LookupPage Blog | Professional Web Presence and Visibility

Using Links to Build Online Brand Presence

Many small businesses have established blogs to help increase online brand presence but are still confused about how using links to build online brand presence works.  In short, search engine algorithms look at a lot of criteria when determining how relevant your blog or website is when ranking.  One of the elements they look at is how many other websites view your blog important enough to link to it on their site.  This is called a linkback and is one of the best strategies to increase your online brand presence.  There are many strategies that can be used to increase linkbacks to your blog but the easiest way to do this is to simply ask.

To be successful in asking another website or blog to link back to your blog you need to first do your research and determine what sites will be the most beneficial to you and your online brand presence.  Perform some Google searches using your primary keywords to determine who your competitors are.  Once you know who they are check their websites to make sure they are a brand you want your brand associated with.

Assuming they are look for places within their blog or website that a link and reference to your blog would benefit. For instance, if they are discussing a topic that you cover in a blog post it is the perfect place to linkback to your blog.  Also, look for places within your blog or website that you can link back to their website or blog.

Once you’ve done the research and have specific places to link both to your blog and you to theirs you need to initiate contact.  While online brand presence might deal with the realm of the internet there are times to contact humans via voice.  This is one of those times.  Calling and speaking to a representative of the business is the best way to get results.  Explain who you are and what your company does.  Commend them on their website and ask if you may have permission to link their blog/site to your content and share where in your blog it would be appropriate. 

Most people will have no problem with this.  After they agree to that mention that you found a place on their website/blog where a link to your blog would be beneficial. Do not demand reciprocity but hint.  If they say they will add a linkback to you send an email verifying the ‘deal’ and include an HTML ready link so they can simply cut and paste it into their web content.

This link building strategy does not always work but takes very little time to execute and costs nothing.  When looking for ways to increase online brand presence using your blog you must be creative and assertive.   Linkbacks are one of the best ways to build an online brand presence and the appropriate amount of effort and time should be spent doing so to help your brand succeed.

Improve Enhanced Online Visibility with Google Search plus Your World

Google has recently announced their latest dangling carrot to entice businesses to utilize Google+ in an effort to seriously improve enhanced online visibility.  Google Search plus Your World is a hybrid search that combines traditional Google search results compiled from its infamous algorithm and the search results from Google+ which uses shared web content from a user’s Circles.  This is an opportunity for businesses to begin seeing a huge increase in enhanced online visibility by simply having an active Google+ account.

Enhanced Online Visibility – Quality Web Content

In order for Google Search plus Your World to retrieve content it must be shared within a Circle.  This means that businesses wanting their web content to be shared and shared often in an effort to increase enhanced online visibility must step up their game and begin writing insightful and interesting professional web content.  Businesses concerned about the quality of their content should contact a professional content writing service specializing in social media management for help writing keyword-rich articles and blog posts.

Enhanced Online Visibility – Circles

Businesses with the best content around will attain no enhanced online visibility through Google Search plus Your World if there are no Circles full of people waiting to share the information.  Google+ Circles should already be a tool used to achieve the online marketing goal of improving enhanced online visibility and if it isn’t, it needs to become one.  The new Google ‘your world’ search relies on a user’s Circles to pull shared content.  The more Circles a business has the more people who will have access to the content through search results.

Enhanced Online Visibility - +1 Shares

One of the interesting things about the new Google search algorithm is that it weighs those items with the most +1 shares more than those with only a few shares.  Again having robust Circles will help with the sharing, but there are other strategies for encouraging customers and followers to share content.  All blog posts need to have ‘+1’ buttons prominently displayed on them to encourage readers to share.  There are many tips to promote one’s web content and businesses are encouraged to take the time to focus on these strategies to increase their shares and, in turn, their enhanced online visibility.

In an effort to encourage more people to adopt Google+ as their primary social media website Google has finally played to their strength – the Google search engine.  For any small and mid-sized business wishing to get a strong boost in Google rankings the new Google Search plus Your World might just be the golden ticket that propels enhanced online visibility to the next level.

The Importance of a Meta Tag Description for Online Brand Presence

While the value of blogging has been understood across industries as a necessary online strategy too many businesses and bloggers underestimate the importance of a meta tag description for online brand presence.  In essence, the meta tag is the first impression the general public, your customers, get of your business and the best way to create an online brand presence.  If your business is in the habit of simply copying and pasting the first sentence into the meta tag box when scheduling blog posts you may be doing damage to your online brand presence.  There are some tips you can follow when creating meta tags that will help convince customers to click on your blog post and build your online brand presence.

1)    Be concise yet pique interest.  Think like a tweet when writing meta tags.  When people scroll through search engine results they skim meta tags and will stop when the description is interesting but not over the top.  You have a limited number of words to make your case, sale your brand, and build your online brand presence.

2)    Use keywords.  You should already have developed a list of keywords to use when optimizing content.  If you have not you need to.  For the fastest and most efficient keyword determination contact a professional content writing company that specializes in building online brand presence.  Once your keywords are determined use them naturally in meta tags.  Your brand name is also a keyword.

3)    Take your time and write quality meta tags.  Even though the actual meta tag is short and may appear simplistic the most effective ones have at least an hour of thought behind them.  Once you write a really good meta tag work on replicating it by using synonyms and changing words around.  Google punishes duplicated meta tags.

4)    Do not use punctuation when writing meta tags.  When Google and other search engines process your meta tag they look at everything as a symbol.  When you throw punctuation into the mix the search engine misreads it as HTML and is not happy.  As much as it may hurt avoid dashes, colons, question marks, parenthesis and quotation marks.

By following these suggestions you will be off to a great start at writing meta tags that increase your online brand presence.  One of the best features of Google is that you are not punished for making changes to past blog posts.  Use that as an advantage and change old meta tags to reflect your goals and increase blog traffic.  The importance of meta tag descriptions for online brand presence cannot be stressed enough as is it is often an ignored online marketing strategy.

Visual Social Media and Online Brand Presence

Anyone involved with social media has noticed the increase in visual social media like Pinterest and Facebook’s new timeline format for brands but may not realize the impact it has on building online brand presence.  There are several factors that make brands focused on visual marketing tools the top sellers right now including the increase of mobile technology, tried and true marketing truisms and just good old fashioned human nature.

Online Brand Presence – Mobile Technology

As more and more people own Smartphones and Tablets and are accessing their social media accounts via those devices it is no surprise that websites focused on picture sharing are growing.  Mobile devices are the primary means of capturing and sharing pictures these days and make adding images to social media a breeze.  Smart brands are doing some serious online brand presence building by encouraging customers to share pictures on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. 

Online Brand Presence – Marketing Truths

Since the birth of marketing those in the biz have known that a picture speaks a thousand words, so to speak.  All the web content in the world cannot replace the emotional reaction customers have to a well designed image.  With people accessing social media via mobile devices text is beginning to take a backseat to images and resurgence in marketing images has begun.

Online Brand Presence – Human Nature

People like to share pictures with other people.  Before digital cameras and computers people shared pictures.  With digital technology and computers sharing pictures has become second nature and taken for granted by most.  Smart online marketers recognize this desire by all people to take and share pictures and encourage it (with their brand front and center) within social media.  Pinterest is proof that visual driven messages not only work but thrive in a social media environment.

Thinking visually takes some adjusting but for small businesses looking for an edge when developing their online brand presence this new trend might just be it.  For those business owners feeling left out of the loop who wish to join the visual revolution contacting professional SEO content writers specializing in the most current types of SEO optimization including visual social media management would be a place to start.  Online brand presence demands business agility and the ability to stay on top of online trends making now the time for small and mid-sized businesses to beef up their visual acumen.

Keywords for Enhanced Online Visibility

The purpose of utilizing social media and blogs is to increase your company’s brand presence and the number one way to do that is to use keywords for enhanced online visibility effectively.  It seems like a simple enough task but for many blogs the keyword optimization is surprisingly void.  The first part of keyword utilization (and increasing enhanced online visibility as a result) is to determine what keywords need to be focused on. After they have been determined you can shift your attention to using those words that have proven to drive traffic to your blog.  By focusing on those the keywords that are currently working you build enhanced online visibility quicker than just about any other tactic.

Keywords for Enhanced Online Visibility – Let Google Help

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that every business should be utilizing to its full potential.  You should have previously already established goals with Google Analytics.  By studying your keyword conversions in Google Analytics for patterns you can determine which keywords your customers are using to locate and click on your website.  Once those keywords are determined the battle is half won.

Keywords for Enhanced Online Visibility – Keep Exploring

Determining the keywords that are presently drawing customers to your website and blog is invaluable but to remain competitive you must be constantly seeking new markets and new keywords to utilize.  The easiest way to do this is to run Google searches on keywords that you believe are relevant to your brand.  If your business is not ranking at least on the first page (preferably in the top three results) you have identified new keywords to focus on.

Keywords for Enhanced Online Visibility – Build Visibility

Once all the keywords are determined you can begin to work on adding them into your content.  Web content writing is a precise skill that does not come easy to some people.  If you struggle with incorporating keywords into blogs you may consider hiring a SEO content writing service to help.  Content writing services specialize in optimizing keywords to drive traffic to your site which in turn creates an enhanced online visibility.

Most people never give blogging much thought when in fact a lot of thought goes into effective blogging if a business’s goal is to build an enhanced online visibility.  Keywords will make a blog or break a blog depending on if and how they are used.  If your blog is suffering and you suspect keywords may have something to do with the minimal views and unimpressive enhanced online visibility consider contacting SEO content writing services for immediate help.

Using People to Build Your Online Brand Presence

For the last few years businesses, especially the small and mid-sized variety, have been encouraged to get involved on social media sites to grow their online brand presence.  As a result many of you have spent countless hours and dollars developing new online marketing goals, social media strategies and kept up with trends to try and utilize social media to your full advantage in regards to your online brand presence.

It’s no surprise that an online brand presence requires quite a buzz to grow into anything worth writing home about.  Because of this you no doubt are on no fewer than three social media sites, subscribe to social media aggregates and spend at least a few hours every day monitoring your online brand presence’s behavior.  Some business owners have turned to professional companies specializing in the nurturing of online brand presences and reputation management to guarantee success with social media.

All that doting and money spent has been a wise investment in your brand but new reports suggest this passive type of advertising and brand growing isn’t enough anymore. The new advice, according to professionals, is to be more proactive in your online brand presence building.  Encourage your social media pawns to advertise for you and more often.  This type of brand building pays off quickly.

Dominoes Pizza is a perfect case in what to do to see your online brand presence explode with growth.  The other day they ran a ‘Tweets for Treats’ campaign in England in which they promised to lower the price of a pizza by 0.01p for each tweet containing the hashtag #letsdolunch posted between 9am and 11am local time.  The end result was Dominoes offering pizzas that day for only £7.74, available to every customer.  Not only did they get their customers to do all the advertising for them (build online brand presence) they sold a bunch of pizzas on a Monday.  That, folks, is how you do it.

Finding a similar way to be proactive in your business’s online brand presence building takes some creativity and a firm understanding on your online marketing goals.  Since this tactic is so new now is the time to experiment with different ways this style of online brand presence can help your business.  You can bet your competitors either are already playing around with this or are will be soon. Online brand presence is not built by simply posting to social media and waiting for your customers to come to you.  The time to be proactive is today.

Online Brand Presence and Social Media Language

As part of a well-planned online marketing campaign social media should play a vital role in creating an online brand presence.  Many times someone or many someones are told to update the Facebook account, send out a Tweet or connect with someone via LinkedIn.  While this may seem like a simple enough task considering almost every employee probably has their own personal social media accounts, employees must be trained in how to create social media updates or connections while upholding the image of the company in order to generate a more positive online brand presence.

Accountability

The first and best way to keep social media professional at all times is to make employees accountable for their updates, tweets and messages.  Of course the assumption is not that employees will somehow harm the company’s online brand presence on purpose or out of spite, but rather do so inadvertently because of poor choices in language use.  By simply asking all employees associated with social media accounts to keep a log of their comments and messages, language can be reviewed for inappropriate content or lack of professionalism and threats to online brand presence can be caught early.

Explicit Training

Employees need to be trained on what is and is not appropriate to say on social media when representing the company.  The obvious bad choices like vulgarity, curses, or slander should be covered but more importantly casual and unprofessional messages that include an overabundance of abbreviations and text-speak should be reviewed.  It should be explained to all employees how that kind of language is both unprofessional and harmful to the company’s precious online brand presence.

Checks and Balances

Even the best employees with the best intentions mess up from time to time.  For that reason no one person needs to have total control of any social media account.  There should always be someone checking on tweets, Facebook updates and any other social media message being released to the masses.  This is a best practice for any communication and will help develop excellent language practices in regards to social media and online brand presence.

Social media strategies that utilize employees from across departments are quite successful and there is no reason to stop them, but accountability, explicit training and regular review are important components to make sure those strategies are a success.  Online brand presence is a delicate yet powerful item and should be guarded by all members of the company.  By monitoring the language of social media within the company online brand presence can stay safely on the right track.

Connecting with Costumers to Build Online Brand Presence

Unlike traditional forms of marketing online marketing allows businesses the opportunity to form relationships with customers while promoting an online brand presence.  This difference is crucial to understand as traditional marketing strategies do not always work when moving online.  Below are a few online strategies that will help your online brand presence grow and are unique to social media marketing.

Online Brand Presence Builders - Focus on Feelings

All good marketing campaigns take customers’ emotions into account but social media is poised to keep up with changing attitudes as they are influenced by trends.  Also, social media allows brands to appeal to more than one group of customers at the same time.  Experts recommend that when developing social media marketing goals with a focus on building online brand presence a focus be determined. This focus should not be the brand or product one is selling but rather a feeling or attitude target customers share.  An example would be a business offering cleaning services might choose their focus to be on simplifying.  This would drive all of their marketing strategies.

Online Brand Presence Builders – Easy Does It

Customers on social media websites do not want to work hard.  Rather, they want to relax, chat with some friends, catch up on news and gossip, and possibly do a little shopping.  The easier one can make the social media experience for the customer the more likely they will take part.  Building an online brand presence depends completely on convincing the customer it is worth their time to share one’s brand with others.  To convince them without overburdening them requires finesse.  Some examples of strategies include social media only deals and giveaways.

Online Brand Presence Builders – The Latest Gadgets

People who will respond to a business’s online marketing campaign are tech people. This is something to take advantage of!  Technology is constantly changing and there is no way any business can always be on top of the hottest trend but they can catch up as quickly as possible.  To build online brand presence business’s must make their brand synonymous with the hottest technology whether that be by having really cool apps or being available on the most operating systems.

Social media marketing with a focus on growing one’s online brand presence presents both challenges and rewards unlike ever seen before in marketing campaigns.  Companies ready to jump on board and ride social media to the bank will adopt strategies that embrace the differences in marketing styles and as a result see a huge increase in online brand presence.

Online Brand Presence and Negative Social Media Comments

Every company aims for their online brand presence to grow infinitely larger.  Unfortunately as the online brand presence increases in size the likelihood of being the recipient of a negative social media post or comment increases as well.  Since it is likely only a matter of time till a company with a thriving online brand presence gets hit with a negative comment it’s best to be prepared in how to handle it.  Protecting one’s online brand presence is not about preventing negative comments but rather handling them with style.

The first thing that needs to be done when confronted with a negative comment or post on a blog or social media site is for the business to react calmly.  In the majority of cases negative comments are driven by anger.  If the business responds angrily or defensively not only does it add fuel to the fire but it makes them appear to be guilty of whatever allegations are being brought against them.

Next, a business should respond to the comment, online, in a respectful manner, acknowledging any wrongdoing and making an apology if need be.  If the comment is not true then a business should express a sincere appreciation for the commenter’s feelings but not admit wrong doing.  The only exception to this rule would be if the commenter is threatening violence or if they mention sensitive topics or confidential details that do not belong on a social media page.  If that is the case the problem must be dealt with offline and immediately.

If the negative comment and reply goes further than a few posts the business should politely ask the commenter if they would discuss the issue privately.  This will most likely solve the problem, appease hurt feelings, and let the rest of one’s followers see that problems are handled with respect and discretion.

No one can keep all bad comments away from their social media sites.  Part of growing an online brand presence is taking the good with the bad.  More important than avoiding negative comments is showing one’s online community that the business is respectful of its customers and employees and handles problems in a professional manner.  That is how online brand presence results in more sales and customer loyalty.

Online Brand Presence – A Whole Team Approach

When small to mid-size business owners set out to create and grow their online brand presence they are often met with a lack of enthusiasm by their employees. Anyone whose job falls outside of marketing usually does not care much about how the company’s Facebook page is doing or how popular yesterday’s Tweets were.  That must change, though, for a social media marketing campaign to take off which will ultimately be what grows one’s online brand presence the most.

First, whether a business has two employees or two hundred they must be educated in social media marketing and how much it influences business decisions.  The assumption that employees understand social media is a bad one and even if every employee has a Facebook or Twitter account it does not mean they understand the marketing angle of social media or how to use social media websites to their fullest capacities – all strategies for building an online brand presence.

Employees must also be trained in how to correctly post onto the company blog and company social media accounts.  This training must be customized to meet the needs of people on a variety of competency levels rather than one generic training.  A company’s online brand presence will only grow if everyone involved knows what to do and how to do it.  Training is essential.

After a successful kick-off to the revamped social media marketing campaign to build online brand presence the head of marketing (or business owner depending on the size of the business) must individualize social media assignments so that all employees can be involved directly.  This is important for taking the load off of one individual and for diversifying social media accounts.

Everyone needs a pat on the back to keep their morale high and that is why a social media newsletter is recommended.  A newsletter allows employee praise for hard work and keeps employees focused on the task at hand – building the company’s online brand presence.  It also is a vehicle for announcing changes which occur often when dealing with social media.

There is no perfect formula for getting an entire company on board when creating a social media campaign but the steps listed above are a good jumping off point.  Online brand presence takes a lot of time and devotion and should not be the responsibility of one employee or business owner.  By enlisting the help of the whole team the one holding the reigns can focus on expansion and new ways to build online brand presence.

Enhanced Online Visibility with Google+

When developing one’s online marketing strategies it’s tempting to stick to a handful of social media sites rather than diversify to really bolster enhanced online visibility.  Rather than sticking with what is comfortable we challenge everyone to step outside their comfort zone and experiment with new types of social media.  One social media tool that too many people tend to avoid when trying to improve their enhanced online visibility is Google+. Although they may be the new kid on the block there are a lot of benefits to using Google that Facebook and Twitter just don’t offer.

For starters, Google+ has a great way to share information, just a little different from its competition.  That difference is huge though when trying to network with a world of people most of them unknown.  Simply put, anyone on Google+ can share a post from anyone else.  This is a great way not only to pass on valuable and interesting information to one’s own circles of friends (great for enhanced online visibility), but also create new relationships with those from whom the information is originated.

When sharing an interesting post there are a few rules to follow. First, always add a new and original title and introduction.  Included in the introduction should be a teaser about the information like a quote or simple bullet points.  Also, one should always give credit to the person who posted the information originally.  By first placing a plus sign (+) directly in front of their name Google+ will add a link to their profile and notify them of the share. It might seem like a little thing to do but flattery will get one everywhere, as they say.  Getting on the radar of important movers and shakers in one’s industry is priceless for building one’s enhanced online visibility and Google+ now makes that much more likely to happen.

Before one shares just anything they may want to create a circle of people who routinely right interesting things related to one’s own industry.  This will simplify the process of acquiring information that is relevant.  One can also ask for recommendations for those quality people from their trusted Google+ friends.  Again, flattery goes a long way.

While there is no sure-fire way to guarantee success with social media within a larger online marketing campaign with a focus on enhanced online visibility diversifying is always a good place to start.  With Facebook and Twitter getting so much attention it’s easy to overlook Google+ even though their numbers are growing quite impressive.  Building an enhanced online visibility takes time and patience plus a lot of networking.  Google+ now makes that networking easier than ever before making the sought after enhanced online visibility closer to becoming a reality.

 

Manage Online Brand Presence

Your company worked hard to create and continually build an online brand presence yet you may be neglecting to monitor that brand to make sure that it is performing as it was intended.  To monitor your online brand presence all that is needed is some regular care and subscriptions to online tools.  With your online reputation so critical to the success of the online brand presence you can’t be diligent enough in monitoring. Below are some online tools that are free and will help you begin to monitor and maintain your online brand presence.

Online Brand Presence Monitoring with Google

Google offers Google Alerts which automatically notifies you via email when a new Google result pops us with the requested topic or search words you tell it to keep an eye out for.  Since Google is the largest and most popular commercial search engine Google Alerts should let you know about what others are saying about your brand fairly quickly.  Depending on what is being said your online brand presence may be strengthened or damaged. Either way, you’ll know and be able to react quickly and properly.

Online Brand Presence Monitoring with Technorati

Technorati is the largest blog search engine in the world.  When you register with Technorati you can be notified when anyone (also registered) mentions your brand in a blog post.  This is ideal for building online brand presence as many people rely on blogs to get first-hand, honest accounts of a brand.  Keeping tabs on what people are saying about your brand will help guide your decisions in reputation management.

Online Brand Presence Monitoring with Backtype

This service goes hand in hand with Technorati and keeping tabs on your online brand presence as portrayed in blogs.  Backtype monitors blog comments opposed to blog posts.  When anyone mentions your brand name in a comment you will receive an alert notifying you.

Online Brand Presence Monitoring with YackTrack

With so much of your online marketing campaign happening on social media sites keeping up with what others say about your brand on those sites is crucial to online brand presence monitoring.  Yacktrack combines the best of the best to let you know when any comment is posted on a social media website about your brand. 

With so much at state reputation management cannot be stressed enough.  If you’ve put all the hard work and time into carefully crafting your brand, releasing it to the online world and as a result creating an online brand presence, you’ll want to monitor and protect that brand as much as possible.  With just a little extra work your online brand presence can remain strong and vibrant through these online services.