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| Courtesy of Flickr |
In today’s competitive
business world, you need an edge to stay ahead of the competition. More importantly,
you need to be able to give prospects a reason to choose you versus others in your industry. The reason people choose a company or professional
is due to their reputation. Trust becomes the determining factor. Think about it.
Most people do their shopping with companies they trust. They buy products because
those products have proven themselves to meet the consumers' standards of quality
and performance. Sure, people will buy something just on price, but if that product
doesn’t meet or exceed their expectations, they will never buy that product again.
The same is true of professionals and the service provider industry as well. Trust
trumps all other factors short of budgetary means. In this week’s episode of Working
the Web to Win, we will explore how addressing
a business’ credibility or professional reputation can make a significant difference
when it comes doing business. We will look at ten often overlooked elements of reputation
that can sway a prospect towards or away from your products or services, without
you even realizing it.
Early on, when
I started my old company called Website Know How, I noticed that after cobbling
together a website and social pages, that I had not really paid close attention to branding my image. This came to light when a prospect at the time told
me they had heard of me and were looking for me on the web. The prospect stated
that they found several pages that had my name on them, but they were confused because
they did not look the same (branded look and feel) and did not actually mention my name. This taught me a valuable lesson. Make sure you
brand the pages as closely as the different social nets allow. Also make sure you
provide profile information about yourself that is also consistent.
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| Courtesy of workingthewebtowin.com |
This is the
point in time that I started adding my middle name
to everything and to use it in all of my social profiles. I also added my
profile picture to everything as well to help differentiate and make it easier for
customers and prospects to recognize the “real Hector Enrique Cisneros” from all
the other H Cisneros profiles out there (real or fake or imagined).
This brings
me to my point. Make sure all social profiles on the web are fully fledged and include
your full name, contact information, profile picture and business information. Leave
out any sensitive information and keep private your personal family information to share with close friends and family.
When I say all social sites, I mean Facebook, Twitter. Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+,
Blogger, YouTube, and any other social site you may be using. This also includes web pages, photo sites (like
Google Photo), business profile directory sites like merchant circle, Alignable,
Yelp, Angie's
List, YP.com, etc. all need to be fully fledged
and branded as well. Not doing so just leads to confusion and lost business.
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| Courtesy of Flickr |
Here are 12 must do practices that every professional and
business owner needs to engage in if they want to maintain a positive reputation
and fill the credibility gap.
12 Must Do Practices to Build
Trust and Credibility.
- Proactive management of testimonials, ratings, and endorsements - Every business and professional must proactively
elicit and cultivate positive reviews, ratings,
and testimonials. There must be a process in place to make this happen or it
won’t!
- Unique Authoritative Content - Here
is where you show off your expertise by providing
high quality, unique, timely, relevant, useful, educational or entertaining information. This can be provided by blogging, article writing, eBook distribution, white paper distribution, vlogging (video blogging), WebTV production, Internet radio show, podcasting, other means. Not having unique, authoritative content produced in your name means you’re riding someone else’s coattails. Sharing someone else’s quality material will garner pageviews and clicks but it will never add to your credibility.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons - Provide a branded look, feel and
consistent message across all platforms. It is imperative that you provide
a consistent look and feel across all of your web properties and marketing
materials. This means all web
properties and analog locations showing a consistent logo, color scheme
and as close as possible look and feel, even when the social nets provide
vastly different criteria for their layout.
- Professional but focused – Your web
property information needs to be focused, easy to understand and navigate.
Make sure you only have one main subject to a page with the URL, page title and content all optimized for the
same key phrase and subject. One main subject only!
- The Five Must Have “On-page Elements”
– Every web page needs to make it easy for the client to do business with you.
Make it easy for prospects and clients to find contact info – phone number,
mailing address, and a map to your location. Always include a call to action
and compelling offer. Make sure you have a short video above the fold, providing
your USP (unique selling proposition), a testimonials and actual written correspondence
singing your praises.
- Be Widely Connected – Make sure you
are widely connected to other authoritative
businesses and professional via website back-links and the top social networks.
Also make sure all of your web properties are cross-linked to each other, creating a cross-pollination effect for Google.
- Broad-based Distribution
– Make sure you can achieve board distribution of all of your marketing and
social messages, via either your social networks or through someone else’s
social network. This will increase your
Page-views, comments, and reposts - for
branding, conversion, and engagement.
This allows you to get exposure, generate traffic, and improve ranking without
purchasing pay per click services. Ultimately, this will increase your brand
and your reputation (but only if you're providing high quality, high production
value authoritative content).
Courtesy of Flickr - Consistency - I can’t overemphasize the importance of consistency.
The regularity of your marketing produces a trust factor in and of itself. Producing regular, timely posting of unique quality and relevant content creates a relationship between you and your followers. If you coupled consistency with testing and measuring to determine what works best, you will maximize return on investment.
- Persistence – All too often businesses
fail because they did not have the staying power to survive the initial perils
that confront a startup business. Make sure
that “Never give up” is part of your mantra. “Measure all your Efforts,” “Learn
from your Experience, Both Good and Bad” and “Be Willing to do What Ever it
Takes” to adapt to what the market needs,”. This will serve you and your business
through both good and bad times.
- Strive to Evolve. Always strive to stretch
your knowledge and capabilities. Strive to improve yourself, and to help those
around you to do the same. Make each year’s performance better, not just the
same old thing. Work to improve your product, customer service and to make
it easy for a prospect and customer to do business with you. Strive to take
the risk out of the transaction for the prospect and customer. This should be your goal, even if you're winning
awards and are at the top of your industry.
- Engage in internet searches for your
business and your personal name. This will show you what others are finding
and reading. Make sure what is showing up is positive and is not confusing.
Find ways to differentiate yourself and learn how to make it easy for others
to identify you verses others who have similar names.
- Engage in Self-evaluations of your Contribution
to Society – Create a checklist to determine how you well you’re doing in your
industry. Are you producing high quality content? Are you providing support
for the community on a regular basis? Are you engaged in charitable events
and organizations where you give of your time and resources? Do you provide
mentoring of others? Creating a self-evaluation checklist can keep you on track
when it comes to filling the credibility gap.
I have discussed
more than a dozen factors that directly affects
your ability to build and maintain trust and credibility with prospects and clients.
I want to encourage our readers to implement these elements in their lives, in their
businesses, on their web properties and on any marketing materials they produce.
Building a solid reputation takes time, hard work and a strong desire to contribute
to society. It is my hopes that you will share this information with your peers,
family, and friends so that they too will
learn these 12 trust and credibility building practices. Also, don’t forget to take
the time to leave us a comment on this topic.
That's my opinion; I look forward to reading yours.
In this article,
I have discussed more than a dozen factors that directly affects your ability to build and maintain trust
and credibility with prospects and clients. I want to encourage our readers to implement
these elements in their lives, in their businesses, on their web properties and
on any marketing materials they produce. It is my hopes that you will share this
information with your peers, family, and friends
and that you will take the time to leave us a comment on this topic.
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| Get your FREE Copy today! |
If you feel your business could use some help with its marketing, contact us at 904-410-2091. You can also fill out the form in the sidebar of this blog where we will provide a free marketing analysis to help you get better results. Our claimed to fame is that we are one of a few companies who actually provide real guarantees.
Hector Cisneros is COO and Director of Social
Media Marketing at Working the Web to Win, an award-winning
Internet marketing company based in Jacksonville, Florida. He is
also co-host of the weekly Internet radio show, "Working the Web
to Win" on BlogTalkRadio.com, which airs every Tuesday at 4
p.m. Eastern. Hector is a syndicated writer and published author of “60 Seconds to Success.”
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