Outsource My Social Media Marketing

If you are considering social media marketing for your business, remember to emphasize the “social” more so than the “marketing.”

Why? Because social media users seek genuine communication, not marketing spin. Nowhere is that more apparent than on social networking sites like Facebook. To make the most out of your efforts to market with social media, you’d do well to get some advice from a marketing firm or, at the very least, read a few tips on how to use these sites.

Using Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites for Marketing

According to O’Reilly Media, Facebook demographics have shifted. Once thought of as an online hangout for high school kids and university students, it is now increasingly the networking site of choice for older groups.

In January, 2009, O’Reilly released its 2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics report. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is users aged 35 to 54. The growth in this demographic is off the charts – 276% in the last 6 months of 2008.

Users aged 55 and over are also discovering Facebook. This demographic jumped by 194% in the same time period. The younger crowd is still there though. The number of 25 to 34-year-olds using Facebook doubles about every six months.

Clearly, there are abundant marketing opportunities here. But you need to know how to approach your audience right.

Social Media Marketing is All About the Soft Sell

To start marketing on Facebook, create page for your business. Once you have established this page, you can build a list of fans. Fans can follow your business and receive updates whenever you add something to your page. The key is to add information of value so people don’t feel they’re being given a hard sell.

Use notes to tell people about upcoming trade shows or conferences you will be attending. Use the mini-feed to keep people connected to your blog. You can talk about new and exciting things in your company, without sounding like you’re selling.

Keep it interesting with photos and video clips. Not only will you promote your company, you will give your business real personality, and allow visitors to see the people behind the company name.

Create a group if you really want to personalize your contact with users. People join groups with specific interests, and moderating a group can help you reach a specific audience. Keep in mind that the group is an entity unto itself, and not a page about your business so it needs to be handled accordingly. Messages sent to the group are delivered directly to member’s Inboxes, so ensure that what you are sharing is of real value to people.

Keeping Up with Social Media Marketing

Herein lies the real challenge with social media marketing – upkeep. You cannot let your page get stale. But between writing blog posts, moderating a group, managing RSS feeds and just keeping up with the communication you generate, social media marketing can be very labour-intensive.

If you need help planning or managing your social media marketing strategy, a training course or online marketing consultant can help.

And remember, you only have one chance to make a good first impression. If you don’t handle your social media marketing right from the beginning, you could end up doing more harm than good. Take the time to learn how to do it right, so you can reap the benefits for a long time to come.

Start Fast, Fix Fast, and Fix Again: Marketing for Breakthrough Results www.ibmpressbooks.com For decades, marketers have been taught to carefully plan ahead because “you must get it right–it’s too expensive to change.” But, in the age of the Web, you can know in hours whether your strategy’s working. Today, winners don’t get it right the first time: they start fast, change fast, and relentlessly optimize their way to success. They do it wrong quickly…then fix it, just as quickly! In this book, Internet marketing pioneer Mike Moran shows you how to do that–step-by-step and in detail. Drawing on his experience building ibm.com into one of the world’s most successful sites, Moran shows how to quickly transition from “plan then execute” to a non-stop cycle of refinement. You’ll master specific techniques for making the Web’s “two-way marketing conversation” work successfully, productively, and profitably. Next, Moran shows how to choose the right new marketing tools, craft them into an integrated strategy, and execute it…achieving unprecedented efficiency, accountability, speed, and results. The indispensable online marketing guide for every CMO, brand marketer, direct marketer, online marketing specialist, strategist, and entrepreneur Learn more from your customers–and learn it faster Systematically measure online marketing results–and improve them Create deeper relationships with your customers on the Web Leverage podcasting, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds …

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted one of the first statistically significant studies on the usage of social media in corporations. The study compares the adoption of social media with a list of the fastest-growing U.S. companies assembled by Inc. Magazine – a leading business magazine headquartered in New York City.

The 2009 results prove that America’s fastest growing private companies adopt social media marketing initiatives at much higher rates than other companies, and that interest in social media has grown exponentially since the first study was conducted in 2007.

In 2007, the first study of this group and their use of social media was released and revealed that the Inc. 500 was outpacing the more traditional Fortune 500 in their use of social media. For example, at that time, 8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to 19% of the Inc. 500.

This study examines the Inc. 500 one year later in the first study on corporate use of these new technologies. Given that previous research now shows that while only 11.6% of the Fortune 500 currently having a public blog, it is astounding to see that 39% of the Inc. 500 are blogging. The addition of 3.6% more Fortune 500 companies to the list pales in comparison to the addition of 20% more of the Inc. 500 companies after the same time period.

Given this statistical significance, the research proves that social media has penetrated parts of the business world at a tremendous speed. It also indicates that corporate familiarity with and usage of social media with these Inc. 500 businesses has nearly doubled in the past 12 months.

The respondents in the study were diverse in category of business, size and location. The 209 companies who responded were asked the same detailed questions concerning their usage and measurement of social media that were asked of the Inc. 500 approximately one year earlier. Questions asked about the familiarity of respondents with six prominent social media – social networking, blogging, podcasting, online video and wikis.

Here are some pertinent facts from the study: 91 percent of companies reporting that they use at least one social media tool, compared with 77 percent of companies surveyed in 2008. While Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites have seen significant growth in comparison to previous years, interest in some older social media tools such as message boards and podcasting has declined. Social media usage by companies on the list has grown in the past year, with 91 percent of companies reporting that they use at least one social media tool, compared with 77 percent of companies surveyed in 2008. 44 percent of companies without a company blog say they plan to start one and 36 percent intend to use some form of online video. Many entrepreneurs have already embraced these sites as part of their business strategy, with Facebook and Twitter being the most widely used among them, drawing activity from 52 percent of the respondents.

Eric Mattson, CEO of a research firm named Financial Insite and one of the head researchers in the study, believes that the high reception to social media among Inc. 500 companies is important for several reasons. ” Inc. 500 companies are focused on doing anything they can to grow faster and social media is an innovative tool that may give them an edge over their competition,” he says.

Mattson thinks it is significant that the sample group consisted entirely of private companies. “There is less implication for private companies using social media – they don’t have to worry about the stock market going up or down based on someone’s Tweet,” he explains.

Mattson concludes, “From a big picture trend standpoint, these results show how prevalent and widespread social media is becoming in every aspect of business now.”

Often in smaller organizations, there is more room for innovation because it requires less processes to adopt.? The specific ways in which the businesses surveyed use social media tools has also evolved. Now – 34 percent of companies reported that they were using social media to communicate with vendors and suppliers and 26 percent cited Twitter in particular as an important vehicle for communication with outside partners.
The study is important in many ways – the most significant being that the fastest growing private businesses in the United States are embracing social media more than ever before.

Abstract
 In recent year’s social media, likely more than anything else has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed over the past few years because of tools like Facebook and Twitter might have been unimaginable for most people at the beginning of this decade. But social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one another and the world around us. Even it has an impact on the way we started spending our free time, there is a big influence of technique on our daily life. Social media topic is not for today its for everyday and it is most forward-looking media and surely “the” medium of the future e. With the fact that we are seeing a trend where more and more people are moving away from traditional media, and its creating vital challenge for companies and making them to think twice before dumping the usual amount of cash into traditional media marketing and advertising.

 
The goal in advertising and marketing is to get your message and/or brand in front of as many people that you can, and to engage your audience accordingly. Common sense would tell you to take your message where the majority of the people are gathering and paying attention, which just happens to be Web 2.0(Shift in consumer habits: From expert driven content to User driven content) social mediums. Does it make sense to spend entire advertising dollars in a declining media market? Of course not. That’s why social media marketing is making more sense by the day.
 

Introduction
 The data is growing every single day. The number of connection points to the DATA is becoming increasingly available. Realizing what information is available about the business relationships becomes more critical as dollar value increases. Every dollar and every minute spend on marketing tactics is for one purpose: Business Growth!  Let me share this interesting quote from Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO – “People relate to people, not companies”, Social media provides us an opportunity to humanize the brand and engage the companies with consumers at personal level, which can provide substantial results in long-term like decreased customer support costs, customer feedback management, good PR and marketing channel to engage with target market.  Social Media is for every company that genuinely wants to engage with their customers, it doesn’t matter whether you are fortune brand or Local restaurant. As Sandy Carter, Marketing Head at IBM quoted, “I think the primary difference here is not in big or small company. But the difference is in how close you are to your customers”. I personally find that it is very interesting and exciting “Net Space” to be in and also rewarding if used in the right manner.
 
Social Media is Evolving           
According to “Michael A. Stelzner” –”Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. It seems that many marketers see the social media frontier as the next marketing gold rush. Given the low cost of entry, many marketing pros are doing more than just dipping their creative toes into this gold-laden water.”
According to me –”Conversation between various people in net space using different internet tools and platforms.” 

Social media contains:    
Is this medium required?-Yes! Why because, this is the place where we can meet real people in real time across the globe. And people are not just demographic anymore to connect with them you need to understand relationships are more powerful than Marketing. Now-a-days If people wants to read news or information then they straight hit internet and they have internet access at home, office, car and even in their pocket. No wonder why Google has 200,000,000 look ups everyday. People are searching product and company information online so if you are not pushing your quality content online then you are missing the great opportunity.  There are sites that can help you to post your content on the internet.  
 
 You cannot make money with Social media for sure but you can make money from people who can trust you. Social media will help you to develop “Trust” and “Build strong relationship” with people. To experience that you need to join the social network website to connect yourself with right people.  Once you find the right people then you need to provide content NOT Commercials. How will you do that? Simple approach would be using content management tools and search engines. For example you can utilize the second most used search engine YouTube –to create video with related content and upload, Or you can post articles for online magazines, Or create your mini website Or Blogs and reviews. You can do things that deliver high quality contents. You can as well provide high ethical information of your email ids and contact info on the pages that you are delivering content and you can as well send newsletters to stay in touch with them.

Right Way to Do Social Media Marketing
Social Media market is just another way of marketing but the difference is that the traditional way of marketing is “Shouting” and Social Media marketing is “Sharing”. It is not a kid game anymore. If you look at the Big Brands and proven track records, “Consumer Brands” have taken the lead in executing “Social Media Strategy”. Many large “B2B companies” have started to explore Social Media opportunities but the question raise in my mind – Are they doing it in Right way?
 
Before defining the right and wrong way of doing Social Media marketing, let’s identify and understand the Social media ROI [Return on Investment] in terms of Qualitative Vs Quantitative advantages. Identifying ROI will allow you understand the opportunities of cost reduction. Quantitative cost measurement, for example you can give trainings /induction programs to your employees by implementing video integration into recruitment process. And also Quantitative would mean the number of activities carried out in various social platforms. When we talk about Qualitative you need to be more innovative to build relationships and grow your market with established industry standards. It also includes the kind of content generated for brand, the quality of response and comments so generated, outreach program carried out for influencers, reviews received from experts etc.

 I will say “Content is Super hero in Social Media”
One life! & One Time! Do things in right way. The fundamental rule is that “people need to understand” that “This is business” and the game is changing everyday. The content is shared everywhere and its reaching people wherever they are.  We all see that the change in the way of consumption of content. You can do market without having a PR or sale person in your team if only your “Quality Content” can talk to people. Content should be more informative and interesting. Your content need to have relevance of your customer need. If your customer find more relevant in your content then you will get business out of it. You can place your content in many interesting format. The most common format is blogging and video streams but I vote for video and moblog to post your content. Creating content and giving format would never end this story of course you need to decide the channel to deliver your content.

There are thousand and above social web sites are available so you need to pick the right channel to deliver your content. You need to get onto the social sites and be a part of the conversations and build followers in social web 2.0 network sites.
Two important things that you need to keep in mind before you connect yourself with Web 2.0 social sites–You should have a strong “Business plan & model” and another one is “Brand acuity”. Brand acuity should start from yourself and once built that, later anything can happen in your business/life. Most of the companies are in cloud of confusion to choose the right Web 2.0 tool – Try to use all kind of User Based tools [anyway you can; everywhere you can;] to connect to people and definitely you will find massive opportunity. In earlier days you need to go under lot of tensions with media streams to create your brand strategy and create sustainable market to see profit but now social media networks, blogs are available for you to carry your ideas, company brands and helps to get good ROI.

Brand Leverage with Social Media:
Branding is nothing but “Name Recognition” of a company along with product & services it sells. It is critical success in ecommerce space; company should develop a branding strategy which allows their name to be associated with quality. Quality and safety of the products and services is an important attribute of branding for a company today because of the global implications of the internet. In present scenario companies are trying to maintain and promote their brand in internet through the following Web 2.0 Tools and Mediums:
:: SEM [Search Engine Marketing tools]:  Blogs, Content development tools, RSS tools, Community building tools, Link development tools. 
:: SEO [Search Engine Optimization]: Social bookmarking tools [such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook], blogger tools [integrating blogs into marketing campaigns], Website analytical tools [Google analytical tool] 
:: Viral Marketing: Every satisfied customer will tell at least three others about the product or service. This particular marketing relies heavily on social networks and social bookmarks, such as: [YouTube – social network MySpace – social network Facebook – social network Digg – social bookmark Stumbleupon – social bookmark Del.icio.us – social bookmark]

Brand Strategy for Social Media:
A brand has a direct or indirect relationship with  people, and if a company is successful in creating relevant and motivating interactions, “brand love” improves. The game today in social media is about density and leverage. Some people are less involved in brand therefore less likely to jump into conversation so what happen to those who are in discuss, join or lead. For example popular bloggers they have huge followers and as a leader shapes and influence the online conversations. A group of people follow a Leader that makes decisions or taps into the motivation of a purchase in ways that no one else can match. The Leader now has leverage over the brand.  People follow, taking advice or information, and their perception of a brand changes based upon the impressions gleaned from the Leader. Understanding the impact a Leader has on the purchase habits of his or her following places immense value on that Leader. The greater the influence a Leader has over his or her followers, the more valuable that person becomes to a brand.
 
The Super Cool – Mega- Awesome- Dos and Don’ts of Social Media marketing
Social Media is creating such an incredible revolution, in the sense, “Anyone can participate”. In 90′s you need to be a tech guru in order to participate in web space but now anyone can do anything without having tech background. More over its completely free and you can look at internet as your own advertising agency. You can create free video and content for people so that they are seeing your content and Commercials. These contents and commercial suppose to be Value-Driven and it should NOT be a replicated one. When you are doing online marketing then you are branding all about yourself and you are positioning yourself in front of people who you are and attracting people to you. Two key things to keep in mind when you do this 1. Content should be value driven and 2. Brand that should add value. Another main key focus area would be how to generate Traffic to your blogs or videos or to your mini websites.

You should know how to drive people to your site. Say for example you are one of the customer related industry and you find interesting a book on “Creating customer value in Internet Era by Peter Keen” and want to share the same with people who are interested in reading books about customer value. When you share this content you are not pitching your product or services you are providing information, within the content you can include links to your landing page, you can link to your blog, you can link to your marketing page, whatever information, you want to direct people but key here is to actually you want them to read your content and information. Only the way you can do this is providing valuable and relevant information to them.

What NOT to do with Social Media? 
:: Directly selling your product and service your followers/audience: it will create negative effect
:: Self promotion is not good so better learn from your competitors
:: Do not ignore criticism, respond to it and try to tackle it the best way possible and it will  
   turn positive results
:: Do not have too many names and email ids that spoil your reputation and you cannot
   brand yourself.
:: Do not bombard the facts and figures to show that you are savvy. Make sure to discuss,
  comment and ask for options.
:: Do not be fake in any way
:: Do not use irrelevant channels and try to connect with irrelevant audience
:: Do not use only one social network

What To Do with Social Media
:: Listen to your prospects.
:: Listen to your customers.
:: Listen to your competitors.
:: Listen to your critics.
:: Listen to your followers and fans.
:: Listen to your industry leaders.
:: Be responsible and honest what you are writing.
:: Be authenticating.
:: Be friendly with your fans/follower when you are in Social media channels because
   you never know when they will turn to be your prospective customers.
:: Double check before you send or pass information/comments/review.
:: Respect copyrights
:: Need to have clear policy that protects the confidential information
:: Need to bring customer value
:: Need to have mechanism to assess ROI

Data Points that helps us to understand the growth of Social Media
Social media marketing budgets were on the rise. Forrester Research is out with their Interactive Marketing Forecast for the next five years, and estimates social media marketing to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums. Forrester estimates that $716 million will be spent on the medium this year, growing to $3.1. Billion in 2014. At that point, social media will be a bigger marketing channel than both email and mobile, but still just a fraction of the size of search or display advertising ($31.6B and $16.9B, respectively).
:: Facebook has garnered over 350,000,000 active users worldwide,
:: Twitter has attained roughly 45,000,000 users, and
:: 130,000,000 blogs indexed by Technocratic since the year 2002.
:: In 24 hours alone, over 900,000 blog posts are created.
But even with these staggering statistics, there are still those who believe that the social media explosion is a fad, not a paradigm shift. 

  Let’s Landscape the Indian Social Media:
Social media and viral marketing is growing slowly and steadily in India. It is fast becoming the replacement of traditional outbound marketing techniques such as TV adverts and direct mail. This inbound marketing is much cheaper or free and the possible ‘reach’ is huge. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and Bharathstudent are exploded.  Facebook in May and June 2009, doubling from 1.6 million to 3.2 million monthly active users in the country in the last 60 days. Facebook is now available in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. This localization approach could explain the growth of Facebook users in India. Orkut beat Facebook in December 2008 with more than 12.8 million visitors, an increase of 81 percent from the previous year. Local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with 3.3 million visitors (up 88 percent) and hi5.com with 2 million visitors (up 182 percent).Apart from this, Facebook has actively partnered with Indian companies, particularly mobile operators.
The recent milestones include:
:: Feb 2009 -– Partnership with Zoom TV and World TV for the Oscars in India.
:: April 2009-– Facebook goes mobile in India for SMS Alerts with Tata Indicom
::  Facebook promoted in a Zoozoo’s commercial by Vodafone.
::  May 2009: -– Launches Indian language interface
::  Partners with Nautanki.tv for coverage of the Indian Elections
:: Lot of Micro blogging platforms were introduced in past 6 months in [SMSGupShup, Snockles, Vakow, and Kwippy]

Conclusion: 
Social media marketing is a big idea meant to change attitudes or behaviors, such as getting kids to stop smoking, protecting the environment or encouraging condom use.  I see every other year “changes” widening the landscape of digital media.  In 2005 blogs were in thousands and slowly a year late broadened the way to upload video into YouTube, a site that did not exist in 2005. In 2007 all the traditional media had fully embraced these social media channels. Its become more and more dynamic in 2008 to engage and quantify the digital landscape. The future of communications is in the mixing of “Open & Controlled conversation” and “Open & Controlled Collaborations” and understanding how they work together to influence the public.  Welcome to Revolution!

Social media is a completely different layer that has been added to the web, hence the web 2.0. Social media is becoming mainstream and in a couple years we won’t even be able to imagine a time when we couldn’t interact with all the screens and mobile content surrounding us. It is indeed a misnomer, but to suggest that the platforms that enable conversations between people and between people and brands are not viable ad opportunities is ludicrous. Social media is all about sharing and connecting. It is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value. Twitter is just one of these web 2.0 Twitter is a perfect platform for micro blogging. Allowing you to post comments with just a few words. Ping.Fm another great tool that allows you update your post to all of your social networks at once. Social Social media provides the tools for people to collaborate and get around barriers for communication, build trust. Social Media is a collection of online tools and sites that function on the premise that people are interested in talking to and engaging with other people. The fact is that social media tools differ significantly based on culture, Internet access and online behavior. Community Community members respond quickly to request to test new tools. Community members provide reflections on their activity, which stimulates change within the group. If you use monitoring to discover a real community, perhaps one you didn’t know existed, then you’ve found a treasure trove of real opinions, reactions, reviews, etc. Social Media IS NOT SEO, but search engines DO look kindly upon blog posts/community comments/online noise. Conversation Conversations in these types of communities tend to be regulated by the needs of the community’s creator or sponsors, they are less transparent, and less valuable to the participants at hand. The ability to actually listen in on market conversations made possible by social media will drive a sea change in the market research industry, one that today’s early adopters are starting to understand. When you engage in conversations in social media it may seem overly labor-intensive compared to launching an ad campaign. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge. I can meet many real people and have real conversations, but it will go nowhere if we don’t connect. Relations Social media needs to be all about relationships. Which in business terms, translates to turning relationships into clients or resources. Most association executives and show producers have realized that relationship building is their greatest priority, few have tapped into the power of social media or adopted a practical plan to incorporate these solutions. Some companies will be hard pressed to understand that its more about relationships and intangible aspects of SM rather than the numbers. Social Media is not just another media. Social media is defined by the act of sharing content in and between social networks regardless of the content type….. For more information about Using Social Media to build your online business Visit: http://www.newsynergyonline.net Blog: http://www.newtrafficbuilder.com

Social media implies that you facilitate a two-way discussion, rather than a one-way bombardment of marketing messages. In short, this means that you stay engaged and in a discussion with visitors.

Social Media sites come and go like the wind. It seems like every 5 seconds some entrepreneur is just around the corner with another Digg or del.icio.us knockoff.

Hoping that whatever maneuver they can bring to the table will make them this week’s hot topic or at least clever enough to catch the eye of whomever might have some money and want to absorb some wicked bit of code or an entire social media community.

Social media (or new media) involves a LOT of things, a lot of tech, and could need a lot of resources (not necessarily money). When you say you do social media, and you want to launch a network of some sort, does that mean the entire process is done in-house?

Social media marketing can bring traffic and links to any website. Too often, marketers overlook the value of social media and tend to stick with traditional methods, while the younger generation of webpreneurs has employed social sites as an every-day strategy.

Social media is gowing at a such a rate that domains, websites and blogsites will increase in value due to the increased demand for webspace. The social aspect is driving the net into new territory and expands exponentially because of its viral nature.

Social media – as understood in a Web 2.0 context and has enabled us to play more effectively than was practical previously, on a global field.

Social Media has released us, freed us: and we won’t go back. Social media has been a great resource for both ideas and traffic for my blog. If you work and get noticed in social media and it gets passed around that’s a great way to promote your work.

Social media seek’s (in theory and in word, at least) a different kind of influence: peer review and approval. The medium and the form of discourse that it supports are wide open.

Social Media is a Branding Exercise – while social media sites can send you a lot of traffic very very quickly they can also be excellent places to do branding. Every time a reader or potential reader comes across you on a social media site the more you reinforce your brand.

Social media marketing is actually becoming necessary but it has to be done right. It is about the weight of numbers and it will bring some honesty, ethics and accountability back to doing business.

Social Media is conversational media in all its interactive forms including text, video and spoken words – whether face to face, over the Internet, over the airwaves or via mobile technologies such as iPods and cell phones.

A Social Media Club is intended to be a place where amateurs and professionals can come together to learn from one another, to understand each other and to work together on the things that make meaning in their lives – their personal passions, their professional endeavours and their noble pursuits.

Social Media, doesn’t even really exist as a subset of media. Everything is social now, we just expect it. Social media companies will race to provide metrics that show impressive results, but that’s not necessarily a good thing, especially given the ways measurement may shape investment and in turn shape the evolution of social mediums.

Social media campaign’s go far beyond the traditional agency model of media planning and buying. So do advertisers they actually get into the game and get their campaign’s out there.

Social media is changing the way online businesses advertise because control of the message is shifting to the consumer.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a new term that was recently coined by Rohit Bhargava and has since been taking on life of its own. SMO tactics can drive huge amounts of people to a website and can also determine whether a startup, website or idea will make it or not.

Social media will be the optimal place to market especially with a recession. Social networks are a rich source of HIGHLY niche audiences and therefore are highly target-able.

In today’s world of push button publishing, any company can become the victim of an online attack from any disgruntled customer or competitor with a computer and an internet connection. Because of the nature of online search, negative blog posts, comments, and press can quickly tarnish a company’s reputation when potential customers find harsh criticisms when conducting a search for your company’s name.

These types of attacks can be extremely damaging to your reputation and profitability – especially when they appear on the first page of search results. However, there are ways to counter them using the same techniques applied by top Internet reputation management experts.

#1 Monitor Your Online Presence

A key component in any Internet reputation management campaign is to continuously monitor what others are saying about you online. When and if negative information is published about your company, you’ll want to be aware of it quickly in order to take action. The simplest way to do this is to set up a Google Alert for your name and your company name, as well as any other key terms associated with your line of business.

#2 Think Carefully Before You Retort

Unlike a conversation you may have with someone in person, a dialog carried out in the comments section of a blog or online forum will be recorded and leave a footprint online for years to come. If you learn that someone has posted a negative comment about you or your business, your first instinct may be to type out a heated retort. Instead of replying immediately, give yourself time to calm down and clearly think through your message before you reply.

Once you calm down, you will likely regret what you may have said in the heat of the moment and worse, possibly enabled the negative publicity to rise in search results.

#3 Ask Content Publishers to Remove Vicious Attacks

Internet reputation management experts will tell you that you can remove some blatantly slanderous results by contacting the content publishers where the comments are posted. This is usually only the case when the comments are overtly slanderous and unfounded. However, many content publishers will not remove material once it has been published. Once you’ve attempted to remove as much of the negative commentary as possible, your next plan of action should be to push the negative dialog as far back in the search engine results as possible. While quite time-consuming, it is a key component.

#4 Continuously Grow Your Presence on Search Engines

More relevant positive information, properly created, in the search engines related to you or your company will dilute the negative information and push it further back in the search engine results. The most effective way to accomplish this is by publishing more valuable content online through user-generated content sites or by building optimized profiles on various social media sites. Remember, the vast majority of people only search the first page of search results.

Companies and individuals may need to rely on Internet reputation management experts to push negative queries back from the first or second page of search results to a distant place where they will seldom if ever be seen. Professional internet reputation management experts use techniques that include building entire sites, massive article publication and distribution, press release generation and distribution, worldwide blogging and more. In addition, Internet reputation management experts are skilled in search engine optimization techniques and understand how and why search engines rank pages, thus making their efforts even more effective.