The No Nonsense Guide to Building Online Reputation and Influence

“This is a scam company. DO NOT BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.”

This is the kind of customer feedback that no company wants to have but the problem is that there is no way you can stop people giving bad name to your company even when they are served best. So, what you are supposed to do next? Will you be waiting for the social media apocalypse to take place? Of course, you are most likely to take some proactive steps to ensure that things do not spiral out of hands. This is exactly where the concept of building online reputation comes into play.

Failure to protect your online reputation can cost you dearly. The very existence of your business can come under serious threat. Remember the famous Dell incident or the Prince fiasco that forced these big corporate giants to take note of the ever growing importance of managing online reputation. ‘You have to get used to the idea that you simply have no control over things on the web and therefore, proactive steps should be taken to build a robust online reputation.’ – says Matt Janaway, an organic web strategist from Nottingham.

Here in this article, we are going to share some tips that might help you build an impressive online presence and expand your influence far and wide –

Why You Should care for Online Reputation or Influence

The global trend is that more and more people are relying on peer reviews while making a buying decision. Direct marketing is no longer that effective when it comes to persuade people purchase your products. Now concept of marketing has moved from self promotion to encouraging people talking about the brand, which is also known as word of mouth marketing.

Whenever an irate customer says something bad about your company, it draws other people who might not be that happy with your service. An ugly discussion can take place which will eventually lead to the loss of credibility. Do not let that happen to your brand.

Online influence can help you in the following ways –

• If you are a job seeker, landing a good job will be a piece of cake given the fact that you have a good reputation on the social media circles. Haven’t you heard people lost their jobs for blabbing funny things on their social media profiles? Now reverse that thing. Cool, is not it?
• Promotion of a new product will be not as much difficult as moving a mountain any more if you have a loyal band of followers on your social channels. Promoting a new product will be less time consuming and less complicated if you can manage to develop your online reputation exponentially. All you have to do is to post some updates and the rest will be taken care by your followers and admirers of your brand.
• Last but not the least; your online reputation will be defended by your fans and followers even when you are not around. Since you have already served a good number of people sincerely, they will be there to defend you.

The Impact of online Reputation

Have you ever thought why do you listen to all White Board Friday videos of Rand Fishkin? Have you ever met him personally? [Do you really? ;)] I doubt it but still you listen to carefully what he or his team has to say.

The reason is simple. Rand has a reputation in the online marketing industry which is unrivalled and he has an immense positive influence on his followers.

But building online reputation is certainly not that easy. The web is already congested and therefore, curving out a niche for your brand is definitely not that simple.

There are few real challenges ahead and there is no getting around these challenges. You have to face them –

• It is challenging. Building trust and credibility online is certainly not everybody’s cup of tea.
• There is no hard and fast rule for building a strong online presence.
• Sometimes more exposures lead to more vicious attacks in the social sphere.

But despite these challenges, building robust online presence is sine qua non for every brand.

The road to Build Influence

The road starts with focusing on your target audience. Not everybody around might not be interested in your product or service. So, you need to build trust and try to gain followers who are most likely to be interested in service.

Next comes, choosing domain names. After the EDM update from the house of Google, the impact of exact match domain has lessened a lot. So, you need to register a domain name that reflects your brand and service. Expired domains if they match with your brand image can also come your rescue. These domains are tempting in the sense that they come preloaded with some SEO value in the form of some quality inbound links. Try this website to make a selection.

Once the website is up and running, you have to feed it regularly with interesting, informative and thought provoking content that people in general would like to share with their friends. Short articles, ever green content, white papers etc anything can be a part of your agenda of social media domination.

Of course, you have to be active on all social channels. By being active, we are not asking you to keep tweeting all day long or posting updates after updates on your FaceBook channel. Nope, rather we suggest you to engage with your fans and followers. Run a FaceBook Paid add, create poll, offer some freebies for spreading your messages etc are some of the cool ideas that you should try on for size.

Hopefully, with the aforementioned tips, you will be able to make reinforce your position in the social media circle and bolster your credibility online.

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