16 Super Simple Social Media Hacks to Master Content Marketing

Every business is operated by the lead generation. This lead is primarily gained from digital marketing. As social media evolved into the primary digital marketing platforms of the present day, the need for the online marketers with expert distinct strategies has increased to foresee effective business results.

Content marketing is the high-end grade in social media marketing and plays a prominent role in online promotions with about 28 % of an organization’s marketing budget being spent on it. This shows how important content marketing strategy plays a role in enterprise publicity. 

The powerful content marketing made it easier to execute strategies and convert leads into happy customers.


While many content marketers are already aware of the basic skills of content marketing, there are certain simple hacks to double the results and generate an effective number of leads. If you want to be successful in your content marketing efforts, then try these following simple hacks:

     ⦁    Audience research
Marketing begins with research on the type of audience the business is targeted. Many of the successful content marketers take this phase very seriously. They start with a light research on the basic customer persona and make a note on everything about their demographics.

Most importantly, they arrive at an assumption to get closer to the truth about the audience.

     ⦁    Relevant current content

If blog posts are too generalized, lest people show interest. It is necessary to keep content fresh and always include topics related to the latest industry trends and global events.

Posts related to people’s interest has the higher chance of getting hits and shares.

     ⦁    Attracting Environment

While a writer comes across a new eye-catchy idea or object, that’s the moment he uses his full potential to generate, repeat, and connect with customers to attract attention, loyalty, and trust.
Successful writers create this environment through attractive storytelling, in a most primitive and powerful form.

     ⦁    Content is the king
Don’t hasten when composing a blog post. Firstly, you must make sure that the content is relevant, engaging, interesting, and unique.

If you are successful in the efforts of sharing valuable content across the social media, it itself can get you through the desired results than paid promotions.

     ⦁    Deep content
The important hack also one of the simplest is writing a deeper content. For SEO branding, content should be of the long form. Great content engages both customers and search engines. Longer and deeper content provides more value to the audience and is completely adored by Google.

The length of the content plays a major role in attracting viewers. An average length of interesting articles is estimated to be over 2,400 words.

However, this doesn't mean creation of a redundant copy of articles. Each word must ensure a value to fulfill visitors’ intention.

     ⦁    Draw the reader

Focus on the title and first few lines. The first 10 words must be catchy and informative. These words drive attention when filled with quirky verbs, interesting examples, and uncanny twists. All these things make sure the audience don’t get run over!

Once you grab the readers’ attention, it is time to engage them with simple, interesting stories. If it is achieved, you are sure to build momentum on social media.

     ⦁    Usage of specific details

In stimulating audience visually, authentic stories hold a value. Each sentence plays a role. When the content carries an implicit story structure, the readers experience it through their own memories.
The more specific the text, the more powerful the story will resonate with the audience.

     ⦁    Instilling Tweetable quotes
An easy way to grow following and lead generation is by adding tweetable quotes within the body of an article.


This simple hack requires just an easy downloadable WordPress plugin or any relevant service or application. This process results in a massive growth of leads through social media.

     ⦁    Image optimization
Putting relevant images in the posts brings an attractive appeal to the written text. It transforms the outlook of the blog completely.

Simply putting images won’t work. The images must attract viewers when shared with other major sites.

Adding the name of your site within the image adds a great value for your business. Many applications and tools are available to insert text within the images.

Images incorporating texts also work great on certain social platforms like Pinterest. This image naming convention makes a stamp of your brand in a reader’s mind.

     ⦁     Share-worthy content
If you are the one who runs a social media page for building the business network, then it is an ideal option to share your valuable content that attracts users.

This way your posts are fed in the news feed and are more likely be read and shared.



So, you must go with the flow to enjoy more hits among your followers.

     ⦁     Include share buttons to all posts
Once you have articulated a killer looking content, it’s time to share this content.

Easy Social Share Button
To make the sharing process seamless, include share buttons at the end of every post. This will simplify the process of sharing and radically generate social hype. Social media sharing buttons  make sharing easier. This surely will make a big difference in long-run.


     ⦁     Analysis
Successful content marketers don’t base their success on subjective factors, rather they reckon on the numbers and analytics to see if their strategy is working or not. Instead of just sitting and believing that their readers are engaging themselves; they question them directly. They dig deep, analyze their assumption and validate their results, before making proper changes.

     ⦁     Networking

Rather than concentrating more on eventual pieces to get created and published, successful content marketers invest their part of a time in building a professional network.

Many possible approaches associate with professional content marketing. These include Learning from others, reaching out for guest blogging, widening the network of publishing medium and attaining insights on similar industries. All these make a decent impact on marketing.

     ⦁     Diversification

Successful content marketers don’t stick with a just single area of expertise, instead, they try to expand the types of content they produce, including images and videos (if any). They expand recruitment of guest bloggers from third-party authorities.

This process keep readers engaged, and keep a track of changing reader’s interest.

     ⦁     Experimentation
When content marketers recognize a certain pattern is working, they stick with it thoroughly.
However, along with maintaining ROI, successful content marketers, also experiment on a regular basis, throwing in new topics and content formats that they believe their audience would typically expect. Even though it is a bit risky, and doesn’t always bring fruitful results, yet it keeps you away from falling into a trench.

     ⦁     Long-term nature
Content marketing is known for its long-term nature. The content always has time to alter the existing, outdated points, add new information and audit own strategies to join the ranks of the ruling in class.
 
Conclusion…
To succeed in social media marketing, it is necessary to keep up a cliché-free zone. As the world spins faster, it is tougher to uphold customers’ attention. Wise content marketing draws more customers into your vision and sustains their bond with your products and services.

You are positioned well to acquire better results in terms of the number of leads, shares and closed business by executing these techniques.

Author Bio:

Sirisha Paladhi possesses love and passion towards writing, which brought her into this field. Presently, she is working as a Content Writer at Mindmajix. During her career, she has written many articles on technology innovations. In her pass time, she relishes in making handy-crafts.

LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paladhi-sirisha-74987881/

What Security Professionals Can Learn From The 5-Year Old Xbox Hacker

What Security Professionals Can Learn From The 5-Year Old Xbox Hacker
Sometimes news of poor security hits and it sends the whole web-o-sphere into panic. Heartbleed was an example of one such story. Other times, one can't help but to get a laugh out of weak security. A story that hit last week worth a laugh involved an Xbox account being hacked not by a teenager with a lot of time on his hands, not by a world class hacker or cyber criminals, but by a five year old kid who wanted to play some games he didn't have access to.

Shortly after Christmas last year, the child's parents caught him playing games on the Xbox that he shouldn't have been able to play, having somehow hacked his father's account to buy any game he pleased.

When asked how he broke into the account, the method used turned out to be... well, kind of ridiculous. He had tried guessing a password to his father's account. When that didn't work, he was taken to a password verification screen where... he hit the space-bar a bunch of times and logged in.

Interestingly, Microsoft actually offers a $10,000 bounty to hackers who can crack their system. Given that this seems to have been more of a fluke than a targeted hack, the family didn't get to reap the rewards, but it's kind of funny that educated, technical-minded hackers looking for backdoors and weak points have nothing on a little kid who really wants to play Minecraft.

Microsoft has fixed the hack, so don't bother trying to score some free games. In the future, a few tips that security professionals might want to keep in mind:
  • Don't Just Rely on Professionals
A professional coder is thinking from a professional perspective. They're not looking for dumb hacks that any five year old kid could employ, they're looking for, well, a challenge. When you put a $10,000 bounty on finding security flaws, hackers are looking for a ten thousand dollar hack.
  • Keep a Five Year Old on the Payroll
Child labor laws probably won't allow this, but rewarding children and casual gamers who can hack the system with free games or whatever prizes are appropriate to your website or gaming service wouldn't be a bad idea. You never know who's going to discover your weak points, so extending bounties to anyone who can find them can help to bring these weaknesses to light in the future.
  • Double Verification Can be Annoying, but Necessary
We might not like typing our credit card number in for every single purchase, but adding an extra security wall after login, at least where money is involved, can help to prevent unauthorized payments, so that even if someone can hack your Xbox Live or Steam account, they won't necessarily be able to make purchases in your name.

"Sometimes security science may seem like it's more, well, art than science," said Jason Hope, tech expert (https://medium.com/@jasonhope) "but with a rigorous approach to developing and testing systems for passwords, verification and online signatures, it's not impossible to build a rock-solid security setup." The five year old hacker doesn't get to keep all the games he bought, but if he keeps at it, he may one day land a job as a professional White Hat hacker. Companies like Sony and Facebook are known to hire professional hackers on a part time and full time basis in order to explore their security systems' flaws and offer tips to improve their verification processes.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem as if the hack has been discovered prior to now, as nobody seems to be coming forward with stories of having their accounts hijacked with the spacebar hack. Most of all, the whole affair has just been a little embarrassing for Microsoft, who generally has a better track record than this when it comes to online security.

In the aftermath of this, it's easy to imagine hundreds of gamers trying similar hacks on the PlayStation Network, Steam and Xbox Live in hopes of scoring a bounty, or at least a few games.

High Amounts of DDoS Attacks in 2013

Largest DDoS Attacks

The year of 2013 saw high amounts of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Beginning in March, finance, banking, and insurance companies were the focus of an assault that lasted for 14.6 days. Through the year, the attacks ranged from 20.6 hours to 5.4 hours at the end of the year.

The finance, banking, and insurance industries faced the brunt of these attacks towards the beginning of the year, whereas media and entertainment saw these types of attacks around the end of the year. The majority of attack vectors were User Datagram Protocol (UDP), SYN and Domain Name System (DNS).

The floods and the peak bandwidth ranged between 111gbps and 179gpbs. Some saw a peak attack of 144 million packets-per-second. These attacks focused on major corporations in the fields of finance, marketing, or politics, as well as various social media platforms and hubs. DDos attacks target massive online shops or host sites for independent sellers. It is a detriment to business and creates a lot of stress for those who fall prey to these forms of attacks.

Created by the marketing team at Prolexic Technologies.

The Most Audacious Hacks in Computer History

Audacious Hacks




When we think of warfare, most people will speak of the horror. Guns, tanks, bombs and explosions. Death and destruction everywhere. This is what war brings to people and to places.

However, there’s another form of warfare that is becoming increasingly prevalent and it can often be just as destructive as traditional war; cyber warfare.

Yes, computers are not only a powerful tool, but used by experts can be a powerful weapon too. The recent troubles with the Ukraine and Russia have highlighted cyber-attacks on Ukrainian computer networks. The sophisticated nature of the ‘Uroburos’ cyberweapon has led experts to believe it was designed to hack government and telecoms networks. Is it a coincidence that this weapon originated from Russia? Who can say, but it is not alone in being a way to disrupt people, businesses and countries as a malicious action.

Here are other examples of computer hacking which are noteworthy for their sheer audaciousness.

US Nearly Explodes Siberia. All of it.
The year is 1982. It is the height of the Cold War between the USA and Russia. The CIA and their Soviet equivalent, the KGB, were constantly trying to outdo each other. In one of the first examples of a Trojan Virus, the CIA added it to software the Russians stole and then used to monitor and regulate Russian gas pipelines. The software would lie in wait until the program finished running a specific number of commands (in this case, 10 million cycles).

After 10 million, it would change the program slightly. This occurred after several months, and then things got serious. The code instructed the software to run a pressure test at higher than normal levels. However, the CIA did not take into account that Russian engineering might not be equipped to handle it. The result was a pipeline explosion in Siberia that was so big it was 20% the strength of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The Best Spy in the Business Wasn’t a Person
Traditionally, secret agents and spies were men and women who put their lives on the line for their government. It didn’t take long for someone to figure out a computer could probably do the same job.
Enter Flame. 20 megabytes of code that was programmed to spy on several countries in the Middle East. Flame had the ability to do the following:
  • Copy files
  • Capture screenshots
  • Download instant messaging logs
  • Turn on computer microphones and cameras remotely
Basically, it acted like James Bond in many ways. In fact, it was also programmed to project a specific cryptographic sequence known as a ‘prefix collision attack’ in case of detection. This means that is basically disguised itself (like any good spy) by convincing antivirus software that it was supposed to be there.

Spy Malware Pic





The amazing thing is that if it did get detected, it would delete itself and all traces from a system. It managed to operate for five years until eventually discovered in Iran. They claimed that the US was responsible for the virus. The US has denied all knowledge so we may never know the truth.

This post was written by Jake Messer on behalf of HANDD, a company specialising in data loss prevention services, file encryption and managed file transfer.