Reputations Can Ruin Businesses

Reputations are a big deal. When it comes to the reputation of your business a good (or bad) reputation can make (or break) your company. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been around a while or are a brand new start-up, a bad rep is a bad rep and word in the cyber world travels fast!

The over-all reputation a company has can be determined by the individual reputations of many people including your family, your employees, and yourself. Anyone one of these (and all of these) can be major cogs in your reputation’s wheel. Sometimes a bad rep has nothing to do with the company itself and everything to do with the people that surround it. Regardless, it all contributes to the overall branding of your company.

The Blah, Blah, Bloggosphere and Other Social Media

Some people arbitrarily comment on or review people or businesses. They make a game of it and they don’t care about the damage they may cause. There are others who are genuinely malicious and wish you harm like disgruntled employees or customers and identity thieves.

Word of mouth can be the greatest form of advertising, but it can also be the worst. Studies have shown — and social media has taught us, that bad lip service gets passed around much more prolifically than good. Ironically, most often it is by people who have never done business with you nor interacted with you or your company in any way.

Say It Isn’t So?

That’s the nature of the Internet beast. It makes no difference whether the on-line chatter about you is true, what matters is that it is being endlessly passed around to countless others who believe it is true and everyone has access to it.

Life on the Internet is long and it isn’t easy to get rid of some of the stuff that’s out there about you or your company. Thankfully, and luckily for you, there are excellent companies that specifically deal with helping you repair your on-line reputation as quickly and efficiently as possible. As a bonus, the services are SEO heavy and partially reliant on fresh content so the added exposure boost is priceless.

The Cost of Doing Business in a Digital World

Sit down, do a few Google searches on your business and your employees. See what’s out there. Are there bad reviews on places like Yelp or negative posts on blogs and other social media? Make a list and make a plan. Only you can start the process of turning your on-line rep you’re your bottom line) around.

A good rep manager has your best interest at heart and is an extension of yourself while they manage your image to create more positive on-line visibility to generate more trust and engagement. To easily stay abreast of the latest tips from wherever you are follow Reputation.com on Twitter: @Reputation_Com. They are the leading experts in on-line reputation management and correction and they frequently Tweet relevant information for free.

A bad reputation can dramatically and negatively affect your bottom line so reputation management should be a part of your marketing, including its budget. The cost to you otherwise is incalculable. The truth is the Internet and all of it’s flaws is not going to go away and you need to address it head on. What are you waiting for?

Getting Online Marketing Right For Your Business: Choosing a Great Marketing Agency

Being visible is how you get business going, and being visible online is how you get business going online in the modern world. Because online marketing and strategising is complex and a little more oblique than marketing in the physical world, you might do well to use an expert for this. You can outsource this job efficiently by contracting someone else to do your online marketing, which is where an online marketing agency comes in. If you haven’t heard about search engine optimisation (SEO), or done some SEO on your site, you should look into it. Search engines are now crucial to online marketing, so look into using an SEO agency like Optimising and think about whether or not it’s the right thing to do for your business.

1. Visibility and accessibility are your goals. Because so much web traffic is driven by search engines, you need to start paying them attention. As it’s the way people interact with the web, it is the mechanism that you need to appeal to. With search engines, you can actually target searchers and customers that are looking for what you offer.

2. Don’t use a generic marketing plan, it won’t be as effective as a tailored one.

3. Incorporate great social media into your online marketing strategy, and choose an agency that will be all over your social media.

4. Make sure you measure the results of your campaign continuously. Ask your agency about how they do their reporting.

The Fundamentals of an Internet Marketing MBA

Internet marketing forms the foundation of today’s most successful companies. As such, graduates in the field of Internet marketing can look forward to a diverse selection of career opportunities, including the excitement of becoming an entrepreneur if desired. No other field is growing and changing as rapidly as Internet marketing, which means you will always have new frontiers to explore during your career. If you are interested in marketing and e-commerce and you love the idea of a career where no two days are the same, then choosing an advanced degree in business with an Internet marketing concentration may be the perfect path for you.

Internet Marketing Explained

With an Internet marketing MBA, you will learn advanced business skills and gain specialized training in how to use the Internet as a marketing and sales tool. Advertising, marketing and selling conducted in the online marketplace requires a different skill set than traditional marketing. Potential customers are easy-to-identify but hard to reach and convert. Your challenge as an Internet marketing professional will be to find innovative, creative ways to establish trusted connections with prospective customers and use those connections to turn them into paying customers.

Internet Marketing Coursework

The primary challenge an Internet marketing professional faces is how to break through the conversational clutter online to capture the attention of a chosen group of customers. As such, you will take courses that teach you how to start a conversation online with your ideal customer base. Courses will include instruction in social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), web analytics, paid online advertising (pay-per-click and Google AdWords) and conversion optimization, which teaches you how to turn a casual browser into a paying customer. You will also learn the latest strategies for composing press releases, blogs and articles for a Web audience. If you are interested in specializing in certain areas within the field, you may also enroll in classes that teach video production and editing, digital media buying, finance MBA coursework and account management.

Career Opportunities in Internet Marketing

As an Internet marketing graduate with an advanced degree, you have many career options to choose from. For instance, many CEOs in the field of marketing began their careers in advertising or sales and worked their way up. You may also choose to start your own business as an Internet marketing consultant or you may want to use your skills to launch your own product online. Because your skills are applicable to every area of business, if you aspire to become a speaker or author on any subject, you will have the skills to market yourself as a product or service. You can also work in the technical end in Web maintenance, programming, software development or online customer service. If you are interested in working with numbers, Internet-savvy accounting and finance professionals are always needed to help analyze sales and profitability and make recommendations for maintaining a company’s health and growth. You could also go into product management and oversee every aspect of a specific product or service, from how it is marketed to how profitable it is. Because Internet marketing is still a relatively new field, you also have the opportunity to literally create your own job function if you have an idea you want to explore.

The Path to Internet Marketing

Because Internet marketing falls under the umbrella of business, the best path to becoming an Internet marketing professional is to get a business MBA and choose an Internet-marketing concentration. This way you will have the knowledge you need to understand how business works and the Internet marketing skills you need to make a valuable contribution in your career. You can take on-campus courses or study for your Internet marketing MBA online. When you graduate, you can look forward to an exciting career in an ever-evolving field. The Internet is here to say, which means as an Internet marketing professional, your job prospects look very bright indeed.

About the Author: Kelley Sinclair fell in love with Internet marketing in college. Recently, she has returned to school to earn her advanced degree in Internet marketing. She plans to start a marketing consulting firm after graduation.

Understanding Twitter as a Social Media Marketing Tool

I already have Facebook – Why Twitter as well?

Businesses use Twitter for a very simple reason. It works and in many instances has more marketing value than Facebook even. It gives greater coverage over a far wider range of demographics than any other social media outlet and allows near instant access to a global audience of nearly five hundred million users. Aside from its huge number of users worldwide, it is also the fastest growing of all social media outlets.

The use of twitter is amazingly simple – you have 140 characters to deliver the message of your choice anytime day or night from any computer or phone. The only caveat to this is with over 5000 tweets per second you must find something interesting enough to say and use an eye catching method of saying it to stand out from this huge volume and attract positive attention. Here are some tips on how to do just that.

Make a profile that says something

On your Twitter profile, you have 160 characters including a photo and a single web link.  You can use your website or blog name but unless it is very well known I would suggest being a person. Combining a name with a your company or blog name works well also. As an example you might choose “Susan-BestFashionBlog” or as a company along the lines of “Mike-SheffieldBikeCEO” as a good solution as they allow other users to identify with you as an individual while at the same time associating you with a product, business or website/blog.

Being a real person lends credibility to your tweets as opposed to a spam look and makes it easier for other users to identify and connect with you. In general users are more responsive to Mike from Sheffield Bikes than to simply Sheffield Bikes Inc. A profile featuring a  clear photograph of smiling person will be more successful than a profile using a  logo or graphic for a very basic reason – people want to make friends and talk with people , not with a company they may not even have heard of. A quality personal photo will allow your Twitter account attract a greater number of followers far sooner than an impersonal logo.

Getting the Most from Twitter

To achieve the best result with Twitter you must understand what it really is. In basic terms it is a global human search engine. You can use it to allow others to find your message on any topic or to find the message and trends of others on any topic. Of course telling people of your business, product and services is the end goal but if you stop at that and strictly promote things you sell or offer you will be missing out on a wealth of other valuable resources on Twitter. To maximize your time and return on that time from Twitter you should  actively participate in the community and use it as a source of information, a method of gaining insight to your market, and even for simple personal knowledge and support from other individuals in fields that relate to yours.

Start with a plan

Using Twitter as a marketing tool will require a plan and concept to be developed prior to even opening the account. Consider these as a good way to formulate an effective plan.

 1.      Start by writing a list of keywords to search for on Twitter

• Include occupations and standard terms used in your field to assist in finding Twitter users in your field

2.       Find the people the tweet about  your field such as

•  businesses
•  organizations
• trade associations

3.      Identify professional and subject matter experts

• media/industry journalists,
• bloggers
• consultants
•  authors

4.       Learn about your competitors

• Know what they are tweeting and who is following them
• Pay particular attention to the people that are re-tweeting their message

Once you have done this you can make use of the information you have.  You should be able to determine the leaders in your field and who people are listening to in that field. Look at the lists they are on and the conversations they are actively engaged. A good strategy is often to simply join into these lists and interject yourself in these established conversation streams to make a connection with the key players and get yourself known as well in the areas that closely overlap with your field.

Once you understand the range of information and conversations that already exist, you will be in a position to build your own plan to engage an audience of followers that want to hear your message.  Use this as a base to build from with these considerations-

1- What information can you add to or provide that is relevant

2- Where the people are that are most interested in your product or service

3- The nature and tone of posts that these people will be receptive to

Use these tips to start your twitter account and to base your posts on and you will be well on your way to effectively using Twitter as a part of your social media marketing strategy.

James Raglan writes for the WebMarketing Group, an SEO and social media marketing company in Yorkshire. You can follow them on both Twitter and Pinterest.

How to Choose a Topic for a Press Release

All experts in the marketing industry know how important online PR is for search engine optimisation (SEO). If you don’t, well then you should be sacked (not that we would want you to be).

Just as directories and social media are crucial to a business’s rankings in search engines like Google, online PR is still vital in today’s digital era. Yes the weight of its importance has diluted but the marketing tool still offers numerous benefits for SEO.

Advantages include:

• Reason for using PR should now be shifted to increase the reputation of the company/brand, by writing an interesting, newsworthy press release rather than doing a press release for link building purposes only.

• Great for increasing brand and reputation management by getting it picked up by influential publications (well-written press releases that are picked up by journalists and PR people can drive quality traffic to your site)

Now we know just how valuable PR can be for your firm, how do you go about writing one? There are numerous articles and templates available that can help you structure the perfect release; such as ‘How to Write A Good Press Release’ and Journalism.co.uk.

But how do you choose a topic for a release?

As yourself the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the press release?
• Is it newsworthy and topical, or a blatant PR piece?

If you said ‘yes’ to the topic being promotional, you need to think of a new angle. Press releases are great for companies to promote a new product or service however; you need to make sure it is interesting for the consumer and relevant.

So here is the all-important tip- your release should have a unique, human interest angle.

Content is the most important thing and it if doesn’t offer anything new or exciting, simply put people won’t read it.

Case study

Why would someone care about your topic? Take for example, a new hairdryer. As any girl will know, there are hundreds of hairdryers on the market to buy. So how do you make your new product stand out?

All hairdryers have the same basic features as each other but what makes yours unique and how does it help the every-day woman?

Does it have negative ion technology to absorb water droplets at a much faster rate? Is it capable of improving the condition and shine of all types of hair? Does it prevent the hair from becoming frizzy?

Well there you go, there you have an angle that will make consumers sit up and say, “I want that hairdryer!” Your PR is different because it focuses on the consumer and what they can benefit from, rather than your technology.

What other content techniques are there?

• Google News

Is there anything going on in the news at the moment, like survey findings or industry related news which you could ‘piggyback’ on? We recommend you to set up Google Alerts and use the BBC as a source.

• 6 W’s (plus H)

Why not use who, what, when, where, why and which and don’t forget how either. Type these terms into Google alongside your industry and you will find a concept that is highly sought in search engines. If it is a problem, can you offer the solution? If it is a question, do you know the expert answer? Uber Suggest is also a great tool.

Voila! Use the tips mentioned above to find a great topic for your press release. Now go forth, spread your news and boost your brand’s awareness online.

This article was written by PR Fire, leading specialists in online press release services. Visit the site today, upload your press release and distribute to over 50,000 journalists and bloggers worldwide.

How To Use Twitter To Achieve Marketing Success

Twitter is now one of the leading social networks out there, with 500 million users tweeting on a regular basis. Twitter is now so popular that it’s even become a part of popular culture, with phrases such as ‘the Twitterverse’ and ‘the Twitterati’ being included in almost everyone’s vocabulary.

But what does that mean for digital marketers?

As a digital marketer, it’s your job to ensure that your clients are achieving the recognition they deserve. However, not only will you want to make your clients’ brand a well-known name in everyone’s home, but you’ll also want to convert that into sales and revenue.

Can Twitter do that?

If you use Twitter correctly, it can become one of the most powerful weapons in your SEO arsenal. There are many ways that you can improve your usage of Twitter to get the most out of it, and you’d be surprised by how many mistakes you could be making.

Where should I start?

An obvious starting point would be to find out whether your client currently has a business Twitter account.

The site business.twitter.com has lots of information on how Twitter can be used by companies and marketers, and includes a number of case studies. These show just how effective Twitter has been in increasing brand image and growth with certain companies, such as Cadbury, Microsoft, MTV and Porsche.

Choose the right username

When signing up to Twitter, it’s vital that you choose the right username for your client’s business. This will determine how easily their business Twitter account can be found, and also how easily users can re-tweet it.

Each tweet can only be 140 characters, so if you choose a Twitter username that’s quite lengthy this could take up more characters than the business’ followers would like.

Ideally, you should choose a username that directly links to the name of your client’s company.

Create a Twitter content plan

Rather than simply tweeting whatever you like, when managing your client’s social media account you should consult with them concerning topics they are happy to discuss on Twitter.

The best Twitter content plans don’t just include boring updates on opening times and redundant questions. Also include special offers, industry news and interesting blog posts that put the business in a positive light. Twitter can also be a great platform to promote blog posts hosted on the client’s official site.

Don’t tweet too often

Posting every few minutes can make people want to unfollow you pretty quickly, as no one wants to have their feed clogged up with multiple tweets from the same user. However, you also don’t want to tweet too infrequently, as you want to keep your client’s name out there.

Use the right programmes

There are lots of Twitter programmes out there that you can use as a marketer to ensure you’re getting the most out of every Tweet.

These tools can help you to compile the results of your efforts on Twitter at a faster rate, and they can also save you a lot of time when it comes to managing your Twitter accounts.

Here are two programmes you certainly shouldn’t be without:

TweetAdder

TweetAdder offers the following functions:

RSS Function

This can automatically tweet new blog posts from your site, as well as having a time control function. This will enable you to space automatic tweets apart to ensure you aren’t over-tweeting, but that your feed is always active.

Follower Management

Each time someone follows you; this function can follow them back automatically. If you follow accounts that don’t return the favour, after a certain amount of time TweetAdder will unfollow them.

User Targeting

It’s vital that you’re targeting the right customer base, in which case you’ll want to follow users with an active interest in your client’s business. TweetAdder can do this for you by searching by keywords or demographics.

Thank you messaging

Each time you get a new follower, TweetAdder can then direct message them to say thank you. Not only this, but it can also include a link to a free eBook or blog post that will get people onto your client’s website.

HootSuite

HootSuite isn’t just a Twitter programme, it can also monitor and manage other social media accounts including Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. It offers:

Multiple-feed Monitoring

You can monitor your own tweets, direct messages, news feed and rankings all through one section. Everything is arranged on easy-to-use tabs, so you can switch between feeds without getting lost.

Detailed analytics

You can access detailed analytics results that can provide you with realistic projections and case studies of the effectiveness of your campaign.

Integrated communication

HootSuite allows for integrated communication with other members of your marketing team, so everyone can be clued in with your campaign easily.

Knowing how to use Twitter for businesses can be difficult, especially if you’re only just broaching the subject of social media. However, by making use of these tips you can get on your way to achieving marketing success.

The article was written by Aurora Johnson on behalf of Custard, a UK-based online PR agency, also offering search, social media, design, and marketing services in Greater Manchester