Do you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, or any other type of social media to promote your shop? If you do, then you can definitely understand how terrifying it would be if someone hacked into all of your accounts. Social media hackings are so common nowadays that it would irresponsible to not protect your accounts.

Check out these 3 simple, free, and easy tips to help protect your social media accounts from hackers:

1. Use passwords that are unique and have variation

Believe it or not, “12345678” and “qwerty” aren’t as great of passwords as you may think. Why you ask? Mostly because these passwords aren’t unique and don’t contain variation—the first is all numbers and the second is all letters. Then what makes a strong password? Here are some criteria from Microsoft’s “Tips for creating a strong password” that will help you make strong passwords for your social media accounts:

• Your password is at least eight characters long
• It doesn’t contain your username, real name, or company name
• It doesn’t contain a complete word
• It is significantly different from previous passwords
• It contains uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols

Following these guidelines will point you in the right direction for creating strong passwords, but if you want to go even further try to make your passwords as least recognizable as possible (ie. izsdAnodf!91).

2. Configure your privacy settings on your mobile apps

Oftentimes, it’s fairly easy for hackers to spam you because you haven’t changed your default privacy settings, which are too weak—anyone can have access to almost all of your personal information. Make sure to edit the privacy settings on your current and future social media accounts so that you have total control of who views your personal as well as auto shop information.

3. Change your passwords regularly

Finally, the last tip is to change your passwords regularly! This is the easiest tip to do, but also the easiest to forget. I know it’s tempting to create a strong password and then just forget to change it, but don’t fall into this trap! According to this response by Life Hacker, the longer your password remains stolen, the longer you’ll be allowing access to hackers to gain your information. But the really scary part is that most of the time you won’t know whether or not your password has been stolen. So don’t take the risk and change your passwords regularly! 

In the end, these tips aren’t fully comprehensive, but they will help you take a step in the right direction toward better social media protection. If you’re still not too sure about how to protect your social media accounts, or you just want more social auto shop marketing guidance, let us help you! Give our auto shop marketing experts a call at 1.800.591.8675