Over the week we go through a lot of content - news and blog posts, how tos and conceptual posts on the state of the internet. Starting this week we are bringing back Buzz and Brilliance but in a new format - we are both going to pick a selection of our favourite reads to share with you.
Check out the links and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you read any great posts this week!
Lara
There are a lot of hackers out there. People who are trying to hack into big networks, and people who want to steal identities. This week Twitter had a security breach that could have affected 250,000 users. Have you changed your password?
Continuing down the same line, Spin Sucks also wrote about a recent case of a blogger/”internet junkie” having her image stolen and associated with a fake profile. This article from Spin Sucks covers how Facebook identity theft can happens and what you should do if it happens to you.
Why should small businesses be online - because that’s where people are not only spending their time but also where they’re looking for answers and advice. This infographic on Socialnomics has some really interesting stats on how people use and what they expect from social media for customer service!
Graph search is slowly being released to more people (Karen has it, Lara doesn’t. Do you?) There is great potential for search to really help small businesses, but to be found in searches, you need to make yourself findable. Here are some simple steps from John Haydon on making your page a little bit more Graph Search friendly.
Karen
Because I recently began teaching a course that teaches students how to write for the web, I really enjoyed reading this piece that applies to copy in any format. One of the keys to writing about the same thing everyone else has already written about is putting your own spin on it. Read this article and you’ll see how changing the angle of your ad copy can net great results.
When your content is shared, it can feel like you’ve won a gold medal. On the other hand, when you’re watching your analytics and never see a spike in pageviews/visits, it feels like you’ve come in dead last in the race for attention. These techniques for getting more shares are simple and won’t take up much of your time. They also heavily incorporate the “social” part of social media.
I predict that we’ll see an even bigger explosion of podcasts and videos this year, which means you need to know what equipment works and how to use it.
It’s important to know what’s happening with your company’s social media accounts, especially if an employee is the one managing them. The first mistake HMV made was not really understanding what social media is. Their second, arguably, was in hiring an intern. Their third was forgetting that said intern was still connected to the accounts, even after she was let go. Despite all that, she didn’t do nearly the harm she could have done if she’d wanted to be truly malicious and vindictive.
One of my favorite tools to help me organize content and ideas is 
I've been doing some experimenting in a Facebook group on posts that get engagement. What I'm finding is that the easier the question, the better engagement I get across the board. It's given me some insight into why 
The introduction of Google+ brand pages means that there is a 
For over a year, 
Foursquare has incorporated 
To me, it's a dangerous practice to definitively say someone is doing social media "wrong". I think that requires proof, such as lack of growth, effectiveness in the network they're building. So, when I saw Mathew Ingram's post earlier this week, I was curious about what he had to say about 
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