Why should you worry what people say about you or your brand online? You’re already doing an awesome job for your clients, people who know you professionally and personally recognize you run a terrific company, right?

Do you use user reviews / local search sites such as Epinion, Yelp etc? Why do you use them? You use them because what people say about you matters. Creating and managing an online reputation is a vital part of defending your company’s brand.

Here are some tips for creating and managing your brand:

1. Create:

Create social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter that include your company’s name. Those social network websites rank fantastically well on Google, when someone looks for your company, they see content you have written and you control. Secondly, if lingering and potential customers, and the media research your company they will recognize your online communities and distinguish that you’re concern enough about your customers to connect with them directly. Ensure these social media channels are active; else it appears you don’t engage your communities!

2. Link:

I see lots of people left out on this one. Granted! You may have a brilliant website/blog for your company; without enough traffic it won’t be of any help to your online reputation. Always remember to link to your company’s website/blog from your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles. Doing this helps inform people where and how they can be in touch with you. It also enhances the possibility of your sites ranking well on Google.

3. Engage:

Besides engaging with people on the already mentioned social media and networking sites, it’s quite important to connect with bloggers who blogged about your company. Commenting on their blog posts, (like: expressing thanks to them, responding to questions they may have raised, recommending related products, etc.) could in addition generate content that could show up when people are search of your company or products.

4. Monitor:

Monitoring what people are saying about your company is the pivotal step to managing your brand. Existing contacts, personnel, products and competition are great sources of data on things you are doing right or wrong, and things that you could do differently. The effortless way to monitor your brand is to set up a content monitoring service, such as Google Alerts which automatically notifies you through e-mail / RSS when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by you. It is free and painless to use. Likewise, free tools like HowSociable (metrics for brand visibility) and BackType (recognize social impact) are ranking well for small business owners too. Also, companies could use monitoring solutions like Brandwatch for real-time monitoring of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Conclusion:

The model of personal and business branding came much prior to social media. Everybody has a personal brand, either they are fond of the concept or hate it. The problem most people have is, once they find out what their bona fide brand is, then comes the how to manage it factor, ranging from the “bright idea” to the implementation of the idea; after that, essentially shielding and marketing that brand for the rest of their life. Even if you’re not into this, its time and hope this article will help you to get started. Love to hear your thoughts.

About the Author:

Name: A.R.Karthick

Bio: Online/Offline Entrepreneur, Blogger, Stock Trader, Humorous and Great believer of positive and creative thinking. Avid photography lover! Love to build my social media presence, networking & marketing.

Blog: http://arkarthick.com/ Follow him on Twitter: @arkarthick and Facebook.