How can I block inappropriate messages in a social media app?

The most important thing to understand is your audience, or rather your target customer. In the beginning, it can be a bit overwhelming to all of a sudden tackle half a dozen social media platforms and do them all well. Focus on just one or two platforms where you know your ideal customers are. For example, if you're building a saas product for techies, get your butt on Twitter and engage with anyone and everyone who's commenting on related hashtags or other Twitter-ers. Twitterites. If you're producing high-end physical products that look awesome in photos, post daily on Instagram and get people to oogle at your Instagram feed. Of course you should still claim your business name on all the platforms just in case, but focus on a few. Use tools like Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, IFTTT, and Zapier to help you automate some of the posting process. Just don't cheap out on your content ;)

I love what Lee said about being yourself but staying on message. And Ali was right: choose your goals then plan backward from them. Twitter is a tree: the more your water, fertilize, and prune it, the stronger it will be. Here are a few quick tips: · Actively prune inactive and spam accounts to keep the number of people you follow less than the number who follow you. · Talk to thought leaders, especially people who have more followers than you. Engaging them in conversation will put you on the radar of all their followers. · Give public "high fives." Compliment other people's work, writing, products, and thoughts, and 95% of them will like you. · Use TweetDeck to create custom streams based on the niches you're target, and Buffer App to schedule the delivery of new content. I have to use Buffer; otherwise, I'll sometimes forget to post my stuff! · Be yourself. I can't stress that one enough. · Keep in mind that bigger isn't necessarily better. Again, what is your goal? If you're trying to network in your industry, than a smaller following might be appropriate. If you're selling info products, then you'll need lots of people entering your sales funnel. · Have fun. I believe that people prefer to follow winsome people. · Stay consistent. Your following will grow steadily as long as you're posting steadily AND engaging people in conversation. · Be really generous. I believe that people prefer to follow generous people. · Go read one hundred blog posts about how to grow your Twitter following. By the time you're finished, you'll be the expert. Come back and teach all of us "experts" something, okay? Austin

Hi! Happy to answer this question. Initially, I'd ask "what are you tracking at present?" And "what are your goals?" Software wise, I love to use a few tools for Twitter. Hootsuite to schedule relevant content (and not all tweets should be scheduled--happy to touch on this more), Tweetreach to get a feel for impressions/influencers who HAVE been engaging (in my mind, impressions are KEY, more so than Follower count because hashtags can help you reach more people) and Sprout Social for a more in depth view of your Twitter analytics. Getting more visibility/followers: what hashtags are you using? How often do you acknowledge those who follow you (new followers vs existing followers)? Are you just sharing autoscheduled content and links OR are you creating conversations? Hashtags wise: find those that have a community already centered around them! *You don't want to "hashtag hijack" however, tags like #smallbiz #blogchat #_________ specific to your industry or ideal client's industry can go a long way. Other tools that people use to track community and engagement include Sum All, and Commun It https://commun.it/ Once you start tracking impressions (and monitoring growth vs plateaus) you can then go back and look at your content to see which posts generated the most response/engagement. Again, just want to emphasize that creating conversations and asking questions are great methods to do all of the things you are looking to accomplish.

Here are some options: ___Free Options___ 1) Make apps without needing to spend a lot of time learning to code. Look into "MIT App Inventor" (http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/). It's a very _easy_ way to make pretty complex apps using drag and drop coding. You can find youtube tutorials that will show you how to make your first app within 5 minutes. I've used MIT App Inventor to make prototype apps for many of my ideas, saving me tens of thousands of dollars if I paid a dev to do it instead. Learn to do "real" coding yourself. The main investment will be your time. There are plenty of free resources for learning coding on the web. I'd suggest learning "React Native", it's a relatively new way to code apps, which allows you to make one app that will run on both Android and iOS. 2) Find a software engineer cofounder. Go to Meetups, conferences, local hackerspaces / makerspaces. Hang out on relevant online forums (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/ make sure to read their rules for posting before posting though). It won't be easy to find a tech cofounder, your idea will need to be amazing, and you yourself will need to be very passionate and capable in order to convince someone to partner up with you for sweat equity. ___Paid options___ 1) Use developers with less established reputations / portfolios (lower cost, higher risk) Be very wary of freelancers on sites like Upwork, Fiverr, etc. Here are some basic hiring rules: In your hiring script, make sure to ask for all applicants to give their account name for github/bitbucket and Trello. Don't hire agencies, only hire individuals. To get hired, ask them to do a simple task via Trello and submit the code via github/bitbucket. This task should only take them maybe 1 hour. Check the quality of what the applicants and if they deliver it in a timely manner. Keep the 1 or 2 people that do a good job. If you don't do this vetting these "low cost" developers may end up costing a lot in the longer run. 2) Use developers with more established reputations / portfolios (higher cost, lower risk) With this option your app will probably cost > $20k to develop, but it can be worth it if you have a single idea that you know you want to move forward with. I can introduce you to a very high quality developer in NY if you're at this stage. Let me know if you'd like any additional help more tailored to your specific app ideas, best, Lee

If you're using source control, it's easy to track source and control access — or revoke access — if someone leaves the company. Also, your developers should have signed a contract about the project itself that clearly places the source code under your/the client's/the company's control, and if/when they leave, they release all rights to code created under that contract. You can never be 100% sure, but these small steps will at least ensure a legal high ground should anyone steal code. Good luck!