Online Reputation Management For Dummies by Lori Randall Stradtman

Author:Lori Randall Stradtman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Claiming Your Brand Online

In This Chapter

Discovering what branding is and why it’s important

Identifying your target audience

Creating a strong presence via social networks

Claiming your brand online is a little like what claiming land used to be during the Wild West days of U.S. history. There are few rules and fewer safeguards to your online reputation, and you never know when you’re going to find wonderful opportunities or face thieves who will try to take it all away from you in a moment. Just to be clear, when I talk about “claiming your brand,” I mean claiming your name or your brand’s name on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or anywhere else it makes sense for your brand to appear online, including your site’s domain name.

If someone else has already claimed the domain name or social media account name that you would like, you will need to get a little creative. I cover more about that later in this chapter. Before you can effectively reach out online to your adoring public — er, target markets — you must first identify who they are, where they hang out, and what issues grab their attention.

In this chapter, I show you the best places to claim your brand and some lesser-known places you should establish yourself, in preparation for the day your brand’s name becomes a household word. When that happens, be sure to remember your dear friend Lori, who taught you all about establishing your reputation online. I digress.

In this chapter, you also learn about the practical security issues involved with passwords and online account access so you’ll have added layers of protection just in case your computer system dies or an employee wins the lottery, leaving you high and dry. This actually happens more often than you may think, because many organizations store all their passwords on (or even under) one computer or with one employee.

With online reputation management, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of virtual cure. You will learn how to protect yourself from important security issues as we navigate the road to building your successful reputation online.

Establishing Your Brand Online

It may not seem like it, but if you’re trying to establish your brand online right now, you are absolutely in the right place at the right time. It may seem that the rest of the world has beaten you there, but nothing could be further from the truth. In terms of legal considerations, social media analytics, and even in terms of culture, new media (social media networks, blogging, press reports, content marketing, and so on) is still in its infancy.

Facebook has become mainstream. You may have already discovered that your parents or even grandparents are socializing with their friends or doing business on Facebook. However, Facebook is only one small part of the picture. There’s a lot more to managing your online reputation than making sure you’ve removed goofy pictures from your Facebook page or discouraging distant friends from posting questionable comments on your Wall.

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