The Savvy Social Marketer

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[<p>Not too many years ago, businesses relied heavily on various media platforms for advertising and communicating with their customers. This required investments in terms of both, time and money with no visible results or data to support the success of their customer outreach campaigns. Customers themselves had to go through cumbersome communication channels to register their complaints and feedback. But this was then.<br><br>Today, social media platforms — having caught the imagination of young and old alike — are equally popular amongst businesses of all sizes. Networks like Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere reach millions of people every day, making them a valuable tool for organizations all over the world. Most small business owners probably never expected that technology would come to the forefront of their business lives and possibly converge.&nbsp; However, small businesses have come to find that social networking can provide a genuine competitive edge.&nbsp; Social networking helps business owners identify and forge deeper ties with customers and business partners. &nbsp;SMBs have found social media as a convenient, effective and virtually cost free platform to reach their target customer base and simultaneously interact with them to receive feedback/complaints or just to simply connect.<br><br>Social media brings in benefits for both customers and businesses alike. The levels of customer engagement increases as businesses can quickly receive customer service ratings. Brand mentions on Twitter can provide better online visibility and also ensure&nbsp;&nbsp; greater brand awareness among media and analysts. It also plays a major role in customer acquisition and sales development. Some of the strategies adopted, include active blogging and maintaining dedicated pages aimed at product promotion. Daily updates and comments on the company's home page on Facebook, Twitter etc ensure that interaction with target customer base is regular and continuous.<br><br>While the visible benefits are for all to see, they bring in newer challenges too. These platforms are also the favorite hunting ground for the cybercriminals who lurk everywhere on the internet prowling for sensitive information that can give them wins, but only spoils to the SMB. Social networks give users an implied sense of security, making them more inclined to click on links without thinking. Sometimes employees may fall for a cleverly orchestrated scam that seeks to deceptively obtain confidential business information. If they thus succeed, cybercriminals can easily access online accounts to steal personal information and content, including personal communication, documents, login credentials and even bank login credentials.<br><br>However this does not mean that SMBs cannot tackle this threat. Employees can be educated to conduct social networking with care and caution. A few simple measures can ensure that SMBs can be immune to these threats and also effectively exploit the huge potential of social media.<br><br></p> <ul> <li>Check the social networking site's address and scrutinise a suspicious site's security certificate to ensure you are logging into legitimate websites and also look for "https" in the address.</li> <li>Think twice before entering your real birth date or other sensitive information on social networking sites. Any information however insignificant like the street number of your home, can prove to be dangerous in the hands of a cyber-crook.</li> <li>&nbsp;Periodic checks of your privacy settings is necessary, don't answer yes when prompted to save your password to a computer. Instead, rely on a strong password committed to memory or stored in a dependable password management program.</li> <li>Don't accept "friend" or "follower" requests from individual's you don't know.</li> <li>Don't click on links in messages, even if from a known "friend," that seems strange or out of character. </li> <li>Report any suspicious or potentially malicious activity to the social networking site's administrators.</li> </ul> <p><br>While social media is here to stay and its utility cannot be questioned or ignored, it's also important to raise the security aspects when it comes to the newer challenges this brings into a business network.<br><br>By following the basic tips as mentioned above, a SMB user can be savvy about being secure while going onto any social networks.<br><br><em>The author is, Managing Director, India &amp; SAARC, Symantec</em></p>