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Archive for the ‘Social Media Marketing’ Category

Online Marketing Blog: Financial Analysts CAN leverage Social Networks

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Financial advisors always tell me that social networking sites are not for them. They of course refer to the federal guidelines for financial planners that they have to abide by.

But given that social networks are so popular, is there no easy way for Financial Analysts to leverage them?

I think there is. I think that three simple strategies could allow Financial Analysts to leverage social networks without getting into trouble with the law.

Just throw your name in the hat – the hat in this case the social websites. Once you are online, let people get to know you as a person without going into what you do and how. Connect with other financial advisors to see what they are doing online. And stay away from dicussing financial stuff online.

Post generic information on the social networks, news items, interesting happenings in your field and even outside your field. Don't make any individual recommendations of any sort and you'll be fine.

Combine your networking with your newsletter and email campaigns. Include your Twitter and FB links on all communication that you send out.

Lastly, be sure to comply with SEC and FINRA regulations. FINRA regulations differentiate between static and interactive content. Social networking content is interactive and therefore no prior approval is needed for them.

Also, FINRA and the SEC require that all tweets be archived or save. To do so, just copy and paste all your tweets in a pdf file every night or week and store these pdf's somewhere. No need to buy new software for this purpose.

Directives from the SEC and FINRA stipulate that all tweets must be archived and be able to be exported, in case regulatory bodies want to rifle through them. To do that, you can manually copy and paste the tweets into a PDF, like Jean Keener of Keener Financial Planning in Keller, Texas does, or like the people who operate the Raymond James' Twitterfeed do.

Tags:Social_Networking
Posted in facebook, Linkedin, Social Media Marketing, twitter | No Comments »

Online Marketing Blog: Using LinkedIn Effectively

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

LinkedIn is one of the most professional business networks you'll find online. It is older than Facebook and is made up of professionals located across the globe. Although it doesn't have as many users as Facebook, if you wish to build your professional network with contacts, LinkedIn is the best platform to do so.

LinkedIn's biggest advantage to you is showcasing your profile with as much detail as possible. Your profile should be an impressive presentation of you, your skills, and your achievements. A captivating profile is bound to attract others who may be looking to do business with you, looking for a job, or looking for a partner.

You should study other profiles in your field and outside your field to find ideas to make your profile more comprehensive and interesting. Also, it is well worth it to review corporate profiles and create one that showcases your company as the company to retain, work with, or buy should the interest be there. Include testimonials from clients (present and current), employees (present and current), and peers or colleagues who can tell others why you and your company are worth a second and third look.

Building your network on LinkedIn is easy. Start with the people you already know. Offer your contacts to others and vice versa ask to connect with contacts of your contacts. But be careful and curb the overwhelming desire to add everyone you see and want to add. Also keep an eye on the LinkedIn database which provides suggestions about the people you might want to add depending on the interest fields you have filled out in your profile. Update your profile as often as you can, post your opinions, make use of the Answers section to answer other people's questions and post some of your own.

Include your website, blogs, and interests in your profile so people can see your professional background but also get to know a little bit about your personal likes and dislikes.

So don't let Facebook and Twitter be the only networks you play on. Take a second look at LinkedIn and make it work for you.

Tags:Linkedin, Social_Networks
Posted in Linkedin, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Online Marketing Blog: Twitter Experiencing Growing Problems?

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Twitter's got problems. Interesting article which needs no real summary.

Article credit: Computer World By Juan Carlos Perez

IDG News Service – The recurrent technical problems that have affected Twitter for the past seven weeks have also taken a toll on developers of external applications built for the microblogging service.

Throughout the outages, malfunctions and bugs that began the second week of June and hit their high point during the soccer World Cup, makers of third-party applications have tried to weather the storm while having little or no control over the situation.

The frequent and disruptive technical issues have forced these developers, many of whom generate significant revenue from their Twitter applications, to scramble to appease their angry users, while trying to protect their brands and cope with lost business.

"Twitter API issues in the previous weeks have been terrible for us," said Loic Le Meur, founder and CEO of Seesmic, which makes Twitter client applications for various desktop and mobile platforms.

Users always blame Seesmic first since it's their primary interface to Twitter. It's extremely frustrating because there is nothing else we can do than warning users Twitter has problems. It is very damaging for us since users start to look for alternatives, which fortunately have the same problems, but damage to the brand is done," he said via e-mail.

Twitter, founded in 2006, became notorious back in 2007 and the first half of 2008 for its lengthy outages, but since then it steadily improved the reliability of the service. It had been having a particularly solid 2010 until June rolled around.

"It had been really stable for a long time and then this just came up as a bit of a surprise," said Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, which makes a client application to manage accounts from Twitter and other social media services.

At various points since the problems started in early June, a very apologetic Twitter has blamed the problems on a variety of factors, including massive traffic spikes caused by World Cup games, internal system bugs, server upgrades gone wrong and faulty network configurations.

"It's been a bit disruptive and frustrating because many people don't know if it's us or Twitter, and they'll just assume it's us. Then we have a communication issue we have to address," Holmes said in a telephone interview.

Although the issues have dropped in frequency and intensity in the past two weeks, some developers remain doubtful of Twitter's ability to provide a consistently stable service…….read more at http://www.wisdeo.com/articles/view_post/7326

Tags:twitter
Posted in Social Media Marketing, twitter | 1 Comment »

Social Media Blog: Malware Loves Social Networks!

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Cyber criminal activity is growing and social networking sites are leading the pack in helping spread this activity. No, not intentionally but by virtue of the fact that social networking sites allow ease of sharing content, malware is easy to pass around.

According to a new report released by Blue Coat, a cyber security firm, cyber criminal activity is spreading so rapidly that security solutions providers are unable to keep up and continue to play catch-up.

Blue Coat reported that online storage and software downloading sites were two of the most common sites where malware was hidden. However what was most concerning in Blue Coat's report was that since social networking sites accounted for 25% of top internet activity, that's where most of the cyber attacks are happening. When networking on popular networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, opening links that contain malware is the leading cause for the spread of malware.

We've seen such attacks on Twitter where a user gets a tweet asking him or her to change their password and the minute they do so, their account is hacked into.

Some simple, common sense steps will help you from falling victim to malware and cyber criminal activity:

Change your passwords on a regular frequency
Make your passwords complicated enough so they cannot be guessed. Trust me, "password" is NOT a good password.
Use tools like Tweetdeck for Twitter where you can "preview" links before opening them.
Do NOT click on links sent to you via Direct Message (DM) on Twitter from someone you know
On Facebook, use caution when accepting friend requests from people even if they are connected to others in your network
Think before you post ANYTHING, and I mean anything. Sharing vacation plans online, is a strong no-no.
Use caution when providing your information on new sites, you can't know how secure or not secure they may be.

Social networking requires MORE not less caution than before. Before, all we had to worry about was spam in our emails. Now, it's real-time information that's out there for anyone and everyone to see. Prevention is better than cure when networking online; so prevent the "bare-all" behavior and you'll be fine.

Tags:Malware_On_Social_Networks
Posted in Blogging, facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, twitter | 3 Comments »