Social Media – Your Brand Reputation Depends on Doing It Right

As part of any social media strategy, it’s very important that the impact of social media on brand building and the impact blogs have on the purchasing decisions of consumers is considered and factored into your strategy.


A social media strategy is not just about Facebook and Twitter, which is what some so called “experts” will have you believe, it is and should always be treated as a Corporate Communications Strategy for your business.

Blogs, play a major role in influencing the purchasing decision amongst women in particular, and in a recent survey in the US, 85% of regular female blog readers said they were influenced to make a purchase as a result of a review or comment posted on a blog. So with that in mind, if you’re the company that gets it right, you have a good chance of getting the sale, but what happens if you are on the receiving end of a negative review or comment. How do you protect your brand and how should you respond?

Your customers can now read, listen, discuss and research their purchasing decisions and you need to work harder at customer service than ever before, if you are finding negative or damaging reviews about you,your brand or service then use this as a wake up call. The world of social media networks, business review sites and blogs has provided the disgruntled consumer with a voice.

Every employee in your company is now responsible for your brands reputation, and when you as a company, start to live up to your reputation, it becomes a lot easier to manage your brand effectively on line.

If you do find a negative review on any of the sites, resist the temptation to respond defensively and do not allow any of your staff to respond, you could put the Streisand effect in motion.

What can be used to deliver a negative can also be used to promote a positive, so use it wisely.

Remember it’s very hard to remove a negative comment or search engine result once it hits the web.

Mike Andrew owns and operates an Internet Marketing Consultancy on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Emails and Social Networks

With more than a third of Internet users now visiting social media networks each month, a lot of time is spent in gathering information, and now it appears that 40% of email users visit social media sites to gather information about products and recommendations from friends.  A recent study called “Emails Gone Viral” by Silverpop found that shared emails delivered an average increase of reach of 24.3%, and that figure is due to increase as sharing becomes more mainstream in the future.
Social media sites do have an impact on the increase of opens for emails as well with at least an additional 1% of opens for emails when shared on network sites.
So when does your email have it’s biggest impact on social media users? the majority of opens and clicks on shared emails is within the first few days and the last click about 7 days after posting, although activity  on an email was extended as long 44 days.

If you'd like to read the full post on this subject you'll find it here at Social Media College

Social Media As The New CV

For some time now I’ve been using my social media network as my on line CV, suggesting to prospective clients and others I work with “to check me out on line and Google me” if they’d like to know more about what I do and a number of times this has been very effective for me and has led to new clients and speaking engagements on using social media to drive new business .

By using this method I’ve found it really gives them a good understanding of what I do, and of course, when it comes to working with them on a web campaign or social media strategy they have a clear understanding of what can be achieved. I’ve effectively replaced the old style paper resume with a new generation concept, and once they do a search on me they see all the web sites I own, articles I’ve written and those that have been syndicated and can see my area of expertise far better than I could explain or show on paper.

There is however a down side to all of this, and that’s why your on line presence or social network needs to managed very carefully and you need to be really aware of what information you put on line on your Facebook or Myspace page, as those photos, words or comments can really come back and bite you big time!!

Job seekers today are being urged to manage their on line footprint very carefully, because a recent report by Viacom in the UK, found that 1 in 5 employers had researched social networking sites and found personal information about prospective employees, and 59% said it had influenced their recruitment decision.

Amongst the reasons given for not employing people they had researched on the net, were and I quote, “His MySpace website showed a negative side to him including excessive alcohol abuse and disrespect for his job’ and ‘We found that the candidate was on the local police wanted list.’

The report also found that we as users of social media sites are leaving significant footprints of personal information on the web, as we use blogging sites, social networking sites etc.
The spread of people posting personal information on the web is not limited to younger generations though, with 31% of all internet users leaving personal information, which is searchable by anyone, on the web. However, the biggest group of information providers are in the age group 18-24, with just under half of those questioned for this survey, posting personal information on Facebook, MySpace and Youtube.

The biggest concern to come out of this survey though, is that over 54% of the 18 to 24 year olds questioned during this research,responded that someone other than themselves, had posted photos, information and comments about them without their approval.
So, with the rise of search engines such as Google and Yahoo, be aware that employers are never more than a click away from getting information about you the job seeker, and of course, the same is true for companies, as job seekers are able to research information about prospective employers, so this is really a two way street.

The upshot of all of this is that you really need to think very carefully about the information you put on social network sites and you need to protect your name or brand. Your on line reputation is so vitally important today that you can’t afford to neglect it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this post, or even if you’ve experienced this problem yourself, so please leave me a comment.

Social Media Usage Grows In Australia in June

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook had the most increase out of all the sites, with Twitter benefiting from it’s mainstream popularity.

But here we go, I’ve written a lot about the impact social media usage is having around the world and having spent the first part of August attending the Inman technology conference in San Francisco, where social media was a dominant theme, I thought I’d take a look at what is happening in the Australian market.

Facebook led the sector with over 6 million visitors, growing 95% from last year.

What’s more, social networking use is quite high across the web, composing almost 90% of users that populated Australia’s top Internet properties for the month.

Other interesting facts are as follows:

Nearly nine million Australians visited a social network in June, making it among the more popular content categories on-line.

Another idea is to attend one of my forth coming workshops on social media.

So which sites were the most popular?

Social media is now an essential part of peoples’ daily on-line routine, providing a level of engagement and reach that far exceeds most other content categories, so understanding how to leverage this audience successfully is both a challenge and significant opportunity for most small business owners.

It’s amazing how quickly you can get out of the discipline of writing blog posts, and having just returned from the US and not having written any articles for awhile, it’s really taken me a little time to get back in the mode again.

As always, let me know if I can assist you or answer any questions you may have with regard to Internet marketing and web site SEO.

Windows Live Profile chalked up close to two million visitors, but Twitter grew the most, rising to 800,000 visitors in June — up from 13,000 in June of last year.

If you are still mystified by social media, let me know and I’ll help shed some light on how you can successfully tap into this medium for your business.

In June, over 70% of Internet users visited a social network site in Australia, that transposes into an increase of 29%.

Google Real Estate vs realestate.com.au

Image via Wikipedia

I've been reading a lot lately about the recent addition of real estate to Google maps in Australia and a lot of discussion has been generated over its value to the real estate industry, not to mention the general public who use the internet to search for property listings and rentals.


So far, to my knowledge, of the main portals only myhome and homehound have uploaded listings to Google, although I’m sure that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au internally have been in discussions about the merits of uploading all their listings to Google.


Google will have a full time job controlling the quality of listings available, and making sure that old, outdated or sold stock is removed, just look at the issues that myhome.com.au faced when it first launched in the market with trying to maintain quality with its listings. Keeping the listings current and fresh will only be part of the problem for Google, removing sold properties and watching out for the lead generators, that is 3rd party players who will list a property and then sell the lead on to the agent.


During a presentation to one of the major franchises on Tuesday night I was asked my opinion on this very subject and in follow up discussions with a number of people in the industry, this is it seems, more about the potential changing of the guard than anything else.


There is a feeling in the real estate community that Google may just break the monopoly of realestate.com.au.


Well, I thought I’d provide you with a link to an article that Simon Baker, ex CEO of realestate.com.au has written on his blog about this very subject, will it work for Google and what, if any impact will it have on realestate.com.au in the future.


To read the article click here

.Mobile Phones Beat PC’s for Young Women

Back in December of last year I wrote a post on the future of the Internet in 2020, and in that post one of the predictions was that mobile devices would be the primary connection tool to the Internet and social media for most people. Well I thought I’d revisit the progress of that statement and look at if the mobile device is in fact having any impact on searching trends.
Some new research from a company in the US SRG, has found the mobile phone is displacing the PC among US women in terms of usage – especially in the 12-24 age group, the survey has found that young women spend twice as much time with their cell phones as women over age 40.

The survey also revealed that more than 80% of US women now use a wireless device and 17% use a smartphone, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or models from HTC, Samsung, LG or similar. Among those in the 12-24 and 25-39 age groups, smartphone ownership is now 23%. In contrast 11% of women ages 40+ own a smartphone.
When asked about the top benefits of owning a smartphone, the top answers among women were convenience, the ability to send texts and email, and access to social media online.
When asked what technology had the most impact on their life in the past two years, women overall picked the internet, followed by the PC/computer, and cell/wireless in a distant third spot. This changed amongst young women, where a wireless device took the #1 spot:

So how does that impact on how they use social media?

The study found that more mobile usage and smartphone ownership is enabling women to bypass the traditional PC to upload their pictures to social media sites:
Nearly 74% of 12-24 year-olds say they have taken a photo with their cell phone in the past month.

Young women are twice as likely have used the internet browser on their cell phone in the past month.

22% of 12-24 year-olds used their mobile device to access Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in the past month, making them four times as likely as older women to have accessed social media such as a Facebook profile or MySpace page on their mobile phone.
From that research and the upward trend of smart phone usage, particularly amongst women, who are the bigger users of social media, you don’t need to be Einstein to work out that the smart phone will be the primary connection tool for the Internet and social media online well before 2020.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave me a comment on this post.

What Can I Share? Not ‘What Can I Get’ Selling

As many of you will know, I’ve done a some work in the past with Grant Thorpe, business coach, professional speaker and mentor, and he is always an inspiration when talking or working with him, so I thought that I would share with you some of his words of wisdom.

As I would like to expand this blog by including articles from other authors, I’ve decided to kick this series off with an article from Grant, so I hope you enjoy this and that you get some ideas and motivation from this.

So please read on and enjoy!

“One of the most effective ways to grow your business is to have your existing clients refer new business to you. After all, they are already using your services and continue to do so because they are satisfied in all respects.

People do not have a natural mind set to look for opportunities to refer our ’service providers’ to colleagues, friends or family. The focus is often on what am I getting not what I can share.
By referring a service provider to someone within your sphere of influence you are achieving three key things.

• You are giving your friend or colleague a chance to use a service or product they may not have been aware of if you had not brought it to their attention - a gift to them!

• You are supporting someone who is currently doing business with you (your service provider) and feeding them additional business.

• And you are fostering a reciprocal arrangement which will start to lead to mutual referrals between two parties that already understand each others businesses. A chance for you to get some business back!

Referrals work in such a simple way but it requires that you first train everyone around you to refer, remember it is not a natural state for them to think this way. This can be done in a couple ways, by referring to them first and by association they will start to see the rewards from this practice. Give and you shall receive!

And secondly by constantly asking all those around you if they know anyone who is thinking of ‘needing your service’ in the near future? A key point here is you are not hounding the person you know to do business with you, you are asking them to refer you to anyone they know who is thinking of needing you in the near future.

Once you get a referral it is very powerful, the new client comes to you with ‘advocacy’ the blessing of your mutual contact, and in many instances will not even bother to get your competition in the door for a comparison. The business is yours!
We have a natural filter in place that stops us seeing this ‘potential business’ which is right in front of us every day.So we need to first train ourselves, then all around us, to open up this filter and to start looking for potential clients through the people we already know and are already doing business with.

To ensure that you start thinking this way, the first step is to make it a new personal minimum standard to simply ask every person you are in contact with if they know anyone who could use your service in the near future. That’s everyone, even the person at the grocery store checkout, or your lawyer, or your mother! Leave no one out of the equation. Everyday we walk over ‘Fields of Diamonds’ and don’t see these opportunities because we are so busy working to create business, when if we just asked…….?

Read more about the results Grant Thorpe can achieve for you on his website at http://www.grantthorpe.com/