Jul 18 2011

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Small Fish In A Big Brand Pond

Recently my husband did something that scared the life out of me: he bought a major appliance from a minor e-retailer. After finding a great price on an item that he wanted, he dug into their online reputation and found that it was practically spotless, so he took a big chance and spent a lot of money at an unknown company. I’d not have been so brave. As I expected, being a Negative Nancy, there was a flaw in the item. However, said minor e-retailer sent a replacement with zero hassle.

Now, I never check a brand’s backlinks before I buy from them of course (being mostly sane) but I definitely check out their online reputation I’ll check their offline reputation out too if possible, but I do look into them. Are most of their reviews positive or negative? Do they have major customer service issues? Do their items tend to fall apart after one month? I want to know these things before I commit my dollars.

Big brand backlinks have been in the news a lot recently as these brands have come under suspicion about how exactly they got their rankings. We know that major brands have enjoyed a certain level of security online for the most part, one that has never been afforded to the little guys. Big brands can play fast and loose and eat up all the online space for keywords that you may want to rank for. Add some polluted local SERPs for certain industries and you have a mess to wade through. How on earth is a small guy supposed to compete?

Here’s how..by capitalizing not on your well-known name (um, because you might not have one yet), but on why you’re different from everyone else who does what you do. What can YOU bring to the table?

For starters you can make darn sure that you don’t make any customer service mistakes that can garner you negative reviews online, and you can make sure that in the event that you do get some negative press, you respond to it and you fix it asap. Nothing is worse than seeing unaddressed complaints online.

You also need to define why you’re different than the bigger guys. Having a few bright spots in how you do business is a definite, but you also need to be able to distinguish yourself in the online world, playing by the online world’s rules. As I’ve said many times before, hiding crappy links in a giant backlink profile is much easier than hiding them in a small profile. If you only have 50 backlinks, you’ll want to make sure that they’re really good ones.

Do:

• Get listed in (relevant) niche and local business directories.
• Set up every possible form of social media alert for your brand and URL. This way you can respond to anything that pops up online, positive and negative.
• Respond to the first instance of negative experience. Don’t wait for someone to complain twice before you address it.
• Use some form of web analytics in order to keep an eye on where your traffic is coming from.
• Keep a very close eye on any links pointing to you. Many people are unaware of what’s lurking in their link profile. As much as I hate to say it, you need to be extra careful if you’re working with someone who isn’t telling you how he’s building links. I come across some really nasty links almost every week, and the clients have no clue.
• Use social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but use them wisely, to build up and be a part of a community.
• If you have a local business presence and it makes sense for you, put a lot of your effort into local marketing. Network with other business owners in your area both online and offline.
• Keep producing good content that is easily shareable using social media buttons.
• Reach out for links when you find a great site. The worst that will happen is that you’ll be turned down.

Don’t:

• Comment or forum spam. You have no idea how many times people ask me to look at what they’re doing wrong with link building and their profile is nothing BUT comment and forum spam.
• Reach out to spammy sites that are comprised of nothing but links. Yes, they’ll probably link to you, but no, you don’t want that link.
• Sit back and rest. Your competitors, especially the bigger ones, certainly aren’t. Building good links is an ongoing effort.
• Think that you can write great content and have us find it accidentally. You need to send us to it.
• Use Twitter and Facebook to only post links to your new blog post, sale, product offering, etc.
• Set up 10 different microsites that all crosslink and concentrate on a specific microtopic for each site. Yep, people are still doing that.
• Crank out impersonal link requests. If these ever get read, they’ll most likely get trashed. And don’t assume the webmaster is male…that’s a personal pet peeve of mine.

Just remember: you can definitely compete online, but you don’t have the same room for mistakes that big brands do. However, if you’re conscientious about how you market your site, you can build a well-optimized web presence that doesn’t rely on what only works at the time.

Written By:

Julie Joyce | Link Fish Media | @JulieJoyce

Julie Joyce owns the link development agency Link Fish Media, is one of SEO Chicks, and contributes to Search Engine Land and Search Marketing Gurus.

More Posts By Julie Joyce

• http://www.brickmarketing.com/ Nick Stamoulis

  The best defense is a good offense, and managing your online brand reputation means being proactive! Brands cannot afford (literally) to hide their heads in the sand when a bad review or bad press pops up. Thank customers for positive reviews, and reach out to those who had a bad experience quickly.

• http://www.lamphouse.co.uk Matthew

  Totally agree Nick, epsicially since rules changed and well they have in the uk where you cannt try and hide the fact you got bad reviews if a customer gives you a review good or bad you are supposed to put on website so people know however nothing wrong with you showing your reply on there, Abit like ebay when people got negative feedback you could reply and justify what had happened as customers who dont get what experience they wanted will leave negative comments about your company even if its not your fault

• http://www.egrovestaffing.com eGrove Systems

  Rich source 

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Source: TheHollywoodGossip.com

Dr. Phil McGraw has been in and out of the celebrity real estate spotlight this year with several transactions.

Last year, Dr. Phil and his wife, Robin, bought an enormous hillside place for a whopping $29.5 million. The couple also listed their other home, a smaller Mediterranean-style villa in Beverly Hills for $16.5 million. Unfortunately, the villa had to go through a few price chops before it sold for $12 million in April of this year.

Apparently, Dr. Phil is ready to play the real estate game again. The couple recently listed another Beverly Hills-area home on the Beverly Glen real estate market for $6,250,000. Current Beverly Glen home values are $1,197,000.

Dr. Phil rose to fame with the help of TV talk show queen, Oprah. Like other instant Oprah TV celebrities such as Rachael Ray, Nate Berkus and Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil grabbed a TV host gig, thereby increasing his fame and scooping up real estate along the way.

Like Dr. Phil’s current hilltop mansion, as well the home that sold in April, this newest Dr. Phil house on the market is a Mediterranean-style mansion.

According to Real Estalker, this home could have once been the residence of the host, or was one of the homes that Dr. Phil and Robin purchased for their two sons.

Dr. Phil’s home was built in 1960 and according to the property listing, a full renovation was completed in 2006. Like many celebrity homes, it’s situated on a gated lot behind a long driveway and is “unable to be seen from the road.”

The home includes a large master suite with his-and-her baths, chef’s kitchen and formal dining room as well as a temperature-controlled wine store room, office and “resort-style” backyard with pool, spa and cabana.

The listing is provided by William Dolan of Hilton & Hyland.

Sorting out your social circles on Google+

Realtor Notebook

I have been playing with Google+ for a week and it reminds me of the early days of Facebook, Twitter and several other social networks.

One of my guiding principles has been to try just about everything and to abandon anything that doesn’t work out, which is why the Internet is littered with my accounts.

I have made more social networking mistakes than I care to list, and as I dive into Google+ I am being a bit more cautious than I have been in the past because I know what a time-suck social websites can be.

One of the biggest mistakes I have made on social networks is having hundreds of friends who I don’t know. Part of the problem is that I never took a proactive approach to the whole friendship thing.

My friends will tell you that is because I am not a people person. I only know a small percentage of my Facebook friends and I actually like six of them. I don’t use my Facebook account for business. I know that I am a Realtor all of the time, but I want and need a social life that has nothing to do with work.

What makes Google+ unique is that it handles lists graphically, and they are called groups. Groups can be created by dragging pictures of people into circles. Circles work just like lists work on Facebook.

The very first thing I did when I set up my Google+ account was to make a special circle for people who I want to ignore. Since no one can tell which circle they are in, there won’t be any hard feelings.

Circles make it easier than ever before to ignore the people who need to be ignored and to pay attention to the people who I want to pay attention to. In fact, it inspired me to update all of my social networking accounts.

The ability to filter out the advertisers is more important than ever as people flock to social networks to promote their businesses. I was only on Google+ for a day before I saw a promotional update for a business, and I moved that friend to my special circle.

The lists I use on Twitter work the same way. They help me sort people out so that I never miss a tweet from the people who I enjoy conversing with or learning from, and the rest go into a general list that is ignored until I have some time to read.

Twitter taught me how to listen and how to organize my account so that I see what the local media are talking about but don’t see which homes were just listed on the East Coast, or who is at a conference today.

After I set up my new Google+ account I went into my Facebook account and worked on my lists. I organized them better and then onto my LinkedIn account, where a friend pointed out that most people were updating LinkedIn via Twitter instead of actually logging in.

I am not sure how LinkedIn fits in, but I have been told that if I ever want a job or want to hire someone for a job I need to use it. The release of Google+ was a reminder to me to keep my accounts organized and to actively avoid the conversations and people who don’t add value.

Another feature of Google+ is the ability to create a “hangout” where we can video chat with a group of people. I have had that capability for many years but have used it only a few times. For some reason I have not had much of a desire to hang out on my video camera and chat.

Already people are claiming that Google+ is the next big thing. It was not all that long ago that Google Wave was the next big thing, but the Wave quickly died out. There is nothing innovative or new about an online social network that allows us to put people in groups, but that doesn’t mean that Google+ won’t catch on.

There isn’t room in my life for another social network, nor is there a need for one, but many people consider having a profile on a social network to be tech-savvy, and being thought of as tech-savvy is desirable in business.

Teresa  Boardman is a broker in St. Paul, Minn., and founder of the St. Paul Real  Estate blog.