Social Networking - an inseparable part of our daily life. Let us explore Security of and Promoting a Brand through Social Networks.
In today's world, Social Networking is growing rapidly. It provides platform for people to share their interests, life-events, thoughts, backgrounds and professional career interests to name few. Social Networking brings world closer and provides more elegant way to reach wider set of audience to communicate with. Social Networking platform can be used for personal and/or professional purposes. These rises two interesting aspects of Social Networking platform. Security measures of Social Networking(personal usage) and promoting a brand through Social Networking(professional usage). Let's look at them in turn.
Privacy is the biggest concern for Social Networking website users. Everyone benefits being a part of Social Network. At the same time users want their personal information private. However, privacy can't solely be achieved by Social Networking website provider but along with the help of Social Networking website users. Let's take an example of Facebook's Social Network. There are 3 most popular features - Add friends, Update status and Facebook applications(games & quizzes) as explained here which if not used properly, can break user's privacy. Consider an example where a Facebook user updates status as "Looking forward to the family vacation next week at Disney World". This is comparable to a road sign shouting an "Empty House Next Week" to the outside world. Friends of friends on Facebook can see what their friends are commenting on their friend's status. It may seem like nothing but status such as above might tempt strangers (Friend's of Friends or to large number of Facebook users if update shared publicly) to take advantage of an "Empty House Next Week" situation. A real example of such an incident can be found here. Example discussed here implies that it is very important to understand features of Social Networks and requires a second thought before using them extensively in one's day to day life. Awareness to such risks can help mitigate information leaks and subsequent damage.
Social Networking can be viewed from a different perspective where this platform can be utilized for promoting brands. With just a click of a button, businesses can reach out to thousands of customers. A recent study, discussed here, says more and more customers connects to various brands, offering lucrative discounts, through Social Networks. This platform helps connect millions of costumers in a cost-effective way. A successful example of such a media promotion is Dell's discounted merchandise promotion over a dedicated Twitter account. Twitter account alone helped generate $3 million revenue where they posted discounted coupons and new product releases. Similarly other Social medias such as Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and Google+ also provides various features for brand promotions. A case study explains how HubSpot, an all-in-one inbound marketing software, took advantage of Facebook's brand promotion to increase sales. HubSpot actively engaged with their Facebook customers with the help of Facebook page and Facebook ads. Various marketing strategies using Facebook page & ads helped them increase their sales by 71%.
Facebook security is an interesting thing. Facebook does not want to have your accounts be fully private and therefor leave a very vulnerable hole in their securities. There probably is a way to prevent Facebook crimes such as having your own household security or not posting on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteI think you could improve this article by adding in the something about how Facebook ads can sometimes be dangerous from having adware and spyware. Even a popular secure website like Google can sometimes make a mistake and let loose a high-risk ad.
Interesting blog post.
Your understanding of Facebook and the security flaws associated are certainly correct and something all users of the website need to understand. Perhaps you could have added ways in which these flaws could affect a business. Your example of a family posting about their upcoming vacation thus revealing too much information to the public could happen with say an employee posting to much about a new product releasing more info then the company wanted. These could also be considered security threats to a company.
ReplyDeleteThe data you provided on Social Media website for branding was also accurate and clearly demonstrates an effective use of social media being used in branding in the form of advertising. Did you consider other ways such this helped as branding ? Ways such as marketing information gathered allowing companies to rebrand themselves and getting real time updates via Facebook or twitter reactions. Either way good post!