The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

Online marketing maven Seth Godin has this saying that if you can gain 1,000 true fans, then you can make a living on your trade. “True fans” are defined as those people who follow your every move and will buy anything you put out. Of course, it’s harder to earn that kind of loyalty than you think. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

But, truth is, it really is easy. People make it hard.

The surest way to earn fans is to provide value. Period. Do one thing really well consistently over time and you will earn your fans.

That’s what Michael Jackson did. You might not be a Michael Jackson fan, but a lot of people are. It’s because he provided them music that they could relate to. He entertained them. They got their money’s worth when they bought a Michael Jackson album or went to one of his concerts.

You could take the most successful icons of any sector of business and say the same thing. They are successful because they consistently provide value.

In business, your medium is your blog or website, your social media, your reputation. Provide consistent value over time and you’ll earn your true fans. It really is that simple.

What is your reputation worth? Reputation and brand awareness go hand in hand – in fact, they both rely on each other when it comes to building a successful business. Mention a brand, any brand, and you will have positive or negative views on that brand (unless the brand is unknown to you, of course). As a business, you spend a lot of time promoting that brand, and a lot of time building a positive image around the brand. So what happens when you lose that brand?

That’s an issue that is facing TwitterMoms.com right now. They have built their website and brand to a point where they have a huge following. More importantly, they have a good reputation amongst both parents and businesses that provide goods and services to parents. I can imagine their horror then when they received a notice from Twitter to cease using their brand name.

TwitterMoms is about to become SocialMoms.com, and while the transition will no doubt be smooth, they will still have to do a lot of work to rebrand themselves, and to transfer their reputation from TwitterMoms to SocialMoms. Being a very successful website, they will be back on track in a very short time. But what if your business wasn’t quite as successful? What if it was only doing reasonably well in a highly competitive niche?

That one simple branding error could cost you business. It is difficult to build a positive image that is attached to a brand. Lose that brand and you have to rebuild a new one, and with it a reputation. In highly competitive niches, that could prove to be impossible. Your brand and reputation are closely tied together – lose one, and you potentially lose the other. When deciding on a brand name, the more unique you are and the easier it is to remember, the better. While riding on the wave of another brand may make life easier initially, it could, over time, prove to be a huge mistake – just ask TwitterMoms.

One oft-repeated storyline we hear is, “I don’t need to advertise; I get a steady stream of referrals based on my reputation.” That’s great. We wouldn’t dare knock a great reputation, but let me give you something else to think about.

What if you could increase your business by 10% just with a little bit of advertising? Or, better yet, what if you could increase your business by 10% over and above what you spend on advertising. Would that be worth it?

Most business owners would say, “Yes.”

Ten percent may not sound like much, but if you do $100,000 worth of business in one month then that’s an additional $10,000 worth of business. And a website doesn’t cost anywhere near that much. If it does then you’re probably using the wrong web designer.

A pay per click advertising campaign might cost you $2,000 per month. If it brings in $5,000 in business each month over and above your current clientele then you can turn some of that business into lifetime customers. That’s the goal, isn’t it?

And it’s just as likely that new customers you acquire through online advertising and Internet marketing will also spread the word about your business. Online, there are some powerful word of mouth tools that you and your clients can use – many of them for free.

With just a little bit of expense, you can increase your business a great amount. So don’t knock advertising.

Online reputation management has become an essential part of doing business on the Internet. But how do you go about it? What are the important tools that you use to manage your reputation online? Here is a list of 10 reputation management tools that we recommend.

1. Your blog – If you don’t have a blog then I recommend one. The search marketing potential of a single blog outweighs almost everything you’re probably used to.
2. Your website – Your company website is the best reputation management tool you have. Unfortunately, most people never tap into its full potential.
3. Google Alerts – Use Google Alerts – they’re free – to notify you whenever your name or brand are mentioned.
4. Twitter – Twitter is the most important real time tool on the Internet. It’s also a great communication and marketing tool.
5. Facebook – The most visited site online. It’s where your friends are. It’s also where you enemies are. Work it well and it can pay off big.
6. LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business networking tool that is becoming more and more important every day.
7. Keyword Research Tool – Study your keywords, find new keywords, and learn what people are searching for. Give it to them.
8. Quora – Quora is a question and answer site that allows you to prove yourself a knowledgeable expert in your field.
9. Social Bookmarking – There are hundreds of social bookmarking sites online. You can pick 10 of them and make a solid reputation for yourself by making new friends and sharing with them information about your niche that you find valuable.
10. Your Service – Seriously, it doesn’t matter how good you do other things, if you don’t provide a good service then people will tell their friends about it. Provide a knock out service and let them tell their friends about that.

You’ve likely heard of Yahoo! Answers. Thousands of people flock to the site every day to ask, and to answer, questions. For the answerer, it’s a great way to make oneself an authority on a subject. You answer questions and people respond with their own answers.

Quora is another question and answer site just like Yahoo! Answers. One of the best parts of Quora is that people can vote on your answers. The more people who vote for your answer the more likely you are to increase your reputations. Answers with the most votes rise to the top of the heap and the answerer gets a boost in reputation.

I think Quora is also a more attractive looking site than Yahoo! Answers. But there aren’t as many people using it yet. Nevertheless, it presents another chance for you to make your mark in a particular industry and be seen as an expert in your field.

Question and answer sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers present a great way for people like you to make themselves a perceived authority. All it takes is a few minutes a day.

Bill Slawski wrote a blog post about what famous social media websites were before they are what they are now. Those on the list include:

• Digg
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Yelp

I thought it was interesting to see what these websites were before they were the famous and popular sites that they are now. Then it dawned on me, could the histories of these websites come back and haunt them?

I doubt that any of these sites will suffer any lasting reputation damage due to a failed business model of the past, but it is important to point out that if you buy a used domain name, it could be damaging to your business model if that older domain has been involved in shady or black hat SEO tactics. Link selling and other nefarious promotional tactics will be attributed to that domain name and you could start off on the wrong foot, with the deck stacked against you before you even get started.

All that last paragraph really means is that you should do your due diligence before you purchase any domain names.

So what about that reputation? I think, once successful it doesn’t matter. If a previous business model for a domain name doesn’t work out it likely won’t affect what your website is today. There may be exceptions to that rule, but you should analyze any business model from every angle before you implement it. Sometimes a bad idea is just a bad idea and there is no real reason for failure.

Your RSS feed can be a very valuable tool for your reputation. And in today’s online culture you need a good reputation management strategy. Use your RSS feed to give your online reputation a boost.

The RSS feed is something your site visitors will subscribe to and by subscribing to your feed they are giving you permission to contact them over and over again. Of course, the feed is what is contacting them. It’s an automatic content delivery system that your site visitors receive after subscribing. It’s a great reputation management tool because your site visitors use the feed to make judgments about you and your business.

RSS stands for really simple syndication. That means you can become a syndicated columnist or author simply by writing a blog or developing a website. And when you make it work for you, your reputation will thank you.

When it comes to marketing yourself online, do you know the most important ingredient in a sound Internet marketing plan? Is it SEO? How about a large budget? Driving traffic? Targeted traffic? Analytics?

How about, None Of The Above.

When it comes to Internet marketing, the most important thing is your reputation. Yes, your online reputation. Guard if ferociously.

The reason I say reputation is the most important aspect of Internet marketing is because once you lose trust and credibility with your audience, that’s it. You can win it back, but it’s a long, hard road uphill. And one you don’t want to climb.

People online would rather do business with someone they know and trust than someone with a great product that has no credibility. If you have a solid reputation online then your Internet marketing efforts will go a lot more smoothly. You’ll get more doors to open. And you’ll be a lot more successful. That’s about how it works off line too, isn’t it?

I guess you could say some things transfer very well from the real world to the virtual world. Internet marketing is a lot like traditional marketing. It’s the technology that is different.

For those of you just popping online before work, I’ll give you the short answer: To immeasurable lengths. For those with a little more time on their hands, I’ll try to sum it all up the best I can, but don’t be surprised if I leave a lot of information out – this is a very broad topic.

In fact, I may not get very far from a single topic concerning how the Internet has changed, because something occured to me the other day, as to just how different the world is with the Internet, and how hard it would be for most of us to go back to the early 90′s, before everything we know and love about said Internet. What came to mind was not how many great resources for information are available thanks to the Internet, or how easy it is to book a hotel, buy a car, find a friend, or stay in touch. I’d like to say that the simple pleasures of cuteoverload.com popped into my head, but the thought was not so quaint.

No, my mind decided to remind me how easy it would be for a 13 year old to ruin me. Odd, I agree, but hear me out.

In 1992, what would a 13 year old need to accomplish in order to get his or her opinion seen, spread and confirmed? Perhaps a paper route, a friend who’s parents worked at the Daily News, a good deal of editing, a petition…the list could go on, but to quickly convey my point, that child would need to go to great lengths to have even a few hundred people see his review on the newest Nintendo game, or perhaps his favorite place to eat in his small town.

Fast forward to 2008, and what do we see on the Internet? Blogs, review sites, forums – and lots of them – many members on these sites of which are 13-18 year olds ranting about their uninformed opinions, trashing companies, and incoherantly attempting to disuade the world from making the same mistake they did by going with the cheaper model. Don’t let their lack of formal education and bad grammar fool you – these people have an amazing influence on the world.

But a few hundred-thousand teens aren’t so scary, right? What can they do to hurt your business? Well, imagine someone searches for your company because they can’t remember the website URL, and just as they’re about to click on your site they see the next search result, an excerpt from a high ranking blog: “Company makes crappy products”. Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe, the excerpt under the result, chosen by the search engine, reads something more like: “Company owner John Smith likes little boys”.

Yeah, that’s pretty scary.

Fear not, friend, the Internet is a very big place, so the chances of someone singling out your business over the rest is as unlikely as the number of businesses out there are many; but who really wants to take the chance? The fact is, simple Preventative Reputation Management can save you a huge hassle, as well as a lot of spend, later on.

The basic idea behind Reputation Management is to populate search results with positive content concerning your business, and it is much better if all those good pieces of information reguarding your business show up in the first 20 results, instead of those frightening 13 year olds who know more about the Internet than a lot of adults, with a brutal opinion, and 120wpm typing “skillz”.

If you’d like to know more about how to protect your online reputation, please don’t hesitate to contact an Internet Marketing Firm such as Reciprocal Consulting today, and ask how.

Reputation is important in the business world, there is no question about it. For each individual, this may be a different story, but chances are, if you’re selling a product or service, you want people to be saying good things about you - especially the important ones.

This holds truer yet on the Internet, the reason being, because searches are based on (a series of algorithms which determine) the priority of one website over another for various keywords. Naturally, a successful SEO campaign will improve your website’s position in natural search rankings for your keywords and key phrases.

However, have you ever typed the name of your company into a search engine to see what results were returned? I should hope that your website is the number one result, but the following results may amount to thousands that do not take the user to your site, and some of those results may be negative comments about, or poor reviews of, your business. Should you come accross a popular blog or major review site to which that one unreasonable or unsatisfied customer belongs, you may be wishing you had invested in some Reputation Management.

Believe it or not, Reputation Management is not so much about Public Relations as it is about securing good information about your business, and ensuring that is what potential customers will see in the first page or two of natural search results. Sure, with enough money, man hours, and “tactful encouragement”, anything can just disappear from sight, but an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting prefers ethical business practices, and we respect clients’ budgets. We like to refer to our approach as Proactive Reputation Management.

The idea behind the proactive approach is not to rid the World Wide Web of negative opinions – after all, the Internet is about freedom of information, which is why you are advertising your business online in the first place – but to populate the search results for your company with positive opinions, and kind words; that is our goal. The key to a successful Reputation Management campaign is very similar to that of a successful SEO campaign, only instead of optimizing your one website for your keywords, we optimize others for your name. These others may depend on your particular needs, but generally, an informational blog will be among those content rich candidates with the sole purpose of saying nice things about your business.

If you’d like to protect your reputation, or even if you think it’s too late, please don’t hesitate to read about how Reciprocal Consulting can help protect your reputation. After all, you only have one.