It’s a fair bet that your boss, dates and anyone you give your business card to will type your name into a search engine. If something negative appears in the results, your online reputation can quickly damage your offline reputation — and affect your life.
Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Microsoft.
While you might not be able to remove damaging content from the Internet, there’s a good chance that you can minimize its impact using simple SEO techniques. And even if your search results are squeaky clean, the same techniques can help you control how you’re perceived online.
Here’s how to get started.
Before you can manage your online reputation, you have to assess it. Type your names in search engines. Set up search alerts for your name (Google recently made this easier to do from the Google dashboard through a new “Me on the Web” tool).
If you find something unflattering, ask yourself:
Did I post it? If, for instance, photos from your Flickr account that you’d rather keep private are showing up in search results for your name, you can simply delete the photos or adjust your privacy settings.
After you’ve removed the offensive content, you can use Google’s URL removal tool to stop it from appearing as a cached copy or snippet in search results. If you do nothing, the content will still eventually drop from Google’s index — it will just take a bit longer to disappear.
If you can’t answer “yes” to either of these questions, your best bet for reducing the visibility of negative content is to compete for top search results using positive content.
“If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”
In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.
Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook and Twitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.
One secret to pushing your positive online presence further up in search results is to make a hub that links to all of your content. Ambron recommends these tips for pushing your hub to the top of search results for your name.
Link to your content. “[Google] considers each link to your site a vote for the site,” Ambron says. “Google has gotten pretty smart, so where those links come from is very important. The more reputable links are better votes. A vote from CNN is better than some site you made that you just linked to yourself.”
Remember all of those social media profiles that you created in step two? They’re attached to reputable sources like Facebook and Twitter, which makes their “votes” count as much more reputable than a page you just created.
Sign up for as many of them as possible (use one of these sites to see what is available), and then link them all to your hub.
There are several services that will help you with your quest for a pristine online reputation for a small fee. Brand-Yourself, for instance, keeps track of your reputation on a dashboard and helps you improve it by helping you raise existing positive content or helping you create new positive content. Vizibility allows users to pre-select the information they want displayed in “search results” from a special button or URL that can be added to online profiles, websites, resumes, email signatures and business cards.
The Future of Search Series is supported by SES San Francisco Conference & Expo. Join more than 6,000 marketers August 15-19 at the Moscone Center for five days of education, inspiration and conversations with the most important voices online. Learn about the industry’s most pressing developments — everything from Google Panda to YouTube LIVE — and every essential topic, including email, display, mobile, search, social media, video and more. Register with “MASH20″ to save 20%. Join the discussion: #SESSF.
– HOW TO: Optimize Text Ads for Search
– Why Your Business Must Embrace the Foreign Language Internet
– 5 Tips for Marketing Online to an International Audience
– 5 Tips for Developing a Global-Friendly Website
– 5 Ways to Improve Your International SEO Strategy
Photos courtesy of Flickr, lunaweb, stevendepolo, venosdale
More About: Brand-Yourself, branding, Future of Search Series, online reputation, reputation, Search, SEO, Vizibility
For more Social Media coverage:
It’s a fair bet that your boss, dates and anyone you give your business card to will type your name into a search engine. If something negative appears in the results, your online reputation can quickly damage your offline reputation — and affect your life.
Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Microsoft.
While you might not be able to remove damaging content from the Internet, there’s a good chance that you can minimize its impact using simple SEO techniques. And even if your search results are squeaky clean, the same techniques can help you control how you’re perceived online.
Here’s how to get started.
Before you can manage your online reputation, you have to assess it. Type your names in search engines. Set up search alerts for your name (Google recently made this easier to do from the Google dashboard through a new “Me on the Web” tool).
If you find something unflattering, ask yourself:
Did I post it? If, for instance, photos from your Flickr account that you’d rather keep private are showing up in search results for your name, you can simply delete the photos or adjust your privacy settings.
After you’ve removed the offensive content, you can use Google’s URL removal tool to stop it from appearing as a cached copy or snippet in search results. If you do nothing, the content will still eventually drop from Google’s index — it will just take a bit longer to disappear.
If you can’t answer “yes” to either of these questions, your best bet for reducing the visibility of negative content is to compete for top search results using positive content.
“If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”
In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.
Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook and Twitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.
One secret to pushing your positive online presence further up in search results is to make a hub that links to all of your content. Ambron recommends these tips for pushing your hub to the top of search results for your name.
Link to your content. “[Google] considers each link to your site a vote for the site,” Ambron says. “Google has gotten pretty smart, so where those links come from is very important. The more reputable links are better votes. A vote from CNN is better than some site you made that you just linked to yourself.”
Remember all of those social media profiles that you created in step two? They’re attached to reputable sources like Facebook and Twitter, which makes their “votes” count as much more reputable than a page you just created.
Sign up for as many of them as possible (use one of these sites to see what is available), and then link them all to your hub.
There are several services that will help you with your quest for a pristine online reputation for a small fee. Brand-Yourself, for instance, keeps track of your reputation on a dashboard and helps you improve it by helping you raise existing positive content or helping you create new positive content. Vizibility allows users to pre-select the information they want displayed in “search results” from a special button or URL that can be added to online profiles, websites, resumes, email signatures and business cards.
The Future of Search Series is supported by SES San Francisco Conference & Expo. Join more than 6,000 marketers August 15-19 at the Moscone Center for five days of education, inspiration and conversations with the most important voices online. Learn about the industry’s most pressing developments — everything from Google Panda to YouTube LIVE — and every essential topic, including email, display, mobile, search, social media, video and more. Register with “MASH20″ to save 20%. Join the discussion: #SESSF.
– HOW TO: Optimize Text Ads for Search
– Why Your Business Must Embrace the Foreign Language Internet
– 5 Tips for Marketing Online to an International Audience
– 5 Tips for Developing a Global-Friendly Website
– 5 Ways to Improve Your International SEO Strategy
Photos courtesy of Flickr, lunaweb, stevendepolo, venosdale
More About: Brand-Yourself, branding, Future of Search Series, online reputation, reputation, Search, SEO, Vizibility
For more Social Media coverage:
It’s a fair bet that your boss, dates and anyone you give your business card to will type your name into a search engine. If something negative appears in the results, your online reputation can quickly damage your offline reputation — and affect your life.
Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Microsoft.
While you might not be able to remove damaging content from the Internet, there’s a good chance that you can minimize its impact using simple SEO techniques. And even if your search results are squeaky clean, the same techniques can help you control how you’re perceived online.
Here’s how to get started.
Before you can manage your online reputation, you have to assess it. Type your names in search engines. Set up search alerts for your name (Google recently made this easier to do from the Google dashboard through a new “Me on the Web” tool).
If you find something unflattering, ask yourself:
Did I post it? If, for instance, photos from your Flickr account that you’d rather keep private are showing up in search results for your name, you can simply delete the photos or adjust your privacy settings.
After you’ve removed the offensive content, you can use Google’s URL removal tool to stop it from appearing as a cached copy or snippet in search results. If you do nothing, the content will still eventually drop from Google’s index — it will just take a bit longer to disappear.
If you can’t answer “yes” to either of these questions, your best bet for reducing the visibility of negative content is to compete for top search results using positive content.
“If you can’t get the content removed from the original site, you probably won’t be able to completely remove it from Google’s search results, either,” reads Google’s guide to keeping personal information out of Google. “Instead, you can try to reduce its visibility in the search results by proactively publishing useful, positive information about yourself or your business.”
In other words, if you want to make negative webpages appear lower in search, you’ll need to create content of relevance to push the negative links down. Google suggests responding to negative reviews of your business, for instance.
Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook and Twitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.
One secret to pushing your positive online presence further up in search results is to make a hub that links to all of your content. Ambron recommends these tips for pushing your hub to the top of search results for your name.
Link to your content. “[Google] considers each link to your site a vote for the site,” Ambron says. “Google has gotten pretty smart, so where those links come from is very important. The more reputable links are better votes. A vote from CNN is better than some site you made that you just linked to yourself.”
Remember all of those social media profiles that you created in step two? They’re attached to reputable sources like Facebook and Twitter, which makes their “votes” count as much more reputable than a page you just created.
Sign up for as many of them as possible (use one of these sites to see what is available), and then link them all to your hub.
There are several services that will help you with your quest for a pristine online reputation for a small fee. Brand-Yourself, for instance, keeps track of your reputation on a dashboard and helps you improve it by helping you raise existing positive content or helping you create new positive content. Vizibility allows users to pre-select the information they want displayed in “search results” from a special button or URL that can be added to online profiles, websites, resumes, email signatures and business cards.
The Future of Search Series is supported by SES San Francisco Conference & Expo. Join more than 6,000 marketers August 15-19 at the Moscone Center for five days of education, inspiration and conversations with the most important voices online. Learn about the industry’s most pressing developments — everything from Google Panda to YouTube LIVE — and every essential topic, including email, display, mobile, search, social media, video and more. Register with “MASH20″ to save 20%. Join the discussion: #SESSF.
– HOW TO: Optimize Text Ads for Search
– Why Your Business Must Embrace the Foreign Language Internet
– 5 Tips for Marketing Online to an International Audience
– 5 Tips for Developing a Global-Friendly Website
– 5 Ways to Improve Your International SEO Strategy
Photos courtesy of Flickr, lunaweb, stevendepolo, venosdale
More About: Brand-Yourself, branding, Future of Search Series, online reputation, reputation, Search, SEO, Vizibility
For more Social Media coverage:
Benjamin Lang is the founder of EpicLaunch and co-founder of MySchoolHelp. You can follow him on Twitter @entrepreneurpro and find out more at BenjaminLang.com.
Everybody needs to get their name out there on the social web. For entrepreneurs, however, it’s an even more critical aspect of the job. A social presence gives you the credibility to attract clients, partners and investors by making yourself available and demonstrating your personality and experience.
Building your online brand in a meaningful way is no easy task, and there are many tools available to get you on the right path. Below, we’ve picked 10 tested methods and highlighted some of the best web tools to help your brand gain momentum in a crowded online marketplace.
Being quoted in news articles is an excellent way to demonstrate your authority. It’s a free way to promote yourself and demonstrate thought leadership. There are a few excellent tools out there that connect reporters with people looking to get quoted.
Having your own custom URL shortener is a great way to get your name out there. If you often share links on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, it’s very useful. Eric Ries is a prime example. When he distributes a link, he uses his own shortened URL: ericri.es.
Here’s an informative tutorial on how to set up your own shortened URL.
Sharing your knowledge on Q&A sites is a superb way to build credibility around your name. There are quite a few sites to choose from, so start with the one that has the most buzz around it at the moment: Quora. Robert Scoble has demonstrated the value the site can provide. Having answered more than 500 questions, he’s built a following of more than 22,000 people.
Be present and active on social networks. It’s crucial to set up your profiles and use the sites to your professional advantage.
Below are some of the top site to establish your presence:
Participating in meetups is another excellent way to network and build clout. There a few good tools for finding interesting events in your area. Here are two to get started with:
Turn your email signature into a social and informative experience. When exchanging emails, everyone in your network will easily be able to find out more about you.
Wisestamp is a popular signature plugin that allows you to create sleek signatures with social icons, RSS feeds and more.
Search for blogs in your area of expertise and pitch them specific ideas for posts. Each blog has its own style and focus, so make sure to tailor your pitches to each outlet. Be ready to share writing samples if asked, and be open to working with editors to revise your post as necessary. Alltop and Technorati are good places to start looking for tops blogs within your area of expertise.
Create a virtual business card so that it’s easy for people to find you and share your information with others. There are many ways to go about this:
Sending out a monthly newsletter will allow you to build up a vast network. If you share valuable content with subscribers, they will then share it with their friends — bringing you a new subscribers and fans. If you do a good job, your list will continue to grow.
Some of the more popular newsletter services include:
As an example, Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, shares interviews, products and knowledge through his Tiny Letter newsletter, Foundation. At $3.99 per month, it’s a bargain for readers who value his content.
The opportunity to grab a meal with other potentially influential people is within your grasp. These days, it’s easy to set up networking meals through online tools like Let’s Lunch or GrubWithUs.
Let’s Lunch is a one-on-one lunch meeting generator that matches people based on reputation, influence, requests and practicality. Right now, it’s only available to people in NYC, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. GrubWithUs allows you to connect with others at group meals that you either find or set up yourself.
What tools have you used to build your online brand? Let us know in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Flickr, loop_oh
More About: brand, branding, busines, entrepreneurs, List, Lists, MARKETING, social media, social networking, startups, trending
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Justin Fogarty is the online community manager at Ariba, a leading provider of collaborative business commerce solutions. Follow Justin on Twitter @justacio or join the thousands interacting on his community, the Ariba Exchange.
The goal of many companies is to facilitate a vibrant online community around a brand or product. “Engagement” is a refrain we’ve all heard time and again, but it is crucial if you want to gain traction on the social web. We can look to the undisputed champ of engagement, Facebook, to inform our own strategies, communities and web presence.
This isn’t just about creating better Facebook ads, or even in getting more “Likes.” The bigger question is, what can our brand communities take away from the success of Facebook’s platform?
It’s not about ROI or advertising dollars at the beginning. It’s not about messaging and positioning. Customers will come back to a place with a compelling reason for going there in the first place. Let the user determine the model, and look at the type of user that you want to attract as the primary driver behind the online presence.
In Facebook’s case, they started with simply facilitating the sharing of information — from personal profiles to pictures. They’ve kept that same core model but expanded into everything from shopping to events. What can you facilitate that will help your customers?
Most communities, like Facebook, are natural extensions of what happens in the real world. Facebook mimics personal relationships. Your online community should mimic the positive interactions traditionally formed within your company. If connections are made at trade shows, then start discussions online that would typically take place at a trade show. If your company’s growth is from sales in a particular vertical, then facilitate connections with influencers in that market.
If there are two things we learned from MySpace, not everyone is a web/UI designer, and people prefer a clean community. This is online design 101, but it applies to your brand as well.
The web has the power to infinitely enhance your capabilities online, but start small. Keep a simple, clean interface with a clear direction for a user to personally benefit. It will keep your brand’s image in focus, and give users a sense of the benefits they’ll get from engaging with you.
Your content should be short, frequent and easy to engage with. Facebook’s News Feed is effective because of these principles. This keeps visitors coming back and spending more time with your community.
If done right, these returning visitors will slowly phase out some other older, inferior communication tools. For example, think about the things that Facebook has trumped — from classmates.com to that old personal blog you haven’t updated in months.
Generally, most people online are “lurkers,” viewing sites and communities without ever interacting with them. Enter the “Like” button, which made engagement quick, easy and approachable. With your business, create a community of quick and easy participation. This will get people invested in your message and enable continuous interaction.
Keeping these tips in mind, your business will be well on its way to creating unique experiences, increasing engagement and enthusiasm for your brand, and developing a truly interactive and meaningful community.
More About: branding, community, engagement, facebook, List, Lists, social media, social media marketing
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Not only did Apple surpass Microsoft in market capitalization to become the second most valuable U.S. company in 2010, it also superseded Google to become the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world, according to a study published by global research agency Millward Brown.
Apple’s brand value jumped 84% to $153.3 billion, driven largely by the company’s success with the iPad and iPhone 4, the study found. Google’s brand declined 2% to $111.5 billion. IBM, McDonald’s and Microsoft rounded out the top five.
With a 246% increase in brand value to $19.1 billion — the greatest leap of any company in the survey — Facebook made its debut on the top 100 chart at number 35. Baidu, the leading search engine in China, was the second-fastest climber at 141%, placing it at number 29.
Other notable findings: Amazon (14) overtook Walmart (15) to become the most valuable retail brand in the world at $37.6 billion; Toyota once again became the most valuable car brand; and 12 of the top 100 brands in 2010 came from China.
Brands’ values were determined by a mix of factors, including future earnings (discounted to their present-day values) and in-depth consumer surveys, Millward Brown says. For further information, see the full report.
More About: apple, Baidu, branding, brandz, facebook, Google, MARKETING, millward brown, trending
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Brian Solis is principal of Altimeter Group, a leading research-based advisory firm. Brian is also the author of the all-new Engage!, an award-winning guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web. Follow him on Twitter.
As a consumer, you are blasted with the same request over and over: “Follow Us on Twitter, Like Us on Facebook.” Why should I? What’s in it for me? These are questions of which a significant number of businesses cannot genuinely answer.
Today, a notable number of businesses are approaching branded social channels from a “ready, fire, aim” approach. This method conjures a facade of achievement when in fact, any progress, if at all recognized, is short term and shoddy at best. Many focus on numbers without first analyzing who they’re trying to reach and, more importantly, how engagement satisfies the needs of their customers. Without a mature content and engagement strategy, a great unfollow and unlike movement is inevitable.
The key to zooming in on purpose and usefulness within social channels starts with the realization that there is no one audience. Nor is there a sustainable market for branded messages, marketing campaigns, or “Tweet/Like to Win” contests. Indeed, every channel created to represent the brand must carry a purpose, mission and corresponding value. One of the most common questions I’m asked by businesses of all shapes and sizes is, “What is the right number of accounts we should have in each social network?” Or, “How many profiles is too many or too few?”
The answer is as simple as it is revealing. Create the number of channels that meaningfully extend the focus of your business. Only create channels that enhance the brand message without diluting it. And make sure you have the capacity to keep all the channels relevant.
So what are the best practices for creating an engaging social stream? Let’s take a look at the traits of some of the more successful and regarded brands in the business.
1. Design an Effective Channel Strategy: Evaluate the main brand, sub brands and notable personalities that engender a “follow worthy” or “likable” presence. If there are other accounts that exist beyond the initial strategy, assess their value as a standalone channel and its current state. It may be best to simply truncate accounts or close them all together.
2. Create a Life Support System: Develop an organized framework that supports each presence uniquely. Ensure that each account establishes a rhythm that meets the needs of its audience.
3. Mission and Purpose: Know the audience you’re trying to reach and design a communicable mission and purpose for each account.
4. Develop an Editorial Program: Create an editorial program that addresses the various needs of the social consumer including entertainment, sales, service, engagement, HR, etc. Evoke the new K.I.S.S. (Keep It Significant and Shareable). Create content that’s both engaging, contextually relevant and shareable. Think beyond the basics and use polls, curation, promotional content and questions to your advantage.
5. Construct a Listening Framework: The best listeners make the best conversationalists. Build a listening framework that monitors the brands as well as the distinct conversations related to each account.
6. Establish Conversational Workflow: Each account requires an information path and workflow. They also require bridges between them to ensure that every representative is informed and that the right delegates within the business are on point to engage or respond accordingly.
7. Formulate a Decision Tree: Draft a clear flowchart that details the steps for a variety of “if this happens, then do this” situations. This is designed to help representatives follow a defined path for the real-time nature of engagement.
8. Initiate a Training Program: Representatives will require ongoing training to stay sharp and focused. Every engagement either reinforces or takes away from the brand experience. As technology moves faster than our ability to master its lessons, training keeps employees on track.
9. Install a Governance and Reward System: Much like the marketing team protects the integrity of the brand and how it’s presented, a social team is necessary to manage the integrity of each Twitter account as well as the overall portfolio. At the same time, a reward system must be put in place to encourage exceptional work.
10. Draft a Social Media Brand Style Guide: Chances are a style guide already exists that communicates brand presentation, usage guidelines and other forms of brand-related marketing aesthetics. This guide requires a significant update to account for social media. Its primary function is to define the brand persona, characteristics, voice, and essence.
11. Compose Guidelines: Develop a social media policy that conveys the Dos and don’ts of social media. If one already exists, update it. Current laws may protect employees’ rights to express opinion about employers within their personal accounts. Additionally, many employees complain that the existing guidelines are either too extreme or ambiguous to define successful engagement. Design the guideline to serve as guardrails and also a roadmap to success.
12. Serve Customers and Prospects: Social consumers now expect brands to solve problems and answer questions in social streams. Each channel requires a service function or a dedicated channel to satisfy needs and promote appreciation and loyalty.
13. Employ Language and Timing Techniques: Two points of note — timing is everything and in brevity there’s clarity. Studies already show that the timing and language of tweets and Facebook updates determine overall reach and engagement. Optimize language and timing to make every update count.
14. Design Engagement and Performance Metrics: Monitor the performance of each account to improve its engagement and editorial strategy.
Following these best practices will prevent your brand from falling victim to the coming wave of customer unlikes and unfollows. But more importantly, focusing social channels and investing in the value of each will improve the customer experience and encourage greater engagement. By increasing meaningful interaction, brand reach is dramatically amplified through the social effect. Your customers will not only be encouraged to “like” your brand, but genuinely love it.
Interested in more Soccial Media resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.More About: branding, engagement, facebook, social media, social media marketing, twitter
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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
The web, as we know, is a great place to market your business — but only if people can find you. Success in online marketing is contingent upon people being able to locate your web presence. One of the best ways to connect with current and potential customers via the web is to leave your footprint around the Internet and create a trail that leads back to your business.
Leaving your business footprint across the web has a number of benefits, including driving traffic back to your site, building brand awareness, establishing trust and boosting your search engine rankings. There are an almost infinite number of places around the web where you can leave your footprint, but here are four rules for getting the most out of your efforts and attracting notice.
Social media is a big place. That can be both a boon and a burden for small businesses. On the one hand, it means there is a virtually unlimited number of ways to leave your business footprint around the Internet, but on the other hand, it also can make doing so a very time consuming and overwhelming process. Still, it’s a good idea to be everywhere on the web that your customers are. Your customers will be having a conversation online — even about your business — whether or not you participate. If you’re concerned with creating a healthy, positive brand image, it’s better to participate in those conversations than to stay on the sidelines.
At the very least, it is important for almost every business trying to build their brand online to have a presence on the major social networks. Crissy Gershey, director of sales and marketing for Parties That Cook, maintains active accounts for the business on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, Foursquare and LinkedIn. Because Gershey’s budget is limited, it makes sense to focus on the social media sites where her clients are.
Further, stagnation is a bad thing. If you can’t actively maintain your presence, it might not be a good idea to register an account at all. Social media profiles tend to rank highly in search, so you want to make sure yours is active and properly filled out.
“Be sure to complete profiles on sites most relevant to your business. In my experience on many sites, including OpenForum.com, people do not complete their profiles. Simply completing your profile makes you stand out above the majority or listings,” advises Jeff Huckaby, the CEO of rackAID.
Jim Olenbush, a broker at Cantera Real Estate in Austin, Texas, agrees. “These pages and accounts will also rank highly for your company name, so make sure they present well,” he says. Olenbush also advises maintaining an active presence on local and business review and support sites like Yelp, Merchant Circle and GetSatisfaction. “Research your competitors by searching for their company names. The websites that have references to them or pages about them might also be good places to list your business. This includes review sites, business profile pages, and mentions of companies on industry blogs.”
It’s often said that social media is a conversation. It’s a cliche, but a truism, and getting involved in that conversation presents amazing opportunities for businesses to spread their footprint. From commenting on industry blogs to posting on discussion forums to conversing with your fans on your own social media profiles or your blog, there are plenty of ways to join the conversation and leave a trail back to your site. But there is one golden rule that all businesses should follow: always add something of value.
“It is important for businesses to provide quality input and selfless content,” says Season Lopiccolo, a partner at Noble Studios. “Nobody likes spam. Web users are likely to repel when they are feeling oversold or the content has no value to them. So always make sure your content is clear, concise and to-the-point.”
Mike Schwarz, founder of RibbedTee, learned that lesson the hard way. “When I first started contributing to forum threads, I was more focused on pitching our brand, and less on addressing the topic of discussion,” he recalls. “A few times, I got schooled pretty bad and came to the realization there was a better way to participate. In many cases, I would visit a forum and refer other competitor’s products if it was a solution to the person’s inquiry.”
His lesson? “Help others thoughtfully, and they will in turn consider your products at some time in the future.”
Of course, quality doesn’t mean you can’t be opinionated. Says Lopiccolo, “Allow people to be a little confrontational, even if it means they don’t agree with you. As long as you show that you are listening, clear in your messaging and open for change, the people on the other end reading will continue to stay interested.”
“Whatever size business you own, you have the ability to influence countless followers by simply sharing your expertise with others. Everyone has expertise, if you simply decide to share it. And you’ll find that the more you share, the more you learn. Don’t try to hide your ideas, concepts, or creativity — talk it up,” advises Alan Guinn, managing director at The Guinn Consulting Group.
You’re probably an expert in something — after all, you won’t be very successful in your business if you aren’t an expert in it — and sharing that knowledge can establish yourself as a leader in your industry and help to build positive associations with your brand. There are many ways to share your expertise online, including blogging, posting on social media sites and traditional media outreach, but one of the best methods is guest posting on already established blogs.
“Great content is king and everyone wants it,” says Jennifer Nichols, CEO and co-founder of FlackList. “Reach out to blogs with advice editorials to see if they’d be interested in sharing with them their readers in exchange for pushing out the link to your email list or posting on your own company blog.”
“If you have a new idea, or a new way of doing things, write it up and put it online. If you have a new technique for approaching business, don’t be afraid to write it up and post it,” says Guinn.
Small businesses generally don’t have the same resources as their well capitalized, enterprise-level competitors, and that can sometimes put them at a competitive disadvantage. One way to mitigate that competitive imbalance is to join forces with other small businesses and create a coalition that has more influence en masse. This strategy can also work when spreading your business footprint around the web.
“One of our key initiatives [for] driving traffic is strategically partnering with other service companies that complement our painting business,” says Ricky Chu, the co-founder of Rayco. Chu has formed partnerships with other local home improvement businesses that target the same clientele. “Since we have implemented cross-promoting our services on our print and web collateral we have increased traffic more than 50%. This is very important because this 50% is coming from targeted customers who are getting work done on their homes.”
According to Matt Griffin, president and CEO of Baker’s Edge, the companies you partner with needn’t always be in your industry. “We like to team up with non-market related companies on projects. Being involved with new faces guarantees new exposure,” he says. “For instance, we have an office Trail Running Team. We like to sponsor local races and participate. It shows us [to be] a more dynamic company, and gets our image out there to places that other kitchenware companies have never thought to tread — have you ever seen a bakeware company sponsor anything aside from a bake off?”
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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.
Potential customers visit your site specifically for its content, meaning its appearance and usability are critical to its success and how those users view your company. However, getting your web design wrong can have a negative impact on your business.
Here are 5 common web design mistakes you must avoid to create a great user experience and grow your bottom line.
Many small businesses fail to make navigation a priority, but without careful attention to how people navigate your site, you could unintentionally be creating a frustrating experience for any potential visitor. People visit your site for specific information, and if they cannot find it they will quickly go elsewhere, leaving with the impression that your business is disorganized in more than just its website.
A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site longer, which means potentially more readers, subscribers, sales or leads — whichever is your primary objective.
Website navigation affects both usability and accessibility, so it’s important to make it a primary concern. Most websites and blogs use common navigational techniques that are expected by the average visitor. The pages and sections of the site should be easy and logical for visitors to maneuver. Don’t make your visitors think about how to navigate your site; it should be effortless and natural.
There are several principles you can follow to create an effective navigation structure:
The fundamental error of many small business websites is the lack of a clear call to action. We’ve all seen bland small-business brochure websites with nothing but endless descriptive paragraphs. If you aren’t leading users to commit to an action (buy a product, contact you or subscribe, for example), then you are losing them.
Driving traffic to your website is important, but that traffic is useless if your primary call to action is a plain “click here” link buried in a sea of text. Call-to-action buttons are a great way to grab the user’s attention, and these buttons can be the key to higher conversions. Investing time and consideration into creating successful calls to action can help guide users and address their needs while achieving your own business goals.
It’s important to keep the following best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action:
Color and contrast aren’t usually high up on the list of priorities for a small business owner when it comes to creating a website. But it should be, because if your website text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have difficulty reading your content, especially people with poor vision or color-blindness.
Aside from plain readability, color and contrast are important because they can be used to create visual interest and direct the attention of the user. It can equally be effective in organizing and defining the flow and hierarchy of a page, and it’s therefore an essential principle to pay attention to during the design process. Here are some tips:
People visit your website for its content, and how that is structured is a huge factor in its success or failure. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of small businesses get so caught up in overloading the user with information that they overlook how that information is presented.
Most people do not read unless it’s absolutely necessary, and they prefer to scan through information quickly to get to the points of interest. This is why it’s so important to establish a strong visual content hierarchy so users can quickly scan your site and sifting through relevant information. A logical content hierarchy also acts as a guide through each page and creates a more enjoyable user experience.
So when focusing on your content, it’s best to keep in mind these three tips:
When talking about content, spelling and grammar cannot be underestimated.
We all know at least one small business website that seems to include everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. Many small business owners tend to cram as much as they can onto a single page — the end result is a busy, cluttered and unreadable page.
The more extraneous items there are on a web page, the more unprofessional it looks, and it becomes overwhelming, confusing and distracting for the user. A cluttered website will also affect traffic because visitors won’t return if they can’t understand or follow the content, which leads to low traffic, a high bounce rate and possibly a poor Page Rank.
Clutter also applies to images. Too many can be a huge distraction and just plain annoying. Images should be used to illustrate, capture attention and guide the user where required.
Follow these guidelines for a more streamlined visitor experience:
Even the greatest content can become lost in a mess of words and graphics, so de-cluttering is essential.
These are just five web design mistakes that many small businesses make. What other mistakes have you noticed on small business websites?
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Once upon a time, going to an event was just going to an event. We went, we hopefully enjoyed it, and we left. If it was memorable enough, we told our friends about it the next day. This series of steps applied to every real world experience. But in the digital age, any smart company knows that our passion and engagement can — and should — be channeled far beyond the physical spot where we’re standing. The fact that the real world can no longer be separated from the digital one is clear, but the way to merge the online and offline worlds to create a unified, coherent brand experience is much less so.
Here are some tips on how to sync your marketing campaign in the digital and real worlds. Leave your tips in the comments.
A mixed media campaign can be powerful, effective and even beautiful, and it ideally engages the consumer in multiple ways. To this end, creativity and collaboration are key, but there is some critical work to do before you go there. Grant Powell, CEO of creative marketing agency Pomegranate, says that it’s all about a unified message. Without a strong foundation, you can be as creative as you want and even spend as much money as you want, but your campaign cocktail may come across as choppy and disjointed. Grant suggests creating a single, concise set of guidelines and making sure they are clearly communicated across all parties and mediums involved. Whether it’s a style guide, a branding document or a handful of rules, these are the building blocks of your integrated campaign.
The days, weeks and months leading up to an offline experience are just as much a part of the game as the experience itself. Antler, an experiential and digital market agency, recently worked with Magners Irish Cider to produce the Magners Comedy Festival in Boston. The event itself took place in January, but Antler kicked things off on Facebook in October with a call for amateur comedians across the U.S. to compete in the festival. People could view and vote for the competitors through a custom Facebook app, and more 40,000 people voted within three weeks. The online engagement and voting not only built enough buzz for a successful turnout, but also determined the make-up of the event itself.
There’s an extended, social audience that is just waiting to share its opinion on everything you’re doing, and it’s much bigger than the one that’s going to show up to anything offline. Let that audience build your buzz for you.
We are perpetual sharers. We broadcast the things we do across the social web, and we engage with people and things we love in real time. During any real world experience, there will inevitably be a constant line of communication between the people who are lucky enough to be there and those who aren’t. They are going to share anyway, so be sure to tell them how. Determine the digital channels that you want your audience to use to talk to each other from the many realms of your integrated campaign, and make them aware of these channels in advance. Antler President and CEO Terry Lozoff recommends considering the mobile mediums that can connect people around an experience: live photo submissions, checkins, QR codes and Text-to-Like on Facebook are a good place to start. Lozoff also reminds us not to overlook the basics — advertise Twitter handles and hashtags, Facebook Pages and other digital opportunities on non-digital materials, like flyers, signs, the stage and anywhere else that holds the attention of your audience.
In August 2010, digital services and creative company Barbarian Group worked with GE to launch The GE Show, an online, episodic web experience made up of video, games and data visualization, designed to tell the story of GE’s innovation in myriad aspects of daily life. The newest episode, The GE Show: Solar, launches tomorrow, and in order to build buzz around the digital property in advance, Barbarian Group went offline. This past March at SXSW, it debuted The GE Show’s first ever offline event, in the form of an original 1920s carousel that had been renovated, decked out with modern LEDs and graced with 100 GE solar panels. Two thousand people per day showed up for rides, which ran 10 hours per for day for five days, relying 100% on GE’s ability to harness the power of the sun. Plus, people could charge their phones using solar powered charging stations while they waited in line.
The digital elements of many integrated campaigns are seen as an extension of the real world experience, but in the case of The GE Show, the standard equation got flipped around. There are times that the bigger story is being told digitally, and the real world serves as a powerful, emotionally charged jumping-off point for inspiring deeper engagement with a digital presence — not the other way around.
The online and offline worlds play off of each other in multiple ways, and the approach we take to weave them together depends entirely on the story we are trying to tell. It is the job of companies and brands to make sure that their fans walk into any experience fully aware of all the ways to extend the reach of the spot they’re standing in, and leave the experience without really leaving at all.
The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, which offers inbound marketing software that helps small and medium sized businesses get found on the Internet by the right prospects and converts more of them into leads and customers. HubSpot’s software platform includes tools that allow professional marketers and small business owners to manage SEO, blogging, social media, landing pages, e-mail, lead intelligence and marketing analytics. Learn more.
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