Rethink the Press Release, Says PR Newswire

Gone are the days of typing a press release, making a few copies of it and physically mailing it to journalists, in the hopes they'll cover your news in a less-than-timely manner. Today, press releases have become a piece of the online content marketing strategy.  You don't have to have a PR Department to issue press releases, either.  Businesses of all sizes - from solo entrepreneurial startups to the Fortune 100 - are taking advantage of press releases.

Marketing and communications provider PRNewswire knows the times have changed, and the company is rolling with the times. The company, which offers press release distribution and online visibility services, focuses several of its products on the small business market.

Journalists … and the Rest of Your Audience

Small businesses are seeing the benefit of online PR beyond the traditional press release.  Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire's vice president of social media, declares:

“…it's time for us to expect more from our press releases in terms of audience reached and outcomes delivered.”

Skerik explains that the audience for a press release has grown with the popularity of social media.

Media journalists are still a potential audience.  But recognize that how they deliver content has changed, also, and so should your approach when crafting your release:

“…it's important to remember that journalists at all different types of media outlets are now charged with creating content for blogs, podcasts and videos; and also for feeding the social media engines that power today's audience engagement.”

Emerging media (blogs, Twitter, Google+ and more), she says, is also an audience for a press release these days. This includes those social media influencers who might not be journalists, but with a simple tweet can amplify your news to thousands.

Potential customers can find your release directly through the search engines or on other sites, as well, since they're already online researching brands like yours.  So think of the press release as a direct outreach tool, as well.

What the New Press Release Does for Small Businesses

The neat thing about press releases is that they equalize the playing field for small, medium, and large businesses. PR Newswire provides press release distribution, media outreach, and other online marketing tools to every sized business, so small biz benefits most by being able to access the same tools as larger counterparts.

Getting covered in the Wall Street Journal is still, of course, gold for any business, but Skerik encourages businesses to consider redefining what constitutes success in distributing a press release online. Social media can help amplify your message, as can a solo blogger who stumbles across your news and shares it with his or her readers.

Whatever metrics you choose to analyze, make sure to set them up within your press release, creating trackable calls to action you can measure.

What PR Newswire Does for Small Business 

Says Michael Crumley, Senior Manager of PR Newswire's SME Program:

“Small businesses can compete with larger companies for consumer and media mindshare.  In fact, small businesses can expedite growth by leveraging the power of online public relations and content syndication to reach potentially millions of readers.”

PR Newswire offers a self-service tool to small businesses called iReach. With it, small businesses can enable their search engine optimized news to be shared in social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and be seen on the  largest news sites like Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.

PR Newswire also manages a small business portal called PRToolkit designed to educate small business owners on PR and online marketing.

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This article is part of a series highlighting key players in the Small Business Influencer Awards.  

This site has a content-partnership relationship with PRNewswire, and offers readers a discount on PRNewswire through an affiliate relationship. 

Twitter Acquires, Shuts Down A/B Mobile Testing Service Clutch.io

Mobile apps are pretty essential for social media sites like Twitter, which has already made some company acquisitions to improve its service and mobile offerings. This week, the microblogging site acquired the IP of mobile testing service Clutch.io.

The service will shut down in November, with the two founders joining the team at Twitter. The Clutch.io founders announced in a blog post that they will now be focusing their efforts on Twitter's product on a larger scale. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Clutch.io users will have until November to port their data from Clutch.io's hosted service. However, over the coming weeks, Clutch.io says it will provide everything users need to transfer their data and run Clutch.io on their own servers. The service is no longer taking on new customers.

Though Twitter already has a strong mobile presence, with dedicated apps for all major devices and mobile operating systems, the acquisition could help Twitter improve the usability and uniformity of its current mobile apps, as well as helping to create updates more regularly.

So even for businesses that aren't affected by the closure of Clutch.io, this news could still impact the way companies use mobile technology to interact with consumers.

Clutch.io is a service that provides A/B testing for both iOS and Android mobile apps. The service aims to help developers choose the best way to present data to their users by allowing them to test whether one feature of an app may garner better results than a second feature.

For example, users could test whether a button that says “free sign up” receives more clicks than a button that says “register.”

Clutch.io is just the most recent of many purchases made by Twitter over the past year. Other recent acquisitions include Twitter client TweetDeck, blogging platform Posterous, and social news provider Summify.

Since the majority of Twitter's user base has access to the social media platform via mobile apps, it makes sense that the company would attempt to strengthen its mobile offerings through acquisitions like Clutch.io.

Take on Team Turnarounds to Win at the Game of Business

Are you finding yourself part of a failing team and wondering “Now what?”  You'll want to check out Team Turnarounds: A Playbook for Transforming Underperforming Teams by Joe Frontiera (@JoeFrontiera) and Daniel Leidl.

This is a great book to read over the next few weeks or months with the fall sports season approaching.  But Team Turnaounds doesn't just use team sports as examples, they also have quite a few business examples, as well.

After all, a business is nothing more than a group of people working together â€" as a team.

In Team Turnarounds the authors discuss the key parallels between business and sports.  One parallel, for example, is that each requires a committed leader; someone who is willing to stand up and tell the truth to the larger organization.  This message often takes the form of something like this, “You're really not that good” and then “We can be better.”

The Authors Bring Sports Psychology to the World of Business

Joe Frontiera and Daniel Leidl co-manage Meno Consulting, a firm that focuses on culture turnaround, team development and leadership development.  Both hold PhDs in sports psychology from West Virginia University, where they serve as adjunct professors in the Leadership Studies program.

You can also read their articles “On Leadership” in The Washington Post.

It's no surprise that the authors' experience in sports psychology resonates with business leaders.  Both sports and business are judged on performance.  And Team Turnarounds explores how business and sports leaders motivate their teams toward a common goal.

Put the 6 Steps to Success to Work for Your Team

In their many interviews with business and sports leaders, Frontiera and Leidl uncovered six key steps that teams have to take to go from worst to first:

1. Leading past losing: Take a good hard look at where you are and tell the truth about it.
2. Committing to growth: After you accept reality, you have to see past it and commit to a new future.
3. Changing behaviors: This stage transforms planning and talking into actually doing and taking actions.
4. Embracing adversity: Domino's Pizza is featured as an example of a company facing their obstacles head on using them to drive their success.
5. Achieving success: Once your team starts winning, the next step is to focus on what's next.  So your winning isn't really the end â€" it's the beginning.
6. Nurturing a culture of excellence: This final stage features an interview with Dan Rooney from the Steelers and what it takes to protect and maintain a dynasty.  Just for fun, you can also think about where Penn State went wrong in this stage when they decimated a brand and dynasty that it took decades to build.

Arguably, the most powerful chapter of the book is Chapter 7, where the authors offer a very thorough workbook or playbook that you can use with your team to create your own turnaround.

Why Team Turnarounds Appeals to a Sports Dummy

Team Turnarounds really spoke to me and I'm a self-proclaimed sports dummy.  I only follow two football teams; my hometown Steelers and Penn State (well, at least until all that mess happened, now I need distance).  But in both of these circumstances, I can say that I've watched these teams play not because of the sport, per se, but because of all the things that Frontiera and Leidl talk about in Team Turnarounds.

This book appealed to me because it drilled down into those subtle aspects of any organizations' success and it gave me a toolkit that I can use to engage and enroll all the teams that I'm a part of.

I also think this book is ideal for those business owners (like me) who are an integral part of virtual teams where you take the lead sometimes and then you follow other times.  I found the insight and advice in this book invaluable in helping me motivate and manage the teams I participate in.

You Don't Need to be Failing to Take on Team Turnarounds

I'd recommend Team Turnarounds as a business book that you read for yourself and share with your associates and team members.  This isn't a book for failing organizations, it's a book for any organization that requires the contribution of more than one person.

It's often said that none of us reaches success on our own; success comes on the heels of those who came before us and those who work with us.  Team Turnarounds is certainly the playbook you'll want to use to win the game of business.

SearchSecurity survey reveals top 5 enterprise mobile security issues

Mobile malware may capture the bulk of the news headlines regarding enterprise mobile security, but the threat of data leakage and device loss and theft may be just as, if not more, important.

From a cybercriminal perspective, smartphones are not a very good attack vector at this time.

Marcus Carey,
security researcher, Rapid7

These were among the chief concerns of respondents to SearchSecurity.com's 2012 enterprise mobile security survey, which was conducted in the second quarter of 2012. The survey, which polled 487 IT security professionals and IT managers, tackled a variety of issues, including bring your own device (BYOD) concerns, mobile policy issues and ongoing mobile security initiatives.

Mobile device theft and loss were listed among the top five enterprise mobile security issues. Application security and mobile malware also added to concerns over data leakage.

Below is a recap of the top five mobile security concerns as indicated by survey respondents, and reaction from industry observers.

1. Device loss: This scenario, involving something as common as an employee tablet or smartphone accidentally left in a taxi cab or at a restaurant, was the top concern of survey respondents. It may be driving the adoption of additional mobile security technolog, such as mobile device management (MDM) platforms, designed to add certain security controls on mobile devices regardless of their platform.

The finding does not surprise Marcus Carey, a security researcher at Boston-based compliance auditing firm Rapid7 Inc., who said it reflects what has been happening at enterprises for years. Lost or stolen laptops containing sensitive data, such as customer information or corporate intellectual property, Carey said, have led to many high-profile data security breaches.

2. Application security: Security researchers have been warning about mobile apps that request too many privileges, enabling them to tap into various data sources on the device. Free mobile apps and even some paid apps are built with ties to advertising networks, which makes contacts, browsing history and geolocation data extremely valuable to application developers, said Domingo Guerra, president and co-founder of San Francisco-based Appthority Inc.

Mobile application privacy and security, Guerra said, is an increasing concern. "Developers want to monetize, consumers want free apps and then ad networks will pay developers to get all of that juicy data from their users."

Survey respondents indicated that leaked corporate contacts, calendar items and even the location of certain executives could put the company at a competitive disadvantage. Another concern is malicious or Trojanized applications, which have appeared mainly on third-party Android markets, which are designed to look like they perform normally, but secretly upload sensitive data to a remote server.

3. Device data leakage: Nearly all of the chief concerns identified in the mobile security survey, from data loss and theft to malicious applications and mobile malware, snowball into a serious concern about data leakage. Enterprise CISOs, IT security teams and administrators in charge of mobile security at the enterprise say they want to gain some control and visibility over the influx of personally owned devices connecting to the corporate network.

While most corporate access privileges on mobile devices remain limited to calendar items and email, new mobile business applications can tap into a variety of sources if the enterprise accepts the risks, said Lisa Phifer, mobile security expert and owner of Core Competence Inc., a Chester Springs, Penn.-based consulting firm that specializes in the business use of emerging Internet technologies. Increased corporate data on devices increases the draw of cybercriminals who can target both the device and the back-end systems they tap into with mobile malware, Phifer said. "If you're going to put sensitive business applications on those devices, then you would want to start taking that threat seriously."

4. Malware attacks: Survey respondents said the threat of mobile malware poses a serious concern. It's a slow-growing problem, though most security experts agree that the threat has been largely overstated. Less than 2% of all global malware is designed to target mobile devices, according to industry estimates. A new report from Finland-based antivirus vendor F-Secure Corp. found the vast majority of mobile malware to be SMS Trojans, designed to charge device owners premium text messages.

Experts say Android devices face the biggest threat, but other platforms can attract financially motivated cybercriminals if they adopt Near Field Communications and other mobile payment technologies. An F-Secure analysis of more than 5,000 malicious Android files found that 81% of mobile malware can be classified as Trojans, followed by monitoring tools (10.1%) and malicious applications (5.1%). "These mobile devices require very specialized payloads that are not available in the wild," said Rapid7's Carey. "From a cybercriminal perspective, smart phones are not a very good attack vector at this time."

5. Device theft: The New York Times technology columnist David Pogue experienced device theft earlier this month, highlighting smartphone theft as a common problem for owners of highly coveted smartphones such as the iPhone or other high-end Android devices. Pogue said he was either pickpocketed on an Amtrak train or his device was stolen when he left it at the counter of the train's meal car. The stolen iPhone was recovered by police in the backyard of a Seat Pleasant, Md., home after Pogue used the Apple tracking features.

Not all stolen devices are recovered, security experts say, and the threat that corporate data, such as account credentialsand access to email, is exposed to atech-savvy thief, makes the issue a major threat to the IT security pros who took the survey. Darrin Reynolds, vice president of information security at Diversified Agency Services, a division of Omnicom Group, said that employees should immediately contact their corporate IT teams if a device is lost or they suspect it is stolen. Reynolds said corporate IT must be informed before the smartphone carrier is notified; that way, the company has the ability to wipe the corporate data off the device before the carrier revokes the device's network access.

Bafruz backdoor Trojan disables security and antivirus products

Microsoft's release of its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) this August will include the Win32/Bafruz family, a backdoor Trojan that creates a peer-to-peer network of infected computers.

Bafruz's arsenal includes the ability to disable security and antivirus products, hijack social media accounts, launch DDoS attacks, perform Bitcoin-mining, and download malware

Bafruz's arsenal includes the ability to disable security and antivirus products, hijack social media accounts, launch distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), perform Bitcoin-mining, and download malware, according to a blog post on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center.

When Bafruz targets security and antivirus products, alerts will appear in the system tray, posing as notifications from a user's actual security provider. These alerts tell users that a virus has been detected and recommend a reboot. Rebooting the computer allows Bafruz to remove components of the antivirus product from the system, fully disabling the product. Even if users choose not to reboot their system, Bafruz will eventually force a reboot.

Once the reboot is complete, an alert mimicking the security product Bafruz just disabled appears, saying the computer has entered "enhanced protection mode." According to Microsoft, Bafruz is currently able to download additional components and malware onto the computer through the peer-to-peer network running in the background.

System changes that could indicate the presence of Bafruz include btc_server.exe, client_8.exe and ddhttp.exe, according to Microsoft's encyclopedia entry on Win32/Bafruz. The antivirus products it targets include MacAfee Antivirus, Microsoft Defender, Norton Antivirus, and several versions of ESET and Kaspersky. Targeted social media sites include Facebook and VKontakte.

Microsoft recommends that users take several steps to guard their systems against a potential Bafruz threat. Prevention tips include keeping computer and antivirus software up to date, using strong passwords, and being cautious when opening attachments and visiting webpages.

Cyber Security Challenge launches \'Cyber Camp\' for candidates

The Cyber Security Challenge UK has announced its first regional ‘Cyber Camp'.

To be held at Lancaster University this September, the five-day training camp will not only provide the opportunity to learn about cyber security for up to 40 candidates, but will also act as a prototype for a network of regional camps that the challenge is looking to roll out across the UK, helping universities and local businesses engage young people in cyber security.

Selected candidates will face a series of security exercises developed by organisations such as the Metropolitan Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU), Raytheon, QinetiQ, HP and KPMG. Candidates will also receive advice on interview techniques and CV writing in order to improve their chances of landing that first job in information security. 

Activities will include learning about digital forensic analysis of confiscated technology, threat analysis and securing networks and cyber related business topics. In a ‘wider concepts day', candidates will be briefed and challenged on risk analysis, politics and criminology by the team at Lancaster University.

Stephanie Daman, CEO of Cyber Security Challenge UK, said: “The cyber camp concept is something completely new for this year's challenge. It represents a great opportunity for our expert sponsors to work closely with a group of talented young amateurs to develop their skills and show them how exciting and varied the cyber security profession can be.

“We are running this as a proof of concept for a series of annual regional camps across the country, run out of local universities with a speciality in computer science and cyber security to specifically target younger guys and girls with real talent.”

Professor Awais Rashid, co-director of ‘Security Lancaster' and theme lead for cyber security at Lancaster University, said that he sees this collaboration as a fantastic way to develop the cyber security professionals of the future.

“An important aspect of this is the challenge run by Lancaster University to inspire creative and innovative solutions to current cyber security problems and guiding the attendees on how to identify and exploit new business opportunities,” Rashid said.

“We are of the view that it is important to not only help our students to gain jobs, but also provide them with the best opportunities to create them in order to grow the economic wealth of the UK and to establish the UK as a world leader in cyber security innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Mitt Romney attracts thousands of fake Twitter followers in one day

US presidential candidate Mitt Romney managed to attract over 100,000 new Twitter followers in a single day but research has revealed that ten per cent have already been suspended.

According to research by Barracuda Networks Labs, on 21st July 2012, there was a 17 per cent increase in Romney's followers on that day from 673,002 to 789,924. Yet to date, ten per cent of these new accounts already have been suspended by Twitter. It also found that one in four of these new Twitter accounts had never sent a single tweet.

Jason Ding, research scientist at Barracuda Labs, said: “Based on the above distinguishable features, we believe most of these recent followers of Romney are not from a general Twitter population but most likely from a paid Twitter follower service.

“Also Romney's newest followers did have few different statistical features than our purchased followers (e.g. much newer than ours), indicating his followers were purchased from a different data resource than ours.”

Findings from Barracuda Labs' most recent study, The Underground Economy of Buying Twitter Followers: Dealers, Abusers and Fake Accounts, found that more than 80 per cent of all Romney's followers were less than three months old and 25 per cent of them were not even three weeks old.

The study analysed a random sampling of more than 70,000 fake Twitter accounts that are being used to sell fake Twitter followers. The study found that there are 20 sellers on eBay of fake Twitter profiles, and 58 websites out of the Google top 100 search results sell fake profiles. In terms of cost, the average price to buy fake followers is $18 per 1,000 followers.

The study identified that the average abuser has 48,885 followers. The average age of a fake Twitter account is 19 weeks, while the average fake Twitter account is following 1,799 accounts and threequarters of abusers have set a URL in their profiles.

Ding said: “It is important to note that authentication is not required when buying Twitter followers from eBay or other websites. It is possible for anyone to buy followers for other Twitter users. That being said, Romney's newest followers could have been paid for by himself, his associates or by his opponents. So far, there is not a feasible way to confirm who is responsible.

“Twitter keeps on detecting fake accounts and followings, and suspending them in last few years. However, if they do not move faster and smarter, these fake accounts will continue to be created, blended into the massive Twitter population, bringing bigger and bigger impact. This underground Twitter business is just blooming.”

Facebook facial recognition facing fresh investigation

German data protection officials have reopened an investigation into Facebook's facial recognition technology saying that the social networking giant was illegally compiling a huge database of members' photos without their consent.

After suspending the investigation in June, Hamburg-based data protection commissioner Johannes Caspar has said he is reopening the case after attempts to persuade Facebook to change its policies had failed.

Speaking to the New York Times, Caspar said it had repeatedly met with Facebook, but had not been able to get its cooperation on this issue "which has grave implications for personal data".

The problem relates to Facebook users having to opt-out of photos uploaded by other members, despite European data protection laws requiring people to give their explicit consent to the practice.

The German regulator is demanding that Facebook destroys its photographic database of faces collected in Germany and revises its website to obtain the explicit consent of members before it creates a digital file based on the biometric data of their faces.

Caspar said that Facebook acknowledged that the company was compiling biometric data on users, but that the process is legal in Ireland where Facebook's European operation is incorporated.

He also said that Facebook could be fined up to £20,000 should it refuse to destroy its biometric database and alter its consent practices. Facebook said that it has voluntarily agreed to suspend its tagging feature for all Europeans who join the network as of 1st July, while the situation for others "remains under active discussion".

A Facebook statement said: “We believe that the photo tag suggest feature on Facebook is fully compliant with EU data protection laws. During our continuous dialogue with our supervisory authority in Europe, the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, we agreed to develop a best practice solution to notify people on Facebook about photo tag suggest.”

In a statement to BBC News, Caspar welcomed Facebook's decision to block the feature for new users, but said it did not go far enough to address his concerns.

He said: “It is to be welcomed that Facebook clearly recognises that the process of collecting biometric data is at least not in accordance with data protection law in Europe. But Facebook can't just stay halfway there.”

Russia Today website hit by AntiLeaks\' DDoS over Pussy Riot judgement

The website of news channel Russia Today has been hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

In a tweet, hacktivist group AntiLeaks said it was "behind the DDoS attack on RT_com" and included a hashtag relating to the concluding case of the Russian band Pussy Riot.

Russia Today said that its "IT team [were] working hard to keep [the] site up" and encouraged following its Twitter feed for breaking news. It said in a story that the RT.com website went down for more than three hours on Friday morning in a worldwide outage after a massive DDoS attack, and was still experiencing technical difficulties.

Paul Lawrence, vice president of international operations at Corero Network Security, told SC Magazine that he was not sure where the Russia Today data centres were located, but said he was surprised that it did not have adequate protection in place to prevent such attacks.

He said: “It went down for a while but it now appears to be okay. It is hard to do much analysis on a DDoS attack as the attack proxies their IP addresses so they block where they are coming from, so without knowing that, it is hard to know if the attack is coming in from the front or the back end.

“A lot of attacks also come from botnets where you may see IP addresses, but you will not see the people who are behind it. This type of attack has moved on from kids to cyber criminals and people with a political agenda so it is more of a collaborative affair.

“The thing is, the Russia Today IT team would realise that they are a target, as they have a political viewpoint and agenda. You would guess that the Russia Today risk profile is quite high.”

The attack came as members of the band were found to be guilty of acting with religious hatred, after they performed a ‘punk prayer' in protest against the Russian Orthodox Church leader's support of President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's Christ the Saviour cathedral in February.

The three members of the band were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and enmity, with the judge saying they showed flagrant disregard for the church parishioners and the fundamentals of the Orthodox faith.

AntiLeaks has been actively attacking the WikiLeaks website this week. WikiLeaks said on its Twitter feed: “Anti-WikiLeaks group is claiming to be behind the DDoS takedown of Russia's international broadcast network, RT, which has been supportive.”

Facebook de-friending etiquette

The great Facebook friend cull is now well established, with more than half a billion people "defriended" last year alone.

But a delicate question remains - how do you delete the third cousin you met at a wedding two years ago, your former flame or historic co-worker without the unwanted friends taking offence?

Some suggest making a status along the lines of: "If you're reading this, you've survived the annual friend cull. Congratulations."

Others prefer to sneakily delete people because they know it won't be until they try to visit your profile that they realise you didn't want to be their cyber friend any more.

Ros Ellwood has her own rule for keeping her friends list intimate.

"If I wouldn't stop and talk to them in the street and have a conversation, I wouldn't have them as a friend on Facebook."

The Dunedin recruitment consultant keeps her friends list to 100 and under - she's just recently added her friend's boyfriend which has bumped her number up to 101 so she is now deciding which person to cut.

It gives the 32-year-old control over who sees what and who is allowed to pry into her private life.

"You sometimes see these people with thousands of friends and you think, 'Would you even recognise them or talk to them.' It horrifies me to think of sharing all my personal information with that many people," she said.

According to research conducted in the United States last year, the number of people defriending other Facebook members rose from 56 per cent in 2009 to 63 per cent in 2011.

More than a half a billion people were culled.

The study by the Pew Research Centre's internet and American Life Project also found that 67 per cent of women on Facebook said they had deleted friends compared with 58 per cent of men.

Women also tended to choose much more selective privacy settings.

Ms Ellwood has hers set so people can't find her by searching her name.

"I work with a lot of people and you don't really want them typing your name into Facebook and finding you and seeing photos of you out in the town on Saturday night."

She hides posts in her news feed from Facebook friends who make inane comments about weight loss.

As a seasoned defriender, Ms Ellwood said there was no polite way of removing someone from your profile.

Only once has she had backlash.

"I deleted someone due to a bit of an incident with an ex-boyfriend of mine who seemed to be finding out a lot of information about me and could only work out it was coming from the wife of a friend of his.

"So I deleted her and I got a big email saying, 'I know what you think's been happening, but I'm really sorry - please take me back,' which I did. It was just a big misunderstanding."

By Amelia Wade | Email Amelia

Facebook Fixes Its Ad Problems

Social networking giant Facebook is relying more and more on advertising, which despite the company's Wall Street woes, remains highly profitable and a major part of the platform's appeal. But questions raised over the effectiveness of that advertising are a constant thorn in the company's side, too. Here are some ways Facebook is tackling that challenge:

Facing Facts

When “likes” just aren't enough. While originally Facebook ads were only helpful for getting more “likes” on your brand's page, advertisers wanted something more. Now Facebook may be considering sharing data on how many people are talking about a company's brand, what they're saying, and some basic demographics. The Atlantic Wire

Adding up the value. The latest flap over the value of Facebook advertising began last month with a story suggesting that many businesses were simply wasting their money on the service, only to get “likes” from people with no interest in their product, from fake accounts run by robots, or from accounts that misrepresent personal information. BBC News

Advertising Innovation

Reaching beyond your Facebook page. Facebook is also testing a new advertising product that reaches beyond a company's Facebook page to deliver marketing messages that might otherwise not reach certain users. The new ads will appear within Facebook's desktop and mobile news feeds and function as sponsored links. PC Mag

Don't annoy your customers. Though Facebook execs seem convinced their new “sponsored stories” ad will be hugely effective both for themselves and for users, company leaders say they are proceeding slowly. The reason why is simpleâ€"to find out whether Facebook's most valuable resource, its users, will buy in. Business Insider

Socializing Specialties

Other Facebook business complaints. There are other complaints about Facebook besides the doubts concerning the effectiveness of the site's advertising services. Businesses use Facebook for marketing, customer service, and much more. Here are some problems with which you may be familiar if you've ever tried to use the platform for your company. Small Business Bliss

Proving your worth. Despite these complaints, however, Facebook “likes” and activity on your page remain key “social proof” of your blog or site's popularity, so their importance cannot be ignored. Here's how to use this integral aspect of Facebook to your best advantage. Keep Up With the Web

Tumbling down. Facebook stock dropped by 6.3% Thursday as early investors were allowed to unload their disappointing shares. The drop in stock is another all-time low for Facebook, falling below $20 a share for the first time since the company went public. But the site's services remain valuable to some marketers and businesses. Wall Street Journal

Office Talk Over Coffee

I like cartoons where something big and silly is happening. Talking animals, explosions, robots… all fun. But sometimes it's the quieter moment that hit me funniest. Take this cartoon for instance.

Apparently this guy was some sort of frog prince. And after what I must assume is some time under this terrible spell, he's released by a beautiful maiden's kiss. Wow! So what's next?

Guy goes into work, gets some coffee, and chats about it with his nonplussed buddy. The quiet banality is somehow funnier to me than any number of animals talking about exploding robots.

Anil Dash of Dashes.com: Blogging & Business Then And Now

We've come a long way baby â€" in the blogosphere that is. Tune in as Anil Dash, one of the pioneers of blogging, dating back to 1999, Founder of ThinkUp and Activate and columnist for Wired magazine, joins Brent Leary to discuss the world of blogging â€" then and now.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Anil Dash: I am a blogger first and foremost, and I have been blogging at Dashes.com for 13 years. That has taught me a little bit about how the tech world works and about how the media world works.

Small Business Trends: Are you surprised at where we are today with blogging and social media?

Anil Dash: Yes and no. I think everything we do in terms of posting to Facebook, blogging and Tweeting, I consider that to be within the realm of what we thought blogging was going to be.

It's actually something similar to, if you say, “We knew hip hop was going to take over the world.” And right now, what you call pop music, even if Justin Bieber is singing it, it sounds like hip hop.

I think the same thing is true in tech. In the early days of blogging that first hundred people, that was part of that community I was part of. I absolutely took it as an article of faith that there we're going to be a hundred million people that are going to do this, or a billion people. There was no question. Nobody had a doubt about that. I think that was part of why we seemed particularly crazy.

So the good and the bad part of being in an early community is there is a little bit of grid thinking. But in retrospect, I think it must have been like that for whoever worked on I Love Lucy.

Television had been around for 30 years before they made I Love Lucy. Then you are working on I Love Lucy, and you think, “Man, this is the sitcom that this medium was made for; we figured it out.”

Small Business Trends: I guess it's the same kind of cycle we are going through with all of this social technology, huh?

Anil Dash: That is exactly right. I think there were probably two or three networks that existed even before I Love Lucy launched right? I don't know what they were doing.

It's kind of like personal computers 20 years before the internet came along. What were we doing on them? Then we had the Internet for decades before social media comes along. What were we doing on it?

That is one of the things, where it takes a lot of time to reveal it. If you are somebody like me who makes software, makes technology, cares about those parts, what you are hoping is you are making the camera that somebody is going to shoot their I Love Lucy with.

Small Business Trends: Have consumers of the technology actually gotten ahead of the creators of technology?

Anil Dash: In some ways yes and in some ways no. At its best, yes. If you made a piece of software, or website, or app, or tool that can be used in ways you did not expect, then you are winning. Then you are really succeeding.

The examples that everybody loves to point to on Twitter are the Hashtag or the @Reply. Those weren't invented by Twitter, those were people saying I am going to spin this turntable backwards and I am going to make something magical out of that.

Even to some degree, Twitter just announced what they are calling “Cashtags,” which is putting the dollar sign in front of the stock ticker. It will link it to information about that company. That is something that emerged from the community

Small Business Trends: How is it different creating new Web based businesses now compared with when you helped build Six Apart?

Anil Dash: It is night and day. I remember this distinctly, late 2002, I was spending days and nights in Microsoft Excel, making spreadsheets, trying to figure out how much it should cost to have a website on the blogging service. Because nobody had ever made a service that you sign up for, and paid money for as a consumer that was a host service on the Web.

I was slaving on it for months and we were doing, what sounds silly now, calculations about how much it costs to run a server and how much it costs to pay for disk storage for your blog if you had to have a lot of pictures.

All of that is gone. Now I talk to young folks doing startups and I try to mentor them, especially here in New York City where I live. They just wave their hands kind of like, “I don't have to worry about that, I use Amazon EC2, or I use Rackspace, or whatever the provider is. It is all in the Cloud. I don't even think about it.”

I know I sound like an old timer, “Back in my day, it was up hill both ways.” But that was our liberation. Now I don't have to know any of that stuff. I can focus on, “Is this going to be useful to somebody?” Or, “How do I tell the story of why this product is useful?”

Small Business Trends: What recent startup has your interest today?

Anil Dash: Kickstarter is just a box of text that a person types into, so it is just a payment system. But they are using Amazon payments and didn't really build their own payment system. There is no technology or algorithm that makes Kickstarter particularly unique or anything you couldn't have done years ago.

What's amazing is the culture changes. First of all, recognizing a large class of things that people want to pay for that are not about business, but instead, are all about good will and artistic expression and creativity and all of these other positive things, which is really amazing.

The second part behind it is just building the site and telling that story in a great way. Because they had to attract a film maker, a musician, somebody with a great idea for a software game, or whatever those people are. You had to be appealing to the creative types and have a place they can go and do it.

Kickstarter is for people that do creative things, I think it is astounding.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more about what you are doing?

Anil Dash: The best place to go is Dashes.com.

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

Whether you're growing your business or starting a new venture, BlackBerry solutions provide you with the freedom you want and the control you need. [Series sponsor]

 

Draw Visitors to Your Small Business with Local SEO Strategies

Small businesses know just how difficult it can be to attract new business to their physical location. It's tough to run your business and manage your marketing efforts at the same time-just one more ball to juggle with the rest of your responsibilities.

Many businesses don't realize how much potential there is in the Internet, and even if they try a few online marketing campaigns, if they aren't successful, businesses abandon Internet marketing altogether.

As someone that works in online marketing and sees the power of successful strategies first-hand every day, take this advice: don't give up on the Internet. According to marketing research, more consumers trust the Internet to help them find local businesses in their area and learn more about them.

With these tips, you can cash in on consumer trends with a few free and easy online tools that will boost your search engine results and get you noticed on the web:

Help Google Help You: Google+ Local

Google is one of the biggest, most widely-used search platforms on the Internet, and they provide a number of free, simple features you can use to promote your business directly to search engine users that are actively looking for your products and services.

Google Search is a product first and foremost, and that product depends upon the quality of data Google has. To make sure that they have the highest-quality data, Google invites businesses to put themselves on the map with Google Places for Business-which recently became Google+ Local.

In just a few minutes, you can boost your small business's visibility on the Internet by providing Google with some basic information about your business. The more you provide, the better your results will be.

To get started, sign in with a Google account and go to Places for Business.  From there, you can follow the prompts and either fill in your business info or claim your business from public listings and provide Google with more valuable information about your services and your brand.

You can be as sparse or as thorough as you'd like with your business's information, but keep in mind that the more thorough you are, and the more you optimize your Google Places page with good keywords and search-sensitive information, the better your results will be.

Once you've completed this, your business will soon be fully discoverable across Google Maps, Google Shopping, Google+ Local, and many other Google Search products.

Use Customer Review Sites to Your Benefit

Marketing research shares a lot of insights into the weight consumers give to business reviews online: 72% of consumers said that online reviews are as trustworthy as personal recommendations, and 52% of them said that positive online reviews about a local business make them more likely to pay it a visit.

This points to one conclusion: online reviews are becoming more popular, and more consumers are referring directly to the Internet to seek out local businesses.

The strategy is very clear here: make these customer reviews work for your business. That doesn't mean you should spam fake reviews of your own business all across the Internet, and it doesn't mean you should use these review sites to slam your competition-those are bad practices that can get you blacklisted on Google Places and can destroy your good name as a reputable business in no time.

Instead, encourage your customers to leave positive reviews online. You can't force customers to really do anything, but if just a handful of them leave positive reviews on the Internet about your business, those will become valuable testimonials that will encourage more potential customers to pay your business a visit.

Localize Your SEO and Content Marketing Strategies

The last major tip is a little obvious, but it's surprisingly overlooked in practice: localizing your search engine optimization with region-specific keywords and place qualifiers.

If you take a look at your website analytics and the data tells you that you have lots of customers searching for you from a particular city or region, you should include that area by name in your keywords. If you find that visitors are hitting your website with a search term paired with a city or state name, optimize your online content for that particular city/state name.

Simply including city and state names with the keywords you're optimizing for on-site is a simple, easy way to increase your visibility in those areas. Search engines will associate your keywords with the regions you're optimizing for, so when someone within your area searches for your services, your business is more likely to rank higher due to that association with both service and regional relevance.

These are just three of the many ways you can use search engines and other online services to boost your local business, attract more qualified visitors to your website, and turn them into customers more easily.

Do you have any other good local SEO tips?

Boutique Shopping Photo via Shutterstock

Confidential Company Data: You Might Be Surprised Where It Ends Up

As a small business owner, you may think you've taken steps to keep your sensitive data private, but it may be more at risk than you realize.  In fact, your customer data, payroll data, banking information, email communications and more may fall into the hands of those it shouldn't - and all because of sharing files.

When files are shared online in the cloud, there are a number of points of weakness that make those files vulnerable to falling into the hands of third parties, as this graphic shows:

Click to see full-size file-sharing graphic

Online security company Symantec has created the above graphic to  illustrate just how vulnerable your confidential company information and sensitive customer data may be.

Symantec's Senior Manager of Emerging Cloud Products, Anthony Kennada, says:

“Employees are increasingly adopting unmanaged, personal-use online file sharing solutions without permission from IT, part of the broader trend of the consumerization of IT in which the adoption of online services for use on personal mobile devices blurs the lines between work and play.  These early-adopter behaviors â€" like those driving the use of file sharing technology â€" are making organizations vulnerable to security threats and potential data loss.”

Symantec's graphic illustrates a number of risk factors that may lead to your company's confidential data finding its way into the wrong hands.  Let's look at some:

• Mobile devices:  Symantec found that 54% of employees are now relying on mobile devices for line-of-business applications. Employees may be using their own phones or tablets due to the BYOD (bring your own device to work)  trend, and it can be difficult for companies to control data that is accessible by mobile devices.  In an earlier report, we learned that the average loss for small businesses that experience a mobile security breach is $126,000.  Using remote wipe or lock-down capabilities over mobile devices is something more small businesses should be doing.
• Competitors:  Competitors getting access to your data is another worry.  If you're thinking James-Bond type corporate espionage, well … look closer to home.  It's much more likely to be an ex-employee passing data to a competitor.  More than half of employees who stole intellectual property, did so by using email, remote network access, or network file transfer to remove the data. And most of those employees stealing your data had already accepted a job with a competing company or started their own company when they removed the data.  You need to have clear employee policies in place, and take a tough stance to set an example in the case of theft.
• Cloud vendors:  Another concern is that many cloud storage and sharing services don't allow companies to instantly remove access or wipe information once an employee leaves, so ex-employees may still have access to sensitive data.  When evaluating cloud vendors, look for such capabilities.  Also, consider that rogue employees in a cloud vendor company may hold the key to your confidential data.  Look at how much the vendor emphasizes data privacy and security.  In small startup vendors, in particular, security may be lax and a large number of vendor employees and contractors may have access to your data.

With more and more businesses using the cloud, it's more important than ever to consider your practices and make sure that your company's data is secure.  Adds Kennada:

“Security is still your responsibility when you move to the cloud, both as an individual user or as business owner.  So don't abandon your responsibilities when you make the move.”

So, does this mean you should never share your files in the cloud and keep everything offline? No. In this day and age, that's just not realistic. But what it does mean is that you shouldn't take security for granted. Look at all the potential points of weakness outlined in the above graphic.  Be sure you have taken steps to minimize loss at each point.

Zuberance Turns Employees Into Brand Advocates

Word of mouth marketing can be a powerful tool for small businesses, especially for those who use tools to make sure that message reaches as many people as possible.

For years, companies have been working on ways to turn their customers into brand advocates, but there's one more group of people who could be a strong advocate for brands in a completely different capacity.

Marketing company Zuberance, which focuses on turning a brand's customers into brand advocates, is now working on a new push to begin turning a company's employees into advocates of a different sort.

The new Workforce Advocacy Program can help companies enhance what is oftentimes already there.

A company's employees could, for example, share positive testimonials about their employer for the recruiting purposes. Zuberance would use the same types of tools as it does for its traditional brand advocacy programs, such as Advocate Stories and Advocate Answers, and just repurpose them to be used in a new capacity.

In addition to employee advocates helping with recruiting, they can also be there to help the company in times of PR crisis.

For example, if the company's CEO posts something on social media that upsets some customers, the company's employee advocates could be there to put the statement into context or clear up any misunderstandings.

Zuberance specializes in finding out which customers, and now employees, would make the most enthusiastic advocates, and then providing them with the tools to create testimonials, reviews, answers to specific questions, and more. Then companies can track how many clicks, leads, and sales were generated by those advocates.

Some of the tools offered by Zuberance may be more relevant to larger companies or brands, but small businesses could benefit from some of the tools offered, both for the Employee Advocacy Solution and the Brand Advocacy program.

Zuberance offers several different options for its advocacy programs, including Zuberance Self Service, a more hands-on approach to the advocacy system that is free to use during its current beta period.

Need More Facebook Check-ins? Intuit Can Help (Infographic)

Today's small businesses know how important social media check-ins are to getting their information in front of consumers. As the number of smartphone users has continued to grow, check-ins have continued to increase, gradually becoming an easy way for social media users to share enthusiasm about a business or its products.

Some businesses assume that check-ins happen naturally, with the business owner having no control over whether or not a customer checks in. But competition is fierce for social media mentions and many businesses are finding that their competitors are getting check-ins when they aren't. Based on recent research that found that one in five smartphone users checks in to publicly announce his or her location, Intuit recently published the below infographic, providing businesses with tips on how to encourage check-ins. Here are a few of the highlights:

• When a user checks in, he or she may leave tips or recommendations behind. This can be beneficial to a business, who will have this feedback, in addition to content for that business's social media site.
• Special offers are popular with consumers, who like to feel they're getting something special in exchange for checking into a business's page. Some businesses have offered free samples or special coupons in exchange for a check-in. This not only shows loyalty toward these customers, it ensures the business's information will be spread throughout those customers' social networks.
• Reward new customers separately from existing customers. Intuit recommends offering two specialsâ€"one for customers who check in frequently and another for first-time check-ins.
• Host a special event. Offer a special that gets “unlocked” if the number of people that check in at a specific date and time reaches a specific number. This is a fun way to get a large number of check-ins in a short time period.
• Perks don't have to be freebies. Free products and services aren't the only way to get customers to check in. Consider offering perks, like VIP parking for the first ten guests to check in or allow them to enter your venue without waiting in line in exchange for a check-in.
• Promote check-ins. You've probably seen businesses advertising “Like us on Facebook.” Invitations to check in can be done the same way. Also consider inviting check-ins on your other social media sites, as well as your business website.
• Be active. Let your customers know you're listening by regularly responding to comments. Even when something negative is posted, find a way to gracefully take part in the conversation, Intuit advises.

As Intuit points out, “The number of people check in is relatively small compared to those engaging in other mobile activities, but it's growing, along with the number of businesses using the services to market to new and existing customers.” By following Intuit's tips, small businesses can position themselves to compete in today's social media-driven world.

3 Simple And Powerful Online Collaboration Tools For Your Business

If telecommuting is the new way of working, online collaboration and project management tools are the new world office place. Just as exotic as working from anywhere in the world, online collaboration tools turn “exotic” into “reality”. Today, companies are created and run using nothing but a smorgasbord of tools over the Internet, out of which project management tools, email, and Instant Messaging favorites, such as Skype, are the staple.

Project management tools allow you to coordinate your tasks between all of your team members, whether on-site or remote.  It's the bedrock of the new slew of web 2.0 businesses  - paperless, highly mobile, location-independent, super-lean, low-cost, start-up friendly â€" operating out of modern, new offices with a lean DNA.

So, what are some of the noteworthy project management tools? Here are three that are worth taking a look at:

Do.com

Simplistic, no-frills, easy-loading, quick, nimble, and free to use â€" that probably sums up everything do.com stands for. Along with the usual bells and whistles that most project management tools boast, you have a way to track opportunities and close deals. It's a fully-functional CRM with a dashboard view of the entire sales pipeline. You can share task lists with friends in your network, easily organize projects, set reminders, create groups, and have conversations. There are activity feeds, reminders to inbox, and there's also integration with Salesforce.com, if you need it. Another cool feature is the email-to-task feature which lets you send emails to “DO” and a task is instantly created. By the way, did I mention that do.com is a crazily popular iPhone and Android App?

Trello

How would you like it if your to-do list started to look and feel like a game of drag-and-drop? Trello.com is a unique project management and online collaboration tool that lets you create three panes of importance: “To do”, “Doing”, and “Done”. You can create multiple projects, add people to teams, converse, collaborate, set-reminders, set recurring or one-off deadlines, and much more. But the cool thing about Trello is the simple, easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface that it utilizes. You just can't go wrong with simplicity, can you? The learning curve on Trello is almost zero. You will find it easy to navigate, use, and deploy.

Is it the best tool for your business? I wrote a detailed review on Trello that you might find useful.

Asana

Founded in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz, the young billionaire who co-founded facebook.com along with Mark Zuckerberg, Asana is another uber-cool project management and online collaboration software that has a lot of promise. Asana, at its heart, is a simple project management system. Under the hood, however, there's a lot more to it. Asana allows for Individual task management, CRM, project management, applicant tracking, bug tracking, and much more. Asana is a wonderful tool, and we use it here at SmallBiztechnology.com. It's quick, inexpensive, versatile, and can be adapted for most uses.

Choosing one tool among these options is always difficult ( I personally used all the three and I am yet to decide which one works best).  Give them a try and let us know what works for you!

The Local Marketing Battle: How To Come Out a Victor

If you are like the majority of small business owners out there, you are confused.  You've read all the articles on how to get your business found, how to increase foot traffic and how to manage your online reputation.  You followed all the advice, but you still aren't getting the response you want and the website ranking you desperately desire.  Why not?

Well, first of all, SEO is an ever changing animal (just like the Google algorithm).  Directory websites are constantly monitoring for high-quality, high-integrity and recent content to publish. But what small business has the time to sit in front of the computer screen and concentrate on constantly updating their listings and web content?  The answer….not many! Fortunately, as with most time consuming tasks that small businesses come up against, there is a solution to help!

Genbook, the very popular online appointment scheduling and marketing provider, has recently launched Genbook Promote â€" a comprehensive service that offers time-strapped small business owners an easy, automated way to promote their business through better web visibility. Through a partnership with CityGrid Network, Genbook Promote allows your business information to be listed on their network of over 250 sites and apps.  Small business owners receive instant, automatic publishing of their business listing information (address, website, Genbook scheduling page, and Genbook reviews), which increases their SEO through real-time, constantly updated, content generation. With better visibility on sites like CitySearch, Google, Facebook and many more, a small business can potentially reach millions of consumers each month resulting in greater promotion of their business and hopefully increased sales.

You can try Genbook free for 30 days and thereafter they have price plans ranging from $19.95 to $39.95.

Another service available to help small businesses conquer the local marketing battle is LocalVox.  By updating an event, deal or announcement on your LocalVox account, you are, within minutes, reaching potential customers on over 100 local directories, social media, email newsletter and your own website.  With the help of what they call Searchlight, their mobile and local directory optimization tool, LocalVox focuses on ensuring that your business is employing all the tactics necessary to boost you to the top of the Google+ Local.

LocalVox offers three levels of programs; Broadcast ($199/mo), Broadcast Boost ($349/mo) and Broadcast Complete ($549/mo) all of which require an additional $200 setup fee.

While it is a battle to promote and market your small business to gain that very valuable local customer, there are weapons at your disposal that can help you to come through the smoke victorious!  So arm yourself, give one of these types of service a try, and let us know how it works for you!