Rethinking Social Media: How Does the New Paradigm Impact YOUR Small or Medium Business?

When I was a boy many moons ago, my father built a highly successful recruiting business in California’s Santa Clara Valley. He did it by working the old-fashioned way; after all, it was the late ’50s and early ’60s! He networked, developed relationships, engaged reputable partners, and provided a good product and service to his customers. As a small business owner, he held many roles while maintaining tight control of all aspects of his business. He didn’t have a marketing department and he didn’t depend on a tech guru; he worked with a slide rule, a drawing board, and dogged determination. Social strategy back then meant dinner parties, golf outings, and cocktail parties, all of which are very different from today’s tweets, likes, and shares.

Not too long ago, the personal computer revolution forever changed the way we do business, interact and communicate on a daily basis. Before the Internet, we relied on the US Postal Service to deliver our mail; today, we send and receive dozens of email communications in a personal and professional way. The Internet has also given rise to other forms of communication, including the recent explosion of social media. Now, phrases like “follow us on Twitter” and “like us on Facebook” are common practice. What is more amazing is that we can communicate, exchange ideas and share information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year thanks to the large number of devices combined with social networking sites and applications. Initially, the business community turned a blind eye to these things; categorizing them as tools for personal interaction.

However, social networks have exploded in the marketing departments of companies of all sizes. People are using these tools in innovative ways to connect with current and future customers. Historically, the SMB community has been the last to jump on the technological innovation bandwagon. When we consider social media as an option, it seems to be more ripe for the average small and medium business. Why? They are often better equipped to be more agile and adapt more quickly than their enterprise-sized counterparts. There are plenty of forums to discuss the business impacts of social media; Common topics are how to integrate social media with your marketing efforts, how to monitor feedback, and how to calculate ROI. In this article, I want to explore how the inroads of social media and apps affect and potentially compromise network IT assets within an SMB organization.

Network access is critical when thinking about your IT scheme. If you have people in your organization who spend time on social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, are those apps consuming their internet access and can it affect performance? Other sites and apps that I won’t mention here allow users to download and stream large music and video files, and by doing so, further block the Internet connection. In some cases, this can bring productivity to a complete halt. Also, there are built-in bandwidth hogs in some of the most popular apps. For example, you can embed YouTube videos on Facebook or link to them via Twitter.

In addition to potential security risks, SMBs are smart to worry about the ramifications of downloading content from social networking sites onto their network systems. The organization’s IT infrastructure can become vulnerable to malware and viruses that will exploit the network firewall from within. A great way to manage access and thwart such exposure is through rich content filtering firewall technology. Content filtering significantly reduces the risk of malware infections; Keep in mind, however, that once a user has access to social networking sites, they can often download up to an unlimited amount of non-work-related material.

Now that we understand that a strong business firewall is usually enough to limit the potential for network compromise, how do you prevent employees from wasting work hours on social media? Security hardware and software, if configured correctly, will step in to keep unwanted use of social media in check. While some groups prefer to completely block their bandwidth during business hours, there are often business reasons why certain employees can access these sites. A great example is what I do all the time! I act as a director of marketing, posting content to the company’s LinkedIn or Facebook page, researching material for an article or Twitter post, or checking notifications from sites like Manta and Yelp for comments posted about the company. Most commercial firewalls provide granular level permissions to allow use by people who need it.

Network space concerns, storage arrays, and servers are another area that is often overlooked. Consider employees who enjoy listening to music while they work. It’s easy to see the impact of streaming media on your Internet connection by checking firewall logs, but you may not know that an employee downloads your entire iTunes library to your local machine. It is strongly recommended that you frequently back up your network, including all employee machines, on a regular basis. If you’re not, what are you waiting for? Unfortunately, those large sound files in that music library can end up on your company storage device, taking up space that should be reserved for work-related content. In many cases, you can configure your backup device or external service to ignore files that are not job-related.

The final area that most of my SMB clients tend to ignore is their mobile environment. Most organizations today have mobile or remote workers who access the network wirelessly through personal and/or company-provided devices. In these cases, the activity may affect the performance of wireless access points and extraneous legitimate business use. When employees are allowed to access company resources on personal devices, a BYOD (bring your own device) policy and accompanying mobile device management (MSM) software suite is essential to managing access and permissions and configure the appropriate security needed to protect the core network. active.

From an IT perspective, these are the most common potential pitfalls when implementing social media use in an organization. However, as technology changes, there will always be new threats that will cause your network infrastructure to adapt. It’s a struggle to find the balance between acceptable use and the business cases of social media. Take the time to map all potential outcomes and develop best practices to limit risk and exposure. Just like anything else, you can’t be sure you cover everything, but just make sure you have systems in place to make sure you can get through anything that comes up. Don’t be afraid of Twitter or LinkedIn. If used appropriately and creatively, they can be a simple aid to your growth and a beacon to show you the way to greater things in the future. Now, you’re really doing fine if you can get it down to 140 characters. My father would be proud!