In the age of smart technologies and masterminds mischievous enough to create phishing scams, it’s more important than ever to take the necessary steps for keeping your business’s accounts secure. No longer will “password1” keep your accounts safe, which means it’s time to create more secure passwords, nail-down storage for your passwords, and control who accesses your accounts. Not sure how to do this? Luckily, the leaders in digital marketing Pittsburgh are here to break down everything you need to know for keeping your passwords safe and your accounts secure.

Creating Secure Passwords for Social Media Accounts

How the Leaders in Marketing Pittsburgh Recommend Creating Passwords

For small businesses working on marketing Pittsburgh, it may seem like you don’t have much to worry about regarding protecting your social media accounts. Why would a hacker be interested in your online and social media accounts, anyway? However, more than half of cyber account hacks are targeted at small businesses, which means small businesses need to armor up and do what they can to protect themselves from social media hacks.

All of this begins with creating secure passwords. We’ve all seen that many websites act for a capital letter, number, and special character in a password, and this is because it helps strengthen your password and make it more difficult to guess. As a general rule of thumb, good passwords should include the following:

• A minimum of 8 characters, but more characters is optimal
• One or more capital letters
• One or more numbers
• A symbol or special character

In addition to these rules for each password, it’s important to change your password frequently and use different passwords for each and every account. While this sounds like it may take up a good chunk of time, this is the best way to keep hacks isolated to a single account without compromising the security of your entire online presence.

However, creating a formula that represents your business can be an easy way to change these passwords consistently without making major differences. Choose parts of the password that stay the same, parts that change as time goes on, and parts that change per platform.

For instance, consider this hypothetical password for Starbucks: Macchi@ttoQ1Tw33ts.

This password is long, has all of the necessary characters, and can be changed to represent the time of year for your business (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4) and has an identifier for the platform (Tw33ts to represent twitter).

Password Storage Tips from the Leader in Marketing Pittsburgh

Small Business Password Storage Apps & More

Creating a secure password and being sure to change it over time is only half the battle. After that, it’s important to keep track of your passwords effectively. There are a number of great ways to store your passwords, all of which depend on factors like the number of people accessing your accounts and the security level of the account:

• Good Old Fashioned Pen & Paper: For small-scale operations, start by keeping account login information written on a piece of paper in your workspace. As long as you have control over who accesses your workspace, these passwords will be kept relatively safe.
• On-Device Storage: If you’re the only person accessing your accounts and have relatively low-risk if a hack were to occur (someone tweeting nonsense from your account vs. accessing your payroll), it’s possible to keep your passwords on a note in your phone or computer.
• Browser Password Storage: Great for personal accounts and for some small businesses, browser password storage syncs your devices and keeps track of passwords, meaning it’s easy to create unique passwords across each platform. While passwords are encrypted in the cloud and considered an ‘okay’ solution, browser storage is not the safest option.
• Password Management Applications: As paid solutions designed exclusively for protecting your account logins, password management applications like 1Password, LastPass, and PassPack are great for keeping all passwords safe for small and large businesses. Additionally, these offer multi-factor authentication for extra security when accessing from a number of devices.

Managing Account Permissions and Access

Tips for Granting Password-Free Account Access from the Leader of Marketing Pittsburgh

As the leaders in digital marketing Pittsburgh, we know a thing or two about logging in and managing numerous accounts at once. No matter how much trust you have in your employees, keeping passwords safe has one golden rule: the fewer people who have access to your password, the less likely it is that your account will be hacked. Because of this, it makes sense to share permission on various platforms rather than sharing your passwords with each and every employee. 

When it comes to social media management, a great way to do this is to use a social media scheduling software. This allows you to provide access to platforms like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Buffer without providing the login information for each individual account while maintaining the same publishing capabilities.

Additionally, some platforms allow you to grant privileges to users without providing them with login information. Facebook, Google My Business, and LinkedIn allow you to grant access to a personal account rather than sharing passwords. Additionally, you can control the degree in which each user has access to the account (admin, manager, and editor) to ensure that each user has the right amount of editing power.

Think it’s time to strengthen your online presence? Get in touch with the leader in marketing Pittsburgh at Responsival today to get started.