Use these 5 easy steps to start building your online reputation:

Step 1: Assess Your Current Reputation

Start by doing a thorough assessment of your current online reputation. Conduct searches for your full name, company name, brand or other key phrase in Google and other search engines. Focus primarily on the first 2 to 3 pages in Google’s results. Put this information into a spreadsheet, listing the urls, position in results and your comments on what’s in that url.

Step 2: Identify Changes Needed

Look through each of the results on your spreadsheet and identify things you want to change. If there is anything negative, mark that as a priority to either delete or push down farther in the results. For results that contain key information you want to promote, mark those as items you want to move up in the rankings.

Step 3: Determine Your Best Arenas

Now look at what is showing up most in your results. Are your highest ranking  urls from Twitter and Facebook? Maybe you show up more on a personal blog or in YouTube videos? If so, these are the types of places where you can publish more information about yourself and influence your reputation. At the same time, be sure to identify places where your target audience hangs out. You want to be seen and heard in the places that are most important for the type of reputation you want.

Step 4: Create a Reputation Strategy

With information about your current reputation in hand, you can now craft a strategy for building the image you want. Focus on both the what and the where of your content and message. What type of content will serve you best? This might include blog posts, press releases, articles for directories, tweets, Facebook pages, or interviews. Then decide where this content will be published and how. This might include which social networks to focus on, high traffic blogs, news sites, your own blogs and video sites.

Step 5: Start Building

The last step in building your online reputation is to follow through on your strategy and start creating your content and promoting it in the search engines and elsewhere with SEO techniques. Be sure to have your name, brand or company listed as the author on each item published, so that you get credit for it. As you create the content that will influence your reputation, continue to monitor search results online. Track your progress and keep tabs on all mentions of your name and key phrases so that you can quickly respond to anything negative.

Once you have assessed your current online reputation and have a firm strategy in place, you can easily take control and manage the way you are seen on the internet.  Keep your message consistent across all your content and you will be building a solid base that will help you both in your business and personal life.

Stick to One Issue

Start creating your survey with a goal in mind. Don’t try to tackle everything at once. Decide what specific information you want to know. This will help you choose the right question and keep the survey from being unfocused. It’s better to do multiple surveys for different types of information than to overwhelm people and have them leave the survey incomplete.

For example, if you want to ask people about products they use, stick to that topic. If you want to discover their pain, frustrations or problems, make that the focus.

What to Ask

When you have a clear goal, questions will usually spring to mind automatically. The best strategy is to generate a huge list of questions and then eliminate the ones that aren’t appropriate or which overlap too much.

All questions should be easy to answer and they shouldn’t be too open-ended. Don’t challenge or frustrate your respondents, or they’ll give up on the survey. For example, don’t ask them something like, ‘Would you buy this product ten years from now?’

Avoid any type of leading question. Your goal is to get objective data about how your market feels, not lead them to agree with you. Leading questions taint your results. Avoid questions like, ‘Do you feel like shopping at big department stores is playing right into massive earth-polluting and slave-driving corporate hands?’

Remove any questions from your list that aren’t completely relevant. Every question should be in line with your goal and provide you with information you can use. Remember that they’re taking people’s valuable time to answer your survey.

Finally, be careful about questions that might offend or alienate someone. Assume that your respondents are sensitive and going to take things personally. An example would be asking them how much money they earn, and then asking them to include their name on the survey.

Tools to Make It Easier

There are a number of software tools at your disposal that make surveys easier. One is SurveyMonkey, which lets you create surveys and polls quickly. The program is easy to use and everything is done online. It gives you lots of variety and customization features, like the ability to skip or vary questions depending on previous answers.

A more extensive program is Zoomerang. Zoomerang has been around for more than 10 years and is used by a number of Fortune 500 companies. Absolutely everything is customizable and it has a wealth of features. Zoomerang is fancier than SurveyMonkey, but also costlier.

Give Them a Nudge

There are many people who are quite happy to give their opinions, but you can sweeten the deal by offering an incentive. Incentives could include a small freebie, free entrance into a contest, a coupon, a discount, or a complimentary membership to a website. Offering a freebie is a very common method and it works to get the fence-sitters to participate.

When you meet people offline, you have a real opportunity to explain what you and your business are about. Your message is much more powerful when delivered in person than on a website. It’s also a good way to know and believe in the work of the people you meet. Networking offline deepens relationships because you’re not just talking business. You really get to know each other.

Social Media

Social networking sites are a great place to start. You can find out about local events for offline networking using websites like Facebook and LinkedIn. If you’re feeling clueless and lost in the shuffle, try looking at your friends, business partners or clients and see what offline events they’re attending. LinkedIn is focused on professionals, so it’s a great site for doing this.

There’s also a site called Meetup that’s specifically for organizing offline marketing events. It’s free to sign up and the site has events in 12,000 cities across the United States alone, not to mention the rest of the world.

Niche Networking Groups

Major social networking sites have so many events that it can be hard to find the right ones. Many people don’t know that there are also niche networking sites. These are social networks based around a common industry or interest. There are niche networking sites for athletes, professionals, artists, language learners, or even just ordinary people who want to be better at goal planning.

When you join a niche networking group, you’ve already got a built-in group of friends who really understand each other. The events they talk about here are more likely to be suited to you.

Industry Trade Shows

Trade shows have always been and continue to be great offline networking opportunities. Every industry has them and they’re hosted all over the world (although quite a few are in Las Vegas!). In addition to networking, they also offer educational opportunities. You can find out about these shows by looking at trade show directories online or reading trade industry journals.

Most trade shows stretch over a few days and cost quite a bit of money to attend. But it’s money well spent if you use the opportunity wisely. Trade shows are not only for discussing business, but also for simply socializing and having fun.

The Key to Offline Networking Success

If you want to make your networking efforts pay off, the key is to follow up. If you don’t follow up with the people you rubbed elbows with, it’ll all amount to nothing. It’s like sending them a ‘thank you’ note. Even if you don’t think it will lead to anything big in the future, be sure to follow up with everyone you met through email or social media.

Local marketing happens when you specifically target the customers and prospects in your community. This is typically done through advertising, SEO and even content marketing (blogs, press releases and even articles about your business). But local also allows you to be listed in local directories where those who have visited your website or place of business can leave reviews about their experience with you and your business.

In fact, listing your business in local directories should be the first step in implementing a local marketing strategy. This way, when someone in your area, or someone traveling through your area, search for you based on the services you offer, your business will shop up automatically. You can take this one step further and use keywords that correspond with your location – for example: Pizza shops Steubenville, Ohio. If you’re a pizza shop in Steubenville and you are using these keywords for your listing in local directories, people who search using these keywors will find you.

So What’s the Big Deal about Local Marketing?

Even if you don’t have a physical location, you should still consider embracing local marketing as part of your overall marketing plan. Why? Because people want convenience and what is more convenient than shopping for what you need a local business?  Also, local marketing, even if you hire an expert to handle this for you, is a very cost effective method for getting the word out about your business. Using the local directories and getting reviews is simple and can do wonders for your reputation – both online and off.

Any Business Can Benefit from Local Marketing

Unlike other, more traditional forms of marketing, local marketing can be beneficial to any type of business. Well, any type of business who wants to attract local customers. If you live in Ohio and your target market is in England, well, local marketing may not work for you. But these instances are rare.

So unless your target market is thousands of miles from your location, it’s time to consider a local marketing initiative. If you have the time, knowledge and inclination to begin this effort yourself. Get listed with your local directories and choose a few choice keywords and phrases that pertain to your business. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll want to install Google analytics on your site to help you track what effect your local marketing efforts are having on your business. Track your results – even some positive results should urge you to continue to grow your local marketing efforts.

Have questions about local marketing? Let me know!

From an advertiser’s perspective, however, this ‘junk mail’ is a way of advertising a product to a target market, creating awareness about an online business, or an effort to make a website name more recognizable. These goals should be present in every business owner’s marketing plan!

Experts say that the volume of direct mail delivered through the US Postal Service totals OVER 1 billion pieces each year, which totals over $71 billion in advertising revenue spent each year. Those are staggering numbers and yet other experts say the ROI is only about 1%.

With those kinds of numbers, it’s vitally important to strategize every direct mail marketing campaign, including how on earth will YOUR direct mail piece be seen amid all the other junk.

Tips For Creative Direct Mail Pieces

1. Use different colored card stock. Plain white postcards with black type may be cost efficient but they are boring and will blend in with everyone else’s postcards. Be unique and choose a neon-colored card stock to catch the reader’s eye.

2. Reduce clutter. Limit just one message per direct mail piece. Adding too much information to a piece will make it look like a Yellow Pages ad. Readers will be ‘blinded’ from the clutter and toss the piece right into the trash.

3. Personalize each envelope. By handwriting the recipient’s name and address, using a real stamp and not putting a company name in the return address, each envelope will appear to be coming from a friend instead of a corporation. Adding these personal touches will make them open the envelope to be sure they’re not missing something important.

4. Send a dimensional package. A box or other three dimensional shipping package will definitely raise the recipient’s curiosity, prompting them to open it immediately for their free gift.

5. Print a creative teaser or call to action on the envelope. Telling the recipient they have a free gift or giving them clear instructions to open the envelope often encourages action. Creative copywriters can improve their open rates even more by adding their unique flair.

Direct Mail Is Not A One-Shot Deal

Keep in mind that people are generally not swayed to make a purchase after their first exposure to a campaign and this is true when using direct mail marketing or online marketing tactics. Often it takes upwards of 6 or 7 viewings before people make the choice to buy and this means creating multiple direct mail pieces, each being unique and compelling. And this means increasing your advertising budget.

Direct mail can be an effective marketing strategy, even for online business owners wanting to improve their brand recognition or venture into local marketing. For the best ROI, plan each campaign carefully with experts.

Identify the Source

Before you can do any reputation repair, you need to figure out where the negative information or attacks are coming from. Use the major search engines and social networks to see what is coming up in search results for your name. The sources will probably show up on the first 2 pages in Google, but you should also use a Twitter search or a tool like Social Mention to see where you are showing up in the social networks.

Option 1: Repair it Yourself

If you need to go the route of repairing your online reputation yourself, the first step is to delete anything negative. If it is something under your own control, such as on a personal blog in a comment, then just go and delete it. Rather than waiting for Google to crawl your site and find the change, you can also use Google’s Webmaster Tools to remove the url from search results. Check in their support sections if you need help with that.

If there is something negative on someone else’s site, you can go to that site’s webmaster and request that it be removed. You can also respond directly if there are comments or complaints about you on a site. Addressing the complaints in a polite and helpful way will actually serve to build up your image further.

Another important step to take is to counter any negative information with positive content. Start regularly posting articles, comments, blog posts, social updates and other information that can push the damaging content way down in the search results. Use whatever SEO tactics you know to promote your positive content to the first pages of Google.

As an extra note, watch carefully for other private data of yours showing up online. If something like your social security number or credit card number is posted, contact Google to have it removed. Search their help functions for the correct url for submitting your request.

Option 2: Bring in the Hired Guns

There are specialist Online Reputation Management services that you can pay to repair your reputation. Depending on the extent of damage, this can turn out to be a very expensive option. However, if you have the funds, it can be the most effective. You can also hire these types of firms to monitor your reputation on an ongoing basis.

Be careful about who you hire to repair and manage your reputation. There are plenty of dishonest or inexperienced consultants who can do more harm than good. Get a recommendation if possible.

Regardless of whether you do it yourself or through the help of a specialist, you need to act fast to repair your online reputation when it has been damaged. A single negative statement about you can go viral quickly and spread throughout the internet. By monitoring your reputation diligently, you can spot the damage before it becomes uncontrollable.

Plan in Advance

Don’t wait until you have a customer service breakdown to start thinking about how to handle difficult situations. Think about what constitutes good service and create a customer service manifesto. Establish a system for dealing with all sorts of customer-related issues. Customer service should never be improvised.

Treat Everyone with Respect

As the old cliché goes, ‘The customer is always right.’ Of course, they aren’t always right. But what this saying really means is that no matter how wrong a customer might be, treat them with the utmost respect. Even an angry customer is worthy of your focus and time. Create a culture of respect within your company, both for internal interactions among employees and externally when dealing with customers.

Make It Loud and Clear

Broadcast your philosophy and standards loudly and clearly. Make sure that everyone who has a touch-point with customers, no matter how small, understands your customer service philosophy. All of your employees, whether full-time, part-time or consultants, should be on the same page.

Listen and Act

Listen to your customers and act on all feedback. Seek ways to get their opinions and have them share their experiences with you. A good company uses this feedback to improve its operations and products, and customers can see the difference. Always be attentive and responsive.

Stay Customer Focused

When you have a problem with a customer, your goal isn’t to get rid of them or to save your company’s reputation. Your goal is to help them solve the problem. This is what it means to be customer-focused. Take on their problem as if it were your own and reach a solution that makes both parties satisfied.

Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver

While you should bend over backwards to help your customers, don’t promise what you can’t deliver. If you make promises you can’t keep in the hopes of pleasing a customer, you’ll end up doing more damage than good when you break that promise. Explain these limitations in your customer service training manuals.

Spy on the Competition

If your customer service beats that of the competition, you’ll quickly gain a reputation for it. To know where you stand, keep an eye on your competition. Use the Internet to spy on them and read what customers are saying about them on forums, review sites, and social media sites like Facebook. When you know where they stand, it’s easy to figure out how to top them.

Finally, remember that customer service is something that takes constant attention and improvement. You don’t just create a set of standards, train your staff, and forget about it. Keep listening to your employees and customers, and change your policies and protocols whenever the situation demands it. Consistent and continuous improvement is how you keep your customer service at the highest level.

Ok so maybe Ogilvy is a bit harsh with this statement, but the fact remains that he’s right on. Today, too many small business owners think their “target audience” is one large mass acting and moving as one. But that’s just not the case. Your target market is made up of a large variety of people – people like you, your family, your spouse, your children, your friends. They have expectations, problems, bills to pay. A successful business owner with a successful brand knows these things – do you?

Can You Define Your Target Market – In Detail?

If the answer is “no” then before you can begin defining your target market, you must first know the elements involve with the definition:

• Demographics: age, gender, geographic location, occupation and income. Your demographics change on a regular basis – stay on top of them.
• Lifestyle:  hobbies, eating habits, smoking/drinking habits, club memberships. All of this is equally important, if not more so. For example, you may target well-to-do males in their twenties who enjoy nightlife on the weekend. If your product is related to the outdoors, your ideal customer is active on the weekends camping, hiking, snowboarding, and doing other outdoor activities.
• Morals and values: clearly define their attitudes and beliefs about themselves, the world around them, current events, and products such as yours. Included in this category would be goals, aspirations, and where they see themselves in the future.
• Shopping habits: This includes how much they spend, where they like to shop (online vs. off), and how they use the products they buy. As a marketer, it’s your job to connect them to the right products where and when they’re looking for them. That’s why this information is so essential.
• Pain points: You’re going to offer them the solution – your product. You should define what frustrates them, what they worry about or fear, and what problems they face. It’s also good to know what kinds of solutions they’re looking for.

Isn’t all of this stereotyping? Of course it is! But it works. By creating a profile of your ideal customer, you know exactly where to aim your marketing efforts. Without it, you’ll cast your net too wide and your message will be irrelevant to many who hear it, wasting your resources and advertising dollars. Create all of your marketing materials and sales copy by speaking directly to this ideal customer and the right people will get the message.

The problem is that most people who use social media don’t track ROI at all. They might track dollars spent, but they do not factor in their time spent at all. Even though they spend an exorbitant amount of time on social media there is no accounting for it. The sad fact is if the time spent isn’t planned out, and mapped out with specific goals in mind, much of that time is not productive.

Since marketers are not studying the impact of their use of social media, they’re not aware that they might simply be wasting time. Time suckers exist in every business, but social media, like long phone calls, can be the biggest time suckers in your business if you allow it to be. If you need encouragement not to waste your time, then study the ROI of any time you spend on any activity in your business.

There are ways to maximize your ROI when using social media. One way is to maximize your time spent on social media by the strategic  use of automation tools. You have to be aware that some types of automation can be detractors while some can add a lot of value. Which ones add or subtract are truly subjective issues that you have to study within your own organization.

Various types of automation for social media enable you to create content once and distribute throughout all your channels. There is also automation to schedule posts on blogs, even plugins that enable a publisher to publish and schedule many posts with a push of a button. Other types of automation actually respond to new people, such as auto tweets to new followers, and auto following on Twitter as well as constant re-tweets and re-sending of the same messages at different times throughout the day.

The important thing to remember is to value your time first and foremost. Then, make sure you are creating value for the other users of social media as you choose which forms of automation you use. Automation will keep you from wasting time. There is absolutely no reason to spend time posting the same link to the same new blog post or article over and over again across all your social media channels. But, there may very well be a reason to thank people “in person” for following you, or “liking” your page, or commenting on your blog posts. After all, social media is social at the heart, and you can’t be social if you’re not participating and being social.

Automation is great for ending time wasting tasks of posting new blog posts, new articles, and outside information. It frees up your time so that you can have a real conversation with potential clients in all of your social networks whether it is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or a forum you enjoy. Spending time having real conversations and answering questions will establish you as an expert, bring traffic to your blog, and provide you with valuable information and connection to your target market.

If you want to make social media truly useful so that it provides a return on investment (ROI) then you have to join in the conversation. If everyone automates everything and only applications and Virtual Assistants are participating in the media then it loses the social aspects and eventually the value will plummet. No one who can make decisions or offer value will be watching if it’s all automated.

The best person to communicate your vision to the world is you. The myth of the four hour work week is that you don’t have to participate at all. It’s true you probably can outsource your entire life, but where is the joy in that? You might save time, but ultimately you lose connection to the people you wanted to connect with in the first place when you started your business. Certainly you had a goal that involved connecting with someone or helping someone. Never forget why you started your business in the first place.