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Branding with WordPress – Great Way of Establishing your Brand

The way your business is branded counts at your visitor and potential customers, so you need to find a way to make your site more visible and have your brand established. WordPress is helping individuals, companies and business owners since 2003. to establish their brand the best way possible and showcase their business in appropriate manner. WordPress has many qualities which contribute to easily established branding and recognizable company ownership, which makes owning WordPress a great business move.

WordPress Personality

WordPress has developed a great way of having your site personalized and easily customizable, so you could adjust your web pages to fit your business needs. You can at very affordable prices, or for free, pick any WordPress package between Basic, which is free, Professional or Business package, and start working on your business site.
Every aspect of WordPress is easily manageable and simple to set up, so anyone could easily do it. One of the crucial factors for establishing your brand is getting your site personalized, which you can easily do by managing your content, uploading media, manipulating tags and creating great site name and tagline, which should capture the visitors’ attention and keep them engaged and returning.

WordPress Original Design

WordPress offers you more than 200 differently designed templates from which you can simply choose the one that suits your vision, by simply going to the Dashboard Appearance option, choosing Templates. WordPress professional designer team has developed a great variety of templates with personalized design, so you can advertise your brand originally and at affordable prices.
No matter what your business is about, you will be able to adjust your brand appearance, color scheme, your company’s logo and tagline, all in jut few minutes and all by yourself. WordPress templates are made and designed to help you showcase your business the way you want it and made that process easier, by making all options and functions extremely simple and easily manageable. You can have your business site set and ready to go in minutes, all in original WordPress design and with wide choice of unique and completely functional templates.

WordPress Blog Posts

Blog posts are basically the best indicator of your activity, which will certainly help you establish your company’s brand mane with WordPress. WordPress blog post options are set up to help you with your site visibility and are set to help you boost trafficking towards your site. In order to get the most out of WordPress blog posts, you should be active and post every day for at least one time, i.e. one post.
Posts are extremely easy to edit, create, publish and trash the posts you don’t need or like, and you can even schedule the publishing and release the post on specific date and time. You can add tags, meta-tags, upload media and do alt-tags to uploaded images on your site. All of these options are meant to help you increase the number of visitors you are having on daily basis, going towards establishing your business brand with WordPress, all easy and simple.

 

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Top 10 Branding Strategies

Branding helps bring forth some of your unique qualities/strength to the masses, and help you stand out from the crowd. Branding helps you define who you are – your unique ideas and vision that makes you the person you are – and why you are different from the mass.
But most entrepreneurs start their business just like any others. They just try to do as much as possible, quickly, and then, settle for less by imitating others. Branding doesn’t work like that. If you want to develop a sense of trust among your visitors, you’ll have to think in terms of brand – i.e. being you!

 

Here are our top 10 branding strategies for small businesses:

 

Glasses 2

 

1. Research

Go to google and type in search terms that you think people will likely search for your products and services, and then visit sites that pops in the 1st page. Analyze each page for all the positives and note down their weaknesses too.
See if you can capitalize on their weakness, or see ways in which you can offer the same services and products in a slightly different way. Finally, make it your unique selling point (USP). Of course at the same time ensure that your Brand is on the 1st Page of Google.

 

unique logo

 

2. Unique Logo

Your business goal is to grow. Your logo definitely has a “wow” effect that compels people to remember it. When they remember their logo, they’ll remember you, and your business.
Put it simply – your logo is the summary of your overall brand image. Although designing a unique logo isn’t a easy walk in the park, but it doesn’t have to be a great ordeal either.
Get a help of a professional graphic designer to design your logo.

 

Tagline

 

3. Tagline

Tagline is a short, catchy, and sometimes a vague phrase that describes your business. It’s an essential part of the overall branding strategy.
Although many people use a saying, or maxims, or a proverb, they’re certainly doing it wrong. Tagline should convey a meaning of your business mission, in less than 10 words.

 

Voice

 

4. Voice

How would you like to present yourself to your customers? Do you want to appear formal? Informal? Entertaining?

 

Target Audience

 

5. Target audience

Think about the people whom you will sell your products and services. Think about their age, gender, race, and interests.

 

Simple Does It

 

6. Simple does it

You could be tempted to sell yourself with flying colors, but if you notice most successful startup, they all used simple branding strategies to make it minimal.

7. Be unique

The market is already filled with buzzwords like “become an industry leader,” or “great company that delivers what it promises” types of brand promises. To reach out to your audience and grab their attention, you’ll need to be unique.

 

Deliver

 

8. Deliver

Branding is like telling your clients that you’ll fulfill your services. That’s the sort of promise people like to hold on to, and keep on coming back for more as they trust you. Be careful as not to overpromise what you offer.

Consistent

 

9. Follow a Branding standard

Create branding guidelines with templates for all marketing materials like logo, business cards, website design, content, and rules and regulations that will help you maintain a consistent look and feel to your business.

 

Consistent

 

10. Be Consistent

Your business site, blog, social profiles, and any other marketing material should be consistent in its voice, colors, promises, and commitment. Failing to do so will only create a negative branding image for your business.

 

Do you think branding strategies help you grow your business?
What type of branding strategies have you used for your business, and did it work?
Please share your comments, below!

 

 

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Google Yourself. See Yourself through Google’s Eyes

Google yourself and see what comes up in the search engine display page(s).  As a small business owner, do you have a reputation management strategy to keep track of those negative mentions about you and your brand?
Do you notice anything unusual – a negative mention, comment, or reviews about your product and services, or simply you? While it is possible to have a total control over what you post on your site, blogs, and social media profiles, it is very difficult to keep track of what other people are saying about you and your brand. As a small business owner, do you have a reputation management strategy to keep track of those negative mentions about you and your brand?
If not, then you should!
You see, your potential clients are always searching for products and services similar to yours through search engines such as Google. For example, they use keywords such as “your company name + reviews,” “your company name + discounts,” “your company name + affiliate program” to learn what other people have to say about your product and services.
And if they come across a negative mention about your brand, that you think isn’t valid, something posted by an online scammer or one of your competitors, it will spread a negative impression about you and people will likely hesitate buying from you. As a result, you’ll lose another customer, not to mention an online reputation that could cause you additional havoc.
Don’t worry about not converting, but you need to have ways to handle those invalid online mentions.

 

Here are top ways to monitor you online reputation using Google’s free tools:

 

Tool #1: Google Suggest

The best way to see yourself through Google’s eyes is to type your brand name on Google Suggest tool and see what other suggestions appear alongside your search term. For example, if your company is based in Singapore that specialize in SEO consulting, type the keyword “SEO company in Singapore” and see what other ideas Google will suggest. Go through each keyword suggestion and see if anything appears about you and your company on the search engine result pages (SERPs). If there is something you don’t want other people to see, then use Google’s content removal tool to stop them from displaying further in search engine result pages.

 

Google Suggest

 

Tool #2: Me on the web

Google recently launched a free tool “Me on the Web”, inside Google Dashboard, which will help you keep track of your search results for your name. The tool is included between Google’s analytics and account information. You can use this tool to receive alerts whenever anyone mentions your name on the internet, either through blog posts, web page, social media updates, or any other online media channels. You can also set up when you would like to receive the notifications – within minutes, daily, weekly, or monthly – so that you can manage them accordingly.

 

Google Me

 

Tool #3: Google Alerts

Go to google.com/alerts and fill up the 5 fields to set up Google alerts to send you notifications whenever someone mentions your brand on the Internet.
  1. Type your brand name or any other keywords and its variations associated to your business in the “search terms” field to set up an alert for each.
  2. Use quotation around two or more words. Google will look for two words as a single phrase.
  3. Select “Comprehensive” from the “type” drop down to include all types of sources.
  4. Select “as-it-happens” from the drop down menu “How often” to get alerts as soon as someone mentions you online. Not to mention, it will also help you to respond appropriately if the mentions are negative and invalid.
  5. Finally, enter the email address to send your “alerts” to.

Google Alerts

 

Use the above three tools to quickly find out who are saying what about you and your brand so that you can quickly take appropriate action before it gets too late.

 

Which online reputation management tool do you use to monitor your brand? Please share and let us know below!

 

 

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Not a Business Entity? You are still being Googled.

If you aren’t a business entity, but just an individual who went out today for a date with someone you met on the Internet, or went for a job interview, then you will probably be Googled very soon.

all about you

All About You

People want to know more about you – where you work, what type of person you are, your personality traits, and about your history – before they either decide to give you another date, or a job post that you’ve been craving for all those years.
And if something negative appears about you on the Internet, you may not be perceived the same as what you appear on the outside world. For example, one of your close friends could have posted abusive status on their Facebook profile and tagged you in their post, which could show up on the screen of your boss’s laptop.

social branding

Social Branding

With the rise of social media sites, and videos sharing sites, not mentioning article submission sites where people could post anything they want about your brand, it becomes really difficult for small business owners to keep track of all these online mentions and deal with it appropriately.
But keeping track of all these online mentions, comments, and negative reviews about you and your products should not be a cumbersome for you, especially when there are plenty of free online reputation management tools at your disposal to keep track of who is searching you and take proper action to put your best foot forward.
Recently, BrandYourself.com released a new feature in their site that allowed their visitors to know who visited their profile and from which location, a feature similar to LinkedIn and MyLife which allowed you to keep track of people searching your online profile, but not limited to a single location but from all around the web.
Free online reputation management tools will motivate its users to keep their profiles updated. The Internet is plagued with hundreds, if not thousands, of free sites than can help promote your brand without having to spend a single dime on marketing.
ORM sites such as LinkedIn, BrandYouself, MyLife, Ziggs, and Naymz keep track of hundreds of popular search engines, social media sites, and news and videos sharing sites in a single manageable platform so that you can easily know who is searching for you online.

 

All About You

In addition to knowing who’s searching you on the Internet, BrandYourself.com also has an easy to use dashboard that will help its users to optimize up to 3 different links. As you already know, Google keeps tab of inbound as well as outbound links to push your profiles higher in the search engine pages.
On BrandYourself.com, you’ll create  a profile page where you can link all other online profiles you’ve set up previously on the Internet, including your website, blogs, social profiles, among others. With a $10 fee, you can optimize unlimited amount of links.
Once you’ve created a profile on any of these free online reputation management tools, you can then get instant notifications if anyone posts anything about you and your brand so that you can quickly deal with it using appropriate action and keep your date and potential employer give you another date or job opportunity you’ve been dying to get.

 

Did you find this article helpful?
Share how do you keep track of your online mentions and what free tools do you use.
Have they been useful for you? Please comment below!

 

 

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Top 10 Digital Marketing Blunders

With the advent of new technologies, tools, and techniques, we now have plenty of opportunities – social media promotion, pay-per-ad promotion, search engine optimization, blogging, and backlink generations, among others – to promote our businesses efficiently.
But most businesses are only focused on short-term benefits over the long-term promise of the digital marketing. As a result, most people make the same mistakes, over and over again.
Do not fall into the trap of short-term benefit.
Instead, think of ways to broaden your marketing strategies to reach out to the vast marketing universe. Here are the list of top 10 digital marketing blunders and how to solve them:

Digital-Marketing-Mistakes

1. You think paid advertisement is digital marketing

Your clients may be in desperate need of blog update to on their website, but that doesn’t mean that’s what they really need.
As an Internet Marketing (IM), gather insights to see the big-picture.
Do they need to “focus” on creating content first to make their website better for SEO?
Should they promote a particular service over others to separate themselves from the crowd?
When this marketing objective is established, utilize online marketing strategies to help you promote you services and products. You could find out that developing an e-Book would be more help than creating a blog post, everyday.

 

2. You think “more friends” means “more conversion.”

If you’re not living under the rock, you already know that more traffic, followers, or friends for that matter, really don’t matter at all. As an Internet Marketer, our job is to form relationships and deepen it first.
In short, we need to focus on “conversion.”
But do you or your company spend time to measure these conversions? Is there a “standard” methodology?
You may use conversion monitoring tools such as Google Analytics, but you’ll still have to dig deeper, from pulling your potential customer through email clicks to finding out the most popular entry points on your website to integrate all other offline activities of your business.

 

3. You spread the same content everywhere.

Do you repeat your conversation with everyone you meet? I don’t think so. Instead, why not spend time developing “individual” audience personas that will help identify what exactly each client’s marketing goals are?

 

4. You do not (forget) inform your clients about their expanding digital marketing opportunities.

Marketing works at a furious pace and it’s easy to get entangled in minor tasks just to keep up with latest social media promotion list. But we’re analysts/counselors first and technicians later.
To become counselors, we’ll have to stay on top of our games – keep up to date with new marketing trends, tools, and techniques – that will affect our client’s base.
Do us a favor – do not withdraw educating yourself on topic that matters in digital marketing. If you do, you’ll only lose more clients down the road.

 

5. You outsource way too much, or nothing at all.

Well-established PR companies outsource most of their digital marketing works. I would become uncomfortable with this approach, especially if I wasn’t involved in the crucial stages of intelligence gathering, devising marketing strategies, and delegating them to my staffs.
But on the other hand, you also have to expand your services and stay relevant to your market. That means bringing outside professionals who may push you into devising a win-program such as new app for Smartphone users.

 

6. You use only handful of social media sites.

Maybe you’re happy with the results you’re getting from social media sites. You have an excellent online presence on Google+ and the conversion rate is awesome. We don’t think so.
You may get complacent on your marketing endeavors. But success in digital marketing requires active participation through variety of online outposts, distributing content rich information, and establishing a strong home base.
Although you do NOT need to have to be everywhere, you still do have to be more than just in place.

 

7. Your content is stuck in a time-wrap.

Most of my clients often suffer from this marketing challenge. If you’re stuck with the white paper, I am sad to say it is not going to help you anymore.
Show your clients how a compelling blog rant/raves, or YouTube meme videos, or Infographics may benefit their organizations. Learn what intrigues them and help them explore a wider marketing spectrum.

 

8. You don’t collaborate with others nicely.

We could all make money online only if understood our core strengths and use them together to collaborate better.
So, if you have a friend who’s an excellent in website design, or social media marketing, why not approach them and brainstorm to service a client together?
At the end, we bet you’ll only build, not lose, the budget.

 

9. You don’t embrace failures to “intrigue” your clients.

While I was just starting my career, our team always discussed ways to manage client’s expectations while doing everything to avoid failures. But why not embrace our failures too?
The best part of digital marketing is that it lets you experiment with little or no money. Inform your clients that they prepare for at least a failure every quarter. Failures will help better identify your client’s likes and dislikes, and we think that’s the ideal way to develop extraordinary marketing success.

 

10. You do not think about your mobile strategies

This is very crucial, but most online PR professionals are still not sure about this point. Follow these time-tested rules to analyze your mobile traffic.
  1. If mobile traffic is only 1% of the total traffic to your website, you’ll have to re-think your mobile strategy
  2. If it’s more than 10%, you need to turn on your mobile strategy
  3. It its greater than 25%, your mobile strategy will make your business

So are you feeling confident that you’ll avoid these top 10 digital marketing blunders in upcoming days?
Share it in the comments, below.

 

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How You Can Brand Your Business Better Online

What simple steps you could take to brand your business better online, without breaking your bank?
Branding your business the “right” way has several benefits for entrepreneurs running their online business.
Proper online branding efforts helps visitors immediately know what the company is about, what they offer, and why they are different from the heap of other competitors.
In addition, proper branding also helps entrepreneurs become clear about what they represent. This way, they can focus their efforts on their “core competencies” rather than being “everything for everyone.”
Today, proper branding also helps online entrepreneurs to rank higher in search engine result pages because search engine such as Google loves businesses that are well-established, genuine, and who are for the long-run.
Related article: Reputation Management for Small Business Owners

 

With that said, let’s look at few simple yet potent steps to help you build a strong brand to skyrocket your online business success:

 

How You Can Brand Your Business Better Online?

 

brandname

 

1. Brand Name –

Brand name states what you do and who you are. However, brand name isn’t just picking up your personal name to identify your business. No one will know about your business through your name. For instance, having business name such as “JamesSmith.com” won’t tell your people what you have to offer.
So instead of using your personal name as your brand, you can use niche-related keywords as your business name.
For example, if you’re in a web design and development field, choosing a brand name such as “WebTech,” or “WebDev,” or even more specific phrase such as “ASPDotNetDevCenter” would perform better to help establish your brand better than rather pick up your name such as “JohnSmith.com.”
So identify what keywords people use to search businesses like you and select a short name that is easy to remember yet powerful to leave a lasting impression on people’s imagination.

 

brand-design

 

2. Design –

The next thing you could do to build a strong online brand would be to build a visually attractive website. Your website has to be welcoming. Just think how people will feel once they land on your website.
  • Is the page loaded with too many ads, or does it even load quickly?
  • Is the color scheme doesn’t match the tone and theme of the industry you’re in?
  • Is the theme customized and stands out from the rest or it’s just like blog or site people usually visit?
  • Is it responsive?
Invest little money on purchasing a professional and relevant theme that reflects the type of industry you’re in. A professional and responsive theme cost less than $15 so don’t worry about burning your pocket.
Similarly, change the content to suit your needs playing around with widgets, plugins, and website settings to make it user-friendly. Do not worry that your website doesn’t come out as professional as you’re thinking. It will take some time to fine tune and tweak things around until you have a site that looks exactly the way you want it to.

 

Logo, Symbols, and Colors –

 

3. Logo, Symbols, and Colors –

The world’s biggest brands have always been using a “single” image that reflects their core vision, ambitions, and activities. Just look at the logo of Coca-cola, Apple, Microsoft, and Manchester United. When it comes to soft drinks, without even thinking about it, people often think about Coca-cola. Similarly, when it comes to high-end gadgets, people invariably think about Apple – iPad, iPhone, iPod, and other gadgets.
Your business is no different!
We’re sure you have a vision and mission for your business. Now, if you could only find a highly relevant logo, symbols, or colors that represent those values, you’ll be in better position to build a strong online brand for sure. Once you’re finalized a color, symbol, and logo for your business, it’s time you place them on your website, social profiles, create business cards and banners out of it so that everything looks consistent.
Related article: Consistent rules

 

Slogan or Tagline –

 

4. Slogan or Tagline –

Slogan and tagline are keyword phrases that help tell something about your brand. It could be very specific, just like the slogan that Nokia uses – “Connecting people” or it could be vague like “Just Do it” like Nike uses.
It doesn’t matter that your logo text and slogan or tagline be the same.
In fact, a study showed that the more contrast there is between your logo text and the slogan, the easier it gets for people to remember your brand.
Sometimes, your slogan could also be slightly long which could appear as a mission statement. But if you’ve communicated what your logo is about in your tagline, people will easily identify you online. Later, you can always strip those long keyword phrases down to two or three word phrase just like the most famous brands have been doing for over decades.

 

Content –

 

5. Content –

Your content has to reflect what your brand is about. That means sticking your content topics that revolves around the main theme of your business. Sometimes people want to get adventurous and write on topics that may sound like similar content to your niche, but in fact, they’re no helpful for people whom you’re targeting in the first place.
This usually happens when you’re out of topics to write in your niche.
I have been spreading my content around several niches, but as my blog is only about Internet Marketing, writing content on programming and web design may have gotten more views on my Facebook pages, but they weren’t popular like the ones I’ve written for Internet Marketing niche.
If you’re running out of topic, I would suggest you go over your content again and look for keywords that could give you a relevant content on your niche. In addition, do not forget to read comment from people as it’s one of the best ways to generate highly relevant content in your niche.

 

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5 Hot Tips to Brand Yourself Online

Internet has become the ultimate cost-effective and convenient tool to build a strong brand and market your business. Whether you are looking to establish new relationships, or looking for new clients, or seeking new job opportunities, the Internet is the “place to be” if you want to get quick results.
When it comes to branding yourself on the Internet, the first thing you need to do is create a strong foundation on which you can build something.
In this article, we’ll discuss top 5 ways you can brand yourself so that you can be more presentable with your targeted audience and become impressive in their eyes so that they’ll trust and feel comfortable doing business with you.

 

5 Hot Tips to Brand Yourself Online:

 

1. Create Your Own Personal Website

 

1. Create Your Own Personal Website

As important as it is to insert social media profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ into your personal brand, ensure that you also have a personal website. No, it doesn’t have to be flashy or expensive website. In fact, having 5 to 7 simple pages on WordPress, Blogspot, or Webs.com is sufficient to make your personal brand stronger, and hopefully than your competitors.
Just ensure that you use a powerful and original headers with logo and slogan (tagline) that will help your brand stand out from the crowd.
Once you’re set up your own site, make sure you incorporate social media tools to drive and attract traffic from your social connection and into your site in hope that people get interested in what you’re doing and plan to achieve.

 

2. Set up Blog

 

2. Set up Blog

Once you’ve created a website, the next thing you can do is set up a blog on your site or on its own separate domain. Again, you do NOT have to create in-depth blog posts every couple of hours or every day. Just a weekly post that includes simple text and few multimedia (images, audios, and videos) will do.
Use this blog post as a way to drive traffic to your main website where you offer product, services, and offers to those who might be interested in what you have to offer.

 

3. Get Social

 

3. Get Social

Now that you have your website and blog ready, it’s time to get social. While it’ not necessary to use every new social media that comes on, it’s still worth using popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
There are free plugins available on WordPress.com to help you with this, even if you do NOT have any programming experience. Set it up once and you’re done. It’s that simple!
Make sure you post positive, interesting, and humorous status on these social media profiles. Remember, the whole world is watching you out there. A negative or outrageous status can either help or ruin your personal brand for a long time.
Before hitting the publish button, make sure you double check everything before sending out your thoughts out into the world.

 

4. Network, network, and Network

 

4. Network, network, and Network

Networking is very beneficial to establish yourself as a strong brand. Not only you’ll get to know each other through networking, but you’ll also help grow your business through the “word of mouth” marketing. Your networks are the best people for your business. They’ll help you stay in the business when nothing seems to be happening.
Anyone could be in your network, though.
They could be your friends, families, co-workers, or a random stranger. If they are aware of what you do and offer, they’ll help refer your business to those people who are seeking it, absolutely free.
So make sure you try to actively engage them with a personal message by picking up a phone and giving a call just to say “how was their day?” and “have their recent purchase helped solved their problems?” So do NOT hesitate to respond back your visitor’s messages, comments, and social media status, regularly.

 

5. Spread Your Message, Everywhere!

 

5. Spread Your Message, Everywhere!

Branding is more psychological than simply a marketing strategy – you’ll have capture people’s mind. The more you do it, the more exposure you’ll give your brand in front your users (social connections, readers, and customers), and longer it will stick to their head.
Use your website, logo, and blog post in many different places as possible.
For example, include your website URLs on your email signatures. Talk about your business on relevant forums and include URLs in the resource box (free marketing). Write guest blog posts on other relevant blogs and include an URL and name as the byline. Buy an ad banners and advertise on Google Adwords via PPC campaign.

 

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7 Ways to Keep your Online Credibility Clean

Most newbie entrepreneurs make an often repeated mistake of focusing their time, money, and efforts on driving visitors to their website, while failing to keep their online credibility clean.
For a moment, step in the shoes of your customers and think about what you would look for in a business whose product and services you will most likely order?
The bad news is that many people are cautious when making their purchase decisions and will do extensive research online on the company, brand or product before making their final decision.
However, you can choose to see this as an invaluable opportunity by understanding the psyche of human behavior, using this to build up your reputation online.
In order to stay in business by converting visitors into long-term paying customers, you’ll need to prove them that you are reliable, trustworthy, and most importantly, you deliver what you promise.

 

Here are 7 USEFUL ways to keep your online credibility clean:

 

Check Search Engines for Negative Reviews

 

#1: Check Search Engines for Negative Reviews

The first step to keep your online credibility clean is to actually do a quick search for all major keyword phrases to see what pops up on search engines result pages (SERPs). If there are any hint of negative reviews about you, or your business and its products and services, then you’ll need to take appropriate action to remove it immediately before search engine robots pick them up!
This strategy is quite simple: If you can remove negative reviews from the 1st and 2nd page of search engines, you’ll likely keep your online credibility clean as people often do NOT click beyond those pages.

 

Ensure No Negative Comments are on Social Media:Forums

 

#3: Ensure No Negative Comments are on Social Media/Forums

In addition to SERPs, make sure there aren’t any negative reviews or comments on social media sites and forums. Most people spend a LOT of time on social media sites like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, and recently, it’s been found that people trust companies that have social profile as it’s very easy to get in touch if they run into any problems down the line.
That means people are always checking out your social profiles!
So keeping it clean from negative reviews and comments is extremely important as rumors can spread in a matter of seconds through these social media sites. Do yourself a favor – check comments, status, and content on your social profiles and remove negative information about you and company, immediately.

 

Post Positive Content:Reviews about You and Your Company

 

#3: Post Positive Content/Reviews about You and Your Company

Once you’ve removed negative reviews and comments from SERPs, it’s time to replace it with fresh, useful, and informative content. Your target audiences are always looking for those positive reviews/success stories of you and your company’s products and services from others to ensure if you are “trustworthy.”
Why not give what they are asking for?
Post past success stories, helpful blog posts, and solution to their pressing question on your site’s blog. For best result, include client testimonials, or even, ask a professional reviewer to write an honest review for your business.

 

#4: Make Your Business MORE Transparent

Negative reviews and rumors about you company travels in a blazing speed when there’s lack of transparency/information about you and your business. Most site fail to include the following pages on their site and NOT only lose a potential client as a result, but also encourage bad rumors to spread throughout the net.
  1. Lack of contact information such as email address, phone number, location
  2. No money back guarantee/ return policy page
  3. No privacy policy and terms of use page
If you do NOT have these pages, people will have reasons to be suspicious about you and your business. But it’s easy to set up these pages. Do it once and forget about it, and make your business authentic in the eyes of your potential clients!

 

#5: Become Active Online, Become a Blogger (If need be)

If you want to stay in the business, you’ll need to be active, both offline and online. That means, you’ll have to promote your business, products, and services by providing informative content on your blog that highlights the benefits, features, pros and cons of your products and services so that people can actually make a wise decision before making a purchase from you.
Becoming active online no way means spending hours online!
You could spend half an hour daily and do most of the things, daily. Post blogs regularly (3 to 5 times a week), respond to comments, email queries, and questions immediately to show that you’re alive and actually care about people’s concerns.
In addition, post useful, easy to grasp, and helpful contents that your visitors will love and you’ll have them keep coming back to your business, over and over again.
Start a blog, today!

#6: Make Your Site Simple Yet Responsive

You do NOT need to have a flashy and complex site with ads and banners all over the place to impress your clients. Just an easy to navigate place where your visitors can quickly and easily find the information they’re looking for will be sufficient!
Remember, if you offer a great user experience by making everything transparent and easy for your visitors, they’ll always have positive views about your business, and in return, help keep your online credibility clean.
Keep your home page fresh, make it easy to contact you, and if possible, link your site to social media sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
And yes, do NOT forget to correct typos!

 

Take a Legal Action against Rumors and False Negative Reviews

 

#7 Take a Legal Action against Rumors and False Negative Reviews

If you still find negative reviews displaying on SERPs after going through all these steps, make sure to contact the person directly and deal with the issue. If the claim is NOT genuine, ask them to remove all the content and links politely. But if they still do not listen to you, it’s time to get even and ask for a legal advice. You’ll need to be extremely cautious in this step as your online brand is already in dangerous territory.
Forcing people to remove the negative comments by threats (using legal action) would only back-fire you and your business. The best way is to respond positively to the reviewer by telling them how you’ll help solve their problem by taking appropriate action.
But you won’t be able to keep track of all negative reviews online. You’ll also need a healthy number of positive reviews for your business. Encourage your happy customers write more positive reviews about your business.

 

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Damaged Online Reputation? All is not lost!

“Gossip” spreads everywhere and so quickly that it is impossible to keep track of what people are saying about you and your brand.
An irritated former employee may want to get revenge by talking negative things about your business, or your ex-girlfriend who’s bitter over the break-up, one day decides to smear your reputation.
But don’t freak out as here’s good news!
You can fix your damaged online reputation, although it’ll be a tough, but doable.

 

Follow these 5 simple steps to recover your damaged online reputation:

 

Perform an online routine search

1. Perform an online routine search –

Remember the old saying, “First impression is the last impression?” People often visit your site/blog or Google your brand to know more about you, and you don’t want them to see any negative comments, reviews, and posts about you, would you?
Well, of course, you would not!
That is why, it’s crucial to perform a routine check of your name, brand name, all product names, and anything related with your brand.
Visit each page; follow up with any comments or reviews; remove negative comments; respond them by shedding positive light on them. Remember to promote yourself as caring, respectful, and professional people.

 

Start Business Blogging

2. Start Business Blogging –

It’s unwise to always leave outside bloggers and media to cover your business events, product reviews, press releases, and brand ideas for you.
You will not have 100% control over what they say about your brand. Their reviews and comments could be either making or breaking your business.
Why not start a business blog yourself?
It could be an ideal place where you can add positive information about your business more often, update content easily, and bury past negative comments quickly before Google search engine robot index them, and recover back from damaged online reputation.

Setup profiles at social media sites

 

3. Setup profiles at social media sites –

Set up new profiles on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other popular social networking sites.
Join groups and start posting helpful content related with your niche/industry to set yourself as an industry “expert.” In addition, address any questions, concerns, and comments about your products and services.
Social networking sites are an ideal place to engage and interact with your targeted audience, and build up a strong online presence.

 

Post MORE positive content

4. Post MORE positive content –

To help bury your damaged online reputation, you need to add MORE positive things about your business and fast. Online reputation management is all about managing how other people look at your business.
And the best way to do that is to add positive, helpful, and unique content about your business using variety of media channels such as press release sites, guest post on other blogs, article directories, YouTube, etc.
Make sure your content is highly relevant and genuine to your target audience.

 

Encourage customer reviews

 

5. Encourage customer reviews –

If you have a GREAT product or service (we’re sure you do), then why don’t you encourage more customer reviews?
Most of your customers will be more than happy to leave a positive review about your brand. For those who won’t, you can address them personally to think otherwise.
Depending on your niche, try to list your business on Foursquare, Yelp, Zagat, and more recent services like Raved. Focus on building a business you’ll be proud of, and your reputation will likely grow.

 

Damaged online reputation: Develop the business you envision!

Developing a STRONG and LASTING online reputation of your business may take some time, and you need to constantly nurture it from the ground up so that it doesn’t crash down easily.
If your online reputation is damaged and think that your situation is unpromising, do not give up. Instead, contact companies like GetYourSiteRank.com.
Even if it’s a worst case scenario, they can HELP!
CONTACT US to help you recover from damaged online reputation, NOW!

 

 

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Brand Yourself. Be a Force to be Reckoned With!

Personal brand is similar to your “reputation” and indicates how others perceive you – i.e. they want to know who are you, what you offer, whether you are trustworthy, an expert, or a genius?
If you’ve been active on your business for a while, then you probably have already developed some sort of personal brand for yourself, without even realizing it, especially when people already know your name, what you offer, and stand for.
But if your personal brand is WEAK or UNORGANIZED, you need to take proper steps to truly stand out from the crowd.
You will need to make it STRONGER, UNIQUE, and MEMORABLE in people’s mind.

 

Brand Yourself

Just think about Coca cola, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Facebook for example. They have a formidable brand, don’t they?
Don’t get overwhelmed. I am not asking you to compete with these guys, but if you consider your personal brand is not very popular, this guide will give you tools and key components of a SUCCESSFUL and STRONG brand.

 

5 Simple Ways to Build a STRONG & FORMIDABLE Brand:

 

Consider Brand as an Investment

 

1. Consider Brand as an Investment

Your personal brand will help to add value to each new project you create. It has the potential to last longer than your own lifespan. It’s that important!
To sustain your business for a longer period, and hopefully grow exponentially, whether you are in an art business, or selling homes, or selling products via online store, a good personal brand is always an invaluable investment.
If people feel connected, or can relate with what you’re saying, then undoubtedly, they’ll follow your brand automatically, from one project to another. If your audience supports you, you’ll less likely struggle launching new projects as you do NOT have to start from scratch – your personal brand takes care of it all.

 

Set up a Blog:Site that is all about YOU

 

2. Set up a Blog/Site that is all about YOU

We don’t care if it’s your first priority, or a second priority. Setting up a blog/site will give you a wonderful opportunity to develop a STRONGER relationship with your clients. Follow these content tips:
  1. Include a mini-bio at the end of each post.
  2. Create an “About” page and make it unique and personal and talk about your ideal brand.
  3. People may forget most things about you, but they remember personal stories about you.
In addition, STOP being business-oriented for a minute, and FOCUS on telling interesting stories about yourself, and your future visions so that people can quickly relate with you.

 

Be ubiquitous WITHOUT trying hard

 

3. Be ubiquitous WITHOUT trying hard

To make your online presence felt everywhere, participate in social media, online forums, guest blogging, and other sources WITHOUT going overboard.
If people will hear your name enough, they will definitely want to know MORE about you (it may not happen the first time, or on the second time, or even the third, but they will eventually click that button).

 

No Matter What, Keep Your Brand Fresh

 

4. No Matter What, Keep Your Brand Fresh

If people sense you are repetitive or going stale as you promote the same business idea that was once a phenomenon, then its high-time you add something new to keep things interesting and fresh.
Keep adding new layers to what you do and represent.
You cannot always ride on the same idea, forever.

 

Keep Yourself Updated Frequently, and Continue to Learn

 

5. Keep Yourself Updated Frequently, and Continue to Learn

Keep yourself updated on your expertise and knowledge of your industry, especially in the online world. The Internet changes drastically day to day, new tools, methodologies always pop up.
So what if you were an “expert” a few years ago? If you have stopped challenging and educating yourself, you’re NOT expert anymore!
Keep on learning and updating

Bonus Tip- Interact, Talk, and Respond

6. Bonus Tip: Interact, Talk, and Respond

Do you respond back to people’s concerns, questions, and comments by replying through comments/emails, or re-tweeting their tweets, or you simply skip this step?
Well, if you don’t, you seriously need to change that strategy immediately and get people talking with you. Get them to comment, share, like, post positive things about you by adding value to their life.
If you can’t reply to everyone who sends you emails, make sure to mention this on your contact pages, or write a post that solves the answer to the generic questions people ask commonly.
Heck, you can even set up a FAQ section on your site.
Remember, if you make it clear in your posts and emails that you can’t respond to every queries and comments, people will understand and they will less likely be disappointed with you.
In this guide, we discussed how to build a personal brand in 5 simple ways.
Go on, what are your thoughts and comments about this? How do you make a STRONG brand image for your business, especially if it’s your online business? And has it worked for YOU?
Please, COMMENT BELOW …
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