It’s time that I share one of my favorite weekly blog reads – a compilation of links gathered and updated every week on The Pen Addict blog. Why? For one, because I have always liked and used fountain pens. I use them much less now that I do much of my note taking on my iPad, but I still like fountain pens, inks and high quality paper. Stationary geek – I am sure very few are surprised.

But there are other reasons I like the weekly compilations like this post from last week. As I browse through the links, I am often exposed to the work and creative habits of other interesting people.

An example from last week’s compilation – a profile of software developer and author Mike Fogus and how he works, with details about everything from his computer setup to the way he takes and accesses notes.

The Internet and blogs in particular make it easy to keep learning, and a great way to find intriguing new ideas is to get a look inside how other people work. At least that works for me. Reading about smart people, just like working with smart people, is one of the best ways to keep a fresh perspective and to keep learning.

How safe are the passwords for your social media accounts? This question was on many minds late last Friday when Twitter announced that it detected an attack on its tool and that up to 250,000 accounts could be compromised. I received an email notice from Twitter while I was out on a run, and as soon as I came home I logged in to Twitter through the website – not trusting to click on a link in an unexpected email for fear that it could be a phishing attack. Sure enough, my account was one of the lucky few, so I created a new password and moved on with life.

This seems like a minor inconvenience, a tiny blip in another week of communicating through online tools. And for me, it was a minor blip, because I was prepared.

What do you need to do to be prepared?

• Use unique passwords for each of your important social media accounts – if you use the same password for Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other accounts, when your password may be compromised on one tool, it is compromised on all tools.
• Use strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed by anyone trying to access your account – strong passwords are usually eight or more characters long and they use a combination of upper and lower case letters as well as numbers and symbols.
• Regularly change your passwords – it is a good practice to change your password every few months to make it even less likely that someone could crack the password and get access to your accounts.
• Limit the number of outside tools that have access to your social media accounts

– you can limit your exposure and the chance that someone can get access to your password by limiting the number and types of add-on tools that you connect to your Twitter or Facebook accounts. Make it a regular practice to do a periodic review of the third-party tools connected to your accounts to ensure that you are only allowing key tools to maintain access to your login and password.

In the case of last week’s issue with Twitter, it isn’t clear if the reason those 250,000 accounts were compromised was due to poor passwords. Since one of my accounts was on the list, I would like to think that wasn’t the case.

Are your social media accounts and their passwords safe? If you rely on social media tools to tell your stories, this is a critical question. It’s up to you to ensure that the answer is yes.

Have you resolved to update the image of your business in 2013? One easy first step is to roll out a new design for your business cards. Lifehacker offers their take on the five best business card printing companies.

Like many other people, I made a switch a few weeks ago to begin using Flickr to share my photos, after using Instagram for most of 2012. Whether this is a good of bad choice for you and your business or brand is a matter of personal preference and whether you believe that you can reach the audience you need to connect with using either service. Both services make it easy to share photos to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, but in my experience it seems that there is still a larger community on Instagram than on Flickr at this point.

To be clear, I haven’t decided whether I will completely delete my Instagram account, but even after they attempted to clarify their new Terms of Service, this still feels like a good opportunity to re-examine which community I want to participate in during 2013.

I have noticed a few key changes in the way I use Flickr versus how I used Instagram. Because of the interface and focus of Instagram, like many other users, I tended to use filters to alter my images more on Instagram than I do when using Flickr. Flickr does offer easy-to-use filters and editing features, but I find that when I am working with a well-composed, full-frame photo rather than an artificially square photo, I tend to let the image speak for itself, without filters.

My evaluation a few weeks after making this switch is simply that Flickr feels more polished and professional than Instagram. My use may vary over time, though.

You can see my Flickr feed for how this evolves.

Have you made the switch from using Instagram to another photo sharing tool? Does it even make sense for your business or brand to do so?

We’re in the season of list articles and infographics, but this graph holds some interesting information about what social media users shared the most during 2012. It’s worth a look.

The approaching new year offers an opportunity to assess your communications efforts and set new goals for 2013. If your communication and brand awareness campaigns include blogging, this is the perfect time to set targets for things such as reframing the focus of your content, finding new ways to measure the impact of your posts or how many posts you want to make each week. When you are setting these goals, remember that your posts will be noticed and read more often if they are posted between noon and 4 p.m. on weekdays, or on Saturdays.

As for creating a strategy itself, one tip is to plot out the topics you want to be sure to cover each month of the year and then use an outline or mindmap to ensure that you hit on each of the topics in your strategy. Lists, outlines and mindmaps are your friends when it comes to ensuring a focused communication strategy – whether your communication channel is on a blog, social media, news release, through advertising buys or any other means.

What are your communication goals for 2013?

The lawyers over at Instagram caused a major ruckus for the users of the popular social media and photo sharing tool yesterday when Instagram released new Terms of Service language that made it appear that beginning in January, users’ photos might be used in advertisements without any notification or profit sharing for the photographers who took the photos. This morning, this led to a host of Facebook and Twitter posts in my feeds about people bailing on Instagram and giving the new Flickr apps a chance as an alternative.

The folks at Instagram hope you’ll wait and reconsider. A few minutes ago they posted a blog piece – Thank you, and we’re listening.

We will see if this clarifying blog post will help stem the tide of defections from Instagram, but this whole incident is a great reminder that when it comes to building a social media presence for your company, government or idea, you can’t afford to put all of your resources in one tool.