

They’re probably going to clobber you.

You still have first-mover advantage on Twitter. In fact, I guarantee you that if you focus on Twitter marketing for the next 100 days, your business will accelerate in a way you never thought possible.

Picture this… Once you master Twitter… Your prospects suddenly transforming into evangelists… A steady flow of leads without spending a red cent… Your personal brand spreading like wildfire across the Internet.

It is possible. In fact, in less than 100 days after coming on Twitter as an unknown, I established a 5 figure business from scratch–with no name, no list and no website. And a 100 days later, I’m among the elite marketers in this world.

I’m handing you the keys to the kingdom. This is the age of acceleration. The whole old-fashioned, white-knucked slave-till-dawn was the old rule of successes. Now, it’s to springboard off the opportunities and devices that make leapfrogging your predecessors so much easier.

So come on! Your next 100 days is do or die. Seize the moment and take that step of faith to succeed today.

—–> Carpe Diem!

P.S. 100 days may seem short. But miracles can happen in that time. A 100 days ago I was still unmarried. A 100 days before that I was still an unknown copywriter trying to make a living. Take the 100 days challenge and rise up now.

Twitter Salvation System. Doors Now Open.