10 SM Resources for Hospitality Customer Service

Why does social media matter for those in hospitality? A Google search for "hotel" turns up 3.1 billion (that’s billion with a b) results in 1.05 seconds. A similar search on "restaurant" turns up almost 1.9 billion in 1.56 seconds. And the top results will be for such places as Hotels.com, Expedia, Trivago, Kayak and Restaurants.com.

For most users those top results will be all they need. But for others the search will be slightly more involved or the decision to click will take a few seconds longer. The difference? Loyalty to a brand or recollection of another person’s great experience.

What can help businesses in hospitality (hotels and restaurants, for example) earn those few seconds of extra consideration?

Social media – it is the very key for industries whose biggest driver is word-of-mouth marketing.

But how? And, perhaps more importantly, why? According to a 2015 article on Harvard Business Review:

• "Consumers under 35 spend almost four hours per day on social media, and more of that time is being spent engaging with brands."
•  "17% of people older than 55 prefer social media over the telephone for service."

And, of the four stages of the consumer decision-making process – need recognition, information search, evaluation and decision – social media increasingly plays a role in the first three….

So how should those in hospitality – particularly on the customer service side – use social media to attract, assist and retain loyal customers?

10 Social Media Resources for Hospitality Customer Service

The article 5 Social Customer Service Best Practices from Cision suggests restaurants and hotels graduate their social care customers to a more reliable communications platform such as SMS or email, get all employees on board with appropriate social responses and understand that customers expect a near-immediate response on social media.

• Key takeaway: "Today, 39 percent of social media complainers who expect a reply want it to come within 60 minutes, yet the average response time from businesses is 5 hours,” says social media expert Jay Baer in the piece.

In Social Hospitality: How 8 Hotels Engage Guests On & Offline (from Sprout Social) author Jennifer Beese suggests that social media allows hoteliers to be an Invaluable resource beyond just providing accommodations, to be attentive during guests’ stays and a to extend the experience after the stay.

• A key takeaway: "Knowing where your guests communicate online will help you provide a better customer service experience while enabling you to reach the right people at exactly the right time."

The grandly named The Complete Guide to Social Media for Restaurants & Bars (also from Sprout Social) gives advice on creating relevant posts (i.e. understanding the difference between engagement vs. promotional posting), how to find optimal times to post and what it takes to get your social efforts to a higher level.

• A key takeaway: "If you’re not visibly active on social media, then you’re missing out on a large customer base."

The question and answer website Quora might be a great resource for those in hospitality according to Quora: How to Generate Leads for a Hotel says an article on the Social Media Explorer site. It suggests such strategies as being on social to provide solutions, searching social platforms for questions to answer and resisting being promotional in social posts.

• A key takeaway: "A boutique hotel could easily muscle in on the big boys’ territory with well-thought out answers to travelers’ queries. In the process, you’ll build authority and possibly carve out a niche for your brand."

The eHotelier.com piece How the hospitality industry is embracing social media offers a series of "insider tips" for those in hospitality and their use of such platforms as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These include Facebook promotions and working with bloggers.

• A key takeaway: "Ninety one per cent of retail brands use two or more social media channels, and the hospitality industry should be no different."

Conversocial, a website that looks at various aspects of social media and customer service, offers Customer Service for Travel, suggesting that hospitality brands standing out as leaders in social customer service are making major investments in this area, expanding their teams and marketing budgets. The piece offers tips on deepening connections to customers and making the right impression on social channels.

• A key takeaway: "More than other customer service channels, social lends itself to creating memorable experiences for customers."

7. Customer service in its broadest sense means offering something of value on social to current and future customers. So the post 10 Examples of Great Social Media Content for Restaurants on the EnPlug Blog offers tips including the obvious "Share mouth-watering photos” and the not-so-obvious "Get your employees involved."

•      A key takeaway: Show your customers that you’re on social for more than just pushing out promotions. Whether you’re answering questions, addressing concerns, saying thanks, or just responding with wit, your responses will go a long way."

Top social media management tools for hotels and the hospitality industry from TravelTripper.com offers a list of 10 social media management tools for the hospitality industry with explanations of features and pricing.

• A key takeaway: "From streamlining content creation and posting to social listening and analytics integrations, social media tools come with a range of innovative features …."

Are there downsides to social media for hospitality businesses? Some would say negative reviews on sites such as Yelp, but RestaurantEngine.com – in How to Respond to Negative Restaurant Reviews – says "…not all negative reviews have lasting consequences…. It’s what you do with the review that sets you apart and defines your restaurant."

• A key takeaway: "Not only are you fighting for the reviewer’s business, but you’re fighting for everyone else who reads the review."

And of course I’d be remiss to not mention all of the various infographics that boil down social customer service to its key elements. I’ve created a public Pinterest board called Social Customer Service that may prove useful to those in hospitality. The graphics range from how to use social to deal with negative comments to using social to build loyalty and trust with future and current customers.

Bonus: If you’re looking for some thought leaders in the area of social media and hospitality you might check out The Top 16 Leaders in Hospitality to Follow on Twitter from Capterra.

                Is social media here to stay as a fact of life for customer service in social media? For sure. Will it evolve and grow as a series of customer service channels? Absolutely. What do you think?

Related posts:

• Social media listening – it’s time to commit to it
• Social Media Employee Empowerment - What Works

Personal branding – don’t leave it to chance

Like it or not a personal brand is something that follows you wherever you go from your personal life to the work world and beyond.

It’s the combined information (Internet postings, social media updates etc.) about you that shows up when someone searches online. So it probably makes sense to figure out how to make your brand the best it can be.

5 steps to take this weekend to boost your personal brand:

1. Define your tactics:
Ask yourself: What do you want people to find when they search for you online? Someone they’d like to …

• Hire: Then focus on optimizing your Linkedin profile (and not just to get it to Linkedin’s 100 percent complete status, but adding images, videos, examples of your work etc.) Consider using other channels too: A blog to demonstrate your knowledge, Pinterest boards to demonstrate any visual work and interests, and Twitter to share your work and to network without the barriers of Linkedin.
• Get to know: Start by picking three platforms to focus on that will allow you to tell your story. For example, if your interests are sports, travel and reading consider creating boards on Pinterest for each of you specific interests.

2. Define yourself:
Develop a short description of who you are, what you believe in and what you do best. In other words: How would you tell your online audience why you’re the right person to work with or connect with? 

This two- or three-sentence statement is for you, but should guide how you describe yourself - everywhere. Be sure to describe what makes you different from other people with the same or similar expertise. 

If you’re not sure what that is, do some research on well-known people in your field. Observe what they do and adapt it to your own way of doing things.

3. Define your expertise:
What particular skills and knowledge do you want to be known for? Who do you hope to connect with?

Determining what makes you unique helps you understand what sets you apart from crowd on the Internet. 

Your areas of expertise define who you are and what you do. They should be included in your social media profile descriptions and should include your main keywords.

4. Define your approach:
How will you use various social media platforms to advance your brand? For example, will ...

• You only use Linkedin to post things relevant to your career or will you also post a few things that show some of your personality?
• Facebook be strictly for people you’ve met in real life or consider personal friends?
• Twitter be a place to share industry news and find new connections?
• You use a scheduling tool such as Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule posts to maintain a regular social presence or will you post organically as you find interesting material?
• You use tools such as Empire Avenue, Kred and Klout to monitor your efforts and guide your progress?

5. Define your success:
What will success look like to you?

• Making lots of online connections that become in real life (IRL) connections?
• Enhancing your current job/career?
• Getting a better job?

Whatever you settle on set some future calendar reminders to look back at what you’ve done. Then decide which efforts are worth continuing and which should be dropped.

Remember your personal brand is an evolving, living thing. The only thing you can do "wrong" is to ignore it and let it change, or worse: stagnate, while you remain blissfully unaware…

Does this help? Will you use social media and a plan to boost your personal brand? I’d love to hear back from you.

Related posts:
Quality SM connections for personal branding
Blogging for personal branding

Social Media #EmployeeEmpowerment – Why it’s a MUST for Business

Social media employee empowerment has become a business imperative – but why? 

Because (as we have seen from previous posts – see below) brands do not have the social reach of all their employees combined and, more importantly, they do not have the trust and level of engagement employees can achieve. 

A recent story in Fortune magazine, Brands are using social media more than ever, and users are ignoring them more than ever, highlights the challenges of social media for brands. 

It points out that at a time when brands are using more social media than ever the percentage of posts that lead to user interactions keeps falling. 

The rates at which users interact with branded social media posts has always been low, but a 2014 study and a follow up study in 2015 by Forrester indicate the numbers are falling, the Fortune piece says. 

"Last year, Instagram posts from brands created interactions with 4.2 percent of a brand’s followers. This year, that number fell to 2.2percent," it says. 

"On Pinterest, interactions fell from 0.1 percent to 0.04 percent." 

It all adds up to brands doing more and getting less from social media. 

Citing Sprout Social research a recent Social Media Today piece, 7 in 8 Social Messages to Brands Go Unanswered, notes that more and more consumers expect a response to a social media inquiry on a brand's official social presence. 

Sprout’s research found "7 in 8 social messages go unanswered by brands in the first 72 hours," which Sprout likened to not answering your phone at your place of business.

The author of the SMT piece, A. A. Currey (@AjaMaybe ion Twitter) is a content hacker at Social Media Today and says what makes a brand have a great response rate and a good rapport with the customer is having actual humans on the other end of social channels.

"The way to a satisfied customer base is, yes, a quick and regular response rate, but there’s no faster way to a consumer’s heart than an authentic reply.

“And that’s something only a brand who values human-to-human connection can provide," she says.

A recent post on the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) website further explains why engagement matters for brands: "With an engaged, loyal online group of followers, you’ll cultivate an audience that will want to buy from you," it says. 

"And, here’s an even bigger benefit—they’ll share information about your brand with their communities, too." 

The IABC then goes on to offer its 10 questions to jump-start social media engagement. Among them are sparking a reader’s curiosity with a question and offering a single-question survey.

So, if social media employee empowerment is important to the brand how can an organization encourage it?

An example of how a brand encourages employees to engage on social media is found in Coca-Cola’s Social Media Principles: The principles start with: "Countless conversations take place online about Coca-Cola every day, and we want our Company’s more than 150,000 associates in more than 200 countries to join those conversations, represent our Company, and share the optimistic and positive spirits of our brands."

They go on to discuss company commitments (five key principles including transparency and monitoring), personal use of social media (including the admonition: "We encourage you to get online and have fun, but use sound judgment and common sense") and company spokespeople expectations.

So, social media employee empowerment is clearly a business MUST in 2015 … will more companies get on board?

Previous posts about SM employee empowerment

• Employee empowerment drives massive social media results for brand
• 2015: The Year of SM #EmployeeEmpowerment and How to Create a Successful Program
• Social Media Employee Empowerment - What Works

Social Media 2015: 10 Perspectives

Social media saw some big shifts in 2014, but what will 2015 bring? 

The only thing that is certain is that change will continue and at least one new network will come along and surprise everyone with how quickly it gets broadly adopted. In the meantime here are … 

10 Views of What 2015 Will Bring in Social Media

Heidi Cohen (@heidicohen on Twitter) of Heidi Cohen’s Actionable Marketing Guide says in 2015 Facebook will retain its social media marketing dominance, but continue to lose its key demographic, namely teens and twentysomethings. Among her other predictions: Amazon will rock social commerce, Twitter will continue to lose market share and importance, and Instagram and Pinterest will keep growing in importance. Read more at: 2015 Social Media Predictions: 10 Forecasts You Need.

Neal Schaffer (@NealSchaffer on Twitter) of Maximize Social Business gathered the opinions of 11 social media CEOS into a SlideShare presentation. Among the more interesting predictions are that "…schools will recognize social media as an asset, rather than a liability" (from Ryan Holmes, CEO at Hootsuite) and "Social Media Marketers are being phased out in favor of Community Managers that understand social media in context of a broader ecosystem. " Read more at: 11 Social Media Predictions for 2015

Stephanie Frasco (@StephanieFrasco on Twitter) writes that in 2015 Facebook will see a lot more "pay to play" … i.e. more advertising. As brands try to stand out on the crowded platform they will need to spend more money to do so. She also says: Hashtags will have a heyday, consumers will seek more online privacy, online influencers will be more important than ever for brands and everyone’s decreasing attention spans means anyone on social media must use more and better visuals. Read more at: 15 Digital Marketing & Social Media Trends That Will Shape 2015.

Angela Hausman (@MarketingLetter on Twitter), an Associate Professor of Marketing at Howard University, writing for Business 2 Community says big trends in 2015 will include brands merging the notion of a customer journey with content marketing, brands understanding the value of building social media community and increase in paid advertising in social. Other things she notes include mobile finally living up to its potential and visuals dominating social networks even more. Read more at: 5 Megatrends: Social Media Predictions For 2015.

Rob Nightingale (@robnights on Twitter) writing for makeuseof.com says the next year in social media will see more video, more paid posts, more use of big data and even more use of mobile. It will also see hashtagging become more mainstream and LinkedIn having a renaissance… at last. Read more at: Social Media In 2015, Predictions and Potential.

Adele Halsall is the lead writer and researcher at Customer Service Guru (@gurucustomers on Twitter), a customer service blog based in Britain, predicts a rise in interest-based, not people-based, social networks. "Newer platforms like Foodie, Fitocracy and PlantWorking are geared towards individual audiences rather than taking a ‘everything, everyone, everywhere’ approach," she says in a guest post on the Jeff Bullas’ blog. She also predicts mobile will continue to grow as a priority for brands, social shopping will become far more common and vlogging (video blogging) will become an increasingly common advertising channel for brands. Read more at: The 7 Top Social Media Trends That Will Impact Your Marketing In 2015. 

Bill Sussman (@BillGSussman on Twitter) CEO of Collective Bias, a publisher of user-generated content, writing for Entrepreneur magazine says 2015 will see a rise in location-based mobile marketing along with personalized media. It will also see the aligning of SEO and social media strategies and marketers creating their own newsrooms to cut through content clutter. Read more at: 3 Social-Marketing Predictions for 2015.

Elena Nicosia (@Numerounoweb on Twitter) is Project Manager at Numero Uno Web Solutions and in writing for Business 2 Community predicts that consuming information on smartphones and tablets will really take off in 2015. She says trends by definition are fleeting, but "the one bet you can bank on in 2015 is that social media will officially become the most important tool for marketers and advertisers." Read more at: Social Media Trends Set To Dominate 2015.

Kimberlee Morrison (@KymleeIsAwesome on Twitter) a writer and editor with the Freedom Writers Foundation writing for Social Times gathered some expert opinions and says 2015 will bring – Apple’s power as a social identity manager will increase while Yahoo’s will continue to decline, so-called native advertising will crease on social media, niche networks will continue to grow and the full power of YouTube will finally be realized and utilized by marketers. Read more at: 10 Social Media Predictions for 2015. 

My 5 Predictions:

• Niche social networks will continue to gain strength – the days of the one network for everything are numbered. Therefore … 
• Facebook’s dominance will begin to show more (and bigger) cracks 
• Twitter, sadly, will continue to struggle to grow
• Linkedin will build on its 2014 success and become a dominant network
• Social media will continued to be "normalized" as a set of communication channels 

What do you think 2015 holds for social media?

10 Social Media Resources for Small Businesses

Any small business owner knows that it’s always about being short on money and short on time … which is why social media can be such a good investment. 

By carefully choosing a few social media platforms and allocating a little time each day small businesses can reap rewards including new customers/increased sales, competitive intelligence, better customer relations and greater word-of-mouth marketing. 

The question is where and how to begin. To help here are 10 resources for small business owners. 

10 Resources for Small Businesses on Social Media

1. Your Guide to Benefitting From Social Media by Bar Charts Inc is a good intro to social media for business purposes, has some helpful "Getting Started" tips and also answers the question for small business: “Why be on social media?”

2. Top 5 Social Media Platforms for Your Business by Gold Coast Design Studio covers Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest and offers reasons you should use them and a few best practices for each.

3. Small Business & Social Media by Purolator is a basic explanation of five key platforms and includes need-to-know terminology and "7 Tips for Getting Started in Social Media" for small businesses. Its Canadian focus on social media usage numbers is hardly surprising given that Purolator is a Canadian shipping and logistics company.

4. The Small Business Guide to Social Media Mastery produced by MarketMeSuite and Placester shares some powerful stats about why small business needs to be on social media and then offers useful tips, recommends some social media leaders to follow and warns against "spreading yourself too thin."

5. Unlock the Secrets of Facebook (For Small Business) by Intuit – offers solid beginner tips on the set up and operation of a small business Facebook page. It also offers a couple of friendly reminders about maintaining a tone of voice and scheduling posts on social media.

6. All About Twitter for Small Business by Search Engine People offers plenty of reasons to be on social media, insights into why customers might connect there and tips for optimizing a small business Twitter account.

7. Small Business Guide to Twitter by Simply Business is a great flow chart approach to answering questions a business owner might have about social media. Each of the 21 boxes in the flow chart then has a clickable link to a useful resource.

8. 5 Go-To Tips to Master Pinterest For Your Business by Infinista Concepts is a useful step-by-step graphic to get better engagement through Pinterest.

9. The Small Business Guide to Google+ by Simply Business consists of a nice interactive flowchart that answers questions and directs readers to more resources based on their knowledge and/or interest level in Google+.

10. The Power of the Hashtag for Small Business by The Huffington Post is a brief history and overview of hashtags and how they can be used by small business to get new customers and learn from other businesses.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other resources for small businesses on social media available on the web, this is just a starter list. I hope it is helpful.

Class: This list has been put together ahead of a new class I’ll be offering at the Rochester Brainery. For more see Social Media for Small Businesses.

Social Media 2013: Looking Back and Looking Forward

The year 2013 on social media will be remembered for being the year visuals dominated social media … and as the year the major social networks began to mimic each other.

From left: Vine, Snapchat and hashtags were big in 2013

From the scorching growth of Instagram and Pinterest for still images to the growing popularity of Vine and Instagram for video 2013 was all about images. Let’s look back on the past year and then predict what 2014 might have in store.

2013 – a look back at three key trends

Photo-sharing: Snapchat, the micro service that allows users to share an image for a few seconds and has become a darling of teens, created lots of buzz when it first turned down a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook and then reportedly a $4 billion offer from Google. But it could also be said that the service prompted changes on other social networks.

Instagram (a Facebook property that introduced video in June and web embeds of video in July) seemed to be trying to compete with Snapchat by launching Instagram Direct, a way for users to send photos and videos privately to up to 15 contacts.

Twitter upped its game by allowing photos to appear in a user’s feed (an idea that mimics Facebook’s news feed). The late October change applied to Vine (owned by Twitter) videos and pictures uploaded to Twitter, not to Facebook-owned competitor Instagram’s links. And, in what is likely a nod to Snapchat’s popularity, it added the ability to send photos via Direct Message, Twitter’s private message service between followers.

All of which reinforced the idea that the biggest social networks are scrambling to be the "one app that does it all."

Hashtags: Facebook launched clickable hashtags this year. Like on Twitter, hashtags help group content on similar topics. Users can click on a hashtag on Facebook and see all the content that's available on the social network for that hashtag. As part of the updates to Google+ in the past year was the addition of the "related hashtags" feature, which automatically adds hashtags related to a post. This means users can find related content via hashtags on Google+.

Other platforms that are now hashtag-friendly: Instagram, Vine, Flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest. And, again, the number of platforms using hashtags is a clear signal that the biggest social networks want more of your time.

For more on hashtags see Mashable’s The Beginner's Guide to the Hashtag or click on the graphic below to see the full infographic.

Brevity Between Vine and its 6-second looping videos and Snapchat and its shared photos that disappear in under 10 seconds, 2013 was about the briefest of social interactions.

Snapchat was likely the new app of the year and the king (or queen) of ephemeral social sharing with users now sending and receiving 400 million photo messages per day. In late December it was updated to add several improvements like "smart" filters and the ability to replay photos and videos. FYI: The update is hidden within Settings - Additional Services - Manage.

Vine, as mentioned earlier, was highly influential and grew rapidly in 2013. Users quickly rose to the challenge of creating fun, interesting and sometimes poignant 6-second videos. Late in the year Vine introduced vanity URLs for users – a first step toward being a mature social platform. For more on Vine see Mashable’s The Beginner's Guide to Vine.

2014 – predictions of what’s to come

Facebook’s decline will become obvious: The service is now too big and too crowded for many users, according to Jay Yarrow in his Entrepreneur magazine article Facebook Is a Fundamentally Broken Product That Is Collapsing Under Its Own Weight. Teens are deserting in droves and moving to other platforms such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Twitter and Instagram (which Facebook owns). All of which are proving popular with said teens seemingly because they don’t "do everything."

"Second screen" battles: The second screen phenomenon has been developing for several years – it’s where people watching a TV show, such as The Voice or the Super Bowl, use a social network to talk about it with other fans. Twitter, the current leader in the battle, and Facebook have been looking to sign deals with TV networks and advertisers. Expect this competition to heat up.

Twitter finally goes mainstream: It’s likely Twitter will become the next billion-user platform, the questions is whether that happens in 2014 or 2015. With more than 700 million users currently and its growth increasing month over month it’s probably a matter of time before Twitter reaches the 1 billion mark. The biggest challenge: Getting more of the those 700+ million users to be on the platform more regularly. Current estimates have as few as 250 million users being active on the platform regularly. The No. 1 reason people are slow to engage? Twitter operates differently from most other social networks.

More pay-to-play for advertisers: It’s getting harder and harder for marketers and others to stand out on the biggest networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin. This means these networks will increase the ways they can help a marketer for a price. For users this will mean a steady increase in promoted posts.

So what do you think? What will be the big changes in social media in 2014?

Social Media Scams: 11 Tips to Fight Them

This guy's looking to scam you

Social media has come a long way and the more it grows the more it is fertile territory for scams and con artists.

Go to the urban legend site Snopes - and I highly recommend this site as THE best place on the web to check for any kind of scam or mischief – and enter the name of your favorite social network in the search box there. 

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram chances are there are several if not dozens of scams related to that platform listed on Snopes.

How easy is it for scammer and other malicious types to target us on social networks?

According to the 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report - from the company behind Norton computer and Internet security software - says people on social networks are increasingly falling victim to online scams. The report says of social network users:

- Four in 10 have fallen victim to cybercrime on social networking platforms 

- One in six report that someone has hacked into their profile and pretended to be them

- One in 10 have fallen victim to a scam or fake link on social network platforms

- 36 percent have accepted friend or follow requests from people they don’t know

- Only half use privacy settings to control what information they share and with whom.

This is just confirms what anyone on social networks already knows: As social media attract more and more people and they spend more and more time there scammers see opportunity.

The scams can be the annoying, but harmless "you need to change your Facebook settings"-type messages or they can be malicious links that are innocently shared because no one bothered to check them.

For example, recently two very smart people I’m connected to both fell for the Facebook Graph Search scam that starts with this … 

"Hello to all of you who are on my list of contacts of Facebook. I would like to ask a favor of you…. You may not know that Facebook has changed its privacy configuration once again. Thanks to the new "Graphic app", any person in Facebook anywhere in the world can see our photos, our "likes" and our "comments". During the next two weeks, I am going to keep this message posted and I ask you to do the following…"

While does Graph Search make it easier for you to find content on Facebook it does not change your privacy settings.

So what can you do to protect yourself and your family on social media? Here are my …

11 Basic Social Media Safety Tips:

Keep your personal information private: Be careful what information you share and post online and with whom you share it– expect that people other than your friends can see it.

Don’t post information that would make you or your family vulnerable: This might include details such as your date of birth, address, information about your daily routine, holiday plans or the school your children attend.

Set your online social networking profiles to private: Never share your account details with others and regularly update your computer’s security software. Note: If you choose not to set some accounts to private remember to be extra cautious about what you share and who you connect with.

Grant access cautiously: Apps often allow you to sign in via Twitter or Facebook, but in so doing are you granting unknown people access to your account? One small safeguard is to Google any app by name before clicking through. If there is trouble with an app chances are someone has posted about it.

Practice good password security: Use strong passwords (minimum of eight characters with a mix of uppercase and lowercase characters and at least one wild card character such as a dollar sign or an ampersand, for example). Change your passwords regularly and have a different password for each social networking site so that if one password is stolen, not all of your accounts will be at risk.

Try not to access social networking sites on public computers: Use your own computer or smartphone instead of the computers at libraries and other public places. Your login information can be intercepted.

Only "friend" real friends: Don’t accept a friend or follow request from a stranger - people are not always who they say they are and the best way to keep scammers out of your life is to never let them in. Likewise don’t answer social media messages or even cellphone texts from people or numbers you don’t recognize.

Use Google: Google yourself at least once a month search for your name and your own variations of it (i.e. “Jonathan Smith” and “Jon Smith”) and also use Google alerts on your name and family members’ names so that you get an email notification when your name crops up on the web. This can be an invaluable early warning that someone else is pretending to be you.

Be ultra cautious about any request for money even if it appears to be from a family member or a good friend. If you receive such a request, contact your friend via another means to check the request is genuine before responding. Do not use any of the contact details in the message.

Click with care: Never click on suspicious links on social networking sites – even if they are from your friends. If the link is from a trusted friend or has an identifiable URL you should be OK.

Educate your children on the dangers of social networking scams. Younger social media users may be more computer savvy than you, but they can be blissfully unaware of the dangers of identity theft and digital scams.

So, what do you think? Will you start being more careful with your information on social media? Will you encourage others to do likewise?

Possibly related posts:
Facebook’s next big privacy change is still coming
10 Tips for Social Media Beginners

The mystery behind 15,000 new Pinterest followers

The Interesting graphics board

Let me be clear upfront: If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to gaining 15,000 new followers on Pinterest in a very short time this is not the blog post for you.

My purpose, from a social media strategy perspective, is to solve a mystery.

If you have wondered why people connect on Pinterest or what attracts people to certain others or their particular boards on Pinterest then I hope my questions here will at the least get you thinking and/or provide some insight.

Some background

On April 11 I was a quiet Pinterest user. I had under a 1,000 people following my various Pinterest boards.

The boards are organized around the things I care about. The board New Zealand!, for example, is images of my home country and the board RIT is about the place I teach (and love) in Rochester, N.Y.

One board Interesting graphics was always my most popular and, as of April 11, in had 286 followers.

But on that day something happened. Starting a little after 9 a.m. EDT I started getting notifications from Pinterest that said, for example, "Sarah Jones and 49 others have started following your board Interesting graphics." 

These notifications began arriving regularly. Every 15 to 20 minutes. Within four days I was approaching 5,000 followers. Within a week it was just over 10,000. As of today (April 25) that board has 15,298 followers.

That’s an amazing 15,013 new followers in just 14 days.

Why is this happening?
For more than a week I have tried everything I know to discover why this might be happening.

• Is it because I posted an amazing infographic that people shared a lot? A search through that board for the past month of activity reveals no unusual volume of sharing.
• I Googled my name and the name of the board … nothing in the search results indicates anyone recommended the board. (That’s too bad because I would thank them.)
• I talked to experts in web marketing and analytics to see if there is any way to find the course of all this attention … and apparently there is not.
• I emailed the Pinterest Help Desk … and got this response: "Unfortunately, we’re a small team and we won't be able to respond to your email." 

So, what now?

I guess I’m hoping someone reading this can help solve the mystery.

Perhaps there are others who have had similar experiences.

Can you help? Please let me know in the Comments area – I would really appreciate it.

A New Online You, Part 2: Platform by Platform

Check each social network

And now the cleanup begins! Once you've found mentions of yourself all over the web and cleaned up the stuff you control the next step is to take care of undesirable material across search engines and social platforms. 

This is the second of a three-part series on how you can assess and improve your online self. (For Part 1, see A New Year: A New Online You)

Today: Cleaning up your reputation platform by platform

Google offers a variety of pages that help you clean up content on the web:
   • Steps for removing content on someone else's site from Google Search results
   • Report or remove content from Google’s services
   • How to keep personal information out of Google Search results
   • Request removal of an image
   • Request removal of a cached page
   • To report concerns over YouTube content

Facebook:
   • Check your Timeline for material that should be deleted.
   • Check your Photos folder and untag yourself from any images that you no longer wish to be associated with.

And for "Friends" who insist on posting stuff you find objectionable or feel may reflect poorly on you:
   • Step 1: Sign in to your Facebook account.
   • Step 2: Scroll through the news feed in the center of your home page to find the offensive item that you want to delete.
   • Step 3: Hover your mouse pointer over the top right-hand corner of the post to reveal the down-arrow button. Click the down-arrow button.
   • Step 4: Select “Hide Story” from the context menu to delete the offensive post.
   • Step 5: Select “Unsubscribe From [Username]” in the context menu to delete the offensive post and remove all other posts from the user who posted the item.  

Other tips:
   • If you select the Unsubscribe option, Facebook will stop displaying updates or posts from the user in your news feed.
   • You can also report Facebook members who post inappropriate or offensive material. Click on the user’s name in any of his posts in your news feed. Scroll to the bottom of the left-hand menu under the user’s profile picture. Click the blue Report/Block link. Click the radio button beside Block or Unfriend to completely block the user or just remove him from your friends list. Click the button that best describes why you want to report the user; Click Continue to submit the report to Facebook.
   • Report a Facebook Page for offensive content by clicking the "Report this Page" link at the bottom left-hand corner of the Page.

Linkedin: To hide entire sections of your profile:
   • Step 1: Place your cursor over the menu displaying your name at the top of the page and then click "Settings."
   • Step 2: Click "Edit Your Public Profile" under the "Helpful Links" category near the bottom of the page. Options for hiding your profile's content then appear under "Profile Content" on the bottom right side of the page.
   • Step 3: Click "Make My Public Profile Visible to No One" to hide all profile information from appearing.
   • Step 4: Click "Make My Public Profile Visible to Everyone" to show your profile and selected information to the public.
   • Step 5: Clear the box beside any categories listed below this option to hide different sections of your profile, including your headline, current and past positions, certifications, education, websites, groups, interests and skills. However, you can't hide your name, industry, location and number of recommendations.
   • Step 6: Click "Go Back to Settings" to apply the changes.

To Edit or Delete content inside sections of your profile:
• Go to "Profile" on the top left-hand side.
• Click on "Edit Profile" and then click on the section you would like to edit.
• It gives you the option to edit current information, and add and remove content from the section you choose.

Twitter:
   • To report violations such as harassment, impersonation or name squatting, or breach of privacy

Desperate measures:
   • Tweeteraser allows for specific word searches or by-date searches to find tweets you’d like to delete
   • Twitwipe will erase all of your tweets (or at least as many as it can get to)
   • How to deactivate your account

Pinterest:
   • Report objectionable content, spam, a user or a comment

Instagram:
   • Step1: Go to Instagram, click on "Support"
   • Step 2: Click on "Privacy & Safety Center"
   • Step 3: Select the appropriate category

Of course as much as possible you should not ever post anything online that you might regret later. But if you or others have, these links should help.

So what other platforms should you check out and clean up?

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