CAI Managed IT blog

Social media companies are some of the most powerful entities in today’s world. Their ability to connect people with others of like mind or specific wants and needs often goes overlooked because much of the experience of operating online in today’s climate is adversarial. With the average user spending roughly two hours and 24 minutes per day on social media and messaging apps, companies can use that exposure to promote themselves. Let’s take a look at how small and medium-sized businesses use social media to their advantage.

Wait! If you haven’t read part one of our Facebook privacy blog yet, you may want to do that before reading this one. If you’re ready, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at your Facebook settings to make sure that your account and its data are as secure as possible. If we’re being honest, protecting this kind of data hasn’t seemed to be one of the platform’s strong suits - and user privacy has been the star of many lists of concern.

Two billion users strong, Facebook is one of the Internet’s most popular websites… which has frequently put the tech giant in the spotlight when it comes to how secure the data you’ve entrusted to them (in addition to what they’ve collected) really is. Today, we’ll discuss how you can access the information Facebook has on you.

We all know how to use YouTube… find video, click video, watch video. Simple, right?

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.

While it’s a security best practice to keep strangers off of your Facebook account, you might feel that it’s understandable to accept an unknown request for the sake of networking or otherwise. This isn’t the ideal way to approach Facebook, but you do have a unique opportunity to allow users to view your profile and follow your public posts, without the need to accept a friend request.

Ordinary fishing, where you hope for a simple-minded fish to latch onto your hook, relies on using a proper lure. The same can be said for the virtual method of phishing, where a hacker will use a similar type of “lure” to convince the target to bite. These phishing scams are especially useful for hackers who want to take advantage of social media to find new targets. A recent study has shown that this is a surprisingly effective method of phishing.

Social media, as wonderful a tool for connecting and communicating as it is, does have its dangers. Fortunately, these risks may be mitigated through careful deliberation and pragmatic posting habits, but only if you know what they are. What follows are some easy habits to encourage a heightened state of security both digitally and in the physical world.

Attention people of the Internet, October is Cyber Security Month! Make sure that you share this information with everyone on the Internet that you know. In a situation like this, sharing content with everyone to raise awareness of a worthy cause is perfectly fine. Although, what’s not alright is the sharing of your personal information online.

Having confidence in your ability to run your business is an important thing to have, but it doesn’t matter how much confidence you have if your customers beg to differ. After all, without them, your business wouldn’t be where it is today. This is why it’s important to listen to what your customers say, and if it’s not positive, you need to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

With email being such a prevalent tool used in the modern office, it might seem silly to think that in just a few short years, email might not be as relevant as it used to be. However, many professionals believe that email is limping along on its last leg, waiting to be put out of its misery by a new solution. Will email be around for much longer? Should the average business prepare for a world without it?

With 255 million active users, Twitter is one of the biggest social media platforms, but some companies are still skeptical about using it. What Twitter-haters may not realize is that it provides businesses with a marketing advantage by allowing them to customize their audience to suit their needs, making it a valuable marketing tool--that is 100% free!

The Internet makes marketing your business much easier, but it's not that way for everyone. A restaurant in California has responded to the standard Internet marketing strategy with an out-of-the-box method of its own. David Cerretini, co-owner of the Italian restaurant Botto Bistro, has told his strategy to USA Today; "I want to be the worst restaurant in the San Francisco area!"

It's no secret that social media has opened a lot of doors for businesses that may not have been there a short time ago. LinkedIn in particular has been an immensely useful tool for people looking for employment, and for employers to find prospective hires.

Social media has become a big part of business, and Twitter is one of the top sites. You may know Twitter as an app that lets you send short messages to "followers," however, there's so much more to this useful tool that has been embraced by 218.3 million users worldwide. Let's take a closer look at Twitter and how to utilize it for your business.

You can't log onto your online account if you're dead, and unless you have your password clearly marked on a sticky note, then nobody else will be able to either. While the Internet is a great distraction to keep us from pondering our mortality, the issue of post-mortem social media forces us to face death by preparing a digital will.

About the same time that the late six-term Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens was proclaiming that the "internet is not something that you can just dump something on. It's not a big trunk. It's a series of tubes", a phenomenon that would transform the Internet was just starting to go mainstream. Virtual social networking, an idea that had been developed for the better part of a decade was swiftly starting to take a foothold on the web.

Facebook has recently achieved one billion active users. Being on top of the social media world comes with a price. Facebook has become one of the top 10 most hated companies in America, this according to a January 2013 study from news site 24/7 Wall St. This survey takes into account customer and employee satisfaction and, most of all, stock prices.

Are you compiling your New Year's resolution list and looking for some help to achieve your goals? If one of your resolutions is to spend less time goofing off on the internet and more time being productive, then we want to share with you a helpful app called Freedom that will help achieve your resolution.

While it may seem difficult to imagine embarrassing oneself in the space of a 140 character message, Twitter has been responsible for the downfall of companies, politicians and entire institutions. No one can deny that Twitter has been a boon for communication, politics and economics, but some people seem determined to prove that one cannot have Twitter without the word "twit." Here are a number of prominent examples from the recent past which demonstrate how Twitter's logo can swiftly become the bluebird of unhappiness for some.