Managing Your Social Media Reputation is Key to Your Brand

David McIver Edwards    Social Media     Social Media

Too many people are jumping into Online Marketing without thinking of the immense importance of constantly building their online reputations. You see, the web does not forget. Of all the websites you create, every blog comment that you post, every article that you write – and every other thing that you’ll ever do, leaves a digital mark on the internet that will be part of digital history forever. Having the correct online reputation management strategy in place is quickly becoming a necessity for business owners today.

Part of your strategy as you engage in social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and others must be to build and maintain a first-class reputation. This is done by having a system of checks and balances and is no longer an option. The statistics are unmistakable: if you want to grow your business enterprise, then you will need to create individualized avenues of communication for your current and future customers. There is no better way to do that presently than to be actively engaged in a social media marketing strategy.

You need to realize that every action that you take online is branding you and your business. You are an entity as a business and you need to give thought to developing your personal brand that will make you unique and attractive to potential prospects.

Tips on how to keep your social media reputation in tack:

• Try to get the same username set up for all of your social media accounts. Your goal is to build a brand so using the same name for all of your social media sites is the ultimate goal.
• Configure your social networking sites with your own name or your business name. This is not the place to use an alias as you are working to develop a brand which means consistency is key. Creating your brand is of great importance and the major search engines like Google and Yahoo will recognize this and reward you with higher organic rankings.
• Whenever adding content of any sort to your social sites, keep your online reputation management strategy in mind. Remember, your digital footprint will last an eternity, so create quality content that will make you and the community at whole proud.

When you start to look at the impact that Social Media is having on the business marketplace, you quickly understand that you have to be personally involved with a strategy for you or your business. With millions and millions of users each and everyday on sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, and others, you literally have multiple hundreds of millions of opportunities to gain targeted prospects. As an online marketer, this is an opportunity that cannot be ignored.

Take action starting today to develop a focused brand presence across your own network of media sites. Social Media is far more than casual communication among friends and family, social media is an opportunity to create success in your life.

Is Twitter For Conversations?

David McIver Edwards    Social Media     david mciver edwards, social media management, social media marketing, social media training, twitter

I was just watching an interesting video from Chris Pirillo about the use of Twitter for conversations and it really made me think… do the masses really get it?.  So many people are confused about how to make the most of Twitter, particularly for business.

Remember that social media is all about providing quality content to other people.  I am sorry to say but your most recent tweet about the fact that you are having a cup of coffee at Starbucks on 3rd and Main is really not of value to me unless I am trying to track you down.

The question is… can you really have an engaging conversation with only 140 characters at a time?  Sure you can tweet back and forth using @ and you can even try and follow a conversation by using search.twitter.com,  but can you really have a conversation.

I would have to say that I agree with Chris in that it is currently impossible to create any type of thread for a conversation on Twitter.  Therefore that Twitter is the place to let people know that you wish to engage in a conversation about a specific topic but not the place to have it.

Use Twitter to let people know what your interests are, what you want to converse about, what is important to you at this point in time.  Once you have engaged the person or persons you wish to converse with, use another channel such as email, or network like facebook where you can have an engaging conversation that can be followed.

Remember to make your tweets with quality information.