I'm a very visual person. Nothing makes me cringe more than seeing a web site with paragraph after paragraph of what seems like endless text. I like to have a break in reading once in a while to view a photograph or a graphic that relates to the content on the page.

Photography doesn't need to be limited to only photo galleries or banner areas on a web site. Content areas are an ideal place to utilize imagery and break up multiple thoughts on a page or even to create an illusion that there is more on a page than what might actually be there without a photo. For example: take a look at your contact us page on your site. It's ok... I'll wait until you get back. OK, so what did you find? I bet there is an address, directions, some phone numbers, maybe a form? Is there a photograph of your building or your office? No? What a perfect place to put a photograph! Give your customers a chance to see where you are located, and at the same time make that form they are about to fill out seem less intimidating.

Another example: do you list out your staff or management team on your site? Are there bio's and descriptive paragraphs about your team members? Are there portraits of those individuals? Adding portraits or even a group photo can bring a human element into an otherwise stale presentation of content. People tend to like to see who they are interacting with, and they tend to remember names better when they have faces to associate them with.

Adding photos to your site doesn't have to be a time intensive endeavor. I would bet that you have an "image bank" of pictures to use for print collateral and other marketing pieces anyway. Why not use them on your web site? A few words of caution however. Don't overuse photography. If a certain page does not warrant having a picture on it, then by all means, don't try to cram one on there. Also, be sure to properly optimize your photographs for viewing online. There are many free applications (http://webresizer.com/) that will resize, crop and edit your photos for you and provide you with a web ready image for your site. Don't upload a full sized picture directly from you digital camera, don't stretch or otherwise distort you photos, and don't apply any unnecessary filters or effects to your images. Remember, your goal is to enhance your web site... not detract from it.

I am always interviewing people.  Even when we don’t have a position I like to meet people that peak my interest or have been recommended to me.  I have been meeting and interviewing people for fifteen years and in the last year I have seen a very new twist on the process.

I receive many résumés each week.  Most of them are sent via our web site or emailed directly to me.  Though I still print out the ones I am interested in I usually peruse them digitally first.  The twist I am seeing in the process is the huge amounts of information that some candidates make accessible beyond the typical résumé with references.

More and more résumés I am seeing are loaded with supporting links and web addresses.  These links are to social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, personal web sites, MySpace, blogs and more.  Each of these social media “résumé extensions” is filled with more data, insight and personality about the potential employee than any employer could discover in an interview.  Those people that are carefully organized and strategic create an affective multimedia marketing campaign for themselves using these simple and free tools.

So now when I see a resume I’m interested in, I spend a few minutes reading that person’s blog, I might check out what they are interested in through their twitter and I might click over to LinkedIn and see what else is there to know about that person’s job history.  If the candidate is smart they will know I will do that and be completely prepared for my mini investigation. 

My niece was looking for her first job after graduation last spring and, because she is one smart woman, she gave her Facebook the once over cleaning, knowing that a potential employer would most likely check it out.  There are countless crazy stories about those people who didn’t “clean up Facebook” and we all know where those resumes ended up.

It is interesting to me to see the twist in the process of interviewing grow into orchestrating a full scale social media marketing plan that supports a candidate’s resume and referrals.  While I see more and more people using these tools to their advantage while job hunting, there are still plenty that rely on the limitations of a résumé and references.

What is it? 

Social Engineering is defined in different ways by different groups of people, but it always boils down to this: Social Engineering is the process of using the human factor to bypass security measures and gain access to something that is otherwise safeguarded.

In your business you’ve probably got plenty of security measures that you think are safeguarding you from unauthorized access: key guards to get into the building, passwords to get on every computer, and user accounts limiting people to what they need access to. By and large, that are all effective means on a day to day basis. However:

• Do you (or your employees) hold open the front door with a smile for a repair or delivery man with his hands full?
• When an employee leaves your company, you disable their accounts. But for shared programs where you have a standard password (or password format that only varies slightly) are you changing those?
• If you scribble down sensitive information like a password, customer information, etc – what are you doing when you’re done with it? Are you just crumpling it and tossing it in the trash?
• When your employees walk away from their desks for a new cup of coffee (or worse leave at night), do they leave their computer on and unlocked?

An Example
All of these are open doors for trouble via social engineering. What kind of damage can someone with bad intent do if they have physical or technological access to your systems? If you search the web, you’ll find thousands of stories about specific scams and scenarios. Let me share with you one I have firsthand knowledge of:

A friend of mine used to work for a company that ships a fair amount of inventory. They had a modest warehouse and shipping dock, with just a handful of employees. The CEO, concerned about security, had a friend nobody had met before pull up to the warehouse door in a uniform carrying a few non-descript brown boxes. The staff on the loading dock held the door open for him and he walked right in. Further, he left his boxes in the warehouse and wandered down an inventory aisle, unquestioned. Before he left, he used the unlocked computer. Someone asked him if he needed anything – and the man simply replied “No thanks, [CEO’s Name] just asked me to do a few things for him.” He was then left alone and he used the computer to email himself all the companies account numbers with their suppliers, which had helpfully been posted next to the computer.

So by just walking in wearing a generic looking uniform with a few empty boxes, he could have done all sorts of damage, in broad daylight, with employees all around:

• What could have been in those boxes? Listening devices? Something more nefarious?
• What could he have done while alone in the inventory aisles? Fill his boxes with products and leave?
• Just by dropping the CEO’s name (which is usually as simple to get as calling the front desk in advance and asking for it) he was able to use the computer. What could someone do with your account numbers with your suppliers? What else could he have lifted off the network? He could have even installed software to trap peoples passwords as they enter them and have the passwords sent directly to him.

The point is this: the standard measures for security all rely on one critical piece to be effective: people.
By nature, your employees want to be helpful and courteous. But what are you doing to make sure that good nature isn’t being taken advantage of?

What can you do?
You will find plenty of companies out there that will audit you on a one time or regular basis. They have varying levels of sophistication and cost. Deciding if you need to go this far is someone dependant on you and your business. If your company is very large (larger companies are usually more attractive targets, in part because the process is made easier because everybody doesn’t know every employee) or deals in a lot of sensitive data – maybe it is.

What is clear is that every company needs to make their employees aware of the concept and regularly remind them to be vigilant. Some common sense tips to share with your employees:

• Don’t use a shared password or password format if it can be helped.
• If you do use some shared password or password format, be sure it is changed every time any employee leaves.
• Don’t hold the door open for anyone that you don’t recognize as an employee.
• If you write something down that could be informative to someone else, shred it.
• If you see something, anything, out of the ordinary – start asking questions and alert the right people within the company immediately.

I am proud to announce that LogicalSolutions.net has partnered with BackupSpace.com to offer a secure way to back up your important data off-site. BackupSpace is a Simple, Safe and Secure way to backup all your sensitive business and personal data.

To say I am passionate about backups and disaster recovery is an understatement; in 1997 my apartment fell victim to Arson and was destroyed. I lost years of e-mail and files that were on my computer. All my data, backed up on 100MB ZIP disks, was destroyed in the fire as well. It gets better - in 2002 my house in Atlanta flooded and my computer that sat on the floor was engulfed in water and ruined. All of my Digital pictures I had not backed up to DVD were gone. (Ironically, the same house is again underwater in Atlanta's flooding this last month.)

I hope you will share in my lesson learned without having to experience a data disaster on your own. Off-site backups are mandatory to prevent against Natural Disaster, Hard Drive Failure and Data Loss. BackupSpace allows for instant data restore, Nightly Backup notifications, Automated Scheduling, and file versioning. Your data is 256-Bit Encrypted and stored across multiple RAIDed drives in LogicalSolutions.net Enterprise Class Data Center. Try it out for you business or personal files today.

I caught up with an old friend and colleague yesterday and he reminded me of something I on occasion I lose sight of.  He reminded me that the creating and construction of a new web effort, for the smallest and the largest of businesses, is a very daunting undertaking for a client.  It is not like ordering out lunch, you cannot simply say you want a new web site and have someone deliver it.  No.  You commit to it, you don’t just buy it.

In many ways it is like building a house.  You need to pick out fixtures, approve designs, select materials and so much more to assure it serves the purpose you desire.  You must be equally involved when architecting and building your website. 

Another analogy for you business owners is that your web site construction should feel a little like you are building a second location for your company; your new “cyber square footage” if you will.  You want to pay attention to the details because you want your new location to be perfect, something to be proud of.  Again, the same approach comes with building a website.

I don’t highlight this to scare anyone off.  My goal is to point out that your site is vitally important to your business and when selecting a vendor and developing a web site your involvement and commitment are essential.  Yes, it can be daunting, but like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it.

The good news when beginning a web project is that no one is better equipped to set goals, understand expectations, anticipate your customer’s needs and extend your brand than you are.  Use all that intellectual property you have been saving up and build out a web site you can be proud of. 


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During the past few years, my work in the political realm has caused me to become a quasi-public figure.  Not what one would consider "famous," but publicly visible enough in a particular realm to know that there are certain things I should not do or say online.  If you do a Google search on my name and city (Syracuse), you will find enough information to realize that any bad behavior on my part would embarrass not just myself, but my company (LogicalSolutions.net), my Congressman (once upon a time I was his director of New Media), and even my President (I was the Central New York Coordinator for the Obama campaign and an elected delegate).

I mention this, not because others of you might have the same particular history (you probably don't), but because all of you nonetheless share the same situation, even if you are still young and in school, and even if you have never given a media interview.

With the recent explosion of social media, each of us needs to give some thought to the content of our online reputation, not just for the sake of those whom we represent now, but with an eye toward the people and groups we may aspire to represent some day.

I like to tell people that in order to gauge where your personal line should be on those items, you should think not of the immediate audience to whom you are speaking, but of the person whose respect you would most like to earn.  Then, think of how your online messages, photos and comments would appear to him or her.  In today’s world, he or she surely will have access to more of it than you might like to think.

Language
Are you using language online that you might be embarrassed about in front of that person or organization? 

Alcohol or Drugs 
Do you allow people to photograph you in situations in which you are, or appear to be impaired?  Many young people make this mistake, thinking that their friends are the only audience they need to care about.  Not true!  It is very hard to roll back years of circumstantial evidence that you might have a drug or alcohol problem. Employers and others are finding more ways every day to build a fuller picture of who you are.  Do you really want those beer-pong photos from college to be part of that picture?

Anger 
Do you express opinions online when angry that you might later wish you could take back?  Sleep on it first!  Ask yourself not, "is this justified with regard to the target of my unhappiness," but rather, "is this message, something I want associated with my name for a long time in the future?"  Your online messages often say more about you than they do about the object of your rant.

Build up the Positive
You may not be able to eliminate all the youthful indiscretions of your online past, (although it certainly does not hurt to politely ask someone to take down a particular photo), but you can begin to build a solid foundation for the future.  There is no time like the present to start putting out the kind of messages and information that you will still feel good about years in the future.  What are you passionate about, good at, altruistic about?  These are the elements of an online reputation that highlights what is best about you.  These are the kind of messages that you will never have to explain awkwardly to your children, employers, or anyone else important in your life.

Your reputation is one of your most valuable assets.  Protect it as if your future depends on it - it does!

If you have a business profile setup for your company on LinkedIn, there are some easy, and free ways to better utilize it.

1) Add Links in the Website Section
You can include up to three links to your website within your profile in the “Websites section”. Use this to add your homepage, and two other specific sections that are important and targeted, for example your blog page and news page. This way anyone viewing your profile will have easy access to your content.

2) Improve SEO.
When editing your profile, select “Edit Public Profile Settings”. From here, make sure it’s set to full view. Another easy tip when editing your profile is to utilize the custom URL option. Set it up so the naming matches your company. Google views LinkedIn as having a high PageRank, so having your links coming from LinkedIn effects your own ranking favorably.

3) Update Your LinkedIn Status Message
When editing your profile, there is a status message labeled with “What are you working on”. This let’s you post a small update at any time. It’s basically the same thing you can do with Twitter or Facebook, but within LinkedIn. Similarly, when an update is made, your connections are notified of an update to your profile (how depends on their personal settings). It also shows to anyone viewing your profile. LinkedIn is a different crowd than Twitter or Facebook, so make the updates less frequently and more ‘meaningful’, something that can last a couple days. Maybe do 2-3 per week.

4) Take advantage of Groups.  LinkedIn has groups just like the other social networks, but more geared towards professionals. If you’re into sales, there are sales related Groups. I’m in some PM groups. There are industry groups for whatever your business is involved in. Join these and participate! LinkedIn groups sometimes require you to apply and be approved, don’t let that intimidate you, more than likely you will be accepted. Many groups have thousands of members.

Once you make the cut, start getting involved in conversations and posting news. This allows you to post some links to your own relevant content. Groups have their own news sections as well, so you can add links & descriptions.

5) Add the ‘Blog Link’ Application
When editing your profile, you can find this within the applications section. “Blog Link” automatically pulls in and displays the latest blogs and Twitter updates from you and from others in your network and posts them on your profile. Again, it’s a great way to share updates from your other online venues, and it’s free.
Don’t be blatantly posting only advertisements or random stuff. Keep it relevant to the group, and keep it meaningful, or else you may be removed.

Video on the web has exploded. Hosting it, posting it, and viewing it is no longer a problem. The problem now is, “How can I create my own videos that are effective tools for my business?” While hiring a professional video company to produce, shoot and format your video may be optimal, it’s not often a realistic option when it comes to budgets. For anyone interested in learning more about how to create effective videos for the web, here is a great new tool to consider: http://webwarriortools.com/ebook/making-web-video-that-sells

Once it’s created, LogicalSolutions.net offers our clients a great way to store, organize, create playlists and display video on websites we develop for them with LogicalSolutions.TV. For a great example of how one of our clients is using video to sell their products check out: http://www.leki.com/trekking/   . The juxtaposition of video demonstration next to product details and the immediate option to buy is an outstanding use of video on the web. It creates a level of customer confidence unmatched by static spec sheets or instructions.

For a fun example of video check out: http://www.geneseebeer.com/Museum/TV/  . Genesee Beer is giving their fans the chance to view great old commercials to reinforce their brand connection and they’re doing in a way that supports the complete brand message.

Go beyond the expected “Welcome Video” and get creative with the way you use video to not only inform or entertain your customers and clients, but to Sell More!

Many people do not know that Google Maps allows you to control the map listing for your business.  You can claim your company, move the map marker to exactly the right location, and list a range of information, including category of business, phone number, hours of operation, a link to your website, description, and up to 10 photos.  It even lets you create a free online coupon.

http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Make sure your company and website are on the map!

If you want to be good at something you have to always work on the fundamentals.  Otherwise you get sloppy.  The foundation of the skill set weakens.  So I held a workshop on “The Customer Experience” for those here at Logicalsolutions.net that interface most with our customers.  One of the exercises was focused on creating tone and personality in emails.
Why is the important?  Email is a cold, lonely, black and white, unforgiving vehicle for human interaction.  There is no nuance, no sincerity, and no connection.  If you want to convey some feeling you must be thinking about it with the creation of every email.
Here is a simple email from a consultant to a customer asking for some needed information in order to schedule a meeting the following week.

James,
I sent you the concept questionnaire on Monday.  If you could please fill that out and return it to me ASAP we can schedule that concept meeting for next week.

That seems like a fine email right?  It is polite, clear and has a call to action.  However, it is cold and frankly, a bit bossy.  Also, it’s all about what you need.  And in the words of my best girl: “It’s not all about you.”  Try this:

Good morning James,
Hope your week is going well.  I know you wanted to get that concept meeting scheduled for next week.  We would love to schedule that once we get the questionnaire back I sent over on Monday.  If you need me to send it again or you have questions, just let me know.
Thanks so much.

Looking forwrad,
Terry

This is the same meaning but with some personality.  It never hurts to say good morning or good afternoon.  The concept meeting is something the customer wants to have happen, not just me.  I told him when I sent it so if he forgot about it he can easily look for it and even offered to send it again if needed.  This one has a cooperative tone and a helpful feel to it.

Try to add some tone into your email and even the simplest communication can help build bonds.