3 Successful Ways to Promote Your Business on Social Media

 

Looking for new ways to promote your business and put your brand in front of social media users?

Wondering what’s working for others?

It’s possible to keep your social posts focused on your brand and avoid seeming self-centred and overly promotional.

In this article, you’ll discover three ways to promote your business on social media more often without turning people off.

#1: Turn to Micro-Influencers Who Share Your Brand Aesthetics

What’s wrong with branded content in the first place? “Most branded content is advertising under a thin layer of information or entertainment. Scratch the paint, find an ad. It’s the brand putting itself first,” Andy Crestodina explained. In other words, branded content is self-serving, and your audience knows it.

The solution: Don’t create it yourself. Instead, go the way of influencers. Unfortunately, here’s where terminology can get you in trouble. Influencer marketing is normally presented as old-school networking dressed up in fresh, digital clothing. Build relationships. Add value. Create a roundup or two. Then reach out for links and shares.

When it comes to branded content, however, influencer marketing is far more akin to advanced product placement. Step one: Get your product or service into the hands of someone your audience trusts. Step two: Get that person to create content around it. Step three: Integrate their content into your platforms.

This article on how to set up a social influencer marketing campaign provides fantastic guidance for getting off the ground. But what exactly does this approach look like in action?

Founded six years ago, Pura Vida Bracelets evolved from a college graduation trip to Costa Rica into a multimillion-dollar e-commerce empire. Alongside a host of tools, their marketing has revolved heavily around influencers.

In this paid influencer post, Pura Vida was able to leverage Rachel Brathen’s (@yoga_girl) 2.1 million followers and track ROI through an exclusive coupon.

As co-founder Griffin Thall explained to me, “Our team digs through Instagram to find creators and influencers that fit our brand’s vibe. We communicate via email and feel them out for ‘trade for product’ or paid collaboration in return for photos, posts, IG stories, IG lives, account take-overs, and giveaways.”

That approach has yielded massively popular posts on influencer accounts as well as on Pura Vida’s own.

With content creators whose audiences are fewer than 50K, Pura Vida trades ‘product for photos’ to leverage micro-influencers.

And it’s the simplicity of Thall’s explanation that offers the most hope for branded content. By seeking out creators with fewer than 50K followers or influencers with more than 500K, you can scale your approach to fit your business.

#2: Give People a Way to Share a Laugh with You

If you’re going to create and host branded content, there’s one ingredient that unites nearly all of the top performers: humour.

This isn’t just because everyone likes to laugh. In his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Jonah Berger discusses the close connection between physiological arousal and sharing. Simply put, pumping hearts lead to busy fingers (digitally speaking). As surprising as it might sound, “Funny content is shared because amusement is a high-arousal emotion.”

Denny’s Tumblr is an excellent example of how to make funny work. From bizarre pictures of horses with their midsections Photoshopped into an English muffin to blogs titled “How do you kill a pancake successfully? I need to know for research purposes,” their content communicates that they don’t take themselves too seriously and you shouldn’t either.

Denny’s Facebook Live Q&A with a pancake was pure branded gold.

Along the same golden lines was Hamburger Helper’s Watch the Stove campaign. More than just humorous, Watch the Stove brought on serious musical heavyweights, and as General Mills’ Senior Marketing Partnership Planner Ashley Wright put it, “We tried to take away any corporate aspect of it.”

Humour is a great way to make it feel like your branded content isn’t, well, branded.

#3: Integrate Brand Advocates’ Social Content Into Your Marketing

Much like influencer marketing, user-generated content (UGC) has been around for years. However, brands have only recently begun to systematically integrate it into their marketing.

Why? Because from sales to social, UGC is conversion gold.

In How Companies Will Use Social Media In 2017, Ryan Holmes points out that UGC “taps into users’ basic impulse – the one at the heart of social media’s appeal in the first place – to create and engage, rather than sit on the sidelines passively.” Campus Protein, for instance, does this masterfully by soliciting, sharing, and regularly posting content made by customers.

This UGC was submitted by a fan, and distributed on a host of Campus Protein’s accounts and added to their on-site checkout process.

But sharing isn’t all Campus Protein does. Having collected over 1,800 reviews and countless images through their hashtag #teamcp, they’ve taken all that UGC and integrated it into their product pages as well.

With their hashtag #Gymshark, Gymshark takes a similar approach and uses UGC in top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel content.

The reason for this integration comes straight from the data. According to Yotpo’s benchmark study of more than half a million online shoppers, people who see UGC are 166% more likely to convert than those who don’t. In essence, when you leverage UGC in branded content, you make the customer the hero, instead of the company.

Gymshark mixes their in-house content with UGC both off-site (such as on Facebook and Instagram) as well as on-site to reach new customers through their existing customers’ connections.

Generating UGC comes down to a handful of intentional steps. First, actively invite people to provide UGC not just on social but especially through transactional emails like order confirmations. Second, make submitting UGC as easy as possible with dedicated hashtags. Third, use UGC tools like Yotpo or Engage Hub to collect reviews, ratings, photos, and customer stories.

Remember, you’re not your best salesperson. Your customer is.

Conclusion

The truth is, despite the explosion of branded content, few have overcome its fundamental problem: Everybody hates branded content.

For example, Beckon’s study “Marketing Truth or Marketing Hype?” found that “while branded content creation is up 300 per cent year over year, consumer engagement with that content is totally flat.” According to their numbers, a mere 5% of all branded content accounts for 90% of total engagement.

That’s an uncomfortable ratio. But it also presents an opportunity. If 5% fuels 90%, then getting branded content right has huge payoffs.

Thankfully, it’s no secret what makes content lovable: for people, by people, that entertains and educates. In the words of the 20th century’s patron saint of advertising, David Ogilvy: “You know, you can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.” The same thing is true today.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these methods for getting your audience to love your branded content? Do you have any other tips to share? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Social Media Examiner

Post Tags:
#Content Marketing#Digital Marketing#Social media#social media mareting

Why Should Authors Care About Digital Marketing?

 

One of the biggest challenges for independent authors is getting their book in front of readers. There are millions of books published every year, and unless you’re very famous independently of your book, odds are that you’re nervous about how to get people interested. That’s where digital marketing comes in. You’ve probably heard this term before, especially as you travel down the road of independent publishing. You’re probably asking questions like: What does digital marketing entail? How does it get books in front of readers? And how could it work for me?

Digital marketing is simply getting your book information in front of Internet consumers, typically in the form of online advertising. So why should you develop a digital marketing strategy?

People Are Online

Consumers spend 5 hours per day on mobile devices. That’s right—5 hours. This is the majority of people’s leisure time, so the best place to find that perfect reader is during their daily Facebook scroll or YouTube binge.

No Need for Marketing Studies

In the past, if you were manufacturing lip gloss and wanted to advertise to TV-watchers, you’d have to pay someone to do a market study of various TV shows, figure out which audiences buy a lot of lip gloss, and take out ads based on that information. The Internet has changed that. Now, Facebook will tell you that there are 3.7 million people who love James Patterson and exactly who they are. If you’re a thriller writer, you’ve just found your audience without expensive market studies.

Digital Marketing Is Less Expensive

Most digital advertising on any social media platform can be adapted to all budgets. Remember that TV ad I mentioned earlier? Not only did you have to do a market study to see if it’s worthwhile, you also had to spend thousands of dollars on the slot and production. Very few independent authors have that kind of cash just lying around. Digital advertising doesn’t have these kinds of requirements. You can adapt the advertising to fit your budget, and though you may find more success with more money, you can still get your book in front of more readers with small advertisements than with no advertisements at all.

You Can Boost Book Sales and Your Online Platform Simultaneously

If you decide to market your book on social media platforms, you get the double benefit of driving social media users to buy your book and generating awareness of your social media profiles. Because they are seeing these ads from your author page, readers who buy the book will be more likely to follow your profile and learn about your new projects—which makes your book marketing for the second book faster and cheaper.

You Control the Content

Did you start an ad, only to think of a better idea or notice that no one seems interested? Then change it. Unlike traditional print or TV advertising, you are not stuck with bad ideas or ineffective ads. The ease with which an ad can be updated or adapted is a huge benefit to advertisers of all sorts.

Once the writing is finished, finding ways to get readers interested in your book is your number one task. Learning about tools such as digital marketing will provide insight when you talk to book publicity and book marketing firms about plans for your book and expand the ways you can reach your book’s newest reader.

Source: Ingramspark

How to Write for Teens Without Sounding Like an Adult Writing for Teens

Ask any agent and they’ll tell you the trick to nailing young adult writing is in the voice. And even though I spend my workdays with teens, I heard it countless times when I was looking for representation for my failed first YA novel. So when I finally buried that novel for good and moved on to what became DON’T GET CAUGHT, I was determined to make sure the voice was right. It took more than eight drafts and constant revisions, but ultimately I signed with an agent who sold the book in a little over a month. The trick, I’ve found, is first to get yourself back to thinking like a teenager again, and once there, writing your novel as a teenager would. Here are 10 practical tips on how to do just that

1. Time travel

To sound like a teenager, you need to become a teenager again. Here’s what I want you to do: Spend a week or longer solely writing out your teenage memories. Start it as a list at first—naming friends, enemies, teachers, adventures you had, successes and screw-ups, choices you had to make, etc. Next, choose the memories that stand out the most to you, and write about them. The important part here is to focus on how you felt during these experiences. This is definitely a dam-opening type of exercise of memories and feelings.

2. Relive the terror of your yearbook.

Yearbooks are essentially monsters collecting dust in your closet. Open one up and you can’t escape seeing people who didn’t want to see ever again, reliving moments it took a team of therapists for you to forget, and being filled with all of the confusing emotions high school fills you with. But it’s also a great way to get in touch with those emotions, which is essential to writing authentic voice.

3. Listen to the music.

I got this trick from fellow YA author Josh Berk who once told me when he needs to return to thinking like a teenager, all he has to listen to is Green Day’s “Dookie.” For me, I use my youthful obsession with R.E.M. To this day I can’t hear any of their songs without being transported back to my high school bedroom or cruising around in my beater of a car. Other bands also transport me to other times in my life. It’s an odd trick, but it works. If you listened to anything obsessively in high school, or if there’s a movie you watched endlessly, revisit them and see what place they take you to. Write down the feelings you get from them.

4. Contact your old high school friends.

This is a simple one: Get in touch with old friends and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll revert back to sounding like you’re a teenager again. Failing that, eavesdrop shamelessly on teenagers. It’s not hard—they’re not usually the quietest bunch! Plant yourself at the places they hangout—the mall, coffee shops, school sporting events, etc.

5. YouTube it.

Teenagers broadcast their lives these days to the nth degree. Take advantage of that. YouTube is full of videos of teens talking, giving advice, and just being plain. Tuning in is a great way to pick up the flow of their language. Search: “Teen YouTube Stars” to get started.

6. Find a picture and make it talk.

Once I have a clear image of my character, I have a good idea of how that character sounds. Do this: Image search high school photography studios. Search the results until you find your character—you’ll know him when you see him. Now, what does he sound like? Copy and paste the picture onto your document and have this person introduce himself to you. This likely won’t be the finished voice of your novel, but it’ll let you get started.

7. Write for plot first.

More so with YA writing than with other genres, I suggest writing the complete story out first, then worrying about revising the voice later. This is so you can focus on one thing at a time, instead of plotting and getting the voice right at the same time. Try to write it in a voice close to what you want, but focus on getting the story down first with no pressure of getting the voice right.

8. Loosen up.

Something about being an adult just tightens you up. To write YA with authentic voice, you need to loosen up. With Don’t Get Caught, when I knew I had the story I wanted, I revised (and revised and revised) with a relaxed, devil-may-care attitude—one that eventually helped me find my MC’s real voice. Do this: Take a paragraph you’ve written and are unhappy with voice-wise. Now, stand up, walk around the room maybe while chewing a piece of gum (always good for loosening up!), and type the idea of that paragraph again, but faster and looser, telling yourself no one will ever see it but you. When you’re finished, do it again, maybe after some jumping jacks this time, or blasting a pop radio station. (Really. Try it.)

9. Overwrite.

When you’re doing your voice revision(s), it’s the asides, apparently meaningless observations, and throwaway conversations that will help you hear your characters. Teenagers have opinions on everything, so put them into your draft. Don’t worry about word count at this point; that’s for later. You can trim back an overwritten passage much more easily than you can add voice to a sparse one.

10. Shorten It Up.

OK, so your novel-in-progress is now full of lots of teen thoughts in just the voice you’ve been looking for. It’s time to cut it way back. Because here’s the thing—teenagers don’t speak in long, drawn-out monologues (hint: Don’t use “Dawson’s Creek” as an example). They generally don’t describe things that way either. Their vocabulary is common and accessible. Before you send out the book to your critique partners, cut way back on the paragraphs, descriptions, dialogue, and change any adult verbiage to more common language.

Culled from Writers Digest

How To Create A Marketing Plan

 What steps are involved in creating a highly effective marketing plan for a startup business?

As a startup, 90% of your success is going to fall on the shoulders of your marketing. That applies even if you are doing no big paid marketing or display campaigns. The number of users you can attract, how much you can charge for your product, and the funds you can raise are all outcomes of marketing.

1) Know Where You Want To Go

To craft a marketing plan that works, you need to know what it should do for you. What’s the ultimate goal in terms of users, coverage, profits and an exit for your company?

Knowing this will help craft every part of your plan, and ensure these components will get you there. That isn’t just the volume you want, but whether the brand and reach you are creating will have the wings to reach that altitude at all.

Knowing these big goals will also facilitate backing out the math. How much marketing will be needed to get to your biggest goals? You probably don’t have the budget to achieve that on day one. So, break it up into milestones, and identify the marketing needed to get you to each marker on the journey. One of the first will be hitting that crucial breakeven point, and paying your founding team enough to be able to afford to stay in business, and enjoy it.

In fact, once you know where you want to go you will need to capture the direction inside your pitch deck. There will be an entire slide dedicated to this in your pitch deck which potential investors expect. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

2) Market Research

Research and data is everything. Do listen to your gut. Then back that up and follow the data and facts. You are going to want to include key statistics from this research into your pitch deck when raising funding.

Among the most basic data will be how big the market is and your startup’s total addressable market (TAM).

Creating marketing and user personas is an important and valuable part of this. Both if you are a B2C and B2B venture. Knowing exactly who your best customers are will enable you to pinpoint and nail your marketing better out of the gate. You’ll waste a lot less, and convert a lot more using targeted campaigns and the right messaging.

The more you know about your customer the better. What do they do for a living? What keeps them up at night? What gets them excited about getting up in the morning? How much do they earn? Where do they shop? What’s their favorite color? What time are they online? Where do they hangout?

Then make sure you have conducted some thorough competitive analysis. Who are your competitors? How much do they charge? How is their customer service? What are they doing well? Where are they dropping the ball and leaving room for you to do better?

This sounds basic, but it is scary how many aspiring entrepreneurs try to launch ventures without really knowing if they are just recreating the wheel.

Equipped with all of this knowledge you will be able to craft an effective positioning statement, USP and brand. Creating a style guide and specs for your marketing and branding to keep everything consistent may be a part of this. It can certainly help to keep a unified image. Just don’t let it slow you down, as things are bound to change as you test, grow and raise money from new investors.

3) Identify Your Marketing Channels

After identifying your best prospective customers and the right branding, entrepreneurs will be able to better select the best fitting marketing and advertising channels.

There is no single right answer. What’s best will be a little different for every startup. It may include social media, TV, outdoor display advertising, print ads, email, popup shops or retail storefronts, apps, affiliate platforms, live events, or outbound calls.

Just make sure you have a well-rounded marketing mix, leave room for trial and error and testing, and give yourself enough time for these channels to payoff and reach critical mass.

4) Budgeting

Clearly all of this requires budgeting. Even if you aren’t doing Google PPC ads, Facebook or other big paid campaigns, marketing requires a budget. Even if that is creating great content for a winning pitch deck and getting out there to present it.

You can never afford to stop marketing. When you stop marketing, you stop having a business. If Apple and Nike are still doing it with all of their billions and market position, then you had better believe it.

Investors need to know this information too. It shows that you know what you are doing. They’d normally much rather invest in helping you expand in this way than to pay for salaries or just keep you afloat because your overhead is draining you.

5) Team

Who will create all of this marketing, respond to incoming leads and follow up?

You may be a sales genius and love selling and creating advertising pieces. Though, no matter how good you are, there are many channels and factors to master in this area of business alone. It’s hard to be a true master on top of all these trends and best practices, and run the business and raise funds well too. Your time may be best spent on other higher level tasks. Even in the beginning your time will be better spent simply closing hot leads than on marketing material.

Know who you need, and make sure you are hiring and having them create for your needs months in advance. Not at the last minute. Otherwise you’ll pay more and have rushed collateral which isn’t near as good or as effective as it could be.

6) Formatting

You should have a stand alone marketing campaign you are consulting regularly and your team is working on. All of the core basics will also be incorporated into your executive summary and pitch deck too.

Being specific is good, but don’t go too crazy with creating volumes of marketing plan documents at the beginning. All of this will evolve over time. You need to get to raising money and gaining new users.

Summary

Marketing is the life blood of every startup. Even if you have a very technical physical product you are developing for the B2B market.

While the outcome of the above may be a very simple and concise plan and set of facts and stats for your deck, all of these factors are important for an affecting marketing game plan that works and delivers on the main goals your startup has.

Culled from Forbes

Post Tags:#business#how to#Marketing#marketing plan#startup business

7 Social Media Management Tips to Save Time & Improve Results

Why is social media management important? According to data from Mainstreethost, social networks are the 2nd most popular way to research brands, just behind search engines. We can google “Faux-suede shirt” and receive an ad from UNTUCKit—but it’s fairly unlikely that I would purchase that shirt before doing my research on the brand.

First, check them out on Facebook, see some reviews; check Twitter and Instagram for discounts. It’s like doing recon for a blind date! I want to know I’m not going to get ripped off; and in the process, the brand should utilize these social channels to develop a relationship with me as a customer.

That being said, I think we agree that social media management can be a stream of irritation. Your brand needs to be engaging, posting and sharing constantly—but who has time for that? I have gathered a list of tips that my colleagues and I use for WordStream’s social media management to help save time, save money, and grow and engage your audience.

1. Social Media Management: Focus on Quality

It is always good to have a constant flow of content and announcements, but I would much rather have nothing at all than abysmal posts with incorrect information.  We want to make sure that we are sharing content that is good enough to be re-shared or retweeted, passed on to colleagues across industries.

We also try to look for content that will last, not just trend for a week and disappear. If you are able to produce content or develop insights that will stay relevant in the industry, these are gold! For us, social media content does really well on—surprise!—social media. This tweet was posted in mid-June and I’m still seeing it being retweeted even now.

It’s a bummer that this doesn’t direct to WordStream, but we have content posted on it, too!

Think about it this way, if someone writes a terrible post without citing sources and shares it on social media—are you going to interact with it? And what does that post say about your credibility as a brand?

2. Analyze Data to Find the Perfect Quantity

…and almost as important, quantity. Because let’s face it, social media is about what is going on NOW, right this second. This is especially true for Twitter; we recently found that engagement rate increased 46% week over week after publishing 30 more tweets than the week prior. In fact, those 30 extra tweets helped push 30% more traffic to the website with 60% more link clicks than the previous week.

During the week with 30 extra posts, there was an average of 5.9K link clicks daily.

It can be hard to get visibility as organic reach continues to decrease, and the one way we’ve found to combat this is to post more often. My favourite trick is to re-post content multiple times—for blog posts, I’ll share it on Twitter up to 5 times on the day it is published. Just make sure you’re not being spammy on Facebook! People hate that. Truly, I’ve seen the comments…

Another good trick is to stay aware of demand—keep your eye on trending topics in your industry’s sphere. Chime in when you can! This will increase your engagement rate and potentially garner more followers.

3. Be Charming (Tools Can Help!)

When my mother complains about social media, she references her friends that only post to brag. “Tommy got into Harvard AND Yale! Such a hard choice!” *Insert picture of the son as the homecoming king*. But, being the charmer she is, she will congratulate them (with a “xoxo”) and as a result, they will like and share and comment on her posts as well. Be my mother! What goes around, comes back around: engage with others and they will engage with you. Though this sounds silly, Larry swears by it.

Yes, my mother’s last profile picture was a flower pot. For 4 years.

One of my biggest challenges is finding content to tweet and post about! A way to tackle this is through social media management tools like Mention and Buzzsumo, which will send alerts your way when a keyword you select is posted online. I currently use keywords like “WordStream” or “Larry Kim” to see if others are posting about us. Then I can retweet their content! Another great resource is Feedly, an RSS feed website that helps you read your favourite blogs all in one space, or Klout, which suggests original content that hasn’t been seen by your audience yet.

4. Use Scheduling Tools

Because no one expects you to manage your social media accounts so intensely that you are manually posting 20+ times per day. Actually, who is reading these daytime posts?! Procrastinators, I see you…

I personally use Hootsuite, which had been conveniently set up before I started working in social media. I’ve also tried Buffer, which works similarly. For a complete list, check out our post on Social Media Management Tools.

Hootsuite dashboard for WordStream

I have found that the most important part of these tools (other than the obviously time-saving) is their ability to auto-schedule posts when your account is most likely to see high engagement. It takes a certain amount of brain power to pick times for 10+ posts per day, and this a huge help. If you’d like to simply analyze your twitter sphere timing, Hubspot has a handy tool called TweetWhen which will select your most retweetable time of day, and Tweriod will select the best times to tweet.

5. Automate Repetitive Tasks with IFTTT

IFTTT, short for If This, Then That, is a social media recipe website! In a series of simple steps, this website will help you set up simple commands which link up different applications to automatically perform actions if triggered. For example, IF the weather app tells you there is a high UV index, THEN a reminder to put on sunscreen is triggered. IF you are tagged in a photo on Facebook, THEN save the photos to dropbox.

At WordStream, we have a few blogs that we follow and trust to post quality content consistently that is of interest to our audience. We were able to set up a recipe that automates the sharing process. IF a certain blog posts new content, THEN tweet the post to our followers on Twitter.

6. Utilize Social Media Analytics

Does this need an explanation? How do you know how many people are seeing your posts and engaging if you don’t look at the numbers! Make decisions based on data!

I won’t pretend to be an expert in analytics, but I appreciate the vast number of metrics available. Luckily, there are experts out there, like the fine people analyzing tweets at Buffer, Twitter themselves, and Kissmetrics, who are kind enough to give us a beginner’s guide to Facebook insights. Personally, I tend to watch post engagement (based on audience size) and URL clicks when managing social media because our goals are to expand and engage our followers while driving them to the site.

7. Be a Real Person

As individuals, we have a higher tendency to follow accounts of “real people” vs. businesses even if we don’t personally know the person. I have tried my hardest to show on social media that WordStream is a real place with a real person with a real personality behind it! To get some ideas, Gizmodo and Contently have companies that manage their social accounts with flair and sass and everything people love…about real people. My personal favourites are Chipotle, Seamless, and Nutella. This says nothing about my real-life favourite things, I swear.

My favourite thing to do on Twitter is to find disgruntled customers and respond, trying to solve their issues. In a survey from InSites Consulting, 83% of companies reported that they deal with questions or complaints sent via social media, so I’m not alone. This is a great way to show that your company cares and has a face and personality behind the façade.

This customer had tweeted @WordStream unhappily reporting his dashboard was broken. We were able to respond and get it fixed! Previous tweets have since been deleted.

We already know from Larry that posts with emojis receive more attention. Similarly, when examining our tactics with images, we found that photos will generally receive more attention. This was further affirmed by Convince&Convert, who report that posts with pictures generate 150% more retweets. At WordStream, we analyzed posts on Twitter and Facebook and found that the most retweeted or liked posts featured images of real people–#PPCkid and images of our employees worked fairly well, but even memes featuring a real human work as well.

This is the back of everyone’s head at WordStream. It received 200% more likes than a post directing to an article a few minutes later.

Just like PPC, managing social media accounts is a constant work in progress. I’m keeping an eye out to see how Facebook’s new algorithm will affect our organic visibility while being vigilant about metrics and engagement across all channels. Do you have any great tips that I missed? Let me know!

10 Tips and Tricks to Stay Safe on Social Media

 

Many of us spend a large amount of our time on social media – Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, or other sites. We share our pictures, our feelings and our memories. However, we also share a lot of personal information on these sites, whether we know it or not.

Because of social media’s large presence and the amount of information we share through it, it is extremely important to be a smart social media user. Follow the tips below to help you stay safe while using these platforms.

1. Don’t Overshare

It’s easy to share information on social media, and much of it is content you may not deem important. But, individuals with bad intentions can use excessive personal information you share to commit crimes, such as stealing your identity, breaking into your house when you’re on vacation or stealing packages off your porch.

This also goes for LinkedIn; the more work and education history you share, the easier it is for thieves to steal your identity or guess your passwords. Be careful of any specifics and details you share online, and before you hit “post,” consider how the information could be used by someone of ill will.

2. Check Your Privacy Options

On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all of the other sites, make sure your security settings are where you want them to be.

It’s wise to make your Facebook profile private to users that aren’t your friends and to request the approval of your Instagram followers. Limit the personal information that other social media users can see by adjusting your privacy settings on each of your profiles.

You can also edit your privacy options to require a security question to be asked when logging on to the site from a new IP address, which will help prevent your accounts from getting hacked.

3. Verify People and Pages

Before you accept a friend or follow request, look at the individual’s page. If you know them and can verify that through the information available, then it’s probably safe to approve them (if you want).

If the information on their profile page doesn’t seem to add up, or you’re not sure if you know them, don’t be afraid to deny (or just ignore) a request.

If there are a lot of typos, only limited pictures or posts that just don’t sound like the person you think it might be, you should proceed with caution. It is not uncommon for people to impersonate other users or even brands on social media and use it to take advantage of other users. Keep this in mind and do a thorough check before you accept.

4. Do Not Violate the Social Media Policies of Your Company

Be familiar with the terms and conditions that regulate social media use at your work. Some obvious no-no’s are using company property to check your personal social media pages or posting on social media about co-workers.

You should never share company-specific details online – for some companies, this may even qualify as the sharing of trade secrets and can land you in big trouble.

5. Know How Sites Use Your Information

Many social media sites sell some of your information to advertisers; that is how they keep the use of their sites free. You have a right to know, however, exactly what information is being collected and how it is being used. Most social media sites will have this policy posted somewhere on their company website, but if you can’t find it, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for a copy of this policy.

6. Don’t Buy into the Popularity Contest

Contrary to popular belief, the more is not necessarily merrier when it comes to social media friends. Make sure your “friends” online are actual real people that you know. For any “friends” that you’re not sure about, dig into their profile a little bit more and if you still have concerns, don’t be afraid to remove them from your network.

Having the most “friends” out of all your friends is not worth the risk if it leads to imposters knowing too much information about you.

7. Check Your Password

Make sure your password is something that could not easily be guessed by someone scrolling through your Facebook, YouTube channel, Instagram or Twitter (e.g. if all of your posts are about your dog Binkie, then don’t make your password Binkie123).

It’s also best to have a different, unique password for each social media site. If you access social media from your phone, be sure that your phone also has a unique, difficult-to-guess password.

8. Sounds Too Good to be True? It Probably is.

When a social media account gets hacked, the account will likely start posting offers for various goods. A common example is: RayBan sunglasses for $19.99!.

Do not ever click on these links, no matter how tempting. It’s nice to also let your friend know if you think their account has been hacked.

9. Install Antivirus Software

Make sure that any computer you use to access social media has antivirus software.

Because of the sheer amount of posts and links and profiles related to social media sites, it’s very easy for viruses to sneak into the content, particularly if you do inadvertently click on a malicious link. Good antivirus software will also protect your pages against viruses that are trying to steal your information.

10. Lose the Location

It’s tempting to tell the world exactly what you’re doing exactly when you’re doing it and exactly where you are. That, however, is not a smart practice. As was already previously mentioned, this can make it easy for thieves to take advantage of the fact that you’re in Aruba for a week. But it also makes it tempting for individuals to stalk you during your everyday routine.

Make sure to turn off all location settings on your social media sites so that Facebook or Twitter doesn’t announce to the whole world that you posted that picture at the gym Monday morning (when you were supposed to be at work).

As with most things, it’s important to listen to your gut when it comes to social media. This friend request looks a little weird? Ignore it. That ad has too many typos? Don’t click on it. The friend of a friend of a friend that you approved keeps commenting on all of your pictures? Delete him. Remember that you’re safety is always the number one priority.

You can never be too cautious when it comes to social media. However, if you follow these tips listed above, you’ll be off to a good start.