Keys to Successful Online Reputation Management

Posted by | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 29-09-2009

Online Reputation Management (ORM) is a fairly new term that has entered marketing and online business lingo to mean the practice of setting up and maintaining a positive online business image. Why is ORM so important? The obvious reason is that consumers rely heavily on the internet to inform their purchasing decisions. Before shopping for an item they need, a lot of people go online to review businesses and see what the best option is. Thus, it behooves any business to maintain a positive online reputation, least potential customers be driven away by negative reviews and comments posted by disgruntled customers or rival competitors. Here are some tips to help you ensure a strong and positive online presence.  

The power of social media

Social media is the most powerful online force today. That’s why it’s essential that you set up a business profile on all the top social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Social profiles let you “have your say”, so to speak. They let you put up the kind of content that you want to be known for. You should include things like corporate history, company profiles, mission statements and any other content that includes information and keywords that you want search engines to pick up on.

Participate

Now, after setting up some good social media profiles, it’s important that your company participate actively in its online community. Update content regularly, respond to comments and encourage forum discussion, both in your social profiles and on your official business website. Participating in your online community is essential for monitoring your online reputations. You have to keep up with what people are saying about your business and figure out how to change your strategy to reflect a better company image.

Blog Regularly
If you don’t have a blog for your business yet, get one. Get a few, actually, and update them regularly with unique, compelling content. Link your blog to your company website and your social media profiles. This creates a sort of online net that will help extend your business’s reach amongst internet users/potential customers. An increased online presence gives you increased control of the type of content that people associate with your brand name.

Please visit http://www.bestrank.com for web development in San Diego and more internet marketing tips.

lease visit http://www.bestrank.com for web development in San Diego and more internet marketing tips.

Ryan Frank is a 23 year writer and blogger living in San Diego, CA.

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How Your Retail Business Can Increase Sales By Blogging

Posted by | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 29-09-2009

In today’s competitive world of business, you need to use every way possible to get your name out there as much as possible. Every week I talk to at least one business owner that is complaining about not getting enough customers in the door. One of the questions I ask them is if they have a blog. They say no and as I explain the benefits of blogging to any business, they still choose not to do this.

Even if you don’t have a traditional website for your business, you should at least have a blog. Blogs are a great way to increase your name online without having to have a traditional website. Not that I am condoning skipping your own business website, but at least start with a blog.

Blogs increase your online presence
Search Engines love blogs. It’s simple. Search Engines feed off of content. Blogs are just content. No fancy Flash animations, no impossible to read graphics. Just pure content.

Plus, think about it this way, if you have a 5 page website and nothing ever changes, search engines will index your site and then never come back if you don’t change anything. Blogs on the other hand teach search engines to come back to look for new stuff. The more blog posts you have, the more “pages” the search engines have to index. See how this works. Instead of just having 5 pages indexed on the search engines, each post counts as a page. Now what if you posted once a week. In a year you’d have 52 pages indexed in the search engines. See how this can increase your exposure online and lead to an increase in sales?

Blogs allow you to communicate with your customers
Your blog is a great way to keep your customers in touch with what’s going on in your business. Simple articles about your company’s latest news, what’s going on in your industry and your newest products and specials can all be posted in your blog to keep everyone up to date.

This keeps your existing customers coming back. You need ot keep in front of your existing custoemrs as much as possible. People are flighty. You need to earn their loyalty and keep them coming back as often as possible. Plus this is an easy way to announce new products that want or need and get them to spend more money with you. It’s easier to sell to a happy customer that has already purchased than it is to convince a prospect that you are the right choice for them.

By communicating with your existing customers via a blog you can easily increase sales on new products and services without spending a ton on advertising.

Blogs show you as the expert
When a prospect is first looking at choosing to give up their hard earned cash to a business, they want to know without a shadow of a doubt that they are choosing the right company. When a prospect finds your blog and shows that you are active and that you share your knowledge by showing how to’s and that you communicate with the world, they see that you are the expert.

The more you share, the more you will build that trust and they are more likely to choose you as the person or company that they do business with.

So, if you’re one of those people that thinks that having a blog is not right for your business or that it’s too much work, I hope that now you see how beneficial having a blog can be for any business. Traditional or Internet based, not having a blog can actually be hurting your business and by blogging on a regular basis and sharing your knowledge with the world you can increase sales in your business and become known as the expert in your industry.

Want to learn how you can increase sales and catch the attention of your prospects immediately on your website or blog? Download my free report “Copywritng Basics For Your Website” and learn how you can write better and get prospects to pay attention to what you have to say! Claim your free report right now at http://mybusinessmarketingmentor.com/membership/

(ArticlesBase ID #1273773)

Ely Delaney is the creator of “My Business Marketing Mentor”, a web site dedicated to giving small business the tools they need to market their businesses both online and offline. Each month new tactics are added that show business owners marketing ideas through video, articles, reports and audios.

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Marketing your way through the recession with SEO

Posted by | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 26-09-2009

In this downturn, nearly every business is trying to find paths to either cut down on expenses, or my favourite, increase revenue. A way to increase possibilities of your own solvency is to diversify and have multiple ways to generate income or leads. Online there are plenty of ways for possible customers to find you and become customers. An often-overlooked or misunderstood tool for doing this is search engine optimization or SEO.

Part of SEO is the method of creating content and links to your web site. The idea is that when anyone types a word or phrase associated with your business into a search engine, your company ranks high on the list. You want to rank in the top ten web sites because they’re the internet sites that users click on the most.

Unlike bought advertisements, each page of your internet site or each press release or blog post is an opportunity for folk to get info about you. Or to find your site. Unlike bought adverts the work you do is permanent it doesn’t stop generating visitors you after you stop paying ( or working ). The SEO work you do now will still provide advantage to you in 2 years from now or long after the recession ends.

The best part about SEO is that it is lower cost and very effective. The return on your investment over the long-term is excellent. You can learn many of the techniques or pay executives to work with you in deciding and implementing the best system. There’s a learning curve ( some simply outsource lots of the more mundane pieces like adding your internet site to directories ) but the payoff over time is worth the effort.

Most companies are already ranking well in search engines for their brand name and branded terms. For example : we rank one for the term OrangeSoda. Obviously that doesn’t help us if someone wants search engine optimization services who have not heard about our business name. If they go to Google and write in those words we would like them to come to us. We want to rank well for every one of the services we offer.

Many businesses do not rank well for phrases that folks search on ( there is requirement for ) associated with their business. This is intended to capture folks ( or other businesses ) who do not know about you but are on the lookout for the goods you offer.

People are actively trying to find information online and are researching the market to resolve a problem or find a product. Ideally you are producing well-optimized content that educates possible clients so when they are ready to make a decision, they find you. You may also build trust so they consider giving you their business.

As you rank high for phrases in search engines, you will get more folks coming to your internet site. You will have more paths to reach them. You’ll have search results with a variety of links from credible sources. SEO can also help you fine tune your selling and messaging.

The internet is dynamic and virtually real time so it’s a good way to keep a pulse on business and your potential clients. Just using a keyword tool or a tool like SpyFu will help you understand what people are looking for and who your competition are. Then you can apply SEO to be high on the list of businesses that provide those services.

Each business and web site is different and their SEO desires can be basic or more sophisticated. Here is a basic outline of making a search engine optimized website:

*Identify terms that people are on the lookout for that apply to your business.

*determine the demand and competition for those terms.

*See where you rank in the most commonly used search engines for those keywords.

*Look at your website structure and making sure it’s optimal for search engines to find and index each webpage of your web site.

*Every subpage is a chance for someone to locate your internet site.

*Keep creating searchterm-rich material.

*Create links to the diverse webpages ( content ) using keywords as the text of the link.

This is an ongoing process of tweaking and building your web site with valuable material that search engines like. Each good SEO company should appraise your website and come up with ways to help booster your rankings. This may increase traffic to your internet site and your visibility on the web. It’s a sensible investment and one that each business with a website should think about especially in rough business times.

(ArticlesBase ID #1267496)

Marketing and SEO analyst at StepOneWeb

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How to Use Social Bookmarks as Part of Your Marketing Plan

Posted by | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 24-09-2009

Social bookmarks can be a very useful part of your overall online marketing plan, especially if care is taken in how they are used and not misused! The power of social marketing is undeniable, and with today’s consumers looking to their peers as authority as opposed to a random website they’ve never seen or heard of, your social marketing plan can reap great benefits as you will be more easily able to establish yourself as that authority they seek. Let’s look at some of the ways you can do this and what pitfalls to avoid.

Social bookmarks can be beneficial in several ways. You can use them to get backlinks, you can sometimes get direct traffic from the, especially if they are on popular sites, such as Digg, StumbleUpon and others. Readers who hang out on those sites, or better yet, search through them can find you under your chosen keywords and all of a sudden you have visitors that you not only didn’t have to spend a dime for, but who are also very targeted visitors, interested in exactly what you are promoting. You can’t ask for more than that.

The process of using social bookmarks as an integral part of your marketing plan is a bit longer and trickier. Since most social bookmarking accounts don’t carry a lot of weight in the search engines, you need to do more to get noticed. That’s why simply Digging your site or posting on Digg once won’t really do anything for you, unless you happen to have been the first to report some monumental news that is quickly picked up on. Getting on the home page of any social bookmarking site such as Digg, StumbleUpon or Mister Wong, to name a few, can indeed deliver many thousands of visitors in a very short amount of time. You need to have a coordinated strategy in place to have a consistent bookmarking of your pages by people other than you. For that to occur, you either need to have all the time in the world to do it yourself, or you need to outsource it to a third party.

A good social bookmarking service can deliver up thousands of bookmarks, all from different IP addresses all over the world, and with the keywords and anchor text you need featured present. This obviously can free you up to do more important things in your business.

While it’s important to garner more than a few bookmarks to make a dent in your marketing plan, you would be wise to make sure to avoid becoming an obvious spammer, and shoot your campaigns in the foot before they really get rolling. Obviously the best way to get the most from your social bookmarks is to create really good content that people will actually want to bookmark. This aids you enormously. Simply spamming the Web with many thousands of bookmarks will have only short term effectiveness, and will likely get your accounts banned. With a little care and prudence you can avoid this!

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Search engine marketing is the most powerful way to drive traffic on the web. With Content Syndication you can control your internet brand. For more info on reputation management go to www.directhorizon.com

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