Qantas' A380 emergency a few days ago has tarnished the brand's image, and the impact of social media and its instantaneous ability to spread good or bad news has played a part in that.
Simon Canning writes in today's Australian that "The challenge to the airline has been further amplified by the emergence of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
"Within minutes of word escaping that there had been a problem with a Qantas jet bound from Singapore to Sydney, Twitter was alive with reports the jet had crashed.
"In the past, such misinformation used to arrive in a newsroom and await confirmation before being broadcast to the world. However, this time Twitter followers for several minutes retweeted unconfirmed news of the crash and shares in the airline plunged briefly before its was clarified that the plane had in fact landed safely in Singapore.
"By then, photos of the cowling were making their way across the world and pictures from the airport confirmed the wreckage was from the jet, with every tweet and image eroding faith in the Qantas brand.
"Qantas's brand is now much like the crippled A380: damaged and grounded, but far from out of service."
Doesn't this make you think about the power of social media and what it can do to your brand? That little line above about share prices dropping immediately after the tweets about the aircraft crashing are as chilling as the notion that the A380 actually fell from the sky. Social media isn't going to go away; it's getting bigger by the minute and is now, really, another arm of mainstream media. We can all be reporters.
But reporting misinformation like the "crash" via social media channels can have a grave impact on organisations and the people that run them. When you use social media services, remember the information stays out there forever. Get your facts right before you put finger to keyboard. You could severely damage someone's reputation. Depending on the situation that someone could be you.
One of my clients phoned me, rather distressed, on Saturday. Someone had hacked her Facebook page and also her Hotmail account...and her email account associated with her own website. Like many of us, remembering a dozen complicated passwords is a pain, so my client had used one password for all three and admittedly it was a relatively low security one.
I've now given her a new email account for her website with a mother of a password, but she's still unable to access her Facebook page and her Hotmail account, which she uses for business.
The ramifications of the Hotmail account being hacked are pretty serious. This person is a consultant with high-level professional clients. She has had to go into damage control mode and send her clients a note stating that her account has been hacked and to disregard any messages sent from her Hotmail account effective last Friday night.
What's making it hard for her to get back on track and get her Facebook and Hotmail accounts back is that the hacker has changed secret questions and answers, and now she is having a tough time proving she is who she is. Facebook can send you a new password via text message, but my client got a new mobile phone earlier this year and didn't update that in her Facebook account. And it's pointless Facebook sending her a new password to her email account, because the account linked with Facebook is, you guessed it, the Hotmail account.
We don't know whether this has been a random hacking attack or a deliberate attack from someone she knows, but my client has called the police and reported it.
Facebook is a hotbed for hackers. We've all heard about tribute pages which have been hacked into, to the distress of the friends and family of the person the page was a tribute to. This is the first time someone I know - let alone a client - has been hacked on Facebook. All of us think "It won't happen to me", but be vigilant, and change your FB password to something a lot more difficult for hackers to guess. Your security is your identity.
New Facebook features not as useful – or private – as they seem
Posted by Sabrina | News, Social Media, Websites | No CommentsNew to blogging? Here’s the gen to get you rating from day one
Posted by Sabrina | Marketing, Websites, Writing and Editing | No CommentsI love WordPress. So does Google. They're a pair made for each other.
But simply starting up a blog on WordPress itself or one your own domain name isn't enough.
If you're a newbie to blogging, there are things you need to know. Obviously you have to have your blog topic all thought out (and I'm not talking about the posts themselves, I'm talking about what your whole blog is going to be about.). And I'd advise, if you're using WP to build a corporate site, to sit down with a pen and paper or better yet an Excel spreadsheet and work out the framework of your blog before you press the 'install' button on WordPress.
Once you've done all that, and preferably chosen a good professional theme (as professional themes are better built for SEO), there's something you should read: 43 Blogger Tips for WordPress Installations.
Andrew Rondeau is from the UK and a very experienced and successful blogger (by the way, I am not affiliated by him, but rather impressed by his entrepreneurship). While I implement a lot of his tips on my site and sites I build for others, Andrew puts this advice so succinctly and clearly it's worth directing you to his post.
One thing I can add to Andrew's advice is to tweet your blog. Get on Twitter. Install Twitter Widget Pro on your site and tweet every post. More than once, if you can find something different to say about your post on a separate tweet or two.
Social media works best when it works in partnership: blogs with Twitter, or YouTube, or Facebook. Try and combine your social media memberships with your blog.
So it's International Quit Facebook Day. I'll be interested to read tomorrow how many people actually quit; I'm sure it'll be in the news somewhere. Or someone will tweet it. Here's the news so far.
There's been a lot of panic in the media over here this month - see this article and this one for examples. Facebook's privacy policy is an overlong nightmare, but let's be realistic for a moment.
Key advice: be sensible what you put on Facebook. Carefully look at your settings to see how much information you're giving out. For example, don't be daft and display your full date of birth and the town you were born in. Identity thieves may love you for it, but do you really want their love? (And if you're worried that the folk at Facebook themselves might do something nasty with your identity, cross your fingers behind your back and type in a different date of birth to your actual one. Not nice, I know, but we all have a ton of information out there in the ether these days; protect it as you can.)
If in doubt, click the options which give out the least information to the world, and keep your wider profile visible only to your friends (and even then, do think about just how much info you want to give out). As with LinkedIn, it's a good idea to only allow people you actually know to befriend you, or possibly friends of people you trust, if you are concerned about your privacy and identity. Yes, that might mean you don't have 567 friends - you might only have 80 - but they are people you actually know.
If you're a business person and you're using your personal Facebook account for business, be sensible about what images you load up. Nobody wants to see you drunk and disorderly at a party. It might have been fun at the time, but it could influence the way future clients think about you. You have less control about the tags other people put on their photos, but you can control your own account as you like.
Realistically, if you're going to use Facebook for business, start a business page. Keep it businesslike. Attract fans. Direct your clients to it. Make it a separate identity to your own Facebook personal page.
Facebook is growing in popularity as a business tool. I don't, at this point, use it for my own company but I do maintain a business page for one of my clients. It's another way to advertise your products and services for free using viral marketing.
Oh, and think about this: Facebook has received a ton of publicity this month. Even if it wasn't all good, it's the name that's on everyone's lips, or fingertips.