Managing your virtual social world trail

By staying signed in on Google and performing search and accessing websites, a user leaves a digital trail behind. This trail is used by many companies to create a user profile. Richer user behavior profiles are very useful to advertisers as they can put personalized ads on websites you view.

There are some simple ways to stop this. The methods explained below will only work for advertisers who are part of Network Advertising Initiative and follows the industry privacy standards for online advertising.

Note: Before following the steps described below, ensure that you are signed in.

Google

1. Visit ads on the web. If you do not like Google 'Make the ads you see on the web more interesting', click on 'Opt Out'.

2. Visit ads preference. This is the profile Google created for you based on your search and browse history. Google even guessed your age and gender. You can delete all the information from here and 'Opt Out'.

You can also download the Advertising cookie opt-out plugin to permanently block personalized ads.

Other advertisers

1. Visit NAI. Using their online tool, you can examine your computer to identify those member companies that have placed an advertising cookie file on your computer. Don't be surprised to see 50 or more cookies from different advertisers. Now, did you know that? You can 'Select All' and 'Submit' the form to clear all the cookies.

2. Visit Aboutads. Again, you can 'opt-out' of ad network.

Facebook

1. Visit Account Settings. Click on 'Apps' tab. Delete all infrequently used apps.  For the remaining apps, set the appropriate privacy level by clicking on 'Edit'. e.g., if you use 'Washington social post reader', by default, all posts and activity from this app are visible on Facebook. Do disable this, select 'Only Me' in privacy settings.

Orkut

Orkut was once very popular in India. If you do not use it anymore and switched camps, then you are not alone. But your profile, scraps, photos etc are still public. To delete your orkut account, visit this link.

If you would like to share more privacy tips, please leave a comment.

Also read: The Internet, social media and privacy.

Social Commerce: Part 3 : The case for and against Facebook

This is the third article in the series 'The case for and against Facebook'

While the previous strategies can be labeled as "Direct Sales", using 'Indirect sales', a retailer can create more value. And all of it can be achieved right from your fans and the fan page.

i. Using Facebook, it is easy to extract trends, identify influencers, monitor competition and glean customer insights. Here is an example of a survey conducted by an e-retailer:

Simple questions like these can provide insights around what strikes a chord with your target audience.

ii. What more? If you boast of your website's fan base, build a detailed profile of your fans using their interests, posts and other information and feed it to your CRM system. Track customer's interaction history on fan page, learn from their kudos and complaints and they will love your customer service. The important point to understand here is to move away from boasting about the number of ‘fans’ and ‘likes’ and instead explore actual consumer behavior.

iii. Another important 'scorecard' that can be derived from Facebook (and social media in general) is customer satisfaction data. It is a fast and inexpensive way to measure customer satisfaction.

With technologies like sentiment analysis and NLP (Natural language processing), you can capture:

• Buzz - How much people are talking about your brand?
• Net Sentiment - How positively they perceive your brand?
• Passion Intensity - How emotionally charged their feelings are?

Hope you enjoyed this series. Feel free to share your ideas.

Previous posts in this series: Part 1 Part 2