In part two of the interview with Andy Beal, you will learn more about online reputation management by using Trackur. According to Trackur.com,

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums–and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

Remember that online reputation management is the process of managing your business and personal identity online. This includes monitor where you business name and personal name appears via the internet.

Question 3: Are there specific tools that business owners should use to monitor the success of their internet strategy plan?

I don’t think any internet marketing campaign should be launched until you have some kind of web site analytics in place. You need to know what’s bringing customers to your site and you need to know which marketing efforts are working and which are not. Google Analytics is completely free, so there is no excuse. You should also monitor external metrics such as blog posts, twitter replies, or mainstream media mentions. You can use free tools such as Google Alerts or Technorati, or you could grab a free trial of our Trackur service and use something a little more sophisticated.

Question 4: Are there things that business owners should avoid when developing their internet strategy plan? If so, please share specific details.

I’d avoid trying to focus on anything further out than 6 months. The web has proven that it can evolve quickly and what’s popular today may be different in six months from now. I’d also avoid jumping on a bandwagon, unless it makes sense for your business. If you target audience consists of 16-20 year olds, then building a marketing plan around Twitter wouldn’t make sense as it is under-represented by that age group. Instead focus on Facebook, which is where most 16-20 year olds hang out.

Question 5: Why is it important for business owners to monitor and manage their online reputation?

Well, the first reason is that we’re in a major recession so every dollar we spend on branding is a dollar we have to pull from some other budget. Building a positive brand helps to alleviate some of that spending–when you have a great reputation you’ll benefit more from free word-of-mouth marketing. Second, there’s a lot that can be learned by simply listening to your target audience. Even if you are not ready to participate, listening allows you to learn what customers like about your product, what they hate about your service, and how they feel about your competitors! If you listen to what’s said about your biggest rivals, you may learn that their customers long for a product feature that you can easily add to your offering.

The third reason why you should manage your online reputation is that, in the absence of your official involvement, the void can be filled by those looking to attack your company. Take your Google repuation for example. Have you entered your business name in Google recently? If you’re not managing the content that shows up in the first ten results on Google, a detractor could very easily write a negative blog post that shows up on the first page of results. One single negative result in Google and you could end up losing a lot of potential business–that’s why I call Google a “reputation engine.”

Hopefully you’ll never face a reputation attack, but you should absolutely take time to do an audit of what shows up in Google for your brand name. If you don’t like what you see, neither will your potential customers. You can learn more about this in my book, or I posted a free article on the subject and also a free whitepaper.

Question 6: Please share how you can be contacted.

The best way to reach me is to head to AndyBeal.com, where you’ll find all of my contact details.

What do you do when you want to makeover the online branding of your website? You can do just as Dots.com did and add audio to help brand your website. Dots.com added a web radio station to create an interactive environment for their website visitors. Below is a screenshot of their new homepage.

To start or launch the Dots.com web radio, all you have to do is click on the link in the lower left hand corner that says “Launch Radio Player”. As a business owner, you too can use audio branding to help build inter-activity into your website and I have included a starter list below to help you with your decision.

• Website welcome audio: create an audio of you welcoming your website visitors. Connect with your web visitors by sharing about your passion for your services or products. Make sure that you give them the option to turn off audio if you have it auto-starting or to launch/start the audio.
• Client testimonials: ask your clients to provide you with testimonials about your service or products.
• Seminars and teleconferences: to help sale your audio products from seminars and teleconferences, share as a free download about 5 minutes of audio.
• Freebie tips: create special audios that include a short list of tips for your web visitors.

Hopefully this has given you food for thought and will help you as you investigate ways to incorporate audio branding into your website.

Image: Dots.com

During a recent interview with Patrick Moran of Fuze Meeting, he shared how Fuze is a webinar service that is worth checking out. When you think about Web 3.0, you need to keep in mind that this type of software allows interaction with web visitors, can run on different platforms such as smartphones or computers. Fuze is a Web 3.0 software program that can help you deliver your brand message.

Using Fuze as a Web 3.0 branding tool means that you are focused on delivering your business message to the masses using an interactive software. To help you better about Fuze Meeting, I have included the interview with Patrick below.

Please introduce yourself and your business. Then share about your expertise and how long you have been in your industry.

How does Fuze Meeting work? Does it take training to get started? Do you provide support in case there are problems?

Does Fuze Meeting require a software download?

Please share some of the ways that Fuze Meeting is being used by your current users.

Now for ideas on how you can use Fuze to help with your online branding, I’ve shared list below from their website called the “Top 10 Uses” of how you can use their software:

1. Manage remote teams
2. Join meetings on different continents
3. Stay at home in your slippers
4. Conduct sales presentations
5. Demonstrate products and software
6. Train customers, partners, and employees
7. Hold a meeting…on a train
8. Hold a meeting…with a dude from Spain
9. Conduct a meeting going 600 miles per hour
10. Share your next big idea

Today’s guest post is from Drew McLellan of Drew’s Marketing Minute.  Drew is one of my favorite branding and marketing bloggers!  

While we hear over and over that those of us writing or reading blogs, creating wikis or harnessing the other Web 2.0 tools are a very small percentage of population, we know two things:

• The percentage is on the rise.  And quickly.
• Those who are using the tools are finding them very effective.

A recent study by the Direct Marketing Association concluded that many marketers who are focusing on building their brand believe in the power of Web 2.0.

The “New Media Emergence in DM & Brand” report (which apparently you can purchase for around $600) from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) investigates Web 2.0 - including blogs, virtual words, social networks, user-generated content, RSS feeds, and Wikis - as the platform that converges all marketing. Read more

The following is a guest post from Gab Goldenberg of SEO ROI.  Gab is my go-to-guy for all things SEO.  You can learn more about Gab at the end of this post. 

What is the true cost of conversions gained through branded search? What is the true ROI?

It’s been repeated often enough that branded search terms convert exceptionally well. Eric Peterson is one proponent, and Avinash Kaushikis another. (Avinash works as a consultant to Google, which tells you something about his skill and the richness of the data he gets to play with!)

But most search marketing experts only look at the click costs of conversions from brand searches. Cross channel tracking needs to be used to measure the real total cost to a business of getting a conversion from a brand-name search. Cross channel tracking, for those who might not know, refers to tracking conversions across various marketing mediums, such as search, email, print ads, radio etc. Here’s how it can be used to measure the real cost of conversions from branded search. Read more

I read a very cool post on Ideas on Ideas this week called Talking Digital with Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts where Eric Karjaluoto interviews the Saatchi & Saatchi CEO about the new digital world.  Following are a couple of excerpts that really stood out to me as examples of Kevin’s understanding of advertising today.

When Eric asked Kevin, “What experiments are you running on interactive?”, Kevin responded by saying:

“Our whole approach is pretty much one big experiment at this stage. There’s no proven pathway (Thank God!!!).”

When Eric asked Kevin, “Are there any companies in the marketplace that have redefined it?”, Kevin said:

“The consumer has.”

Check out Eric’s interview with Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts when you have a moment.  I love Kevin’s honesty!

Image source: Saatchi.com

Earlier this week, I wrote a post on BloggingTips that discusses the psychology of impression management and how that affects online branding.  I think the topic is very interesting from a branding perspective and wanted to share it with Brandcurve readers.  You can find my article at You Say Impression Management, I Say Branding.

Brandcurve is part of the b5media network of blogs, and Darren Rowse of Problogger fame is Vice President of Training for b5media.  This week, Forbes announced its second annual list of The Web Celeb 25.  Darren Rowse came in at #25! Read more

Today’s post is more of a request for opinions from Brandcurve’s readers.  I have yet to use SlideShare, which is a social networking tool that allows users to post and share presentations online.  It’s free to join, and according to the SlideShare FAQ page, “users can upload PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Keynote or PDF files, tag them, embed them into your blog or website, browse others’ presentations, and comment on individual slides. What’s more, the transcripts of your presentation will be indexed by internet search engines and show up in search results.” Read more

I read a great article this week on Buzz Networker by Kevin Palmer called The Cult of Personality: A Case Study on Popularity on the Social Web.  This post gives an in-depth analysis of how four celebrity brands, Dane Cook, OK Go, Brad Listi and Tila Tequila, used social networking to create and promote their brands.

Here’s a quick overview of Kevin’s observations: Read more