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Top Ten Marketing Tools

Ask ten different people what their ten favorite marketing tools are and you are more than likely to get ten different answers. While marketing tactics are all essentially the same, you are going to see variations on the same theme depending on the type of business doing the marketing. Along with those variations, marketing tools will be given different priorities depending, again, on the type of business being marketed.

Search engine positioning will always have a high priority because the majority of the people using the internet use search engines to find what they want. In that same vein, tag lines are used as marketing tools to help your message stand out to the consumers who are using search engines. Once the consumer gets to your web site, you will find that a well designed website is one of the best marketing strategies you can have. Getting a press release out to the public has also been proven to be an effective marketing tool.

Using marketing tools such as Google Analytics is essential regardless of what type of business you have. Analyzing and tracking your customer base is essential if you want to keep them. Something as simple as sending regular e-mails will also help you retain customers as they are reminded of what you have to offer. Using optimum keyword tracking tools will also help in your marketing strategy because it will keep you updated as to what the most popular keywords are in the type of business you have. Using a social bookmarking toolbar such as StumbleUpon for example will also help drive traffic to your site. Sites such as this are also known as directories and they have a proven track record of improving your online reputation because they are keyword optimized marketing tools.

 

Managing Your Professional Reputation Online

As more and more people spend time online and on social networks like Facebook, the private and the professional are continuing to collide. In response to this collision, institutions are establishing policies about how professionals should conduct them online. Most recently, the Ontario College of Teachers released a report over their concerns that teachers are establishing relationships with their students on social media sites like Facebook.

Even though Facebook has many privacy settings that enable you to group different people together and change your settings based on the group, the teachers association is concerned with how electronic messages will effect students' relationships to their teachers inside the classroom. Facebook messages and other online activity don't allow for people to communicate as clearly as in person, and this online communication can effect how students learn, the association argues. 

At the same time, cyberbullying between students has become increasingly monitored by schools as online student relationships spur offline reactions that school officials must deal with. In some severe cases, students have been bullied so badly online that they have committed suicide -- increasing concern for school officials over social media activity. However, teachers participation in online discussions with their students are still seen as blurring the lines between professional and private and are in general still frowned upon. 

However, students are incredibly tech savvy and young people use text messages and Facebook to communicate some of their most important social actions. This means that their is also a necessity for schools to find a way that they can use social media and teach their students how to act professionally online. Many schools are now starting to have Facebook pages and increasing online presences -- making it more important than ever that they also educate their students in the classroom about how to effectively and professionally use social media to manage their professional and personal online reputations.

How to Manage Negative Publicity

One of the big issues facing businesses today, in a world of instant reviews and online blogs, is managing negative publicity. While in the past there may have been only a handful of channels available to reviewers, allowing you to carefully monitor and control your messaging, these days anyone with an internet connection can post whatever they want about your brand, and their posts may find their way to the front page of an important search.

You can do your best to keep publicity positive by treating every job as important, making personal connections with colleagues, and keeping open lines of communication so that you can address problems as they arise and before they are shared with the world. Eventually, however, it is likely you will inadvertently generate negative publicity, and at that point you’ll need to deal with it. By keeping your wits and taking immediate action you can mitigate possible damage.

Keep Initial Exchanges Private

Assuming the negative publicity you’re receiving isn’t obviously just someone lashing out to be negative and get a response, your first step should be to contact the person who wrote about your brand. Keep in mind during your exchanges that you are trying to fix the problem, however, and do not get overly defensive. Generally this first round of exchanges should take place privately.

You want to be able to be honest in your responses, and you want them to feel free to clearly articulate their problems, without giving further fuel to their negative reviews. If they decide to move the conversation into a public forum, such as a comments thread, take extra care to never come across as overly defensive, and if possible try to steer the conversation so that they do not need to further repeat their problems. Keep in mind that any public conversation will also be indexed by search engines, and could exacerbate your negative publicity.

Attempt Reconciliation

Once you have an idea of the underlying issue that provoked the negative publicity, you can make an attempt to remedy the problem. Often people who post negative reviews online are doing so out of a sense of frustration, and the simple act of reaching out to them will be enough for them to feel their complaints have been taken care of.

If you are able to reach an understanding with the other person, such that they feel okay with the situation, the next step is to ask them if they would remove their original negative review, or post a follow-up review. Having negative publicity taken away entirely is of course always preferable, but in cases where that’s not possible, having an immediate follow-up explaining that the situation has been resolved can actually help your brand in the long run. 

If All Else Fails, Bury

If reconciliation is not possible, either because the person is just out to slander you, or because you simply can’t come to an understanding, make efforts to hide their negative comments. By utilizing brand reputation tools you can push negative publicity down search engine results for your name or brand. Although the negative publicity will still exist, its effects will be greatly lessened by the fact that most web users won’t ever see it.

How to Deal with Corruption Scandals

Dealing with a corruption scandal can be one of the most difficult experiences for an individual or an organization. Corruption scandals are often overplayed in the media and lead to a slew of bad public relations. But how can individuals and companies weather the storm and curb the worst of the bad media? LookupPage offers a number of different methods to manage negative public relations. Here are a few of our best tips:

Be Transparent

If there has been a mistake, acknowledge it. This is the first and foremost important step in managing negative publicity. Respond by making a public statement and openly acknowledging the failure. Public statements can be made in a number of ways – via online media, like the company website (news section), facebook page, video or even photographs.

Nothing goes over as well as being transparent about the mistake and making a formal apology. Throughout history, there are a series of opportunities where brands --- governmental, commercial and non-governmental – could make public statements and apologies for the mistakes they've made. By acknowledging the wrongdoing, you illuminate the opportunity for critics to argue that you haven’t taken responsibility. Of course, these public statements must be backed up by real action, but making a formal apology – especially to parties that have been hurt or lost because of the incident – will surely help insure that you and your company end up on top.

Generate Positive PR

In addition to acknowledging the mistake, it’s important to start doing good as soon as possible. When BP’s oil spilled out into the Gulf of Mexico, the oil giant found itself in a PR crisis. However the company was ready and made sure that there were camera crews to capture them cleaning up their act. In addition to hosting this content on the BP website, BP can send it to news and other media outlets – who always love free content – in order to provide a positive image of the company.

Distract

Another great way to take the attention away from bad PR is to generate a new campaign. In addition to acknowledging the mistake and generating new content that directly related to the negative incident, it is a good idea to start a new, exciting campaign that will direct attention away from the bad PR. There are a number of creative campaigns that companies have launched to generate positive PR. Picking a holiday that can have some commercial significance to your brand or your company is a great way to divert attention in a discreet way. For example, Dunkin Donuts launched an incredibly successful social media campaign for the annual coffee holiday (who even knew there was such a thing). If you go online and search for holidays you’re sure to find calendars with loads of holidays that you weren’t even aware of. These holidays can serve as good platforms for publicity campaigns because most often, people will think that the campaign was pre-planned, in accordance with the calendar, instead of launched to cover up the mistake or bad PR incident that happened before.

Improving Your Google CV

You’re getting ready for that big job interview or presentation. You’ve sent your application in and now you know that your company or name is going to be Googled. Unfortunately, when you were back in college, you took a few too many pictures and posted some “funny” comments on your friends blogs. Now, every time you search your name on Google the bad links are showing up. So what to do? Can you eliminate or erase content from Google. Unfortunately, the answer is no. There is no way to remove content from Google. On the other hand, good, new content you put online will also not be removed. So how do you get that good content to take over the bad content?

SEO isn’t just about improving traffic to your website, it’s also about building your Google CV. Whether you have a lack of content online or negative content, there are a number of secondary sources that are high ranking on Google. When you fill in profiles on these websites, they push weaker results down and secure your reputation on your Google CV. One of the highest ranking secondary sites that you can put your information on is LookupPage. LookupPage was especially designed in order to be high ranking in Google, so when you put your information there – very quickly you will find it generating positive links and positive of PR – pushing the negative content down to the bottom.

There are many aspects to a Google CV. Of course, the most obvious is the overall web view where a few images and videos will be shown as well. However, it’s very important, when you are checking your Google CV, to check all of the different pages behind Google and other search engines. For example, images, videos, blogs, news, scholar and so on. Where you have links, will determine what kind of impression you make on potential clients – depending on what type of brand or company you are, you’ll want to target different parts of the search engine.

For example, if you are a photography company, you’ll want to insure that when you type your company name or related keywords ie San Francisco photographer, that pictures from your company and representing your brand show up. If you manage to monitor the links on your website and what you contribute to other websites, you’ll be able to easily improve the results in the image section. Each time you submit an image, especially on your website, you’ll be able to write a description and tags. In these places it’s most important to write your company name and other keywords, so that they will show up in the results.

Another example is with video. Google video now tracks all of the different videos on the web and compiles them in one place. However, it doesn’t compile and treat video from every location the same. If you want to insure that your video will show up in the web results, you must insure that the tags on the video and the title are related to the keywords that you are targeting. Video makes an especially good impression as a few videos will show up at the top of Google immediately, taking up some of the most precious advertising real estate in the world – real estate that isn’t for sale, but for strategic usage. `

Real Time Public Relations

There are many different ways to do public relations online, but real-time public relations is a whole new ball-game. While press conferences have become more popular online, today will mark the first ever real-time performance of a play!

A remake of a Shakespeare play, Much Ado About Nothing, will become the newest social media experiment and will bring facebook fans together to view the play. This real time experiment is also a great way for the two founding organizations to generate positive publicity, reach out to new potential supporters and bring attention to the important issue of privacy -- especially on facebook. 

According to Read, one of the sponsoring organizations, this is the plot synopsis:

Much Ado is a romantic comedy that showcases villainy at its most vicious as an innocent girl’s reputation is damaged by lies and deception. The play also features the memorable characters of Beatrice and Benedick, who start out at each other’s throats and then act out a romantic plot of their own.

In addition to showing the play online, the group has created facebook profiles for each of the characters and gives them an online persona for fans to interact with. This is a great way to fictionalize facebook and a new way of using social media -- always exciting and buzz worthy for online users and a great way to build a positive reputation online. 

Lastly, the project asks users to be super interactive and change their facebook news feed settings to show posts from all your friends and pages -- this will insure that users get the "full theater experience" and is a great way to insure that their message will get into other supporters news feeds.