10 Ways to Build Your Online Reputation to Reach Your Long-Term Goals
Anyone can use social media to build a reputation for themselves or their business to increase sales or profits. It is important to understand how to use the social Web to build your online reputation to help you reach your goals.
10 Ways to Build Your Online Reputation to Reach Your Long-Term Goals
Here are 10 ways to build your online reputation so that you can reach your long-term goals and not waste your time.
1. Take care
Listen to the conversations taking place on the Internet about your business or career. Learn from what you read, listen, and view online. Social media success is as dependent on listening as on publishing.
2. Stay focused
Focus your social media activity on the conversations and content that are relevant to your niche. A concentrated brand is stronger than a large one. To understand brand contraction, read The Power of Owning a Word. To build your online reputation, you must always be a leader and use your strengths. Be consistent with your content and conversations.
3. Be authentic
If your social media conversations and content read like corporate rhetoric, or a brochure, it will be useless. Be real and human. Think of your audience as a person, and adjust your tone and content to meet their needs.
4. Trustworthiness is key
Honesty is a key part of building your online brand using social media tools. Transparency is not a trendy word. It's a strategic imperative that should be applied to all aspects of your business or career, including your social media participation.
5. Be meaningful
Your content on social media must be meaningful and useful to your target audience. Otherwise, there's no reason for them reading it or to have a conversation with you. If your content isn't valuable to your target audience, they won’t share it or talk about it with their own communities. This means that your content will not spread widely on the Internet and your online reputation will suffer.
6. Be non-self-promotional
If your conversations and content read like a sales pitch, no one will read or engage with your content on social media. The 80-20 rule of marketing states that you should spend at least 80% of your time on social media activities that don't promote yourself and 20% on self-promotional activities. You can still get more exposure and build your online reputation if you don't want to bother others. Here are 5 Steps to Generating Blogger Buzz About You or Your Business.
7. Be responsive and accessible
Understanding that social media participation does not just revolve around you is an important part of building your online profile. To build a connection with others on social media, you must spend time acknowledging them. They need to know that you care about them. Respond to comments, questions, and tweets.
8. Recommend
People can't expect you to reach out and share your content via social media and then not return the favor. You can't ignore someone who engages you on your blog, Twitter or Facebook. You must comment on others' blogs and share their content on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. It is impossible to operate in silos on the social Web and expect success. For some great ideas, you can check out 12 Tips to Get The Most Out of LinkedIn.
9. Be uncontrolling
It can be scary to think of giving up control and allowing your content, conversations, and name to spread all over the Web. Your online reputation will not grow without sharing content and engaging in interactive dialogue on the social Web. Your online reputation will grow if you are willing to let others share your content and allow them to talk about it. Do not worry about negative buzz surrounding you, your brand or your business. Negative comments on social media can always be addressed. For more ideas, see Fight, Flood, and Flood.
10. Participate
You shouldn't waste your time in one area. You can't have a good reputation online if you don't put in the effort to build it. However, quality is better than quantity.