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Building Online Brand Presence - Your Virtual Business Card

I have to admit I’m not good with business cards.  When someone hands me one it usually gets tucked away in my pocket or purse. More often than not it ends up a victim of my washing machine.  In fact, I’ve always considered people who hand out their business card like candy to be annoying.  That was until I needed an auto body shop and remembered I had a casual acquaintance who owned a body shop.  I had forgotten the name of the shop, though. What to do?  Then, I remembered the business card.

After digging through my purse I found his card and a few days later was paying his company for fixing the dent in my bumper.  The moral to this story is that even though my friend’s incessant handing out of business cards borders on aggressive marketing, it is effective.  That is how one builds an online brand presence and gets more customers.

There are all kinds of tips and techniques for online brand presence building and increasing traffic to a company’s website.   While all the advice is completely well-meaning and in most cases highly effective the first step in building a company’s online brand presence is to think like my friend and see opportunities in every situation. 

The key to building an online brand presence is to remember when online the small business owner should always behave as if all their customers are watching.  By being cognizant of their movements and behavior on social media and forums they create opportunities to build an online brand presence.  There are a few simple steps that go a long way in developing an impressive online brand presence:

1)      Every online signature should include a website address. Period.  This includes Forum signatures, email signatures and social media.  One’s online signature is their business card and is how online brand presence is created.

2)      To reach more customers subtle promotion must be authentic and show thoughtfulness.  This means becoming active on industry forums.  Active does not mean constant pitching of one’s product or service.  It means becoming part of the community and adding valuable and thought-provoking comments.

3)      Business owners should become experts in their field.  Expertise demands respect.  The best way to showcase expertise is to create a blog.  By discussing all aspects and elements of one’s industry or product they will grow a customer base guaranteed.

Building an online brand presence is about more than just online marketing – it’s about creating a brand for one’s company and selling it.  The goal of every business owners should be to have a customer base who thinks of them first when a need arises; much like I did when I needed my friend’s body shop. 

 

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.

 

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.

The Best Reputation in the World

Managing your reputation can lead to lots of good publicity and connections with other businesses and potential clients. But some company's reputations can take them even farther, and now Google has been given the status of "The Best Reputation in the World" by Harris Interactive, a US based company. 

According to Harris' sophisticated rating system, Google beat out Johnson & Johnson for the best reputation, as well as 3M, Apple and other highly well regarded brands and companies. The status of "Best Reputation" was awarded by Harris after conducting a survey of 30,000 Americans on their opinions of the 60 "mot visible companies" in the USA. The survey groups responded to six categories that mattered most to the firm's reputation "emotional appeal, products, services, social responsibility, vision and leadership."

The technology sector had increasingly high reputations, with Apple and Facebook, among others, coming in the top 50. Over the past decade, the technology sector has become one of the most favorable as people interact with technology brands on a daily basis and many of the companies have some element of democratic participation. Additionally, unlike other companies that produce hard products, technology companies have less chance to create reputation disasters like oil and gas companies or other companies that's work negatively impacts the environment. 

One of the best ways to improve your company's reputation is surely to enter different competitions for best brand, best product and other categories. These kind of competitions can be found easily online simply by searching and can provide your company with an opportunity to compete, beat out and shine other competition. Additionally, people love to see quotes from former and current clients and testimonies from their experience with your company. This boosts consumer confidence and improves your company's online reputation.

 

How to Prevent Leaks and Reputation Management Spoilers

Sometimes, even if you plan your public relations campaign very carefully, someone can spoil your efforts. For example, if you've carefully planned an online contest, tallied the results and determined the winner, you'll want to send out a virtual press release to top bloggers and media sources announcing the results. However, it is usually necessary to send this kind of release out a few days in advance of announcing the results on your site -- thus creating an opportunity for a leak of the highly secret information. 

Leaks can create big public relations messes and reuion your surprise, so it's imperative that you put a big header on your press release that details that this is confidential information. In some cases, it's also a good idea to ask journalists to sign a confidentiality agreement. Take for example the recent case of a Glee extra spoiling the season finale. Last week on Twitter, Nichole Crowther revealed who would become prom king and queen on the show -- a big spoiler.

This created a backlash against Nichole where angry fans responded to her spoiling the show and the producer of Glee, Blad Falchuk, tweeted "hope you're qualified to do something besides work in entertainment" and "Who are you to spoil something talented people have spent months to create?"

Unfortunately in this case, the standard union contract that Nichole signed did not require her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so filing a suit for liquidated damages would be difficult. However, if Nichole had signed an agreement with a pre-set amount of money for leaking, Glee and Fox would be protected from such actions -- and more importantly -- would probably prevent such reputation management problems from occurring at all. 

Managing Your Green Reputation

Over the past decade consumers have become much more environmentally conscious and are making many of their purchasing choices, including online choices, based on companies with good green reputations. That is making it increasingly important for companies to firstly make wise business choices when it comes to the environment and secondly to manage their green reputations -- especially online. While small companies and brands are less likely to have independent environmental watch organizations conduct investigations on them, bigger companies and brands have to manage their green reputation carefully or else they could end up with a reputation crisis like Apple is currently finding itself in.

Last week, the powerful NGO Greenpeace published a report about the top internet companies and their green reputations. The 35 page report details how much energy data companies like Yahoo, Google and Apple use to create the massive internet cloud. According to Greenpeace, the internet is consuming nearly 2% of the worlds power. After looking at a number of influential companies, Yahoo was ranked the cleanest -- improving its reputation with eco-savvy surfers -- and Apple was ranked the dirtiest. For Apple, who has a reputation of being a progressive organization, this is a blow to its reputation and in order to curb the bad public relations that this report will produce, Apple should change its policies and find ways to save more energy. Additionally, the company should send out a press release acknowledging their lack of eco-consciousness and perhaps even launch a campaign to reduce their energy consumption.

Today, in an ever increasingly environmentally conscious consumer driven world, being green isn't just about being trendy. NGOs and other civil society organizations are keeping a close watch on private companies and using the net to share with the world whose really green and whose just green washing. Thus, it's important that you truly know your companies green record and find a effective way to share it with the world and keep your online reputation as clean as possible.

 

How to Improve Your PR Campaigns

As a company it is hard to come up with PR campaigns that work and something you can stick too. It is also very important for your company to have at least a couple ideas about how they envision the PR campaigns to go. There will be a couple that will be written here that you can try to use yourself or put your own spin on to fit your company.

One campaign was on the social network Twitter, with a link on the company's site with a fun game. This game inspired people to spread the word about the company without much thought and advertise for the company for free simply because they wanted to share the game. All it takes is a creative way of having people use your product or service as a social outlet to allow them to praise your name without them even knowing it.

Another social networking campaign was a progressively growing coupon. This coupon's amount grew larger and larger each time someone liked their product and signed up for the coupon. Thus, the fan base grew and grew in order to reach a financial goal. This is a great way of improving your campaign by allowing people to not only get a discount on your product but getting the word out on your company as well. Many people are more than willing to help spread the word of your company as long as they can receive some benefit in return. 

Using social networking as a public relations campaign launcher is a great way to get people interested in your company and improve your reputation. You can specifically reach out to your specific target market and let it grow from there. This can improve your reputation and your overall market by allowing the internet to do your marketing for you.

Improve Your Reputation with a Strong Facebook Presence

It is no secret that Facebook is a strong tool in any company's tool belt. With the ease to reach millions with a click of a button it is obvious that it can be something that can help improve your reputation for your company. There are a couple ways you can achieve this and are not hard for you to do either.

Facebook allows you to upload photos, videos or comments that made by or for your company. These can easily be shared with your friends and fan base through facebook without any difficulty of having to create your own complicated website. This can help immensely when you want to get out a certain topic about your company out there by contacting all of your market with a single click of a button.

If you want to run a charity campaign, you can use the facebook application "causes" to market your cause and get people to donate money. Facebook helps you through any steps you need help with to get your cause started and than from than on improving your company's reputation. Raising funds for a charitable cause will be something you can add to your list of accomplishments and will be a great way to reach out to new clients and supporters. 

A great way to build your own Facebook page for your company is so you can start to interact with your market audience. The more you interact with people, the more people trust you and your company and also can save you a lot of PR work in the long run. Interacting is not only fun for both parties to take part in but is also educational for you because you can hear first hand what your market has issues with or want more of from your company. Overall, Facebook is a great tool that should be used to improve your company's reputation.

Do Mobile Apps Improve Your Reputation?

Many people think mobile apps are annoying and will not improve your company, but actually hurt it and be overbearing. This can be true if you do not properly advertise with mobile applications. If this tool is properly used it won't hurt yourcompany but actually could be a valuable asset.

One thing that is important when using mobile app advertisements is to make sure you allow the user to be in control of the application. This means let the user be able to see what he or she wants to see in your app by giving them choices. This gives them the feeling of you not being overbearing or trying to control them and force them to see your product or service.

Another way to have success with you mobile apps adverting is to make sure that you design for the medium. What this means is to not make it so simplistic but also don't go over the top with your design. You have to find a happy middle ground where you're not boring people to sleep but you're also not to in their face about it. This is may be the trickiest of all steps to creating your mobile app advertisement since it is hard to gauge where you stand exactly.

Load times are something that can really break you if you don't take seriously. No one is going to check out an advertisement for a product that takes 10 minutes to load. Make sure your advertisement loads quickly and without any faults to make sure you are able to get your word out. Also, if someone downloads your app advertisement you should think of giving something back to them. Such as a coupon of some sort or discount to your product or service you are offering.

Mobile app advertising is a great way to improve your company's reputation and expand it across the globe. So many people use mobile applications multiple times a day giving you a large group of people access to your company and whatever it may provide.

 

How to Reach Out (Virtually) to Japan

The recent devestating earthquake and tsunami in Japan has left hundreds of people dead and thousands upon thousands homeless. According to CNN, this could be the most expensive earthquake in history. However, there are plenty of clever ways that caring people are finding ways to help online. Here are some of our favorite highlights of ways that you can make a difference to the Japanese people.

Facebook Donate

The Red Cross is using facebook causes to launch an incredibly timely fundraising campaign to send $25,000 to Japanese victims of the tsunami. On their facebook cause page, the Red Cross has also posted raw footage of the earthquake and other important bits of information to motivate people to donate. The project has been incredibly successful and already raised nearly double their target $40,000. 

Donate your SMS

The American Red Cross has also launched a SMS donation campaign where you can simply text REDCROSS to 90999 and donate $10 to the Red Cross' humanitarian efforts in Japan, Haiti and other places suffering from natural disasters around the world. This type of fundraising has been so successful, that last year the Red Cross was able to raise $20 million for Haiti.

Virtual Games

Thought those people playing FarmVille are just waisting their time? Not since FarmVille decided to provide relief to Japan. Zynga has already raised $2 million dollars for relief efforts in Japan and millions more for Haiti.

"Like" a facebook page

Explore.org is donating $1 for every person who likes their "Dog Bless You" facebook page. This idea could be applied to several other campaigns and helps organizations connect with new users, improve your reputation and put funds towards a worthy cause. 

Create a donation landing page

Several companies and organizations have added a small piece of html code to their websites to encourage their users to donate to relief organizations. The Hello Bar puts a small message on top of the website and lets people directly send donations via your website. This is a great way to encourage people to donate to the relief efforts and get to get to know your organization or company better. 

Improve Your Business with Blackberry Apps

A Blackberry is good for much more than making phone calls and checking your emails. With the addition of more and more apps on the market, you can run most or all of your business from it as well. Using Blackberry apps to improve your business is the way to go if you want to be successful. Below are the top 5 must-have apps for the blackberry to help run your small business. 

1. Blackberry Messenger

This messenger app offers more than just being able to chat with your friends. With Blackberry messenger, you can improve your business by being able to keep in constant contact with clients, business partners and employees in order to organize work tasks and get work done. 

2. Evernote

Evernote is another perfect tool to use to improve your business. Whenever you have an idea that you need to save, you can use Evernote to instantly write it down. You can also use it to take notes, make memos and lists, tag pictures and much more. 

3. Google Sync

If you use both a computer and your phone to make appointments and keep track of clients, then you know that it can be hard to keep both of them up to date. With Google Sync your contacts and calendar are automatically synced together so you can easily keep everything up to date.

4. Wordpress

Another way to improve your business is by having a blog that offers you a way to exhibit your business and give people info on what you do and offer. The Blackberry version is just like the web based version, allowing you to manage content, add posts as well as moderate comments. 

5. Skype

Everyone should know that in order to improve your business, face time is important. Thankfully, now you can do face-to-face chatting through your phone. Skype offers users a free way for businesses to interact with their clients and partners through web and text chat very easily.

 

Google Chrome Apps to Improve Your Online Business

Google has recently launched a new Webstore for Chrome users to get Google Chrome apps and extensions that are perfect for small business owners to improve your business. Below is listed the top 6 free apps and extensions that are offered and are perfect for small businesses that are on tight budgets.

1. Google Shortcuts

This handy little extension is a great tool to use because it will conveniently display all of your chosen Google services as buttons or as a small drop-down menu next to the address bar in your browser. You can add things like Google Reader, Google Calendar and Gmail with a single click on your browser. 

2. Scribble

Another app that is great to help improve your business is Scribble. It is basically like a virtual post-it notes application. If you like to keep lots of notes or thoughts in text files, this is a great way to organize and manage them in a clutter free way.

3. Vyew

This tool can improve your business because it is kind of like a web conferencing tool, but you can do a lot more with it. It offers the ability to upload files, images and videos into conference "rooms" where anyone can have access to them in real time and continuously. 

4. Todo.ly

This tool is also great to help improve your business because it is an easy way to manage all of your tasks as well as create lists. You can create projects and sub-projects and give them due dates and more. 

5. Write Space

This tool is a text editor that offers full-screen, distraction-free writing. You can work offline and your work is automatically saved with every key stroke. You are also able to customize the settings to your liking. 

6. Pivotal Tracker

This tool can help improve your business because it is a project management tool that is story based. It allows a team of software developers to get together and provide feedback to you in real time on your projects.