Social Media and your business

There has been much talk about Social Media recently and how fraudsters are honing in on places such as FaceBook and MySpace etc.

How can you protect your identity and that of your business when moving into this marketing medium?

1) Always be suspicious! Before giving away some personal details, ask yourself why they need it. Do some more digging.

2) Always remember your password! Don’t write it down online anywhere, or keep it near any other related documents. Make your password something you can remember and always destroy emails containing passwords – or change them asap.

3) Don’t put personal information on the web. Simple really. What is the first question a business will ask you if you have lost your password? You can bet it’s one of: Mothers maiden name, birthday, street address, dogs name. If you have this info anywhere online, all a fraudster needs to do is click on one of those “Forgotten your password?” links.

4) Don’t put anything up that you wouldn’t want your grandmother seeing. I remember a story about a teacher who put a photo up of her drinking. This action got her fired from her job. Why? Because her employer saw it, and she was only a student teacher at the time, and underage. A prospective business owner will more than likely check out to see if you have a facebook or myspace profile before working with you, so keep it professional.

5) Remember this golden rule – if someone walked up to you in the street and asked you for your street address, would you give it? If someone asked you to walk behind a building because they have some fantastic wares selling cheaply, would you go? Use this same commensense when it comes to online networks.

6) Don’t put it up, thinking you can always take it down. Search engines cache a page, and someone might have already seen it, and pasted it around the net for others. Best bet – just don’t put it up.

Have fun venturing into the world of Social Media, and just remember to use your commonsense!!