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Personal Branding: The Foundation of Massive Success
By Reputation Management | 1 comment
1The concept of using personal branding to spread the word or market a product is one that can be traced back many centuries. During ancient Roman times, leaders were known for decorating money with their faces plastered across the outside of coins. Today, where would KFC be without the Colonel or Wendy’s without Dave Thomas’ freckle-faced girl? Personal branding has without a doubt become an easily recognizable approach towards marketing a business , product, or service.
Throughout history, the technique has garnered widespread recognition and respect that has been used to capture the attention of the public. Successful individuals are able to also get what they want out of life and any business pursuits they may approach. Personal branding may also be used to boost the sales of a product, especially when their name becomes associated with a particular approach or system. This is seen with concepts, such as Pilates or the Atkins Diet. This same technique has also been used throughout history as a way to spread and develop religion, including Buddhism.
In the world of business, extreme success comes when an individual becomes connected to a particular career where as soon as their name is mentioned, the majority of people across the nation (and even sometimes the world) take notice or can identify. This is seen in notable personalities, such as Mozart, Einstein, and even more recently – Oprah, Madonna, and Bill Gates.
All of the above have been able to take an aspect of their life and share it with the world to the point that they have become a trusted representation of their trade. Oprah is known as such a successful media personality and entrepreneur that people purchase her pick for Book of the Month. Madonna can do no wrong in the entertainment business, as she has built a solid career spanning numerous decades. When news of computers and the advancement of technology hit the headlines, it is Bill Gates that tends to find his way into most software-related conversations.
To start on the path towards successful personal branding, there are plenty of seminars, books, and marketed techniques. An individual must also learn how to self-package their image for the world to accept. These efforts should be approached as a way to manage a profession, where the public can easily identify and communicate with an image that appears unique or compelling enough to create a response. Learn about personal branding at http://www.brandaface.com/
Internet Reputation Management
By Reputation Management
Internet Reputation Management for Internet Marketers
Author: Cynthia Mosher
Building a name for yourself is essential to success in today’s internet business world. People want to do business with and offer their money to people they feel they can trust. These ten steps will go a long way to helping you build a reputation of trust with your visitors.
1. Present a Real Face
Showing your web site is a legitimate physical business you will boost your site’s credibility. The simplest way to do this is by providing a physical address and telephone number for voicemail contact. It also helps to post a picture of yourself or your office and place a list of memberships you belong to such as the chamber of commerce and professional organizations for your business field.
2. Provide Authority
Give authority site links to research and information you present. Even if the reader does not check your information, seeing the respected source of your statement instills trust in your information and your site. And just the opposite – don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association.
3. Highlight Your Staff
People like to know who runs things behind the scenes. Offer brief “about us” information for your staff, even if it’s just you and your partner, freelancer, or virtual assistant.
4. Share Your Experience and Expertise
Are you an expert on some topic? Make that known on your site, in your About Us page and wherever appropriate in articles and resources. List your education and accomplishments in specific areas of knowledge and training.
5. Be Reachable
People like to feel there’s a real person there to communicate with. Give a personal email address and answer promptly. Provide a physical address, telephone number and fax number if you can. A customer help desk is a good addition for a busy site too. But most importantly, respond to their needs as soon as possible.
6. Present a Well Designed Site
Lots of people judge a website by its cover. Provide a professional look but keep it user friendly and consistent. Your design should be appropriate for your business and inviting to internet users of varying experience.
7. Keep it Simple
That snazzy flash page may dazzle some but for many others it will simply be overboard and they will click on by. Use the basics that load quickly and perform well for all internet users and don’t require them to update their computer software to view your pages. People are looking for information and they want it quickly and easily and don’t want to upgrade to get it.
8. Provide New Content Regularly
A site with the same content your visitor saw last month or even last week will give a feeling of absence or abandonment. Keep things current. Place new content weekly if you can. A blog is a great way to do this and you can schedule the content delivery to make it easy.
9. Keep Ads to a Minimum
Advertising should be for products or services you stand behind and should not constitute a large part of your site’s presentation. Featuring a new product or service every month or even every week can be fine. Just don’t bombard your reader with ads. It conveys a feel of your selling interest superseding your sincere interest in your customer
10. Present Clean, Error-free, Functioning Content
Spelling mistakes and broken links are a real turn-off. As an internet business owner you rely mostly on the written word to convey information and professionalism about you and your business. It is important that you present the best you can for your visitors and that it be functional and accessible when they need it.
Use these ten steps to establish your business online. Not only will you gain trust and respect online, you will gather a devoted audience that will spread the word. That’s the best advertising that no money can buy.
Reputation Management Basics
By Reputation Management
User generated content has transformed the way we as consumers research the products and businesses we are going to spend our money on. We can see read reviews and opinions from people who have already made the purchase, helping us to make an informed choice that was never before possible.
The internet is a democracy where free speech is championed, everyone can give their opinion as long as they have a computer and access to the internet. A larger percentage of people than ever before are active users on social networking sites and communities such as Facebook, MySpace, Trip Advisor and consumer forums.
Reputations can be damaged by by blogs, forums, un-favorable articles, disgruntled employees, websites or other online footprint damage, it can even be generated by mistake by your employees revealing sensitive information that was never intended for the public domain. Some reputation damage is not just created by disgruntled consumers, but actually created by your competitors looking to bad mouth your name. This can have huge implications as often these comments and opinions will rank very highly in the search engines. It has even been reported that if a surfer sees a negative search below the official website then they are 70% more likely to click the negative result.
The anonymity of the internet has meant people have been more forthright in their opinions than in the past when newspapers and similar media where held accountable for what their journalists wrote with fear of liable and slander lawsuits keeping the majority of things written to be based on fact.
Reputation management is all about alerting to and tracking of newly generated content and then dealing with anything inappropriate. It is good practice to know what people are saying about you, any gossip or how your products and services are being received. Reputation management is beneficial to businesses, individuals, charities, celebrities and organisations.
Small Businesses
Particularly at risk from negative online publicity are smaller scale and family run businesses. Often these companies will rely heavily on word of mouth and good will between customers and have a much smaller customer base. Family run businesses will have worked tirelessly to create a good reputation for themselves over the years and yet can be blissfully unaware of the damage being done to the business via negative opinions and comments.
A good example of this is a small family run hotel that had seen a decline in the number of new bookings. Although regular users of the internet, the owners of the business were not active on the well known and influential vacation website trip advisor and as such had not been aware of the negative comments and reviews being posted on this prominent site. It actually transpired that a competing hotel in the area had created various aliases to post fabricated, negative reviews that completely outnumbered the genuine reviews and was causing the drop off in new bookings.
If protecting your image and brand online is important to you, you should seek a reputation management expert who will have experience in all the areas of concern and also give you an indication of your current online reputation as well as giving you an reputation management plan.
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Specialists in reputation management and http://www.crisis-management.co.uk Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Betts |
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