Tag: Facebook

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Know Your Tech: Social Media

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You see the term “social media” thrown around all the time, but what does it mean for both individual users and whole businesses? Organizations that understand the importance of social media have a unique advantage over other businesses in the same industry, be it a way to attract more consumers or a way to protect against common security threats that find their home on these websites.

What is Social Media?
Social media can be considered any website or service that is used to interact socially with other people. Some common examples include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Instagram. All of these services have common ground in regard to features that allow people to communicate or learn more about one another, whether it’s in the form of a terribly-worded Facebook post or a bite-sized glimpse into someone’s soul via Twitter. LinkedIn allows business professionals to learn more about each other by providing information about their work history or current situation, which can be quite helpful for learning more about a company or a prospective client.

Social media is generally used more for the former, though. It’s likely that your employees have at least one account on a social media platform, so it’s important that your organization understands what it means for the purposes of security.

Security Issues of Social Media
One of the biggest issues regarding social media is that it can provide hackers with a way to get into your organization’s network–or, rather, trick your employees into providing information that could aid them in their attack. Hackers can create fake accounts where they can impersonate people you may know. They then use this process to weasel information from your employees such as usernames or passwords. You need to make sure that your employees are aware of the telltale signs of social media attacks so you know they won’t be an issue for your organization.

Social Media as an Outreach Method
Many organizations have turned to social media as a way to directly interact with consumers. Take, for example, Verizon. If you tweet at their support account, there is a solid chance that they will address any problems you might be having with your mobile service. You can use social media in this regard to directly reach out to customers and get their feedback about your products or services.

How does your business use social media? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

How Much Time Do You Spend on These Websites?

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The Internet is massive. It’s simultaneously a never-ending shopping mall, the biggest library that you’ve ever seen, and movie theater. According to a study conducted by MIT, the average American now spends a full day of their week (24 hours) online…and that’s just an average. We all know people who are locked into the Internet from the moment they wake up and stay locked in until they go to sleep. Surprisingly, people only spend their time on a handful of the over 644 million websites that populate the Internet. Today we will take a look at the four most visited sites on the Internet and examine why users spend so much time visiting them.

Google.com
I don’t think anyone would be surprised to find out that Google was the most visited site on the Internet. As the most popular (and best) search engine on the web, it is the most useful site. After all, when you search for something on the Internet (whether you use Google.com or not), it’s referred to as “googling”. This just speaks to its transcendence in the consciousness of Internet users everywhere.

The Google homepage is extraordinarily simple with no advertisements and options to access Google-based products and services and provides a legendary ease of use. Simply type (or speak) your query in the Google bar and wham, you have results. In 2017, nearly 70 percent of all web searches were done using Google.com. Results pages give visitors a lot of options, and do have advertisements, but Google has made certain that the ad space they sell is qualified and is represented on the page much like the non-ad content, as to not distract the user. Some options they give visitors include search query results, access to media, access to contact information, access to immediate information (if available), and suggestions for other queries you may use to get the answers you want. Add it all up and Google has become the most visited site on the Internet because it brings a lot of value to each and every user.

YouTube.com
Consider for a moment that the video streaming service YouTube may just be human’s greatest resource. Who among us hasn’t gone onto YouTube to view a tutorial about something or other? People continuously seek knowledge and today’s person is much more comfortable taking their information in video form than they are through reading. YouTube is a website that shows you just how helpful people can be when they have information they are willing to share.

YouTube’s search engine is technically the second largest of its kind on the Internet, and if you think that figure is impressive, consider one more tidbit: at any given time, half of the Internet is viewing YouTube. Whether you are looking to be educated or entertained, YouTube is a one-stop shop.

For businesses it’s more a mixed bag. There is no doubt that the marketing opportunities provided by YouTube can be a great way to get your message out to potential customers, but the drains that YouTube can have on employee productivity are substantial. In fact, some businesses have suggested that they lose upwards of seven hours per week per employee (or about 18% of total productivity), so if you are going to allow your staff access to YouTube at work (which statistics show you should), make sure that you have a system in place that can work to limit employee access to training materials and other educational channels and not time-wasting channels.

Facebook.com
Over two billion people actively use Facebook. Today, it’s used to run events, sell products and services, and express opinions. Since so many people utilize the service, anything you need to do as far as virtual networking can be done using Facebook.

It has a lot of attractive integrated applications, but no single application has as big of an effect on the use of Facebook as Facebook Messenger. The messaging application sets Facebook apart from all other social networks as it integrates with most computing platforms to provide feature-rich text messaging to other people using the service. Beyond Messenger, there are countless other ways to connect with people on Facebook. Games, discussion groups, and much, much more make Facebook the go-to resource for social networking on the web.

Like YouTube, Facebook can be a big drain on productivity. One study found that Facebook costs U.S.-based businesses upwards of $28 billion a year. That’s about 1.5 percent of all potential productivity lost to political memes, friend’s statuses, and event planning, so be sure to monitor your network for Facebook usage and limit it as necessary.

Reddit.com
Reddit is the largest online forum website and has made it up to the top four because of the amount of time people spend on it. As the self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet”, it has become the site where people spend the most time. There is no other website that has the combination of controversy, information, entertainment, and potential distraction that Reddit has. There are literally thousands of different topics being discussed in forums, called subreddits. Any hobby, platform, opinion, or fact probably has its own subreddit. Since users can search through them, and quickly become engaged, time can melt away pretty quickly.

Of all the sites that a business should consider blocking, Reddit has to be at the top. By allowing it to be accessed by your staff, there is a distinct possibility that you are just tossing money down the drain. So, while it is extremely useful for anyone that wants to learn or discuss variables about issues that are relevant today, Reddit is most certainly an enemy of productivity.

Everyone knows that the Internet is a great resource, but it can also be a huge waste of an organization time–and that is a resource you can’t get back. For more information about instituting a content filter to ensure that your staff is focused on the things they should be while at work call COMPANYNAME today at PHONENUMBER.

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Technology

In Case of Emergency, Activate Facebook’s Safety Check

b2ap3_thumbnail_facebook_safety_check_400.jpg In 2014, Facebook launched Safety Check, a helpful tool allowing users to “check in” that they’re okay during a crisis event, like a natural disaster, mass shooting, etc. Recently, Facebook made a major change to Safety Check by allowing users affected by the crisis to activate the feature. This is yet another example of how social media is changing the way people find out about major events and react to them.

To give you an idea of the sizeable difference this change makes, consider the fact that in the first year of Safety Check (when it was exclusively controlled by Facebook), the feature was activated 39 times worldwide. Since the change was made in December of 2015, Safety Check was activated a total of 328 times over the following six months. That is a significant number of crisis situations that would have been overlooked if Facebook alone was at the helm.

Rest assured, Facebook is still involved in Safety Check’s activation process. Otherwise, jokesters and Internet trolls would surely abuse the tool and “cry wolf” every chance they get, which would effectively render the tool useless. To prevent this, Facebook has a two-step activation system.

  • Step 1: A user submits a crisis event to Facebook they deem to be worthy of Safety Check activation.
  • Step 2: Facebook checks on the validity of the event by analyzing the chatter over its social network, along with third party organizations.

If the crisis event makes it through rigors of this automated process, then Safety Check is activated and those affected can begin “checking in” that they’re okay.

Of course, the Internet being the Internet, there will always be those who make light of a crisis situation by “checking in” on Safety Check events that have nothing to do with them. However, this annoyance aside, society can only benefit from the public having a tool like Safety Check to quickly notify scores of friends and family of one’s status during a crisis.

Have you used Facebook’s Safety Check to notify your friends that you’re okay? If so, then share with us in the comments if you’ve found this tool to be useful or not.