LinkedIn and Branding: Build Your Personal Brand 101

It is no doubt that personal brand is very important to job seekers. One of the most effective ways to sell YOU to potential employees is to build an impressive online personal brand on a social network. However, each social media tool has different targets; for example, Facebook may be great for graduate students, and Twitter is good for media recruitment. In contrast, LinkedIn generally is the best choice for anyone who is searching for a job. Currently, most recruiters and HR departments are searching their candidates through 225 million LinkedIn accounts.


 
“LinkedIn is not just a virtual resume that should be tucked away for a rainy day. Instead, it acts as a resume, cover letter, references document, database of your contacts throughout your life and a place where you can learn, share and interact in a professional manner.”




Following are 2 very first steps to build an impressive brand on LinkedIn.

1. BRAND YOUR PROFILE

Let think that LinkedIn is an incredible asset to your entire career, so we have to make it perfectly errors free. The more you keep your LinkedIn profile professional, the more you can sell YOU to all people in the network. A professional profile is likely to attract all potential employees.

Below are some important things to brand a profile:

• Custom URL: A "http://linkedin.com/in/yourfullname” is an easy way to find you in the network.

• Picture: Your picture should be professional to reflect your brand. In fact, you get 30% more clicks if your file has a picture.

• Headline: It should display your desired job or the last job.

• Summary: A brief summary, which is about your work experiences, unique abilities, awards and career aspirations is most important in the profile

• Keywords: It is good to add as much as you can to get found easily.

• Applications: You put your blog here because it is good if people know more about you.

• Recommendations: Significant recommendations that are from people in your trusted the network is a plus for the profile.

2. DEVELOP YOUR NETWORK

Your career opportunities depend on how big your professional trusted network. Because LinkedIn is a network of people, any contact you add will help you link to their contacts. So, you should add all your friends as contacts in order to link to their contacts.

Below are things you should do to develop your network:

• Be open and available: It helps on accepting the contact requests.

• Leave an email address: It is the only way to communicate with other friends.

• Promote your URL: You should let people know your works, experiences, or even your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

As long as you keep your LinkedIn profile updated, you will have a great chance to get hired.


References:

1. How To Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn [21 Useful Tips] 
http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/how-build-your-personal-brand-linkedin-21-useful-tips/

2. HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn 
http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/linkedin-personal-brand/

QR Codes and 2 Common Issues of Security Risks

Generally, all we know about QR codes are encoded messages that contain information such as URL, phone number, text, or even a Wi-Fi access password. This information can be used to market a business or to provide further information about the company’s products and services. A tool such as QR codes scanner, or a smartphone QR codes scanner application can easily decode it. However, scammers might use these QR codes to redirect users to websites, which may contain viruses or malwares, via malicious links. From here, incautious users may become cyber-attack victims when scanning untrusted QR codes.

In this post, I will discuss about 2 common issues of security risks and solutions to avoid when using QR codes.

1. Shortened URL in QR code is really dangerous:

SHORTENED URLS COULD BE MALICIOUS LINKS. Currently, most URLs in QR codes are decoded as shortened URL version because it is easier to save a short, simple URL than a long, complex one. For instance, tinyrul.com, bit.ly and goo.gl are some URL shortening services to help convert any long, complex URL to a shortened version.

For example:

This is my full blog address: http://quangpham-cs100w.blogspot.com,
and its shortened URL is http://goo.gl/1JtEKN  







 
A website's link that may contain viruses or malwares: http://scammers.com,
and its shortened URL is http://goo.gl/qEKd6Y

Are you able to see if the two shortened URLs above lead us to trusted websites? When we click to those shortened URLs to get access to webpages, we cannot know if the sites are viruses or malwares free or not. Are there any solutions for this problem?

YES! WE SHOULD PREVIEW THE SHORTENED URLS BEFORE USING THEM. Several website tools help us to get a full URL address from the shortened URL. In addition, some URL shortening services, such as goo.gl, give us an option to preview the shortened URL first by add a “+” at the end of the URL. 

As I type in “http://goo.gl/qEKd6Y+”, the preview page will show full address “http://scammers.com” in order to let us know if it is a trusted destination.

2. Scanning randomly malicious QR codes is an easy way to get attacked from scammers:

STAY AWAY FROM MALICIOUS QR CODES! Scanning QR codes in the form of stickers placed randomly on the street's walls is most dangerous. It is a very common way that scammers use to get people scan the code just because of curiosity. Reports say, “46% just said they were curious what this odd little jumbled cube could do.” So, we should not scan any QR codes that are not from trusted sources. 

A malicious QR code on the street.

LOOK CLOSELY TO A QR CODE BEFORE DO ANYTHING ELSE! Another way to avoid getting hacked is to know if QR codes are legit codes or under a form of adhered stickers over other ones. Most trusted companies will market their products and services by publishing their posters in public areas. Usually, all QR codes are printed directly on these posters. However, scammers may produce malicious QR codes as stickers and adhere them onto legitimate ones.

QR Codes Sticker can be use to adhere on original one

There is no double that QR codes are on the upswing. In a near future, we may start to see more intuitive ways of deceiving people via QR codes. However, the two essential issues above are most common ways to attack users when incautiously scanning QR codes. So, everyone should be careful with those little black-and-white squares.

References:  

1. A General Introduction about QR Codes:
http://www.socialquickstarter.com/content/93-introduction_to_qr_codes  

2. QR Codes Privacy and Security Risks:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45729377/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/how-qr-codes-hide-privacy-security-risks/     

3. Be Wary When Scanning QR Codes:
http://gcn.com/articles/2011/09/13/qr-code-vulnerabilities.aspx

Social networking and the lack of when promoting a company brand

Currently, in the Web 2.0, most of the social networking sites increase their services to attract people to stop by every day. For example, Facebook, Goolge Plus, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedln are the top social networking sites that help connecting people to people, finding jobs or even promoting a start-up business. Users can benefit from these powerful online tools a lot if they know how to use them correctly for their specific purposes. However, safety is always a first concern to everyone when using social media tools to expose themselves to the public.

Top famous sites of social media networking

Nowadays, most of the organizations use social media to promote their brands, create a positive image of the companies, advertise their new products, and connect directly to their consumer.  In comparing to traditional ways, it is cheap and more effective just by maintaining their presence on most famous social media sites. In this post, I will discuss the lack of when promoting a brand in social media.

1. Maintaining a good company reputation is most important in social networking.

Most companies build their social media site as a customer base to communicate with consumers, to provide feedback to improve their products. However, potential risk is lacked of communication policy. For example, most of the big companies have a Facebook page with a long list “friended” of their employees in the account. Assuming one of these employees' comments on the site that is inaccurate and unrepresentative information could damage the company image. The inappropriate activities of employees at the company social media sites are bad to company reputation. As a best solution to this problem is a proper training to all employees who may say or represent as company’s voice in the social media website.

A whopping 74% of your employees agree that their social media antics 

could damage your company’s reputation

2. Social engineering training must be good enough to avoid security threads.

For hackers, the best way to attack a company is to through its employees. For instance, any follower of a company Facebook's site can post a giveaway product, which is under a survey link to the site. The post may attract the site’s viewer, including company’s employees. When these employees click to the survey link, they may be asked for employee ID, username and password to join the reward program. From here, these input data could provide information to hack the company network. Although this kind of Internet scam is not effective like before, there is still a lot success cases in this type of hacking. So, managing best social engineering is the must for all companies nowadays.

Over 300 sites compromised by New Apple ID Phishing Effort by using host fake login pages, which are linked to in emails sent out in an attempt to trick unsuspecting Apple users.

 

3. Carefulness in protecting intellectual property and confidentiality is important.

When building a company social media page like Facebook and LinkedIn, the communication to competitive companies within the community cannot be avoided. The exposed data such as marketing strategies, rate of sales, new products could be a big thread for company future. To protect the confidential data from other competitors, the policy of data protection should be given clearly to employees who may recklessly share to the outside world.

The NetWitness/Ponemon survey reveals that 44% of corporate intrusions

result in the loss of “confidential or sensitive information,” while 45% of

attacks lead to “theft of intellectual property.”

 

The growth of brand marketing in social media networking is non-stop nowadays. Thus, many organizations are reluctant to adopt this kind of marketing without proper protection. The most important goals are to detect the weaknesses of social engineering, policy in protection of intellectual property and confidentiality. At the end, the company's reputation is the most valuable property to a company.

For more information, you can look at some valuable link about this topic:

1) Brand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand

2) Media risks: http://mcgladrey.com/Perspective/Three-steps-to-assessing-and-managing-social-media-risks