Social Networking and Security. . .or Lack of When Promoting Your Brand.

Facebook continues to be the world's most popular social media sites. Besides it is the best place where friends share and communicate online, Facebook has become a venue for businesses to promote their brands, communicate with clients and look for potential customers.

In this post we will be looking at how to use Facebook as a marketing tool and some security issues related to it.

One common way to use Facebook as a marketing tool is a Facebook page. Businesses on their pages can post information such as contact information and background of their companies. In addition, businesses can also promote and update their products and services through sharing images and videos. Another way is to use Facebook ads. Businesses have many options to customize and market their ads in Facebook. There are targeting options to specific what kinds of customers businesses target their ads to based on different location, age, interest, education level and more. Also, for app developers, when people click on the ad on the mobile device, they will be directed to the App Store or Google Play to install the app.

Although using Facebook helps promote your brand, some security issues should be taken into consideration. A number of Facebook security flaws have recently been shared. According to slashgear.com, the latest flaw was image related. This security flaw allowed any user to delete any image from other users’ Facebook page. Previous security flaws include user accounted being hacked and one of the victims was Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook. According to cnn.com, a Palestinian researcher posted a message on Mark’s page saying “First, sorry for breaking your privacy and post(ing) to your wall. I (have) no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to (the) Facebook team.” Khalil Shreateh, the security researcher said he found a hole in Facebook’s systems that let him post to any user’s page including users not on his friends list. Although it is almost impossible to have no bug for such large social media which has users more than 1.15 billion, as users, there are still some actions we can take to eliminate the security attack. One way of being secure while using Facebook is to use a one-time password. According to nakedsecurity.sophos.com, if you would like to use Facebook from a public location, you can use a one-time password to access your Facebook account. This password is sent to you by text message and will expire after 20 minutes. Another way is to block apps installed on Facebook. By doing this, you can prevent them from accessing your personal information. Last but not least, make sure you log out when you are done using Facebook, otherwise, people can do crazy things on your Facebook account which might result ruining your business or personal reputation.

As long as you take care of the security of your account well, Facebook is one of the best online tools to promote your brand.

Work cited:

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

http://www.slashgear.com/facebook-security-flaw-allowed-any-user-to-delete-any-image-02295703/

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/tech/social-media/zuckerberg-facebook-hack