Social Media Marketing IS Reputation Management
There is a real need in today’s online marketing culture to understand and comprehend reputation management. Just as well, business owners need to comprehend the power of social media and how it fits into your overall reputation management plan. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are almost synonymous.
Social media marketing is the wave of the future. You can no longer ignore the power of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and the hundreds of other social media websites online.
While social media is the future of online marketing, it should also be viewed as more than just another online marketing tool or strategy. It is a reputation management strategy. The key to utilizing social media for reputation management is to know yourself and to know your product and how it can solve problems. By knowing where you fit into the marketplace and the problems your product solves you are offering yourself as an expert with a specialized niche to fill. How you present yourself is how others will see you. And, yes, your reputation is always on the line.
How Many Ways Can You Manage A Reputation
Reputation management is often thought of as nothing more than increasing the number of ways you rank in the search engines for your name or brand while reducing the number of negative results for the same. While that is certainly one way to approach the subject of reputation management, it isn’t the only way.
Online reputation management is really about building trust. And it’s your job as a member of your team to help boost the company image and brand recognition through the tools at your disposal. Much of reputation management is simply interacting with your audience and engaging them in conversation on your blog, through social media, and using other online tools to reach your audience. Reputation management should be seen as an extension of your online marketing efforts.
In truth, everything you do (and everything anyone in your organization does) is reputation management. It all affects how your audience views your brand. Whether you are writing a press release and sending it out or engaging through Facebook and Twitter, you are trying to send a positive image. Succeeding at that is the best reputation management tool you have.
Why Reputation Management Is Hard To Escape
It is difficult in life to escape getting a reputation. Everything you do tells who you are. That principle is even more important online where everything you do becomes a permanent record of who you are or who you used to be (and, consequently, who others perceive you to always be). Reputation management is the science of maintaining a presence online that you can always be proud of. It’s an activity that is inescapable.
Everything you do speaks. Online and off line. Whatever others see you produce becomes a part of your persona, or their perception of your persona. And it has a positive or a negative effect.
The idea behind reputation management is to present yourself in every situation in as positive a manner as possible and to address any negative or neutral concerns in a forthright and up front manner so that others see you as you really are. That’s a challenge in any environment, but doubly so online. That may be why so many people are shy of entering forums and making posts about themselves on blogs and other Internet properties. But you need not be afraid.
With a strong reputation management strategy backed by a solid philosophy, you can design your online perception from scratch and leave others think positively about you everywhere you go. It takes work, but you can do it.
How Many Ways Can You Market A Website Online?
Internet marketing has grown a lot over the years. And it seems to keep growing. Not just in the number of people participating in the game, but in the number of ways the game can be played. Let’s count them:
- Search engine optimization
- Search engine marketing
- Opt-in newsletter
- E-mail marketing
- Blogging
- Pay per click
- Display advertising
- Social bookmarking
- Social networking
- Article marketing
- Forum marketing
- Directory submissions
- Lifestreaming
- Pay to click advertising
- Link building
- Video marketing
- Podcasting
- Viral marketing
- Wiki editing
- Yahoo! Answers
- Google Knol
- Squidoo Lenses
- HubPages
OK, now I’m just touching the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of different ways to market a website online. Some of them are better than others and some are better when used in conjunction with other methods. The job for every Internet marketer is to figure out the best ways to reach your audience online and use those methods that show the most promise and deliver the best results. There’s really no better way to define Internet marketing.
The Reputation Management Conundrum
A conundrum is a difficult problem whose answer is or involves a pun. Many online marketers have begun to discover that there is such a dilemma with reputation management. As soon as you realize what the problem is you also realize that the solution has just as much difficulty attached to it. It is indeed a riddle. A condundrum.
So what’s the problem? I’ll try to state it in as simple terms as possible.
Reputation management involves positioning your name or brand in a positive light while monitoring what others are saying about you. You truly are “managing” your reputation. You cannot control what others say about you. All you can do is respond to them if they say something you don’t agree with. But there are some challenges in responding to every little bit criticism you receive. You will have some trouble if you try to respond to it all.
That isn’t the conundrum, however. The real issue is that the more popular you are then the more reputation management you need and the harder it is to manage that reputation. If you are a virtual unknown then not many people are going to be saying much about you – good or bad. But if you are very well known – a celebrity, let’s say – then you are likely getting talked about, both good and bad. The problem for celebrities is that they can’t possibly respond to every bit of bad press they get, and really shouldn’t try.
But what if you’re a business? Your reputation could rise to celebrity status. And what’s more, even if you start out a virtual unknown, you could be catapulted to stardom by your reputation management efforts. See the joke now?
In simpler terms, reputation management begins the moment you open your doors. No one knows who you are or what you have to offer, but that won’t stop them from sampling your services. Once that first taste of your business is out there, you immediately need to manage your reputation because that customer is going to talk to somebody. That’s online and an off line reality.
Online, information is forever. Build a website and your reputation is attached. Perform some online marketing through social media and your reputation follows. In many cases, it gets there first. Even a virtual unknown can have a bad reputation before the perceived need to defend it. So what’s the moral? It is this: That you must make a conscious decision early on in your online business to establish a reputation for good customer service, a great product, and develop a positive perception. Any little blip in that reputation armor of yours and you just may need more “management” than you can handle.
Is Internet Marketing A Black And White Game?
If you’ve been online long and tried your hand at Internet marketing then you’ve probably met with some often spoken truths or half-truths. You’ve probably heard a lot about black hat and white hat techniques. You’ve likely heard about SEO, social media, and a lot of people talking about the right way and the wrong way to go about it all. Let me just say that most of this is misinformation. Much of it, too, is deliberate misinformation.
Why would anyone deliberately misinform concerning Internet marketing strategies? Well, if they are a full-time internet marketer working in more than one niche, they probably don’t want more competition. They’re trying to keep it low profile.
The first thing you need to know about Internet marketing is that there is no one way to accomplish a goal. There are as many ways to be successful at Internet marketing as there are Internet marketers. That’s not to say that there aren’t strategies that are more effective than others. It is to say that you may not necessarily benefit from all the methods the gurus teach. And you shouldn’t necessarily try.
The key to successful Internet marketing is testing. You have to try different things and see what works for you – within the realm of best practices, of course.
Competitive Intelligence In An Online World
Last week we talked about competitive intelligence in a corporate world. It’s an important part of any business whether online or offline. Competitive intelligence is also important when it comes to marketing. In an online world that competitive intelligence extends to search engine placement as well as online marketing.
How does competitive intelligence relate to search engine placement? SEO or search engine optimization is the process of gaining the best possible place on the search results pages for any search involving your keywords.
The key part of competitive intelligence is the gathering of facts that relate to your competitors. Some of the information gathered includes:
- Keywords and keyphrases
- Inbound links
- Associated websites
- Partnerships
- Social marketing tactics
The gathering of facts is, however, only one part of competitive intelligence. The most important part is knowing how to filter that data, what to do with the filtered data and finally how to compare it against your own site(s).
Just because a competitor uses a set of keywords doesn’t mean you should as well. In fact, your competitive advantage may be the fact you do use a different set of keywords.
In that situation, your concern should be how to protect your advantage since competitive intelligence is a two way street – yes, they could well be researching you. Whilst worrying how to get ahead of the rest, don’t forget to stay in front of those behind you.
When Do You Think About Reputation Management?
Reputation management is one of those things that most people don’t think about until they need it. But it’s one of the most important aspects of doing business online and you should think about it right from start. How are you going to manage your reputation?
First, you need to stop thinking about reputation management as a clean up exercise. Yes, you might have to do some clean up from time to time. But that’s not necessarily what it’s all about. It is about ensuring that you go about your business like a business and keeping a positive image of yourself in the blogosphere and elsewhere. But how?
For starters, you should engage in a dialogue with members of your target audience. Engage them with conversation in a comfortable environment – like on your blog or in a chatroom or forum.
By treating others as you would like to be treated, you can go a long way in ensuring that they see you as the expert and kind human being you want them see you as. Keep your head up, walk in a dignified manner, and be yourself. There is really no better way to manage your reputation – online or elsewhere.
What Makes Pay Per Click So Special?
Pay per click marketing isn’t so new any more. A lot of people are doing it. Some are more successful than others. Some people swear by it. Others swear at it. But no matter your view on pay per click advertising, there is one thing for sure. It is unique among advertising models and there is one thing in particular that makes it a special kind of advertising.
Pay per click advertising provides one benefit that no other form of advertising offers. Quality, targeted traffic.
You know that traffic is important to any web business. Get no site visitors and you can’t get any business. But even better than loads of traffic is moderate targeted traffic. I’d rather get 1,000 good quality leads than 100,000 paint pellets on a wall. Pay per click offers targeted traffic. If one does it right.
What that means is, if you do your keyword research well and you define your market followed by a well-written ad targeted toward your ideal audience and that uses a strong call to action, you should do well with pay per click. The size of your budget doesn’t matter. What does matter is the quality of your advertising.
Online Reputation Management Is A Multi-Faceted Ongoing Project
New Internet marketers may not understand the terms that get used online and reputation management is one that gets confused a lot. To be sure, it’s not a one-time event. It’s an ongoing project when done right and it should be started long before you really need it.
I’ve met far too many website owners – and even some non-website owners – who think of reputation management as a last minute resort, or as a cleanup activity. Once they’ve met with someone online who is trashing their name and trying to ruin their reputation, that’s when they think about protecting it. At that point, it’s too late.
Online reputation management should begin the moment that you start thinking about building an online presence. Reputation management should be a part of your overall strategy for building a business online.
The tools that you’ll use to build and maintain your reputation online are many. Which ones you focus on depends on your personality, your business goals, and your budget, but here are a few ideas to get your mind spinning:
- Online video
- Search engine optimization
- Search engine marketing
- Blogging
- Article marketing
- Podcasting
- Display advertising
- Social media marketing
- Viral marketing
- Reciprocal push marketing
- Newsletter marketing
- E-mail marketing
- Link building
As you can see, the tools in your arsenal are plenty. And you can use them all together. The key is to develop a strategy and stick with it. Your reputation is too important to leave to chance.
An Internet Marketing Illustration
Seth Godin shares an anecdote about a real estate agent who lifts vague signage to advertise her business. It occurred to me that these types of vague claims could happen just as well – and often do – online.
Suppose the real estate agent put up a website and right at the top of the page when you landed on her site was the phrase “#1 in Westchester, Top 10 Nationwide.” Would you be tempted to do business or to leave the site? I think most of us would head off to play Yahoo! Games or something.
Now, I’m not denigrating this real estate broker, but what does it really mean to be No. 1 in your neighborhood and top 10 nationwide? Who’s counting? Does that mean you’ve sold a lot of houses?
I think Seth’s point, and now my point, is you’ve got to be specific with your message. Especially online. Because Internet marketing isn’t getting any easier and people don’t have a lot of time to sift through vague marketing message to try and find that one person who can help them get what they want. They want someone who communicates clearly and succinctly about what they have to offer. If you can do that on your website then you’ll reach the people you want to reach.