Social media can be a great way for your business to both expand and build as well as solidify your brand, which can in turn bring in more customers. While there are numerous services out there, many companies focus on Facebook and Twitter, when they should also be focusing on the main business related social media service: LinkedIn.

Here’s four reasons why your business should have a presence on LinkedIn.

1. You have more than 1 employee. With a company profile, you can pick how many people work in your organization, and many small businesses pick 1-10 or 11-50. In these two categories there are over 1.5 million businesses with accounts. Lots right? Add into this the ability to filter companies by industry, location and relationship and you have a powerful search tool that can help you stand out locally.
2. You want to connect with your peers. Facebook is a great tool for connecting with nearly everybody, while LinkedIn is better for connecting to your colleagues and peers who are constantly sharing topical information and discussions that could be of great use when you’re stuck, or need advice.
3. You are hiring. LinkedIn is also one of the best job boards for mid-level and higher professionals. If you have a job opening, you can post it on the site and people connected to you and your friends can be recommended for the job. You can also target the posting at professionals who you want to apply, no more having to wade through unqualified candidates.
4. You don’t want to deal with games/links to cat videos/senseless sharing. LinkedIn is a professional network, as such, there aren’t many time wasting features. If you haven’t bought into, or are tired of notifications about games or other activities, LinkedIn is a great alternative. Just be warned, you won’t connect with your customers on a close basis like you can with other networks.

If you feel it’s time to get on to LinkedIn and would like to know more about the process, please contact us.

Marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs can be a tough nut to crack. You’re often competing against larger companies with budgets that probably rival your yearly net profits. There is one medium however which small businesses can employ to gain a foot up, or at the very least, compete on an equal footing, and that is through social media.

Using social media to advertise or sell products and services, commonly called ‘social selling’, should be an integral part of your marketing and sales promotions. Here are five reasons why your sales force should be social.

1. Cost effective. Of the main marketing and sales pipelines, social media is by-far the most cost effective way to connect with people and build a solid marketing funnel.
2. Level playing field. The best thing about social media is that there’s no size requirement. One man companies can benefit in exactly the same way as multinational corporations. With a well crafted and executed plan, you could see your company achieve Internet fame and increased revenue as a result.
3. Less investment of time. Marketing and sales is a full time job, and using a website or other technical mediums requires the time of other departments as well. With social media, sales people can run campaigns themselves thereby reducing the demands on other departments.
4. Highly trackable. Social networks like Facebook and Google+ have built in analytics making it easy to track nearly anything related to social media sales. If a mistake is made changes can be made quickly and results will show instantly.
5. Drives loyalty and brand presence. With successful social media interactions, customers will often be more loyal as they feel a connection with the brand and will be less willing to change to buy from other companies. Social media also gives customers a chance to truly let you know how they feel, and other customers can see this. Visible comments are one of the most effective ways to build brand identity.

Using social media to conduct social selling is a great way for small businesses to not only grow their business but also market their brand. If you’re not using social media in your company, or would like to know more about how social media can help your business grow, please contact us.

Business owners and managers have many concerns they must address on a regular basis, or at least be aware of. Some of security concerns revolve around fraud, more specifically email fraud. While this isn't a new concept, email fraud and scam occurrences are on the rise, and it is vital to know how to spot them.

Here's five tips to help you spot email frauds or scams.

Look at the email address One of the easiest ways to spot a fraudulent email or scam is by looking at the email address of the sender. Many credit card application scams use third party email services like Gmail or Yahoo. Some scammers go so far as to set up accounts in the name of the company e.g., AMEX_121@gmail.com.

Sophisticated scammers will actually try to copy the legitimate company's email account - a practice called spoofing. They will usually have a few changes like a missing letter from the address, or an extra . added.

The easiest thing you can do is look for the sender's site on the Internet. For example: You get an email from AMEX OPEN (American Express's small business credit card) and notice that the sender's email address just doesn't look right. Go to Google and search for amex fraud. You'll likely find the fraud page which tells you exactly how the company sends emails. If the sender is a smaller company, most of these will have email contact addresses right on the site, take a look and compare the two. If they are different, the email is likely a scam.

Look at the sender's website If you think an email is fraudulent, try looking up the website associated with the sender. Should you be unable to find the site, it's likely a scam.

If you find a website, click through some pages to see if there is anything that looks out of place. For example a website selling a new financial service has pages with Coming Soon or you get errors when you try to load the page. If it looks fishy, it likely is - delete the email.

It would also be a good idea to go to archive.org's Wayback Machine, copy and paste the website's URL into the The Wayback Machine Search bar and hit Take me back. This will bring up previous versions of the website. If you see that the site in question was something completely different a few months to a year ago (e.g., it is a financial services page now, but six months ago it was a page selling prescription drugs), chances are high it's a fraud.

Call them Many scammers will put phone numbers into emails to make them look more legitimate. If you are unsure about whether this email is legitimate or not, why not try calling the number? Many scammers run more than one fraud operating at the same time and may answer the phone with another name, or not at all.

Similarly, if you call a local number of a supposedly small business and get routed directly to voicemail, it's likely fraud.

Look carefully at the body of the message The body of the email can also be a great way to suss out email scammers and potential fraud. Because many fraudulent emails originate outside of the major English speaking countries, there will often be language that just sounds different from the way people write in your area. One great example of this would be a line like 'We wish to sell you a great product.'

You should also look for spelling errors, grammar mistakes or inconsistencies. While some fraudulent emails will have minor spelling inconsistencies, others will spell common words wrong. If you see mistakes like 'our product are a great deals', this should raise a warning flag.

Spelling and grammar errors are a part of business communication, so don't expect a perfect email from all companies, especially if you see that the company is located overseas. It's the emails with mistakes supposedly coming from companies in your area that should really raise alarm.

The sender asks for money or passwords It's kind of an unwritten rule that when sending out emails you never ask for a person's credit card number or account passwords. Banks, large companies and many social networks will never ask you for passwords or account information, credit card numbers, pin codes, etc of any kind over email. If you notice that an email selling something asks for you to reply with a credit card details so you can make a purchase, it's best to delete the email as it's likely a fraud.

Email fraud is a big deal, and unfortunately it will likely become even more common in the near future. This means you should be able to spot potentially fraudulent emails. If you think an email is a scam, it's best to just delete it immediately. Don't respond or forward it to colleagues or employees. If you need to let people know, write another email that describes the suspected email but has no links. You can also forward a screenshot to your colleagues or friends to illustrate the scam.

Looking for more ways you can protect your company? Contact us today. We can work with you to develop a security system that will meet your needs.

It can be argued what the most important invention of the last 100 years has been, but many would agree that the computer has to be among the top. These complex machines helped usher in the information age. Unfortunately, they come with a downside: Destructive malware such as viruses have become a major problem for businesses because viruses have been built up to such mythical proportions that many users simply don't know fact from fiction.

Here are five common myths about viruses that confuse people, and the truths associated with them. Before we delve deeper it would be a good idea to explain what a virus is.

A virus is a computer program that infects a computer and can generally copy itself and infect other computers. Most viruses aim to cause havoc by either deleting important files or rendering a computer inoperable. Most viruses have to be installed by the user, and usually come hidden as programs, browser plugins, etc.

You may hear the term malware used interchangeably with virus. Malware is short for malicious software and is more of an umbrella term that covers any software that aims to cause harm. A virus is simply a type of malware.

Myth 1: Error messages = virus A common thought many have when their computer shows an error message is that they must have a virus. In truth, bugs in the software, a faulty hard drive, memory or even issues with your virus scanner are more likely the cause. The same goes with if your computer crashes, it likely could be because of something other than a virus.

When you do see error messages, or your computer crashes while trying to run a program or open a file, you should scan for viruses, just to rule it out.

Myth 2: Computers can infect themselves It's not uncommon to have clients bring their computers to a techie exclaiming that a virus has magically appeared on the system all by itself. Despite what some may believe, viruses cannot infect computers by themselves. Users have to physically open an infected program, or visit a site that hosts the virus and download it.

To minimize the chance of being infected you should steer clear of any adult oriented sites - they are often loaded with viruses, torrent sites, etc. A good rule of thumb is: If the site has illegal or 'adult' content, it likely has viruses that can and will infect your system if visited, or files downloaded from there.

Myth 3: Only PCs can get viruses If you read the news, you likely know that many of the big viruses and malware infect mostly systems running Windows. This has led users to believe that other systems like Apple's OS X are virus free.

The truth of the matter is: All systems could be infected by a virus, it's just that the vast majority of them are written to target Windows machines. This is because most computers run Windows. That being said, there is an increasing number of threats to OS X and Linux, as these systems are becoming more popular. If this trend keeps up, we will see an exponential rise in the number of viruses infecting these systems.

Myth 4: If I reinstall Windows and copy all my old files over, I'll be ok Some believe that if their system has been infected, they can simply copy their files onto a hard drive, or backup solution, reinstall Windows and then copy their files back and the virus will be gone.

To be honest, wiping your hard drive and reinstalling Windows will normally get rid of any viruses. However, if the virus is in the files you backed up, your computer will be infected when you move the files back and open them. The key here is that if your system is infected, you need to scan the files and remove the virus before you put them back onto your system.

Myth 5: Firewalls protect networks from viruses Windows comes with a firewall built into the OS, and many users have been somewhat misled as to what it actually does, and that firewalls can protect from viruses. That's actually a half truth. Firewalls are actually for network traffic, their main job is to keep networks and computers connected to the network secure; they don't scan for viruses.

Where they could help is if a virus is sending data to a computer outside of your network. In theory, a firewall will pick up this traffic and alert you to it, or stop the flow of data outright. Some of the bigger viruses actually turn off the firewall, rendering your whole network open to malware attacks.

What can I do? There are many things you can do to minimize the chances of infection. The most important is to install a virus scanner on all of your systems, keep it up to date and run it regularly. But a defensive strategy like this isn't enough, you need to be proactive by:

• Not installing programs from sources you don't know or trust
• Being weary of any program that asks you for your password
• Not installing any browser add-ons or plugins suggested by websites. Instead, download them from the browser's app store, or the developer's website.

If you are worried about the security of your systems and network, call us today. Our team of security experts can work with you to provide a plan that will meet your needs.

One of the more popular debates about the Internet is who exactly owns your data and information when it goes online? Most of the information regarding this is held in the Terms of Service, which most people click and agree to without reading. The interesting thing about this is that web oriented companies usually update their policies on regular basis and often introduce changes you may not be aware of. With so many websites, it can be a chore to keep track of all these changes, luckily there is an online database that makes this easy.

Terms of Service for websites change on a fairly regular basis, and many of us simply have no way of knowing if and when such changes have been made, and what exactly has been changed. That's why a group of lawyers and professionals started Docracy. According to the website, "Docracy is a home for contracts and other legal documents, socially curated by the communities that use them." The company aims to make legal documents freely available.

Part of this site is the Terms of Service section which is a database of over 1,000 popular websites' Terms of Service and Privacy policies. It tracks them and notes when changes are made, and highlights these changes so they are easily found.

If you visit the site here, you can see a list of changes that companies have recently made, and clicking on one should give you basic change information. Clicking on See Full Changes will bring up the full doc with the recent changes highlighted.

Selecting See Full Directory will bring up every policy that the website tracks, and allow you to read them.

Is this useful for my business? Online law is very complicated, and many companies that run websites that you may have accounts with often don't make it easy for you to find legal contracts or policies. A good example of where Docracy is helpful is if you want to know who exactly owns your content stored on a popular cloud service. You can go to Docracy's database and quickly find the related Terms of Service. From there you can download the document and look through it, or view it on the site.

Basically this site can help you get a clearer picture on the various contracts you sign with websites, and how these websites plan to use your data. For many business owners, knowing exactly what other companies are going to do with your data can help you find a more secure solution. After all, being prepared with the correct knowledge is half the battle.

If you would like to learn more about Docracy, or how a change to a Terms of Service could affect your business please contact us today.

Think of the everyday usual precautions you take. When you get into a car, you put on your seatbelt; when you leave the house, you lock the door, the list goes on and on. Yet, when it comes to online security, most people are content with a virus scanner, and do little about securing their personal data stored online. Why is this? If a grocery store clerk asks for your home address and phone number, you'd likely ask why they need it. Online however, we usually provide it without a second thought. Instead, we should be proactive taking steps to protect our personal information.

Here's three things you can do to help secure your personal data shared online.

1. Realize your online actions are risky Read any tech related blog, or even syndicated news articles and it's not hard to see that identity theft and cybercrime in general is not only serious, but on the rise. Let's face it, our online actions are risky. As with any plan, the first step is realizing that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. The first step is to educate yourself about online security, what steps you should take, and what exactly it is.

For example, here's a great article written in the middle of February about how different age groups react to Facebook changes, and if they take steps to minimize who can view their personal data. It's kind of interesting to see that the younger generations take more steps to secure their profiles than their parents, yet you still see people with reputation damaging pictures that can be viewed by anyone.

2. Take matters into your own hands Many people already know their personal information online is at risk, but there are further things you should do to minimize any dangers:

1. Don't rely on websites to keep you secure - Websites like Facebook are companies. They exist to make money. How do they do it? Often by selling information you have given them access to. That's not saying site owners don't look out for their customers' best interests - many do. What you need to do though is look at all the sites you have accounts with and ensure your information is secure to the level you are happy with.
2. Provide the least amount of information possible - Think about the last time you joined a social network, or mailing list. You likely were asked to provide your name, address, birthday, etc. Did you know that you don't have to provide all the information requested? Most sites only require your name and birthday, the rest is optional - usually used to provide better service or targeted ads. Many sites will put an asterisk beside required information to let you know that you have to supply this.
3. Think twice before signing up - It's a good idea when signing up for a new account to think twice. Do you really need this account? Or can you get by without it?
4. Use separate email accounts and passwords - Setting up different email accounts is a good idea. One should be for personal use, so the address is given only to people you know. Another could be for all of your online accounts, with a final one strictly for password recovery. It would be best to make the addresses as different as possible. Beyond that you should have separate passwords for each account and every service. This will limit hackers from being able to gain access to multiple accounts.
5. Secure your browsing - Almost every website that asks users to sign up for accounts offers a secure version of the site. Enter https://www. before the site address, e.g., https://www.facebook.com. https is a secure communications protocol that ensures one is communicating directly with the website - you're actually looking at Facebook, not a phishing site designed to steal passwords.

3. Encourage others to think It's not enough to just take action yourself. Encouraging colleagues, friends and family to also take steps to protect their online information and identities, is worthwhile. There are many great ways to help spread the word about safety, including the National Cyber Security website, which has information on Internet related security. Check it out, and share it!

If you would like to learn about how we can help you keep your information and data safe online, please contact us today for a comprehensive solution!

It seems that there is a security threat or leak in the news almost every week. The majority of these leaks tend to revolve around account information and passwords being stolen and released on the Internet for anyone to view. In truth, most of the passwords released are secure, but not 100% secure. Anyone with a powerful enough computer and the right tools can crack almost any security measure. The only thing you can really do is come up with strong passwords.

If you want to minimize the chances of your password being hacked, here are five things you should NOT do.

1. Don't pick short passwords

While short passwords are easier to remember, they are also easier and quicker to hack. The most common way to hack passwords is by using brute force: Developing a list of every possible password, then trying this list with a username.

Using a mid-range computer like the one many have on their desk, with a normal Internet connection, you can develop a list of all potential passwords astonishingly quickly. For example it would take 11.9 seconds to generate a list of all possible passwords using five lowercase characters (a,b,c,d,etc.) only. It will take about 2.15 hours to develop a list of all possible passwords using five of any computer character. Once a hacker has the list, they just have to try every potential password with your user name.

On the other hand, a list of all 8 character passwords with at least one special character (!,@,%,etc.) and one capital letter would take this computer 2.14 centuries to develop. In other words, the longer the password, the harder it will be to hack. That being said, longer passwords aren't impossible to hack, they just take more time. So, most hackers will usually go after the shorter passwords first.

2. Don't use the same password

The way most hackers work is that they assume users have the same password for different accounts. If they can get one password, it's as simple as looking through that account's information for any related accounts and trying the original password with the other accounts. If one of these happens to be your email where you have kept bank information, you will likely see your bank account drained.

It's therefore important to use a different password for every online account. They key here is to try and use a password that's as different as possible. Don't just add a number or character onto the end of a word. If you have trouble remembering all of your passwords, try using a password manager like LastPass.

3. Don't use words from the dictionary or all numbers

This article published last year on ZDnet highlights the 25 most popular passwords. Notice that more than 15 contain words from the dictionary, and most of the rest are strings of common numbers. To have a secure password, most security experts agree that you should not use words from the dictionary or number combinations that are beside each other (e.g., 1234).

4. Don't use standard number substitutions

Some users have passwords where they replace letters with a number that looks similar, for example: h31lo (hello). Most new password hacking tools actually have combinations like this built in and will try a normal word, followed by replacing letters with similar numbers. It’s best to avoid this.

5. Don't use available information as a password

What we mean by this is using information that can be easily found on the Internet. For example, doing a quick search for your name will likely return your email address and social media profiles. If you have pictures of your kids, spouse, pets, family, their dates of birth, etc. on your Facebook profile and have put their names in captions, it's possible for a hacker to see this (assuming the pictures are shared with the public).

You can bet that they will try these names as your password. You would be surprised with the amount of personal information on the web. We suggest searching for yourself using your email address(s), social media profile names, etc. and seeing what information can be found. If your passwords are close to what you find, it would be a good idea to change them immediately.

There are numerous things you can do to minimize the chance that your passwords are stolen and accounts hacked.

 

Email is among the most important tools at a manager's disposal; it's often the main form of communication with suppliers, employees, customers, etc. With the smartphone, you can now take your email with you and be in near constant contact. If you have an iPhone and use the Mail app, you may have noticed that email attachments are a bit different from other apps.

Below is a brief overview of how iPhone's Mail app's attachments work.

How to open an attachment If you get an email with an attachment, open the message and scroll down to the bottom of the message. You will see the name of the attachment along with the file type and size. If you tap on it, your phone should open it in a new window. You can then zoom in/out and scroll around.

Some attachments can be downloaded by tapping and holding on the attachment. After about a second, a pop-up menu will show, and you should be able to select to save it. Instead of saving the attachment, you can also choose to open it using other apps.

Why won't some attachments open? There may be a time where you get an email with an attachment that can't be opened. You will still be able to see it in the email, but you won't be able to tap on it. This is because the Mail app doesn't support all file and document types.

Don't worry if you can't open an attachment as chances are there's an app in the App store that will open it. The easiest thing to do is look at the file type of the attachment, which is usually indicated by a three letter code at the end of the file name. For example, a Word document will be FILENAME.doc or FILENAME.docx. A quick Internet search for something like, 'iPhone app that can open .ddd' will usually return results with an app that can open your file.

Once you download the app, try pressing and holding on the attachment in Mail and selecting Open in... from the pop-up menu. Look for the app you downloaded and tap on it.

How to add an attachment to emails You can add an attachment to an email by pressing and holding on the body section of a new email. A pop-up menu should come up, if you scroll left you should see the Select/Paste option. Tapping on this will allow you to select either a photo, video or message which you can attach to the email. Unfortunately, there isn't much else you can attach, so if you need to attach a document or other file type, you would be better off doing so on your computer.

If you would like to learn more about the iPhone and how it can help you, please contact us today.

Winston Churchill once said, "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." This saying is something almost every company in the tech industry takes to heart. There are very few products that stay the same, software included. Because of this rapid pace of change, there will come a time when older software is no longer supported. Microsoft has made a recent announcement that businesses should be aware of.

For businesses running Office 2003 or Microsoft XP SP3, you need to be aware that Microsoft has announced that they will stop supporting these products on April 8, 2014. This could have far reaching consequences for businesses that use these platforms.

What does this mean for my business? When a company like Microsoft says they will 'stop supporting' what they mean is that they will usually stop providing updates, paid support, security updates and maybe even online based support.

The biggest problem with a move like this hinges on security. If a hacker finds a security exploit on an older system that a developer has stopped supporting, your systems could be open to attack. Beyond that, if you have paid for support, you will no longer have it if the software stops working. These two reasons alone will eventually lead to higher IT costs.

When it comes to programs like Office and XP, there is another downside to this withdrawal of support: It is highly likely that future versions of the software will be incompatible with what you are running. This means you likely won't be able to open newer versions of Office documents, which could create problems especially if you have clients who use newer versions; you won't be able to read/edit the documents. What can we do? The easiest thing to do is to upgrade your software. This may be easier said than done, especially if you have a tighter budget. Luckily, you have more or less one year to upgrade, and in this modern age you have more than one way to update. Possibly the best is to work with an IT partner who can help develop a solution that will fit your business and budget.

If you're still using Office 2003 or XP SP3 in your office, contact us today to see how we can help.

It's pretty safe to say that Microsoft Office and Office 365 are the most popular office productivity programs. A word processing document is simply called a Word document and most presentations are simply known as PowerPoints. While these programs are useful, there are so many features that often go unused. For example, did you know that you can create a PowerPoint presentation from Word?

Here's how to use Word to create a PowerPoint presentation.

How does this work?

The idea here is to use Word to establish the outline and basic text of a PowerPoint presentation. This outline can then be opened in PowerPoint and converted into slides. The way the program does this is through the use of heading styles in Word. Assigning a different heading style (we'll explain how below) will create the outline of your presentation. For example, Heading 1 will be the title of each slide, while Heading 2 becomes the text.

There are two ways you can create an outline. Here's both:

Using Outline view

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Click on View in the menu bar and select Outline.
3. Type your outline - enter the title of each slide, hit Enter to create a new entry. You can also enter the text in the slide under each title.
4. Select each line and hit either Promote or Demote (they look like the indent text buttons, and are located in the Outline menu bar).
5. Click on File and Save As when you have finished the outline.
6. Name the file and under the Format section select Rich Text Format (.rtf). You can also just save the document as a normal Word File, but saving as a .rtf file will ensure that PowerPoint can read the outline properly.

Using Heading styles

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Enter your outline. The best way to do this is to enter the slide title, hit enter and insert the body/bullet points. Don't leave empty spaces as these may be read as empty slides.
3. Highlight the first title and look at the main ribbon for the Styles section. Press the down arrow beside the box that says body and select Heading 1.
4. Highlight the related body text (if any) and press Heading 2. This should be just below the Heading 1 option above.
5. Repeat for the rest of the slides.
6. Click on File and Save As when you have finished the outline.
7. Name the file and under the Format section select Rich Text Format (.rtf). You can also just save the document as a normal Word File, but saving as a .rtf file will ensure that PowerPoint can read the outline properly.

Creating the presentation

When you are ready to create the presentation you can:

1. Open a new PowerPoint presentation.
2. Create the title slide and in the navigation bar (left side of the window), click on it.
3. Click on the gray arrow beside New Slide which is located in the Home bar, under the Slides section.
4. Select Insert Slides from Outline.
5. Locate the outline file you saved and double click on it.

The slides should automatically be created below the title slide. If you didn't apply any formatting to the text, it will likely show up in a slide on the left-hand side with no spacing. You will have to go in and edit it.

By creating an outline in Word first, you can cut down the time needed to format and edit slides in PowerPoint. Of course you will have to edit the slides and add color, themes, images, etc. But, this should help you create more professional presentations.

If you are looking for more tips on PowerPoint, Word or any of the other Office programs please contact us today.