Are You Maximizing Facebook for Your Business?

Many businesses understand that they must have a social media strategy, but many companies do not fully understand how to accomplish this. In order to be successful, let’s first understand the demographics of Facebook. According to a recent report on Pingdom the average age for a Facebook user is 40.5 years old. Here are some additional stats that may alter your way of thinking about Facebook, 65% of Facebook users are 35 or older and Facebook and Twitter have the same gender distribution: 40% male, 60% female.

Here is what is truly interesting about the age trend for Facebook and Twitter. Compared to a previous survey Pingdom did 2.5 years ago, the age of the average Facebook user has gone up two years, while the age of the average Twitter user has gone down two years. In other words, Twitter’s user base is getting younger, while Facebook’s is getting older.

So now that you understand who is using Facebook, let’s start to figure out how you maximize your exposure. The first thing you need to consider is how to build a strong fan base. Your Facebook page can drive traffic to your website, increase sales and build customer loyalty, but like anything else you have to carefully create your presence. Make sure your page is using your company name and any specialized keywords that your business is typically found under.

You want your page to stand out from competitors, to do this, you need to engage your fan base, for example, you can customize the tabs of your page to highlight your business, including photos, videos, hot items and genera discussions. You also need to keep the content fresh, there is nothing like going back to a website several times to see no updates, so while it may take you some time each day, make sure you stay current with your content, otherwise your fan base will go elsewhere. If you want to grow your fan base quickly, Host contests or giveaways, according to Facebook, research by Forrester shows that contests, giveaways and promotions are the fastest ways to build fans to your page.

Another great way to increase your exposure is to collaborate and connect with Facebook Applications, they are a great way to network and do business through your Page. Facebook has over 50,000 applications on its platform. There are Facebook apps available for everything, including Twitter, Wordpress, Google Reader, and many others. To get your business moving start with the following, and build from there, Add the RSS Feed application to incorporate your blog , add the LinkedIn Profile application to promote your LinkedIn account by posting a badge on your Page, add the Twitter application to incorporate your Tweets.

Once you have built your page you need to gain exposure by getting everyone involved, don’t just put up a Business Page and forget about it. Monitor the feeds, make updates and discuss industry trends, product reviews and relevant events. Encourage employees to be active and participate on your Page. The more people involved on Facebook, the more exposure your company will receive With fresh content and lots of activity, your Page will build in strength and become successful — no one will follow a stagnate page. You should also join other Facebook groups and become fans of other Business Pages to build a network of conversations

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

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Can we protect against nation-state espionage?

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have uncovered new nation-state espionage malware that has links to two previous identified espionage tools known as Flame and Gauss, and it appears to be a “high-precision, surgical attack tool” targeting victims in Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere.

The new malware has been coined miniFlame, although the attackers who designed it called it by two other names – “SPE” and “John.” MiniFlame appears to be used to gain control of and obtain increased spying capability over select computers originally infected by the Flame and Gauss spyware.

According to Wired, “It is the fourth piece of nation-state malware discovered in the last year that appears to have been created by the same group behind Stuxnet, the groundbreaking cyberweapon that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program and is believed to have been created by the U.S. and Israeli governments. The others – all designed for espionage rather than destruction – are DuQu, Flame, and Gauss.”

“With Flame, Gauss and miniFlame, we have probably only scratched [the] surface of the massive cyber-spy operations ongoing in the Middle East,” the Kaspersky researchers write in a report released Monday. “Their true, full purpose remains obscure and the identity of the victims and attackers remain unknown.”

The report was released as the U.S. continues to make claims against China for its involvement in nation-state cyberespionage. Most notably are the alleged hacks against Google to obtain intelligence about political dissidents and against defense contractors to obtain military secrets.

The risk with miniFlame/SPE malware is that it can be used on its own as a small, standalone data collection tool, or it can be inserted into Flame or Gauss. Until recently, it was assumed that Flame and Gauss were independent nation-state projects that had no connection; but the discovery of miniFlame is the first solid clue that the two projects came out of the same “cyberweapon factory” and were part of the same larger operation.

While the targets appear to be focused on the Middle East, the question must still be answered as to how far this has spread and what information are these countries trying to obtain. While many of us feel that our data is protected and even if it is not, what is the real harm in being compromised, the bigger risk is what happens when the financial institutions are attacked – replacing a credit card is an inconvenient, not being able to use credit cards could impact a nation.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Now it is Microsoft versus Google in German patent lawsuit

Yesterday Microsoft informed the judge that it will amend their patent infringement lawsuit against Motorola Mobility to include Google as a defendant. Microsoft is suing over European patent EP0845124, which covers a “computer system for identifying local resources and method therefore. The same technology is addressed in U.S. Patent no 6,240,360.

The German lawsuit, filed in April, goes after Android’s Google Map app, which Motorola spent a good amount of time yesterday denying Microsoft’s infringement accusations without ever getting into actual server process discussions. Microsoft has aggressively going after Android handset makers to agree to license agreements, including LG, Samsung and HTC. All have signed on to avoid the legal battle, which can put up to $15 per handset they sell.

Motorola has held out and had hoped that it’s acquisition by parent company Google would prevent Microsoft from taking them on – a strategy that has ultimately failed. Motorola has been forced to pull virtually all of their smartphones from retailers in Germany due to previous patent litigation with Apple and Microsoft. The move today is believed to show that the Android OS is not free and that the Windows Phone system would be a worthy alternative.

Once again Patents will force manufacturer behavior, which will end up providing the consumer with little choice in which phone they can purchase. It would be interesting if these companies would put more of the legal costs into R&D and develop the next generation phone rather than continually fight each other for positioning. The concept of the strong will survive, now appears to mean that the one with the best lawyers will survive – not the best product!

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Tweeting Tips

Twitter remains one of the top social media tools on the market today, according to Twitter they process 340,000,000 Tweets per day and have over 140,000,000 active users. With this kind of access one can imagine why Twitter remains a key tool for successful marketing strategies. While each organization will find a different level of success, there are a few tips to help maximize your success on Twitter.

Keep your Tweet to 125 characters or less:

You only get 140 characters and the goal is not just to tweet your message but to get other people to re-tweet the message so you can maximize your coverage. If you max out, the retweet may cut off the last part of your message, and should that be the URL – you will impact the effect of the tweet. So try to keep your message short!

Follow the right people:

The common misconception is that the more followers you have the better coverage you will get. The reality is that a more targeted approach generates greater results. You do not want to follow everybody that follows you – you need to do your homework and make sure the company or person you follow meets your standards.

You are far better off having 25 super followers that are willing to retweet your message and or post about your products on their blog than trying to gain 6,000 random followers. A good place to start is trying to follow industry experts who do a lot of retweeting – the goal is to get your tweet retweeted. So you may wonder how you gain these super users, the first thing to do is to start following them, some will follow you back if your tweets have value to them. You should also follow their blog and comment as frequently as possible, this will most likely get you recognized and increase your odds of having your message picked up.

Utilize Twitter’s search feature:

One of the most underutilized feature available from Twitter is their search function,, located at http://search.twitter.com. This search feature allows you to see what people are talking about in real time, which can change how you tweet. It is also recommended that you get an RSS feed for the keywords that are most important to you. You can do this on Twitter by clicking “RSS feed for this query” near the bottom of the page after entering a search term.

In addition, you should be aware of which hashtags are critical for your industry and business. To identify the right hashtags for you, you can go to hashtags.org and enter any hashtag and see how it’s trending.

The time of your Tweet is critical:

Most users of Twitter do not read tweets that are more than a few hours old, so you want to send your tweets during the optimal time of the day. The best time to do this is during business hours for the Eastern Time Zone. Retweeting tends to drop off by the end of the day. Of course each business is different so while this is a good general rule to follow, understand your industry may have a more optimal time, especially if you are focused globally.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Walmart versus Amazon

The lines between on-line retailers and brick and mortar have become blurred even further today as Walmart announces same day delivery in several launch cities. In competing with Amazon (AMZN) and their push to deliver products the same day to meet consumer’s requirement for instant gratification, Walmart has conveniently launched their same day delivery service jut in time for Christmas.

For a flat $10.00 you can have all of your items delivered the same day, Walmart intends to utilize their large quantity of store locations to act as warehouses versus Amazon’s methodology of using strategically place warehouses to support the same day shipping. In reality Walmart has the distinct advantage since you can find them virtually everywhere – this expands their product availability and allows them far more flexibility in the shipping process.

Just like all things, the old become new – if you remember it was predicted that on-line retailers would make the old brick and mortar stores obsolete, and to a large degree we saw many icons collapse as on-line retailers were able to offer lower cost for the same products (does anyone remember Circuit City or Comp USA?). But in the end we have seen a integration of on-line and brick and mortar, in rare instances the exclusive on-line or brick and mortar store has been able to thrive, but the most successful ones had to become more than just a one trick pony.

\It will be interesting to see who ends up winning the holiday season, Walmart or Amazon.  What I can predict is that one of them will see their stock price soar while the other will see it decline dramatically. Investors will be watching this battle closely to see which power house retailer comes out on top.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.