SOCIAL MEDIA SECURITY ESSENTIALS

UNIT-3
(for More information refer the textbook)
1. Being bold versus being overlooked
Many businesses and individuals compete for the attention of social media
users, wanting to get their message across to as broad an audience as
possible. A person may want more followers and friends for a number of

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reasons.They may want to connect to people with similar interests, gain
benefits in games by getting additional neighbors or allies, or gratify their
vanity or competitive spirit by having more friends than their peers. For

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businesses, the number of followers is important, as it helps them reach
more existing and potential customers.The goal of social media campaigns is
to get noticed. You want the campaign to be bold enough to be shared,
discussed, and make social media users feel involved. You want to attract
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positive attention and not be overlooked.

While there’s no formula on how to have a successful social media

campaign, there are many good and bad examples to learn from. In this
chapter, we’ll look at a number of campaigns and elements that can make or
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break your social media presence. We’ll see how you can get the most out of
social media by engaging people in a positive way and how to avoid
common pitfalls that can expose you and your organization to potential
problems.
2. Good social media campaigns
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One of the best examples of a company shifting away from old advertising
techniques and taking full advantage of social media is Nike. For years,
Nike’s advertising showed top sports figures succeeding by wearing Nike
products, while telling customers to do the same with the command “Just
Do It.” While their hero worship campaign did undeniably well, a different
approach was needed for a social media campaign. Rather than say what to
do, they made people a part of what was happening
In 2013, a new campaign called #MAKEITCOUNT started which focuses
on motivating people to achieve goals they set. Nike promoted a three-part
 process of picking people you know on Twitter and Facebook who will
encourage you to achieve what you want, choosing a goal (such as working
out at the gym, basketball), and then using what Nike offers to help you
succeed. In getting people to encourage you, you send a tweet to your
friends with the hashtag #MAKEITCOUNT.

A hashtag is created, i.e., the # is put in front of a keyword in the tweet, so

that when someone clicks on the word, any other tweets containing the same
hashtag are displayed. By clicking #MAKEITCOUNT, you see tweets from
others who are taking action on trying to achieve their goals.

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Another great example of using social media to promote products and
generate interest in a brand occurred in 2009, when Burger King started a
campaign called the Whopper Sacrifice. The premise poked fun at the

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Facebook fixation over how many friends a person had and got them to
decide whether they’d choose a hamburger over a fair-weather Internet
friendship. After installing an app on your Facebook account, if you
removed 10 people as friends, you could print out a coupon for a free
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Whopper.
3. Bad social media campaigns
Not all social media campaigns go as planned or accepted in a way you
intended. There are many examples of campaigns that have gone wrong,
sometimes with funny or almost tragic results. Looking at them provides
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valuable insight into why they failed and what not to do.

While the humorous Whopper Sacrifice campaign did well for Burger King,
their competitors have not fared so well in social media campaigns. The fast
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food chain Wendy’s attempted to play on their successful 1980s advertising

campaign of Where’s the beef? In October 2011, they tweeted about
launching their thickest burger ever and decided to use the hashtag
#HeresTheBeef. Unfortunately, they apparently didn’t check whether it was
already being used.
In January 2012, McDonalds also made an attempt at using a hashtag
campaign to promote their products, starting with the tweet Things quickly
spiraled out of control. People began using the hastag #McDStories to tell
horror stories about the food. These included tweets about get physically ill,
things found in food, and the quality of the products.
4. Sometimes it’s better to be overlooked
In making a decision between being bold versus being overlooked,
sometimes it’s better to be overlooked. Public attention isn’t always positive,
and not all publicity is good publicity. At times, you may need to do damage
control and deal with issues related to you or your business. While it may be
important to address a problem by commenting on a person’s post or
releasing a prepared statement, you don’t want to dwell on it and certainly
don’t want to provoke additional responses that will make you the focal
point of attention.
A case in point is Amy’s Baking Company of Scottsdale, Arizona. In May

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2013, the restaurant was featured in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, a
reality show in which Chef Gordon Ramsay spends a week with a struggling
or failing restaurant, attempting to revive the business.

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5. Social media hoaxes
Sometimes, the things you read online may not be true. Hoaxes and urban
legends have been spread through email, message boards, and other methods
of communication since the early days of the Internet, so it should come as
to
no surprise that they’re now shared on social media sites. There are many
different kinds of hoaxes, including bogus stories, manipulated images,
outdated information, and cruel pranks.

Reports of missing persons or requests to assist law enforcement are often

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retweeted and shared on social networking sites. They allow information to

be shared with a larger audience in the hopes that someone may have
valuable knowledge about a case. Unfortunately, an email, a post or tweet
like this can be passed around long after a case is solved.
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Such is the case of Laura Clark who briefly went missing for just over 24
hours in February 2013. A photo, description, and information about her
disappearance were quickly published online and still shared on social media
sites. A Facebook page called “Help Find Laura Clark, Missing on 26th Feb
2013” continues to exist, without any update that the person was found.
Although West Midlands Police issued a press release on their Web site and
informed people via Twitter that the teenager was found, it hasn’t stopped
the posts and tweets about her being missing.
 Not all social media sites have policies or procedures on what happens to the
accounts of deceased users. Generally, they will follow the requests of the
family reporting that a user has died. In the case of Facebook, an account
may be deactivated with the profile removed or memorialized.
6. The Human factor
Even in the most secure environments, the element that makes an
organization vulnerable and causes unexpected problems is people. Mistakes
happen, especially when dealing with content that is user generated and
informal. A person may post information that shouldn’t be released, provide
updates that compromise security, type things incorrectly, or make

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comments that are taken the wrong way. With a little awareness, you can
avoid common mistakes that can cause a great deal of embarrassment or
make you vulnerable to risk.

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The oops factor:
When handling social media for an organization, you may use several
different accounts. In addition to corporate accounts, you may have your
own accounts for social media sites. If you’re using a family computer or
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sharing a workstation, several people may use the machine and have access
to social networks. This leads to the obvious risk that a person could
mistakenly use the wrong account to make a tweet or post a comment.
Example:
In 2012, there was an issue where an apparent employee of the ticket sales
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company StubHub thought they were using a personal account, but sent out
a tweet using the business’ @StubHub Twitter account. The tweet (with its
expletive edited here) stated: “Thank f*** it’s Friday! Can’t wait to get out
of this stubsucking hell hole.” StubHub deleted the tweet shortly afterward
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and took responsibility by apologizing for the inappropriate language.

Acronyms and abbreviations in messaging:
Acronyms are words that have been shortened by using the first letter of
each word, while abbreviations are shortened versions of a word. They’ve
been commonly used in electronic messages even before the Internet became
popular, but achieved increased popularity with texting, chats, and tweets as
it saves having to type out common phrases. For example, rather than typing
out “be right back,” you would type “BRB.” Similarly, you might type “You
hate text messages from people” as “u h8 txt msgs from ppl.” While handy
 for shortening messages, you should avoid them professionally and for
business use.

Netiquette:
Netiquette is short for network etiquette and refers to the proper behavior
when writing content and using technology. Just as the rules of etiquette
teach you how to act in society, netiquette shows you how to conduct
yourself in social media. By following good behavior, you can avoid a
number of problems with social interaction and know the best way of

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handling yourself online.
7. Content management
Content management is the process of collecting, managing, and publishing

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digital content throughout its life cycle. The life cycle of data used in social
media consists of different stages, starting with it being produced and ending
with it no longer being relevant:
1. Creation, in which you research and write text and generate other content
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like images or video.
2. Editing, in which the content is reviewed and possibly revised. For
example, sites with collaboration features like SharePoint or Yammer enable
multiple users to work on the same document, while others like Wikipedia
rely on crowdsourcing, in which users will review and edit incorrect
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information.
3. Publishing, in which the content now becomes available for others to
view online.
4. Monitoring, in which conversations and comments on your material are
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observed and possibly responded to, and updates or new versions of content
are generated.
5. Removal, in which old and possibly outdated information is archived or
deleted.

Stale and outdated content:

One of the most difficult things about maintaining a site is keeping the
content fresh. If there’s nothing new, the draw to follow you or visit a page
simply won’t be there. You can manually tweet and publish new
information, but there are times when this is difficult or even impossible.
 Maybe you’re on vacation or it’s outside of business hours, or you’re busy
with some crisis or event. There may also be times, such as during a press
conference, when you’d like the information to go out at a scheduled time.
This is where automatically posting content can help.
There are a number of tools that can help with managing content. One such
online tool is HootSuite, which allows you to monitor and manage your
accounts on a number of different social media sites, including Twitter,
Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, MySpace, Foursquare, WordPress, and mixi.

Censorship:

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When creating user-generated content and accessing information on the
Internet, you probably never considered that you were exercising a human
right. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that

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everyone “has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers.” Even though the Act was adopted by the United Nations in 1948,
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the fact that it applies to “any media” makes it applicable to the Internet.
This right is not without limits or necessarily followed by some countries.
The ability to access content on the Internet may be restricted by
governments and businesses.
8. Promotion of Social media
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If you’re starting a social media campaign, you want to reach as many

people as possible. With that comes some impatience. While friends and
followers will come in time, there are some things you can do to promote
yourself. the trick is to generate interest and inform people about your brand
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and social media presence. Advertising on sites can increase the number of
people who visit your page or follow you.
Social media sites make money through advertising, which is why sites like
Facebook display ads on pages. In clicking an ad, you visit a page or Web
site. Similarly, Twitter will promote the tweets or trends created by
advertising partners, so they appear high on the list of trends and tweets. In
advertising on social media sites, you’re getting word out to other users who
may be interested in following your brand.
Contests:
Contests are a great way of getting people to visit your sites and follow on
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites,One example of this would
be a restaurant that gives a gift card for the 100th person that comments on
your Facebook page

Directories:
There are a number of directories on the Internet that list users of Twitter,
Instagram, and other social media under specific categories. Browsing these
directories, you can find others with specific interests or expertise and begin

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to follow their activities.
Not everyone is on the internet:
It’s easy to forget that not everyone uses social media or even has Internet

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access. According to a 2013 report by the International Telecommunication
Union, only 39% of the world’s population is online. Most of those without
access are in developing countries, but even if we look at those in the
developed world, 33% don’t have Internet access. As seen in Figure 5.9,
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your ability to reach people using social media may be diminished by the
area of the world targeted by your campaign.

Depending on the region you’re targeting in a social media campaign, the

results may vary. However, as Internet access has steadily increased over the
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past decade, don’t feel that a social media presence isn’t worth pursuing. It
will simply make you an early adopter for that area. It will however mean
that you may need to combine traditional and social media in your
advertising, which isn’t a bad thing.
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