Believe it or not, most people don’t have an online reputation or if they do, it’s not a very good one. Your online reputation is critical to your amount of influence on other people, including clients, co-workers, and partners. If you have a solid reputation, individuals have a tendency to trust you more and open up to you. Without a solid track record, you are opening yourself up to ambiguity from your clients because of trust and security issues.

Trust is key in the online game and your reputation will help you immensely.

In order to help you with forming your online reputation, I’ve outlined five methods below. Let’s see how we can get you to become an online superstar…

1. Set up a blog – Without a doubt, this is the best way to create a online reputation for yourself. Why? Because everyone uses search engines to find information. If you are meeting with a new client, chances are they have searched the Internet for you to find out more information. If you make it freely available, people find you to be open, honest, and connected. Your blog doesn’t have to be much but it should exist so people can locate you and find out more information.

Tip – When registering for your blog, use your name or the name of your company in the URL. This will make you easily searchable and recognizable.

2. Go tweeting – Twitter has become extremely popular in a short period of time and it doesn’t look like it will be vanishing anytime soon. If you want to create an online reputation, begin using Twitter to share worthwhile information. Once you generate a list of followers, you will begin creating your sphere of influence. This will help you when you’re looking for clients and customers.

Tip – Make sure that you tweet about a variety of topics to show people you know how to “let your hair down.” This helps you become more trusting and approachable.

3. Share links – People crave information and if you happen to deliver the information they’re looking for, you have immediately garnered a reputation. Begin to set up accounts at delicious and Tumblr in order to share links and pages you find interesting. Your information sharing techniques will prove that you are reliable and that you are open to new ideas–two qualities that most people seek out in their relationships.

Tip – The same rules for tweeting apply for sharing links; share a variety of information.

4. Comment – One of the easiest ways to build a reputation is through commenting on articles, pages, and blogs. Most sites have some sort of community and if you can get into that community, your reputation and sphere of influence will begin to grow. Be precise with your comments and make sure that you are engaging and asking questions. This will spark side conversations, which lead to private messages, potential partnerships, and even clients.

Tip – Don’t make enemies on blogs because it WILL come back to haunt you. If someone doesn’t agree with your opinion, keep cool and let it go.

5. Recommend others – You can recommend others in two ways, using your blog or using LinkedIn. If you regularly maintain your blog, give a shout out every now and then to the people who you trust or know provide quality service. This will show your community and potential clients that you are able to give credit where it is due. LinkedIn allows users to recommend other people in various ways and your recommendation will appear on both your page and the page of the person you commended. If you network using LinkedIn, this is a great way to show you’re a team player.

Tip – Keep your recommendations short and sweet; the less fluff the better everyone looks.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by Concrete Forms

It is widely accepted that a blog should be the focal point around which a good social media marketing strategy revolves. There are a lot of great reasons and statistics to back this up, but for our purposes right now let’s assume that you’re already working on a killer blog with lots of great content that your audience is going to love. Now all you need to worry about is dazzling the blogosphere with your world class content and the traffic and leads will just start pouring in right? Wrong!

What this line of thinking doesn’t take into account is the massive amount of competition online, and the ridiculously short attention span of today’s blog readers. Great content is essential, but it isn’t enough to ensure a quality experience when someone visits your blog.

The problem is that you only have about 4 seconds (or less) for some one to decide if they want to stay and read your blog or go somewhere else. Many potentially great blogs suffer from what I like to call “howmuchinfocanIcramintothispageitis”. See, even that is difficult to read so imagine what happens when a potential reader’s brain tries to make sense of a crowded page on a blog. That 4 seconds gets burned up really fast…you’ve lost them.

So how does a small business blogger ensure a quality experience when someone visits their blog? I suggest borrowing a couple of Hollywood’s best marketing secrets.

In the movie business, a producer doesn’t even consider looking at a script unless it has a strong log line (also called a tag line or elevator pitch). The log line is a one or two sentence summary of the entire film. The reason for this is because once the movie is made and someone asks their friend if they want to go see a new movie, their first response is usually “What’s it about”? If the benefit of seeing that movie isn’t apparent in a one or two sentence description, then the moviegoer will see something else. The content of the movie might be fantastic, but it’s most likely going to flop at the box office.

Another example is to look at Hollywood movie posters. Good movie posters aren’t cluttered with extra images (no matter how cool they might look) or unnecessary information. One glance and you can get a good idea of what the movie is about, the genre, and how you will feel when watching this movie.

Ask a friend or colleague if they can answer the following questions within 4 seconds of visiting your blog.

1. What is this blog about?
2. How am I going to benefit from spending my time reading this blog?

If they can answer those questions in 2 sentences or less, then you are on the right track and should keep cranking out your great content.

If they can’t answer those questions in 2 sentences or less then it’s time to get rid of all the extra images, text, widgets, links, and unnecessary clutter until they can.

Don’t make the mistake of letting  your small business blog get forgotten in D-list obscurity,  just because potential readers can’t quickly come up with a good reason to attend your show. Go implement these marketing secrets now and help turn your A-list content into A-list “box office receipts”.

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John Lucchetti is a social media and internet marketing expert, and frequent contributor to FolkMedia.org. He concurrently serves as media director for Ad2action.com as well as marketing director for LoveTheTruthClothing.com and eFamilyCounselor.com. Mr. Lucchetti is a self proclaimed “music junkie” who served as a past member of the Southwest Symphony Marketing Committee and past director of “Thursday Nights at the Opera House” concert series.

*Photo by jorgemir

Importing your blog into Facebook is a great way to spread your content around the Internet.  In this screencast, I’ll show you how to go through this process.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by smt-info.com

Images are everywhere – no matter if we look outside or in the darkest room.  Our mind still captures an image and stores it for future use.  Mental images are important because they allow for you to recall a person, place, or thing.  For example, when you’re lost and you pass by the local movie theater twice, you know that you’re going in circles.  In addition, mental images serve as compliments to what we hear, guides for our actions, and much more.  Images are essential to our lives…

…and our blog posts.

Blog post images don’t serve as your guide for life but they do have a significant impact on your reader.  In order to be an effective blogger, you must know how to incorporate effective images into your writing.  Choosing not to use images or using ineffective images can hamper your progress and reputation as a blogger.

The good thing is that using powerful images effectively isn’t hard.  It can be easily mastered and will make a difference in your blogging and your impact on readers.

Truth #1: Create linkbacks to your website.

On the Internet, stats and ranking are everything.  No matter where you turn, someone is talking about ROI or Google page rank.  Oftentimes, bloggers get tired of hearing about these things because they don’t know how to increase their page rank or use ROI.  Let me in on a little secret:

If you want to increase your page rank, create linkbacks using your images.

It’s pretty simple.  Whenever you pull an image from a royalty-free site, such as Flickr or stock.chng, leave a comment on the image saying that you used it for your blog post.  Be sure to include a hyperlink to your site and not just a passing mention.  The more you get your name and URL out there, the higher your page rank will go.

Truth #2: Choose relevant images.

Relevancy is probably the most important criteria for evaluating effective images.  As a rule of thumb:

If it’s not relevant, it doesn’t belong.

When you are browsing the ‘net for images to include in your post, please pass on the images that do not pertain to your post.  Yes, that dog doing tricks might look cool but it has nothing to do with chemistry.  Your readers will most likely remember your post by your image.  If the image you choose doesn’t match your topic, you’re confusing the reader and chances are slim that they’ll think about your post again.  Make it easy for them; choose relevant images.

Truth #3: Name your images carefully.

I think it’s interesting to go through Google images and look at how many images use a naming convention totally unrelated to the subject of the image. (I know, I’m nerdy.) A majority of the time, the images are named using a word and then a string of numbers.  How is this effective?  It’s not.

When you’re uploading an image to your site for use, make sure you name it appropriately.  For the images at Folk Media, we usually name them according to our blog post.  So, the image you see above is named “four-truths-about-incorporating-images-into-your-blog-posts.”  This creates a better page rank for our blog post and it helps us organize the images on our server.  Make sure to effectively name your images.

Truth #4: Don’t be image happy.

Have you ever been to a website that is image happy?  Have you ever seen a blog post with an image before or after every paragraph?  It’s annoying isn’t it?  Yes, the images help the reader rest their eyes but they also distract the reader.  I don’t know about you but I can’t understand and remember an article if I need to look at 10 images in the process.

As a common courtesy, only use two or three images per blog post.

This does not mean full size images, either.  Keep your images small.  Remember, the images you include need to compliment the text.  They are not a replacement for words.  It is your job to deliver the message to your readers and your images are only supplementary to your words.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by ahmed76

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As a business owner or professional, blogging can be confusing. Mix in the multiple platforms, terms and tools and blogging can become downright scary.

I want to demystify some of the pain points for you so you can get your business up and running with a blog. Here is a quick sketch overview of the four platform tools in online blog publishing.

Blogger.com

Blogger is the best starting point for most people. It is owned by Google and you can be set up  and publishing in a matter of minutes. To use a camera analogy – Blogger is like a point and click fixed lens camera.

But unlike a point and click, Blogger does have the option to manually override the entire template and customize it for your business.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Blogger is a good starting point – but your business may want something a little more robust…

Enter WordPress

This platform is fast becoming a standard in online publishing. It is open source (meaning it is free) and has multiple add-on features and plugins. We use WordPress to power the FolkMedia.org site and our other client sites.

Unlike Blogger, if you want to get the full benefits of wordpress, you will need to host it on your own site. If you are tech savy, you could read the install instructions and follow the step-by-step setup. Of course we here at Folk Media would be happy to help you install and host. (How’s that for a shameless plug?)

Movable Type

Movable Type is your choice if your business wants a good solid publishing platform that is backed by a great customer service team. They charge for the blogging software – but you get support.

Some of the largest online publishers and media companies use Movable Type to power their blogs and content. The folks over at Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) have built a very useful CMS.

Ning

Want a custom MySpace/Facebook type platform for you clients or customers? Ning may be a great solution.

Ning is free. It is easy to set up and easy to publish. The templates and styles are customizable. If your organization or business lends itself to high customer feedback and involvement – then Ning may be the solution you need.

These are four of the top players in the online publishing and blogging space. Personally, I am blog platform agnostic. The important thing to remember is to create compelling content that people want to read – see – listen to – or watch. The platform is only a tool to amplify your unique business voice.
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Joel Mark Witt is a producer, speaker, and new media leader who writes about social media and its impact in the business world. He is also the Founding Director of Folk Media. Send him an eMail: joelmarkwitt (at) folkmedia.org or follow him on Twitter.

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Subscribe to the Folk Media Insider eNewsletter. It’s a free monthly newsletter packed with tips, tools, strategies and resources to take your business to the next level online.

.An RSS feed is simply a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

What it does is help you get your content into the hands of the people who want it online.

You can see ours in the upper right hand corner of our website. It looks like this:

By clicking on that rss icon or by copying this URL: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/FolkMedia you can add this blog to your feed reader.

Confused?

Don’t worry – this stumps even the brightest minds. The following video will break the concept down and help you understand why RSS is so important:

*Unedited Source Image By photopia / HiMY SYeD

So exactly what is Twitter?

Wikipedia describes Twitter as “a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”

That’s a pretty good way to explain it. I think I would also add that it is more like a text based telephone than a micro-blog. Of course it is a telephone conversation that anyone can listen to. But I think this is the power of Twitter. And Twitter for business can be very powerful.

Twitter gives you an opportunity to be transparent as a business allowing you to build a case for yourself or your company through dialogue.

My friend Lee from Common Craft made this short video explaining Twitter in everyday language.  This is ” Twitter In Plain English. ”

My experience with Twitter

I thought Twitter was really stupid until I gave it a try. And then I still thought it was stupid.

My problem was misunderstanding how it can be used as a tool for business and communications. But I’ve really changed my mind on this. And now Twitter has become indispensable to me and our business.

The tipping point personally came when I was recently speaking at a conference in Las Vegas. If you’ve ever been to the Las Vegas Convention Center, you’ll appreciate the fact that even a smart guy like me was able to get lost. The building is a small city and navigation can at times be very difficult. In order to find my way around I pulled up Twitter on my cell phone and tweeted out a quick message asking for directions. Within moments I had an answer from a stranger who was following me and was able to easily find my way to the conference hall.

The tipping point for my business came when clients began contacting me from seeing Tweets. I decided right then and there to begin taking this Twitter thing seriously and have developed some strategies for how we are using Twitter in our own company.

Things your company can do with Twitter

Twitter for business?

Yes.

While Twitter can  be used for actual business communications, it is important to remember that this tool isn’t for everyone. It should be used wisely like any tool online. I would say that about 80% of businesses can use Twitter to:

• Listen to what people are talking about in your market or industry
• Break news related to your industry or customers
• Link to insightful articles that will help your clients
• Offer quick tips to help people with particular problems
• Conduct surveys to get instant feedback
• Spread knowledge by re-tweeting other’s posts
• Ask for customer service feedback and engage those folks

Twitter is one of the most interesting and fastest growing online applications for personal and business communications. Even if you decide Twitter isn’t for you,  at least give it a try and do some experimentation. There are a lot of opportunities to harness Twitter for your business.

Joel Mark Witt is a producer, speaker, and new media leader who writes about social media and its impact in the business world. He is also the Founding Director of Folk Media. Send him an email: joelmarkwitt (at) folkmedia.org or follow him on Twitter.

*Photo by seyDoggie

Written By: Joel Mark Witt

You may already have a blog that you’ve claimed in Technorati.

So you probably know the benefits of Technorati indexing the web within minutes and helping their users get up-to-date information. They are the authority on what is happening on the live web and enable you to track online conversations about you, your sites, your company, and your products.

So why not claim your Twitter feed and contribute to that “live web conversation?”

I think you should. Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign into your Technorati account. If you don’t have one sign up here for free.

2. Select claim your blog from the Blogger Central drop down menu.

3. Click “claim a new blog link at the bottom left of the page.

4. Enter the URL to your twitter profile. And click “begin claim”

5. You will be taken to this screen with a small piece of code.

6. Simply copy the code Technorati provides and make a Twitter post with it in your account.

7. Now head back over to Technorati and click “complete claim.” You should see a page where you can edit your blog settings. Fill out the keywords and other info you want to have associated with your Twitter stream and click save.

8. Be sure to go back to your Twitter account and delete the tweet you made with the Technorati code. Otherwise it will look shabby to others in your time line.

9. Congratulations you have now claimed your twitter feed in Technorati. Your twitter feed will have the same benefits of a Technorati claim as your other blogs.

Folk Media works with businesses, ad agencies, and professionals to skyrocket sales and marketing goals using online audio, video and social media content. You can follow us on Twitter or if you have an online video, audio or social media project consider requesting a proposal.

Here are 3 Reasons Why Your Business Should Have A Blog. Listen to them here:

1) Blogs create a feedback look for your business.
The internet allows two-way communication. So you can begin a discussion on your blog and ask your readers and customers to comment. This creates a great way to listen to your customers needs and wants.

2) Blogs are great for search engine optimization (SEO)
Basically this means that your content on the blog will be recognized by search engines. The key is to make the content valuable to a reader. Google, Yahoo, and others will then link to your online posts and articles exposing your business to new prospects and clients.

3) Blogs beg to be updated.
A blog is a platform that feeds off of new information. Search engines and web visitors in general love to see fresh, new content on your site. This will in turn help with your SEO.

Joel Mark Witt is a producer, speaker, and new media leader who writes about social media and its impact in the business world. He is also the Founding Director of Folk Media. Send him an email: joelmarkwitt (at) folkmedia.org or follow him on Twitter.

*Photo by Swampadswain

I have three quick tips to help you schedule your business blog posts. Listen to them here:

1) Post once per day.
Don’t try to be a super hero and post five times a day. One piece of content is good enough for a business blog.

2) Schedule your posts ahead of time.

No need to write each time you need to make a post. Block out large amount of time and use the auto posting feature in WordPress, Blogger, or Typepad.

3) Spread the workload.
Get your entire company involved in creating blog content. It is a lot easier to have five people each post once per week than one person posting 5 times per week.

Joel Mark Witt is a producer, speaker, and new media leader who writes about social media and its impact in the business world. He is also the Founding Director of Folk Media. Send him an email: joelmarkwitt (at) folkmedia.org or follow him on Twitter.

*Photo by -Mandie-