5 Little-Known Factors That Could Affect Your Online Reputation

Merriam-Webster defines “reputation” as:

“overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general”

Nowadays that reputation is increasingly informed by what people see online. Use of the yellow pages is going down. Google is way up. People ask for opinions on Twitter before they would pick up the phone to get their best friend’s opinion.

So while you used to invest resources to make sure your business cards, stationery and signage reflected your image and good reputation, now you must use turn your attention to your online reputation as well. Little things online speak loud and clear about the quality and character of your business.

Below are 5 little-known factors that affect your online reputation:

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Social Media Fails: The Worst Case Studies of 2012 (So Far)

It’s good to learn from other people’s mistakes — so we don’t end up making them ourselves! In today’s guest post, Rachel Hyun Kim writes about 2012′s worst social media failures, and what we can learn from them. Take notes!

Social media is a constantly evolving process, with no formula set for a perfect campaign. While cheap, far-reaching, and sharable, social media is not without its potential downfalls. Unfortunately, many individuals and companies are learning this the hard way. Take a tip from the following failures, and make sure that your company learns from the mistakes of the following examples:

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7 Ways You Are Missing Out On Getting Your Company Noticed

In today’s guest post, Juliette Schmerler lists seven commonly missed opportunities for exposure, both online and offline. Does this list inspire you to try a new marketing platform?

There are undoubtedly a number of marketing methods that your business is NOT using at the moment to improve your visibility with potential customers. Unfortunately, too many businesses feel that if they have a website, they have done enough to make themselves visible. The truth is, today’s businesses need to make use of many methods in order to make it easy for their customers to connect with them.

Here are just a few methods which are commonly overlooked, but can bring a lot more exposure to your company:

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Get PR Like Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is a celebrity phenomenon. She rose to stardom on the wings of social media and has achieved so much in little time compared to her predecessors. Consider this:

• she has over 20 million Twitter followers
• almost 50 million people have liked her Facebook page
• she has won 5 Grammy Awards, among many other music awards
• in 2011, Forbes named her the #1 most powerful celebrity and #7 on its list of most powerful women
• she is estimated to have earned over US$90 million as of August 2011

If that’s not enough, the University of South Carolina has created a course, “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.”

Clearly, we can learn a thing or two from someone who has accomplished so much. What can Lady Gaga teach us about getting PR in a social media-driven world?

7 PR Tips You Can Learn From Lady Gaga

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Look Yourself Straight in the Eye: Questions Entrepreneurs Must Ask

Today we have a guest post from Karen Southall Watts, who tells us to be courageous and ask ourselves the toughest questions about our business. Doing so may not be pleasant but, trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

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You’re tired or cranky. The office seems overly noisy but not productive. Something seems off, but you aren’t sure what.

It happens to all entrepreneurs—the time comes to look in the mirror and ask some tough questions.

Don’t shy away. Just face yourself and you can move on to greater success.

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How to Be Newsworthy

Our biggest challenge in PR is getting our stories published in the news. But to get in the news, we must first be “newsworthy.”

Unless your business is related to politics or celebrities, chances are you need to work at being newsworthy. Don’t despair, even the most mundane of businesses can be compelling enough to land the news.

What does it mean to be newsworthy anyway?

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How to Track an SEO Press Release

So you’ve written a very easy to read and keyword optimized SEO press release. You get it all ready to send out and upload to your website so you can start raking in the dough, but you hesitate. Suddenly it occurs to you that you have no idea how to actually track this press release’s level of success.

How many eyeballs will the press release reach? How effective will your keyword placement be? Did you anchor your links properly for optimum SEO? So many questions, and they all make a huge difference to your company’s well-being. So how to track how well your SEO press release does?

Search Rank

The easiest way to tell just how great your SEO press release is doing is by how far up you’ve moved in your search ranking! If you started out buried on page four and suddenly find your website listed on page two, then you can rest assured your SEO press release is working, barring any extenuating circumstances.

Keep in mind this might not happen all at once, and not for every single web crawler. All use different algorithms to search the Internet and may provide different results. As a result, you’ll want to check each search engine to see where you rank. Over time this will change, hopefully for the better.

If there is little to no result, you may want to go back to the drawing board with your SEO press release. Again don’t expect everything to happen all at once, but if days and weeks go by and your site has gone nowhere, give it another shot.

Trackers

If you’d rather not spend half your day looking at multiple search engines, then you may want to give an SEO tracker a go. These automatically crawl around the web looking to see where your site ranks, and can even let you know when other sites and bloggers mention you.

They range from the inexpensive, like Sheer SEO, to the free yet a little more complicated, like Google Analytics. The more expensive ones are naturally going to be more in-depth and headache free, and most will do everything you need without you lifting a finger.

Remember when I mentioned looking at the different search engines to see where you are? Technically, that’s almost impossible to do by yourself, as there are over 700 search engines. You’d literally do nothing all day long if you tried to do that! However, it’s important to recognize that three search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) comprise more than 95% of all search traffic. Focus on these engines and don’t get distracted by the others.

Also, some higher end tracking software can suggest related keywords to use in the future to increase your page rank. This can give you a better idea how to get to that coveted “page 1,” which can often make a huge difference in how easily potential new customers find you.

 

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This guest post is by Mickie Kennedy, the founder of eReleases – home of affordable, next generation press release distribution. Mickie also publishes PR Fuel, a PR-centric blog that showcases advice and articles on all things social media, PR publicity, and online marketing.

 

Selecting the Right PR Tools for Your Business Goals

In today’s guest post, PR professional Laura Ward takes us back to basics by explaining the key PR tools to consider and how to choose the right ones.

So you’ve decided to add public relations to your marketing mix. Or, you’re considering it. Either way, fantastic!  Congratulations on making (or, getting ready to make) a very smart business decision.

Public relations helps build brands, generate awareness and visibility, and drive bottom line results. However, simply realizing you need and want public relations doesn’t make developing and executing the right plan any less intimidating or overwhelming. PR is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the lazy.

Most times, upon answering questions about what they do for a living, PR professionals are the proud recipients of responses such as, “Oh, that’s nice. So, you write press releases.”

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Unlocking Social Media for PR: Part 4

In this post, you’ll find an excerpt of the fourth and final installment of PR Newswire’s ebook, “Unlocking Social Media for PR.” In case you missed them, you’ll find the earlier parts below:

Part 1: Wetting Your Feet in the Pool of Social Media

Part 2: The Evolved Practice of Journalism and Earned Media Landscape

Part 3: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora & ProfNet Connect: A Deeper Dive

In this part of the book, you will read about Maria Perez’s experience in tweeting as a brand. Author Sarah Skerik then summarizes her top tips for using key social media platforms:  Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You’ll definitely find a few gems you can implement right away.

Here is the table of contents for Part 4 of “Unlocking Social Media for PR”:

Riding the Social Media Journey

The final part (part four) in this eBook series takes a closer look at the social media journey of Maria Perez in her role as the voice of @ProfNet, Maria shares her experiences and lessons learned as she carefully built a brand on Twitter – and mastered the difference between professional and personal tweeting. The eBook concludes with the author’s, Sarah Skerik’s, thoughtful recap and key takeaways from her ongoing journey through social media.

Chapter 11

10 Tips for Tweeting as a Brand……………………………………………………………………………. 4

Closing

Lessons Learned from My Social Network Journey – So Far……………………………. 7

Click here to sign up for this final part of “Unlocking Social Media for PR” — it’s free!

Unlocking Social Media for PR: Part 3

It’s time for Part 3 of PR Newswire’s ebook, “Unlocking Social Media for PR.”

Here are the links to the previous parts of this series:

Part 1:  Wetting Your Feet in the Pool of Social Media

Part 2:  The Evolved Practice of Journalism and Earned Media Landscape

In Part 3, author Sarah Skerik dives into strategies for using specific social networks for PR: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, and discussion groups and forums. These chapters contain the nuts-and-bolts of the ebook.

Here’s the table of contents from Part 3 of “Unlocking Social Media for PR”:

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