The pros and cons of social media for businesses

The pros and cons of social media for businesses

by | Sep 13, 2022

Business Tips

The pros and cons of social media for businesses

September 13, 2022

Pros and cons of social media for businesses

One day you are a local business with your regular daily customers. The next day, suddenly you are a viral sensation and people come pouring in from different parts of the world. What happened? One of those customers liked what you had to offer and shared it on social media. It does not matter if it is an influencer or not, if it gets traction, you’re suddenly an internet sensation. 

Of course, not all social media presence will get viral. Frankly, the chances are thin. But that doesn’t make social media any less valuable for businesses. Organic social media marketing is gold when it comes to brand awareness and building a community with your customers.

On the other hand, social media can also bring negative publicity, and even close your shop (as quickly as a bad location). Especially in today’s society when there’s zero tolerance for political incorrectness. Even if it’s something your employee posted, a personal opinion of theirs, it can trace back to your business and ruin your reputation.

For that reason, we’ve made a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of social media for business owners such as yourself, and how to respond to those.

Pros of social media for businesses

The list of pros of social media for businesses is long and dynamic. But we’ve managed to encapsulate the most important aspects.

Advertising

As Alexi Laine, from Black Belonging Matters, says, “one advantage of using social media for business is the ease in which businesses can set up and run ads.

The set up process on most social media sites is almost intuitive. They allow businesses to quickly and easily adjust or correct ads without needing marketing expertise, and without relying on a traditional advertiser. Which can’t really be said for Google Ads.

No matter what time of day it is, the business owner can add, delete or correct ads to their heart’s desire. The turn around for ad approval is typically much faster than other mediums as well.”

Cost-effectiveness

“One advantage of using social media to market your business is that it’s incredibly cost-effective. Even with running paid campaigns, the return on investment is high and you have the added value of getting market insights, additional brand awareness, and a direct connection to your customers even if you are only relying on organic social media tactics”, says Ricardo Mello from ManhattanMiami.

Community

According to Pedro Campos, Founder of Advertongue, “social media allows businesses to not only build relationships with prospective customers and existing ones, but also to create a community around the brand. A community is essentially goodwill, it´s a long-term strategy between the business and the audience that builds tangible and intangible results beyond just brand loyalty.”

To build a community, be noticed and actively followed on social media requires a lot more than posting promotional content. In the words of Samuel Scott, “the basic rule is that people follow other human beings and emotional topics on social media. In general, people use social media to catch up on the news, connect with friends and family, and follow politicians, causes, celebrities, sports teams, influencers, and entertainers. They do not follow mustard and dishwashing soap brands.

So, if your company does fall into one of those categories, then social media can work wonders. People will engage with and share posts that provoke emotional responses. While organic reach is practically zero on Facebook, a good advertisement with some paid support can still get massive reach. But typically that is possible in only these niche industries.

And if your target audience is Generation Z, then social media is a no-brainer – especially newer networks such as TikTok. Even better, the ad offerings of these platforms are still in their infancy and have not reached the point where organic reach will likely be cut there as well.”

Networking

“One advantage of social media is growing your professional network, especially during the pandemic when we can’t network in person. I reach out to at least 10 new people a day on LinkedIn and have made some excellent connections, and even gotten new clients, by doing so”, says Emily Weisgrau from Weiswood Strategies.

Yes, in-person networking events were replaced with virtual ones, but that doesn’t mean you should wait for events to grow your network. Facebook groups, for example, are breeding ground for new connections. Join a few groups that resonate with your business and you’ll not only grow your network but your business knowledge as well.

Influencers

The new retail trends suggest gone is the day of superstar influencers, and people turned to nano-influencers for product opinions and recommendations.

“Social media hosts influencer content which is an example of authentic media. Consumers trust influencers, and when influencers (or brand ambassadors) demonstrate genuine excitement about their favorite brands, that excitement overflows onto engaged followers”, says Ken Fortney from GRIN.

One deal with the right influencer can position your brand at the top of the market a lot quicker and easier than multiple marketing efforts combined together. You just have to find the perfect person who stands for the same values as your brand and whose followership matches your target audience.

Brand loyalty

“I think an often overlooked advantage is improving brand loyalty”, says Kelsey from CocoSign, “it is one thing to get customers, it’s another to engage your already existing customer base. Using social media posts, infographics, articles, videos and other forms of content, you can keep your customers engaged. Make them feel like a part of the family by providing them with incentives and see them stay loyal to you even if your direct competitors come with more tempting offers.”

Small businesses often make the mistake to think of social media only as a magnet for new customers. In fact, the social networks are perfect to nourish your existing customer base.

Strategic positioning

As Maria Tudor from Rolzo puts it, “social media channels are fantastic means to optimise your strategic positioning in relation to competitors. For example, having an active LinkedIn page has enabled us to compare ourselves with other industry players on key performance metrics and adjust our communications strategy accordingly. As a result, we have optimised our social media content, bringing our engagement rate above that of established companies in the sector.”

Market data

In recent years, all social media platforms introduced analytics where you can find data like who your followers are, how engaged are they with your content, what type of gets most traction etc. Draw conclusions from this data and do not take it for granted. In the past, businesses would pay gold to get this kind of information.

Moreover, social media users are keen on leaving feedback and reviews. Even when it’s not direct. For example, a follower left you a comment that he’s satisfied with your product but it took him forever to get his hands on it. What they basically say is that you have to improve your distribution network and find new/more vendors.

SEO

What every business that’s present online fights for is better SEO rankings. The benefits of SEO are well known but the practices to increasing your rankings are a constant topic of discussion among experts. However, social media presence undoubtedly is a big plus.

Deepak Shukla, the co-founder of Serpwizz, notes that a clear advantage of social media marketing is that it helps to establish E-A-T (expertise, authority and trustworthiness). This combination has been announced by Google as a frontrunner for its 2021 analytics push. Regular social media updates, network connections and customer interaction all help establish brand credibility. It’s also great for your SEO rankings!

Growth

The more people follow and engage with your content, the bigger the chances to convert them, thus increase your sales. With the right social media content plan, you can not only grow your followership but also your sales. In today’s world, social media is the first place consumers check for information about a brand. 

So make sure you have the right social media mix. In other words, not all networks will be suitable for your type of business. For B2B, usually,  TikTok or Instagram will be a bad choice. But for B2C it’s the place you should be. Facebook plays on both sides. Pinterest is perfect for D2C businesses with creative undertone.

Cons of social media for businesses

With the good, always comes the bad, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Except to be aware of it and keep it under control as much as possible. Check these negative effects of social media for businesses and always have them in mind.

Restrictions

Sure we like to believe in a democracy everyone can say and advertise anything, but that’s not the case. With the rise of fake news and similar issues, many social networks introduced restrictions.

Alexi Laine goes on to say that depending on the industry, you may find yourself an unintended collateral damage:

“For example, Facebook, Facebook-owned Instagram, and Twitter, have all instituted restrictions on advertising as a result of the Presidential election. The move was reportedly designed to reduce election interference.

Included in the restriction on advertising are ads related to social justice. My company, which runs ads relating to employment equity for Black people, has been shut out of advertising during this period.

I wouldn’t go as far to say the restriction was designed to suppress Black voices, but it certainly has had that effect.”

Privacy

I believe we all remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when personal details of over 86 million Facebook users were used for political campaigning, without their consent. TikTok, although relatively new in the social media game, got its share of privacy accusations too, ending up being banned in several countries.

This brings us to a conclusion that social media are unsafe thus imposing your customers’ data at risk. In fact, it’s not even your data.

Reputation damage

One of the biggest cons of using social media for business is that sometimes it is difficult to draw a fine line between personal sentiments and professional acumen” says Kelsey Chan. 

In the same manner,  she continues to explain, “should your social media handler be too preoccupied with trending posts and hashtags, they may go overboard and make posts that will endanger your brand’s reputation. Take, for example, when McDonalds tweeted about Trump being a ‘disgusting excuse of a President’. They stepped over the line and may have gone too personal. The backlash was too difficult to handle for them.”

Tracking ROI

Sure there are many tools that claim to track ROI on social media marketing but the figures will never be 100% right. It’s hard to understand how much of your profit comes from social media because likes and comments only serve your ego, and not your business.

Sure you can try keeping track of the purchases coming from social media, but only those you’re aware of, and there could be many more which you’re oblivious of.

Trolls

Trolls are everywhere. They crawl up to your page and leave their nasty comments and reviews hoping to bring you down. They are miserable, annoying and everyone hates them. Yet, they can influence presidential elections. Unfair, right?

Well, life isn’t fair and neither is business. 

So if they can have such a huge impact on who’s going to run the biggest economy in the world, imagine what they can do to your tiny business. Sooner or later, every business is faced with trolls on social media, so you better prepare for them. Don’t let them paint an inaccurate picture of your brand. Learn at the best of your ability how to deal with negative reviews and rude people in the comment section. They can smell fear, so don’t give them that satisfaction.

Time-consuming

Sure social media is a budget-friendly marketing solution for businesses, but that also makes it time-consuming. Because if you don’t want to outsource or hire a social-media-savvy youngster, you’ll be doing it all by yourself. And that takes time.

Ricardo Mello is right when he says that “the time spent on creating and curating content is a disadvantage of marketing your business on social media. It takes time to find content to

share, design graphics, or create videos – not to mention the effort put into hashtag research and engaging with other accounts.”

That becomes even a bigger challenge if you’re not the tech fellow who knows Canva like the back of their hand or can quickly set up auto-publishing apps.

As Marcos Brisson from Kaizntree vividly describes it “it’s a black hole. Once you start using social media, it’s so easy to lose yourself into prioritising it over other business activities. There’s this false perception that businesses need to be active, need to post daily, need to do this and that. It’s too easy to overestimate its importance.”

Short-lived trends

“Social media trends are extremely difficult to keep up with. Within the same week, your marketing team drops everything else to plan, produce, and share content or risk losing a chance to glow brilliantly for your followers every time a new trend comes out. The world is always changing, and so is social media. What works for you today may be totally pointless tomorrow” says Jason Wong, founder of DoeLashes.

Or, as Pedro Campos says, “social media is a real job, it takes a lot of work and patience, it´s like a hungry monster that´s never satisfied. It requires you to be consistent and creative with content creation and learn from the things that didn´t work, most won´t by the way. You have to prepared to show up over and over again, be willing to fail, and try new approaches because what worked 6 months ago might not work today, on social media.”

Crazy algorithms

The algorithms are constantly changing and it’s hard to keep up with them. Take Instagram algorithm for example, two years ago everyone got their fair share of likes or comments regardless if they were an influencer or a John Doe. Nowadays, it feels like that to get engagement, even from your sister and brother, Mercury shouldn’t be in retrograde, roses should be in bloom on Antarctica and clocks should tick backwards.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are numerous pros and cons of using social media for businesses. However, it all falls upon whether you can learn from your mistakes, and invest enough time in creating a strategy on how you will deal with social media engagement. After all, it is a powerful tool and all businesses need to take advantage of it.

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How fear of making decisions is damaging your business

How fear of making decisions is damaging your business

by | Aug 5, 2022

Business Tips

How fear of making decisions is damaging your business

August 05, 2022

Fear of making decisions

Life is not a computer game. You can’t go to your previously saved game when you make mistakes and continue from that point. Yet, life and business are about making decisions and taking the right opportunity. Even though it is in our nature to fail after all, and we spoke about how failure can be turned into an advantage, Today, we are going to talk about one of the toughest challenges for entrepreneurs – fear of making decisions. 

Fear is a powerful emotion. Some people spend their lives not taking any chances, nor making hard decisions because they are afraid. It’s good to feel comfortable in your safe zone and target the same customers that keep buying the same products. But, working every day without expecting anything more than yesterday it’s the wrong path for your business. Hence, that should never be your choice if you don’t want to limit your real potential.

How fear of making decisions affects your business

If you do nothing, nothing will happen. Fear will prevent you from fulfilling your dreams, and blind your vision when creating long-term plans. That voice in your head is not always right. It is called the superego, and it is made of rules and fears created by our parents, teachers, friends, and overall our personal life experience.

You are not different if you are afraid to make decisions, in reality, we all are. However, some have learned their lesson, whilst others have not. If you are one of those who didn’t, read the following testimonials from experienced entrepreneurs. Find out how being afraid to make decisions has affected their business and follow their tried and tested advice on how to overcome your fear of making decisions.

Fear of making decisions eliminates chances of succeeding

In the past, I was afraid to make decisions. It’s costly to make a mistake and I don’t want to lose clients. The fear of making the wrong decision eliminated our business’s chances of growing and succeeding. I’ve learned that taking action is better than remaining stuck. Success is not about making no mistakes, success is doing your best and striving for growth.

To overcome the fear of making decisions, I took it one step at a time. I avoided thinking negative thoughts. Whatever the outcome, I know that I can learn something from it that will help me make better decisions next time. Making mistakes in business is common and it can help us improve our knowledge and develop our personality which can help us achieve the success we are all aiming for.

Lauri Kinkar, CEO at Messente

Fear causes turmoil in your business

A fear of decision-making can cause turmoil in your business. With you unable to make a choice, your employees will be unable to perform their jobs appropriately and may get frustrated with the situation. If you feel unable to make a decision try listening to your gut. Your first, gut instinct is usually right, so go with it.

John Levisay, CEO of The Pro’s Closet

How to overcome the fear of making decisions

The first thing in overcoming the fear of making decisions is to accept it. Sometimes you make investments that may not pay off, but taking action is still better than standing still. If you don’t do anything, you are eliminating all chances of succeeding by default.

Although the market can be unforgiving, predicting the future of your business industry is hard if you don’t possess the right knowledge. Even in order to gain new information, you will need to make an investment decision, and find a good way to upgrade your business knowledge.

Rationalize with facts

Rationalize the fear of making the wrong decision with facts. Nobody knows how your decision will turn out, until the moment you make it. It all falls to rationalizing and making decisions based on facts.

If the data shows you can invest in something different, you should try it, in order to stay on the growth path. If you calculate based on facts, no wrong decision can cause huge damage to your business. The main benefit from a wrong decision that will be useful, is the experience you will gather. Therefore, one of the most valued characteristics of an experienced entrepreneur is being a fearless decision-maker.

Think about the long-term effect

When making business decisions that will affect a business long or short term is always difficult. The best way to handle your fear of making decisions is to have a process in place for checks and balances. Think about what the long-term effect of the decision will be as well as the short-term effect. 

Evaluate what you are currently doing to fill that space now and if the new decision supplements or improves that. A good business comes down when you stop being afraid to make decisions so focus your efforts to find a way to overcome your fear.

Artie Baxter, CEO and Co-founder at Paperclips

Use your worst-case scenario

My fear of making decisions was born from the fear of making the wrong decision or causing someone an inconvenience. I worked through that by using my worst-case scenario blueprint. When I have a big decision to make, I weigh all the alternatives and then think through what is the worst thing that can happen in the process? Then, I make a plan for dealing with that scenario.

With a plan in play, I feel more confident in making the decision knowing that if it works, great. If it doesn’t, I already have a plan to deal with it and the fallout of it. Given that it’s the unknowns that cause us anxiety, knowing that you have a plan for whatever comes is helping to overcome the fear of failure.

Camille D. Jamerson, Founder and CEO of CDJ and Associates

Learn how to seek help

I used to dread making big business decisions. After all, if I make the wrong turn, I could lose everything. But I realized that I don’t have to do this alone, so I learned how to seek help and where to find help. This can be a bit unorthodox, but I just think that more heads are better than one. But I also make sure that the people I ask for help from are really trustworthy.

David Stellini, Co-founder at AllFront.io

Learn from your mistakes

Fear of making mistakes is what demolishes many of us from making decisions. Don’t neglect that even a bad decision is better than no decision at all. We work and hopefully, we learn. Don’t underestimate the power of bad decisions. My mistakes helped me make smart decisions.

Salvador Ordorica, CEO at The Spanish Group LLC

Be confident

I presumed that I had only two options. Either I can stop making decisions from now and regret it my whole life, or I can make a major decision regarding my business from now onwards and feel proud of myself someday later. I challenged myself and then came up with some smartest business moves and I employed them with all my confidence and without any fear. 

Because when you are confident about something your business mind works excellently. I took my bad decisions as my motivation. I started believing in my capabilities and ended up with a successful businesswoman.

Emily David, Owner of Wiringo

Research before you make a decision

I was also prone to the scary word “fear” because I used the wrong decision-making strategy. Usually, people make decisions based on their perceptions the same as I did. But our perceptions are not always accurate. It led me to see failure when I thought of a software flaw as a technical issue, and it cost me a lot while there was no such issue. After the experience, I used to research the matter thoroughly before making any decision.

Hitesh Agarwal, Director at TechExactly

Accept you are not perfect but do your best

When it came time for me to make critical decisions, I was tentative and oftentimes hesitant which led to inefficient processes that interrupted enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of scaling the business. I stopped being afraid to make decisions by coming to accept that I will never be perfect and win, lose, or draw. I was ok with the results as long as I prepared and executed to the best of my abilities.

Zachary Thames, CEO at Golden Intellect

Educate yourself on the options

A great way to overcome a fear of making the wrong decision is to educate yourself on the options. Research what the options entail and the risks with each option. This way you will be able to make a fully informed decision with less fear of failure.

Alex Czarnecki, Founder and CEO of Cottage

Measure the impact

Measure the impact of the decision. Change is necessary, but how significant will the change really be? Will the planned expansion destroy your business, even if it does not do as well as expected, or will you manage to survive? Ask yourself – what is the worst thing that can happen to your business?

Sometimes predictions can be hard to make, but often people find the fear of making a decision worse than the current market trends that can do real damage to their businesses. Is the decision going to change the business too much? Measure its impact. People experience difficulty making decisions when they are afraid that their business is going to suffer major changes. They feel the fear that they cannot get a grip on it, as before. 

Clear your mind

Clear your mind. Sometimes a walk in the park can release all tension and fear. Your mind will be sharper, and the fear of making decisions will disappear. Additionally, many entrepreneurs use meditation as a way to release negative energy. As fear builds up a lot of power, the body seeks a way to release it. 

This might be a reason you cannot make a decision, you feel under pressure. Moreover, negative energy can hurt your mental health, so don’t overthink things, get that exercise and clear your mind. You will be refreshed and feel enlightened, for making decisions. 

Get support

Get support from your loved ones. In difficult times, you need support, and what better way to get support than from your loved ones. Technology made everything easier; now even at thousands of miles away with just a touch on your phone, you can speak to your loved ones, and receive their support. They will help you rationalize fear, and give a different insight into the problem, even though they might not have a business and industry background.

Conclusion

We cannot hide from fear. However, it is in our benefit to manage the fear of making decisions better, if we want to succeed. If the inability to make decisions damages the future of your business, the points we made in this article will help you understand, rationalize and combat that. Don’t be a silent voice in the business world, because “sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right.” It’s up to you.

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How to properly secure customer personal information

How to properly secure customer personal information

by | Jun 28, 2022

Business Tips

How to properly secure customer personal information

June 28, 2022

How to properly secure customer personal information

Customer data protection is one of the most important determinants of business growth. Although online services provide fast, affordable, and convenient solutions, their rising adoption encourages data breaches. This illegal industry is lucrative to cybercriminals, with experts expecting the cost to keep rising.

High-profile attacks against giants such as Acer, Microsoft, and Bombardier show no company is immune to hacking. This worrying trend calls for constant vigilance and commitment to customer data protection in compliance with the highest cybersecurity standards. The following tips will help you achieve these objectives:

Have an explicit and honest privacy policy

Trust determines how comfortably consumers interact with your brand. They have more faith in healthcare providers than in social media apps. That’s because the former asks for information most relevant to your physical and mental wellbeing, while the latter collects more than they need. In addition to harming your reputation, deceptive data policies expose you to potential legal disputes.

Embrace data encryption

Encryption sounds like a no-brainer, but most businesses don’t embrace it. Network access points are always vulnerable to data breaches. Apart from firewalls, password management tools provide affordable and productive solutions.

They improve data security by complicating stored passwords, making them unreadable to unauthorized personnel. The best encryption tools protect data in transit and at rest.

Limit data access

Although efficient data collection and analysis are beneficial, you should only give access to employees who need it. For instance, your marketing department utilizes different information from the finance section. This limitation reduces the likelihood of internal breaches.

Similarly, collect data that are crucial to your organization’s core business. It makes more sense to allow third-party vendors to process credit card transactions rather than handle them in-house.

Implement minimum cybersecurity standards

Minimum security standards ensure consistency across the board. Customer information is better protected if your SaaS tools comply with SOC 2 or ISO 27001 requirements. SOC 2 follows five essential principles: privacy, security, confidentiality, availability, and processing integrity. ISO-based compliance requires continuous evaluation, refining, and augmentation. These solutions make it easier to scale service provision to thousands or even millions of users.  According to DataCo, when it comes to earning the trust of customers, it is a good idea to pursue an ISO 27001 certificate. Having this in place will give you a blueprint for what it takes to protect private data as comprehensively as possible, while also enabling you to show clear evidence of your commitment to security to existing customers and prospects alike.

Prompt system updates

Most companies avoid regular software updates for fear of affecting the customer experience. However, cybercriminals are always looking for vulnerabilities. Every minute you delay this crucial step could lead to a costly data breach. Although some updates are expensive and time-consuming, their long-term benefits are worth the minor inconvenience.

A comprehensive guide to secure data collection

Most consumers submit their data because they trust the company to safeguard it. Data security consists of various techniques that prevent unauthorized access and misuse of this information. Improper access ranges from harmless actions such as an employee viewing data without proper clearance to deliberate malware attacks.

Collecting data over insecure connections also increases the likelihood of cybercriminals intercepting vital transactions. HTTPS protection prevents it through the TLS protocol, which offers three crucial security layers:

  • Encryption prevents unwanted eavesdropping, monitoring, and access to information.
  • Data integrity prevents unlicensed modification and corruption during transfer.
  • Authentication ensures your customers are interacting with the correct website. This layer protects data against man-in-the-middle interceptions.

With several data collection tools available, the ideal choice depends on your business niche, budget, and target audience, among other factors. Commonly used business solutions include Google Analytics, Facebook Audience Insights, and SurveyMonkey.

The Google Tag Manager (GTM) allows you to gather visitor details by adding JavaScript code snippets to your website. It’s a free tracking tool compatible with Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and other online advertising options. The snippets, also known as tags, eliminate the complications of manually tagging each platform.

How data collection helps measure business performance

Efficient data collection techniques help you identify the best key performance indicators for your business. KPIs are quantifiable measurements that determine an organization’s long-term strategic, operational, and financial achievements. Although they vary between industries, there are five universally applicable KPIs: customer satisfaction, profit margin, revenue growth, client retention rate, and revenue per client.

To avoid confusion, choose a few measures for each business objective and assign each KPI to particular individuals. Additionally, set a monthly, quarterly, or other suitable frequency to ensure continual monitoring and reporting. Performance management software allows you to create custom KPI dashboards for different audiences, such as departments and company executives.

Why do you need strategic risk management?

Strategic risk management identifies, quantifies, and mitigates threats to your business strategy. These risks include technological changes, competitive pressure, regulatory updates, management turnover, and merger integration. Risk management involves five essential steps:

  • Defining your business objectives.
  • Creating KPIs to gauge results.
  • Identifying risks that can affect performance.
  • Establishing key risk indicators (KRIs) and your tolerance for these threats.
  • Monitoring and reporting continuously to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.

As with KPIs, you can use premium software solutions such as Reciprocity ZenRisk to unify cybersecurity compliance and risk. This platform offers high-level visibility to help you avoid threats and receive actionable insights.

Important data regulations

Effective data collection methods and tools comply with various state, federal, and international regulations on security and privacy. One of the most comprehensive regulations is HIPAA compliance, which pertains to protected health information (PHI).

HIPAA-compliant solutions collect up to 18 different data items. They include names, email, phone numbers, geographical identifiers, social security numbers, vehicle details, biometrics, IP addresses, account numbers, and photographs.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) is another law that outlines how financial service providers should handle sensitive data. Its essential requirements include providing clear privacy notices, formulating an extensive security plan, and working with GLBA-compliant contractors.

At the state level, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) stands out for its commitment to protecting consumer data privacy. Requirements include providing opt-out options, updating privacy policies, using CCPA-compliant tools, and having a disaster response plan.

International data protection laws include Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Strong Consumer Authentication (SCA).

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Everything you need to know about repairing your credit

Everything you need to know about repairing your credit

by | Jun 28, 2022

Business Insights

Everything you need to know about repairing your credit

June 28, 2022

Improving your credit once and for all

Although time-consuming, poor credit may be repaired. It’s a minefield as well. You need to be aware of what to do, where to go for assistance, and which businesses to stay away from. The stakes are quite high, and the results can follow you for years.

Your credit history, report, and score all have a significant impact on your financial situation. They influence the particular parameters of the deal, such as how advantageous your interest rate will be, as well as whether you are authorized by lenders for items like a mortgage, personal loan, or auto loan.

Continue reading to find out more about the numerous tools, techniques, and behaviors that may help you raise a low credit score.

Self-reliance is possible

There’s nothing a reputable credit repair company can do for you that you couldn’t do yourself, so this might be an alternative, but if you pick the best company to repair credit, you won’t need to find out tons of information and do transactions where It’s easy to make a mistake and ruin everything. You may learn a lot about credit, how it works, and what you can do to fix your own by reading books and browsing the internet.

Techniques including challenging erroneous reports, debt validation, pay-for-delete services, and goodwill letters may be used to erase unfavorable information. All of these techniques are used by credit repair businesses to get inaccurate information taken out of your credit report.

You may save money by doing it yourself. Your credit history is likewise in your hands, under your control.

The Federal Reserve reports that in the first quarter of 2022, U.S. Household Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income is an average of 9.51904. This means that on average, households will spend 9.51904% of their disposable income on debt service payments, such as mortgage payments, credit card payments, and auto loan payments. 

This is up from 9.48%, which was the average for the fourth quarter of 2021. However, it is down from the peak of 10.62% reached in the third quarter of 2007.

The report provides information on the percent of household income devoted to debt service payments, the median payment-to-income ratio, and the average payment-to-income ratio. The household debt service payments as a percent of disposable personal income helps to indicate the financial health of American consumers and is watched closely by economists. 

A high DSP can indicate that consumers are struggling to keep up with their debt payments and may be at risk of defaulting on their loans. A low DSP can indicate that consumers are able to easily make their debt payments and are in good financial health.

It’s hard to remove accurate negative information

Here, the word “accurate” is highlighted. Only erroneous or unverifiable information may be
lawfully removed from your credit report by credit bureaus.

Since the credit bureaus have the legal power to disclose inaccurate negative information, doing so is more difficult. In reality, the accuracy of the information that credit bureaus report is essential to maintaining the integrity of the credit system.

However, there are several techniques that may assist you to get rid of true bad information,
such as a debt that you really owe that is in the collection. These tactics may need more
time and work than a straightforward credit report dispute, but they are still worth trying. The
greatest solutions for these kinds of accounts include requests for a goodwill deletion, paying
for deletion, and debt validation (for collection agencies).

Verify your credit report for any mistakes

To be sure there aren’t any false negatives, get a copy of your credit report. Common credit report inaccuracies, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, include canceled credit accounts displaying as open, loans that appear more than once, and erroneous amounts.

Visit annualcreditreport.com to get a free credit report from each of the three main credit agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion). Although you won’t get a score from this, it will highlight your shortcomings and potential development areas.

You may dispute any inaccurate information on your credit report by sending a letter to the relevant credit reporting organization if you find it. If you’re unclear about how to do this, the Federal Trade Commission offers a sample credit dispute letter that you may refer to.

Reconsider your approach to credit usage ratios

Your credit usage ratio calculates how much credit you are currently utilizing in comparison to your total credit limit. Never let this percentage exceed one-third or around 30% of your expenditure cap. If you have $1,000 in available credit, for instance, you shouldn’t utilize more than $300 of it.

Think about doing nothing

Negative items won’t remain on your credit record forever. Although there are a few exceptions, most reports are only kept there for seven years. For up to 10 years, a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, for instance, will remain on your credit record.

If you’re running out of time to delete the account from credit reporting, it can be less unpleasant and time-consuming to wait for it to naturally disappear. Contrary to common perception, responding to a negative account does not prolong the window for credit reporting. If you settle a six-year-old debt collection, it will still disappear off your record after the seventh year.

Obtain permission to use someone else’s credit card

A person added to an active credit card account under someone else’s name is known as an authorized user.

Authorized users are free to use the card as if it were their own, but they are not liable for any debt they accrue. Additionally, because they are sharing the card’s payment history and usage percentage, this might eventually raise their credit score.

Here, the cardholder bears the majority of the financial risk, not the authorized user. However, Lynch advises that if you’re seeking to establish credit, you should ask some “uncomfortable questions” before signing the contract, such as finding out the borrower’s payment history to see whether this is the best course of action for you.

Consider consolidating your debt

Bundling all of your loans into one is what debt consolidation entails. When compared to individual invoices, this often results in a cheaper interest rate or lower monthly payment.

Those who struggle to manage many due dates or have a variety of high-interest credit card balances would benefit from this repayment method.

Avoid undesirable behaviors

Without a comprehensive plan, avoid applying for several new credit cards or closing numerous accounts. Everything related to credit is interconnected, therefore deleting old accounts and starting new ones might damage your credit mix and history.

For instance, applying for multiple new credit cards quickly may lead to several hard inquiries, which might lower your credit score. Instead, think about obtaining a secured credit card or credit-builder loan.

Conclusion

Although repairing your credit might be a drawn-out process, it is ultimately worthwhile. You may either do this on your own or with the assistance of a credit repair business.

Whichever path you choose, maintaining good credit requires credit monitoring, timely monthly payments, and sound money management practices. The most crucial thing is to exercise patience and adhere to a successful approach.

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Ensure enterprise data protection while working remotely

Ensure enterprise data protection while working remotely

by | Jun 20, 2022

Business Tips

Ensure enterprise data protection while working remotely

June 20, 2022

How to ensure enterprise data protection

We can all agree that the pandemic has turned our lives upside down. And although it was exciting to work from home at the beginning, as time passed by, we were becoming aware of the disadvantages of remote work as well. One of the weaknesses of remote working is enterprise data protection.

So, if your business has shifted to a remote work model, you should focus on enterprise data protection. There are plenty of file-sharing methods out there, but not all of them can ensure enterprise data protection. To avoid cybercrime, be sure to employ the following secure file share practices.

3 ways to initiate enterprise data protection

When companies are switching over to remote work, they are afraid of the possibility of hacking or security breaches. But fortunately, you can ensure enterprise data protection by implementing these five tips.

Email phishing

Remote employees send a lot of emails back and forth to their co-workers, managers, and clients. It’s possible that an employee could fall victim to an email phishing scam if they aren’t careful. To ensure enterprise data protection, teach your employees to use a reputable email platform that helps automatically filter out spam messages that could have malware, untrustworthy links, or downloadable files.

Securing Wi-Fi and desktop with passwords

Ask your employees to change and strengthen their passwords on their Wi-Fi and desktop computer for that extra level of security. Inform them that using public Wi-Fi could leave them open to a cyberattack, but a VPN or file sharing server can protect them as long as they remain online. Employees should change their passwords regularly to avoid potential breaches.

Backing up files

Most employees will have a thumb drive or a separate hard drive where they can keep duplicates of client files. Every person at the company must have a copy of each client document if a hard drive becomes corrupted or the file is deleted by accident. Your employees could also upload these files to an encrypted Cloud sharing platform.

3 essential processes to ensure enterprise data protection

Once your organization has numerous operating units based in different locations, your needs clearly become more complicated than a one-location business with one IT department. To ensure enterprise data protection, make sure you apply the following tips to your business.

Best practices for organizing work remotely

Even though file integration is probably the most challenging part, remaining organized is a necessity as well. That way you will make sure you don’t mix up your personal files with work-related data. 

Use the following tips to ensure you don’t get confused after switching to a remote office.

 

  • Folder structuring: Create separate folders for different departments, projects, and types of information. Keep things simple and straightforward.
  • File naming: Decide on a common naming convention. For example, you could name a folder like this: Client Name, Date, Work Type, Draft/In-Progress/Final.
  • Tagging: Use different tags to look up the product, department, or the purpose of the project, like “internal use only” or “brochure.” 
  • Granular permissions: Some of your documents will contain sensitive information, so it’s essential to tag employees who have access to these files.
  • Password managers: Use password management tools to keep work-related passwords safe in one place with a possibility to share necessary data with your colleagues. .

Sharing a local file server over the internet

If you already have a local file server setup, you can quickly turn it into an Internet file share server. Remote workers are consistently involved in internal and external company functions, and they may need to visit customers to show them data locked on a central file server. You’ll need a file sharing solution based on the on-premise file server; your workflow depends on it. With a file-sharing server, users can create a mapped drive without using a VPN, can lock files, provide mobile sharing and folder access, all from a web browser-based interface.

Share files with a VPN

A VPN is another, although more complicated, way of sending secure files over the Internet. Whether you buy a premium VPN or use the Windows 10 built-in settings to set one up between computers, you can create a VPN server on the host PC to access all incoming connections. It does require a bit of computer know-how and a great Internet connection to work. Additionally, the benefits of VPN extend beyond secure file transfers, providing enhanced encryption when used in conjunction with a file-sharing server.

Conclusion

Cyber attacks can bring major damage to corporate IT infrastructures and result in substantial data leaks. That being said, you should definitely focus on enterprise data protection, starting with these practices that can be done by you and your employees.

 In the end, if you are unlucky and a victim of a security breach, make sure you act properly so you can minimize the damage.

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