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Collecting Data Through Your Mobile Browsing: Ethical?

It interesting to see that many people download apps on their phone but rarely glace at the provisions for doing so. Are you one of them?

Mobile service providers collect your internet browsing data to develop a file of search history and purchase behaviors. WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION. Unethical? Yes. But are we totally doomed from it all? 

Improper use of your personal information can actually affect you and may even cost you money. Malicious Software and Viruses can take control of your phone and download harmful content to collect personal information such as your financials. With the world today and its exponential growth, its become increasing difficult for companies to compete in a market with pressures of globalization. Not to mention competitors playing in your market from overseas. Unauthorized collection of your mobile search data will provide analysts with your search patterns and everyone else’s to give advertisers a better shot at reaching you. It becomes a problem when monitoring goes beyond looking at patterns and becomes watching you with a magnifying glass. 

If it means getting exactly what you want when you need it, collection of our data made our lives easier and can prove to be beneficial to creating better products. But by making the effort to increase your privacy protection, you can better equip yourself for the changing future ahead.

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How to Travel Light With Everything You'll Need

So you love to travel but sometimes carrying around the extra added weight from things you need can be annoying and tiresome..Fortunately, we have a solution that can hopefully solve all these inconveniences for you. 1st and only step: BRING AN IPHONE 6 - this will pretty much be the only thing you’ll need, trust me. With the iPhone 6 you  can capture panoramic view of the scenery which allows you to have full view of those special moments

Overall, the iPhone 6 has an amazing camera. Therefore, you have no need to carry around a DSLR and HDVR in order to take nice pics and vids. That saves you time and reduces the amount of things you need to carry. Makes taking quick snaps of your delicious and healthy lunch a breeze!

 While you out adventuring, you can be sure that you'll never get lost with the Mapped Picture Feature.

This feature of the phone lets you know where you took the picture.Whether capturing and remembering a moment or simply needing to back track your steps, you can be sure that while your on vacay that'll keep you safe.

And finally, this built in feature allows you to locate your phone if it happens to get lost. We know how important your phone is to you, and so does Apple Inc. You can e sure that if for some reason it isn't with you, you'll know where to find it.

Now that you've see what it can do, how confident are you travelling with one? The iPhone 6 eliminated about 20lbs. of baggage and added extra security features not just to your phone, but to you.

Pick yours up today at your local retailer. See stores for details.

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Social Media Dashboards that Help you Manage Multiple Social Media Accounts

Some people wonder, “How do people keep up with all these different types of social media accounts? How can they possibly find the time to post and respond to everything?”

The individuals in social media management can easily find ways to fill up their time but to an average person this can seem like an impossible task. It can be very time consuming and at times exhausting trying to find the time to catch up with the world.

So how can you become just as efficient? The solution is Social Media Dashboards.

Social media dashboards are a program that allows you to view and manage different types of social media profiles from one platform. To fully understand how useful this can be for you, let’s look at 3 dashboards: Hootsuite, Buffer and Mention.

Hootsuite

From the start, you can already tell which accounts can be connected. You can choose to sign up with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or email.

Social Network Support:

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wordpress, Mixi, Instagram

Mobile Capability:

Android & iOS devices

Browser Capability:

Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

When you enter Hootsuite, this dashboard will appear.

1.This is where all our social media accounts will be located. You can easily click to each social media account and access different streams from there.

2.This is where all your streams will be displayed. On one screen, you can see all the activity that each social media account active with. You can scroll through updates and reply directly from this screen. This saves time switching from one stream to another. In addition, you can set time when you want to post something on each social media account. The benefit of this is you can maximize the amount of eyes touches your content.

3. Hootsuite also offers analytics. You can track your engagement on each social media account and create summary reports to see which account is actively engaging with your audience and see which areas you can strengthen your brands social media presence.

Cost: Hootsuite offers free service up to 3 accounts and plans start from 9.99/month for 50 profiles

Buffer

Like Hootsuite, you can sign up with Twitter, Facebook or email but with the option of LinkedIn instead of Google+.

Social Network Support:

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn

Mobile Capability:

Android & iOS devices

Browser Capability:

Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

An interesting alternative to Buffer is that the dashboard offers suggestions on content you can post.

You can set Queues which means that posting content is timed to release when the majority of your audience is active. This benefit differs from Hootsuite because you can change specific scheduling times and change scheduling patterns.

Analytics include the same benefits as Hootsuite so you can track the conversation and engagement on this platform.

In addition, Buffer offers insights to your conversation and engagement progress.  This allows you to put focus on the amount off attention you need to keep up the conversation.

Cost: 10$/month or 102$/year with 10 social media profiles

Mention

With Mention, you have the option to sign up with all the social media platforms that Hootsuite and Buffer offer.  

Social Network Support:

Twitter, Facebook, news, websites

Mobile Capability:

Android & iOS devices

Browser Capability:

Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

The difference with mention is that from anywhere across the web and social media platforms, you will get a notification about a conversation that you're tracking.

You can choose what language and misspelling you wish to track. This dashboard allows you to choose or filter out what you want to track about that key word. this allows you to be able to focus on specific conversations. 

Anaytics about the conversations rates and results are standard with this dashboard and provide the same benefits as Hootsuite and Buffer.

One of the main downfalls about this dash board the cost. 

After the 14-day free trial, the cost is:

29$/month 3 alerts, 3000 mentions, 3 users

99$/month 5 alerts, 10000 mentions, 5 users

299$/month, 10 alerts, 50000 mentions, 10 users

I would suggest using mention more for business rather than personal use.

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Can You Really Compare Social Media to SEO?

In an article comparing social media’s effectiveness to generating online sales leads, writer Mitchell Harper clearly expresses his position on which digital marketing tool provides a better response rate, SEO. Although Harper provides credibly sourced percentage figures to prove his point, I can’t help but feel the exact opposite in that social media is just as effective as SEO, if not, even more.

One of the first things that questioned the article for me was the figures he provided. Harper makes a point to compare the percentages of online searches to social media’s numbers. In my opinion, this only proves that we haven’t found a way to successfully measure all aspects of social media as a driver to connect able and willing buyers to sellers. As a consumer, I don’t necessarily jump to purchase decisions on the spot. Yes, the majority of my day spent on social media is made through my phone but I don't always take immediate action. And let’s say a product or service catches my interest. I then go home to my laptop and make an educated and informed decision after researching alternatives and searching for the best value for the money I’m about to spend. In my opinion, there just isn’t a way for research companies to collect data on that type of search behavior and therefore percentage figures comparing online search to social media as a traffic source is irrelevant.

I also question the method behind measuring the results because how could you collect data on influences social media provide before they searched online? How you can determine that those searches were solely influenced based on the algorithms from SEO or influenced from ads during the searches? To me, social media affects anyone’s purchase behavior. And if a company utilizes it correctly, the outcome turns into a purchase based on an effective marketing campaign carried out through social media outlets. Now I’m not going to say that social media or SEO is the main reason companies achieve successful sales, but whether the purchase is made online or in person, social media cannot be regarded as an ineffective strategy for sales.

Another point I want to make is that Mitchell Harper, Founder of Big Commerce, wrote this article. The founder of an SEO company. Of course I’m going to call him out on being completely biased on his article. But I don’t disagree with his efforts to keep his business profitable.