Online reputation building - Do you know how exposed you are to your clients?

I am not entirely surer if this is the right section, but if not, please move it to where it belongs. fanks.

Right, to action!. I have been around forums for a while now, and I am pretty sure this works with every area you add a comment, link etc. to. I know everyone wants their company site/blog to rank well, but how concerned are you with your online reputation? (think about it for a bit.)
I might step on a few toes, so if I do, I mean no offense at all, this is just an observation I have made and I am trying to analyze and make sense of it. If you are a business owner, or you use the services of others to spread links around the net to help you market your site, do you check what they do? I mean really check, and not just the amount of links agreed as per package (I think they call them that).

Ok, let me get to the point (and probably get a few folks really upset all in one go.) We all know that, your online presence is important to not only you, but your business as well because its how you interact with other people, that clients see and can then evaluate within minutes whether or not they want to do business with you, or even visit your site. That being said, why is it that I see so many wasting opportunities? I mean, seriously, adding value to something like a blog, a forum, social network etc. is some of the most important work you would have to do to promote your site. Blogs are strictly moderated now days, and if you want to have a niche specific comment added to a high ranking blog, don't just say thanks, give the writer a little proof that you have read the post, ask a question or two. In the end that comment will be added to the blog, and you have your link. but at the same time, you have also shown the owner of the blog that you give a fluff about what they have to say and actually find it interesting enough to ask questions. It works the same with forums, social networks, you name it. Anywhere you can leave a comment, a post, what you say is directly linked to the way you do business. If what you say online is short, pointless and clearly shows that you are not even reading what is written, or just commenting for the sake of a link, stuff like that, it gives prospective clients a bad impression about you and your company.

Wouldn't you agree? I would like to hear your thoughts.

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Agree 100%.

Online Reputation is becoming more and more important every year. I'm anal about ours, and dive on any negative comment when I find it. Tools such Google alerts are invaluable.

But with so many online marketeers, SEOers, hobbyists, professionals and inbetween, it is getting quite easy to stand out from the crowd. The crowd just want a quick link dump, and as you say, pointless forum post, blog comment, 5 line article etc.

People who take their reputations seriously, and want to be known and associated across multiple online medias, spend time and craft comments. They understand the idea of communities, and the power and influence a positive reputation or perceived knowledge of a particular area can have on their business.

You can see it on this forum and countless others, the quality responses, and the passing through link dumpers. It doesn't take long to spot familiar posters across multiple forums and blogs etc who are making a name for themselves, which can generate familiarity and trust. The rest of the crowd tends to disappear into a link chasing and dumping frenzy, with all the single line posters poor efforts blurring into one.

The 21st century has changed the way we do business. Companies now actively go out and engage with their customers or prospective customers via social media. Nobody has to put up with bad service any more, it takes about 5 minutes now to do any research on any company in the world. How anyone can not take their online reputation seriously, or would risk damaging it is beyond me. Whats worth more? People associating the web link in your signature as a trust worthy resource or even potential supplier. Or associating the link with low quality posts, spam, and steering well clear.

Unfortunately Johnny Spammer and Mr low quality link dumper are here to stay, just looked at our Spam Blocker stats, in the last 6 months, we have automatically blocked 57,324 spam user registrations! But then that's why I personally think its quite easy to shine...

The majority of people can't be bothered

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cheers Steve
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If you're here to spam, then expect a ban

Was tempted to drop a one liner her . Not really. Like you say Steve the majority of people just can't be asked. Maybe they just find it too time consuming so just take the easy/easier option.

More than 57,000? Good Losh. There is one root to all of it. The snake oil salesmen that tell newbies that they can make a ton of money by doing this, or that, and then they give the technique a name, and the next think, its the latest big thing, and all it is, is spam.

I firmly believe newcomers are falling into this trap unwittingly and are being taught to spam. And that's above and beyond the majority of em that can' be fluffed.

__________________
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. ~ Sun Tzu
My BusinessDMS blog.

Forum Rules and FAQ's at a glance

One thing that helps a small business owner when deciding where to advertise, in my opinion:

There's the 1 big fish in any field, a couple of also-rans, and the rest. Once you identify those, you can save time and money by not advertising on myboringclassifiedads.com

So you just set up and maintain a presence on the big players and a few niche sites.

And: Manage your reputation by giving a bit extra to your clients than they paid for. Job done.

Exactly. As an example, I bought a video editor to help me with videos I am creating for work (no, not camtasia). I have a video already made, but its enormous, and I need to cut it down to size. Which camtasia seemed to have major issues with. So, once again I was trawling the web to find a new editor. I finally found one, and gave the free trial a go. It started to p**** the audio on the vid and I was already impressed because camtasia refused to even load the vid. So on that, I bought the editor (it wasn't even expensive). A few days down the line, I am still trying to get the vid to load, but at the same time I am in constant contact with the creators of the editor, giving me advice on what I could do to be able to work on the vid. I mean, lol they even apologized for the inconvenience, where there clearly wasn't any.

This makes me respect the company more, and actually enjoy working with the editor because I know I have a safety net if something goes wrong.

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Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. ~ Sun Tzu
My BusinessDMS blog.

Forum Rules and FAQ's at a glance

Yes ,If you talk with customer impolitly and rude ,you will lose the customer.Communicating is very important for internet business.

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I quite agree with your post. A lot of online business owners are only interested in getting links to their website. Their response in many ways shows they have not taken time to read and digest what others have written. Otherwise, their response would be better than a cheap "thanks". Moreover, your response to others shows a lot about who you are and how you do business. A not-really-interested approach may mean one is only interested in his own thoughts. This may also be interpreted as self-centredness, I think.

I agree 100%. The quality of a persons post speaks volumes about how that person approaches any task.

If they are prepared to do a poor job of a simple thing like answering posts in blogs and forums then one has to ask if their commitment to their clients is equally as poor.

And I have to add that I really hate spammers. I used to run a car club before I knew about such things and they destroyed my forums with posts offering our members the type of services that should definitely be reserved for non family sites.

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At the end of the day all we have is our reputation, and how have we groomed it?

a few years back I was shocked with the amount of scamming the networkmarketing industry has in it.

It is a breath of fresh air to find businesses and venues that offer honesty and depth. We have a lot of work to do to bring integrity back to the forefront.