April 24, 2013

Using social media to enhance your brand’s reputation

Maintain your social profiles for better search results

Guest post by Cara Aley

With your company focused on its business goals and set up on social channels, it’s critically important that your online business reputation be one that is polished and positive. As you’re likely to be in the market for new customers, clients, partners or investors, it’s important that when they run a Google search on your business or startup, not only are you properly search engine optimized but that meaningful and positive results appear.

Social media as a marketing strategy is an important method for ensuring that this happens, and should be prioritized as much as or more than any other marketing strategy. I’ll explain why.

Understand SEO

Social media profiles are critical for search engine optimization (SEO). You know what SEO is. (See Socialmedia.biz’s series on online reputation.) Now it’s time to start building those social media profiles in order to improve your SEO. Continue reading →

October 10, 2012

How to boost your Klout score with Flipboard

Give more than you take — and get rewarded for it

I’ll get to the point: My secret to being amazingly and profoundly engaged with so many of my followers on Twitter, my friends on Facebook, and my circles on Google+ is because I cheat.

Whenever I am between things, in lines, waiting for something, and even on boring conference calls, I pull up Flipboard and read what my followers, friends, and circles are sharing and I generously retweet, +1, like, favorite, share and comment. I believe that Flipboard is my secret weapon when it comes to improving and maintaining my Klout score. Why? Well, the more I give, the more I get. The more items I honestly and earnestly retweet, favorite, +1, like, and share, the more willing and game the people I share are also willing to take the few seconds it takes to retweet me back. Continue reading →

August 29, 2012

Remove those regrettable online reputation tattoos

The way you feel now about all those photos of you at the beach, in your suit, body-proud, tanned and drinking — liberation and joy — may end up making you feel completely different in your near future — trapped and ashamed. No matter how young you may be, reading these words, you need to start thinking long-game when it comes to your online reputation.

You’re at the mercy of the Panopticon: networked cameras are almost ubiquitous

Your online reputation on Google Search is a culmination of all your separate, discrete (or indiscreet) choices — sort of like tattoos — and it’s always easier to not get inked in the first place than it is live with the consequences or go through the pain and expense of having all of your tribal, prison, lower-back, ankle, neck, and face tattoos removed. Continue reading →

August 22, 2012

Own your online reputation with help from your friends

Many hands make light online reputation work. Changing your reputation online is no small task. It’s also a house of cards. You can either do it yourself, about yourself, for yourself, or you can start the equivalent of an online reputation club, inviting friends, family, your colleagues, and your industry to start building a universe of content that is germane and salient to who you are, what you believe, what you’ve done, and what you’re doing as well as who they are, what they believe, what they’ve done, and what they’re doing.

Continue reading →

August 9, 2012

How to wine, dine and marry into the Google Search Index

Take your time to do reputation defense the right way

Online reputation is a marathon and not a sprint. One thing I have learned over time is that you cannot treat your online reputation like a barn-raising — you can’t construct an entire online reputation in a long weekend by just getting “all hands on deck,” throwing money, availability, strong shoulders, and resources at it all at once.

Rather, it’s more like building a wooden boat from scratch: You can spend a weekend designing it, sourcing your materials, and collecting all your tools, but some things take time; and, in boat-building, some things take longer than others (stains and waterproofing take time to dry, bending and curving and shaping wood also requires wetting and careful molding).

Continue reading →