An online profile or reputation is a product of multiple activities and platforms. It includes the following:
Web portfolio management The online portfolio helps to build the visibility of a brand or individual. It works as a centralized hub for all the activities related to the brand and includes the contact info of the brand, what the brand is about (history, vision etc.) and a product showcase. The web portfolio comes in different forms. The most common form of a portfolio is the website. A website, usually built on the same domain as the brand's name, represents the business/person throughout the web. Brands and companies prefer to use websites to establish themselves and gain higher brand awareness levels because it is very important for the company to maintain relevance over time, and promoting a product online makes it much easier to keep up with the times. Businesses need to keep online visibility high as well as their performance compared to their competitors.
Search engine optimization Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most popular techniques to build traction and turn a web page into a revenue-generation machine. Search engine optimization allows companies or individuals to: • Identify keywords that are likely to bring potential customers or audiences to their website • Embed those keywords into the web content, naturally and in a value-added way • Allow search engines to crawl the web page and index all the content Search engines use a spider or a
crawler to gather listings by automatically "crawling" the web. The spider follows links to web pages, makes copies of the pages, and stores them in the search engine's index. Based on this data, the search engines then index the pages and rank the websites accordingly. Major search engines that index pages using spiders include
Google,
Yahoo,
Bing,
AOL, and
Lycos. Some methods that help optimize a web page for the search engine include: •
Link Building — creating relevant and natural links for the website • Creating keyword-optimized content
Internet advertising Internet advertising is a form of broadcasting and promotion of products, ideas, or services using the internet to attract customers. This idea is very similar to that of social media marketing. Internet advertising has overtaken other traditional advertising media such as newspapers, magazines, and radio.
Internet advertising targets users interested in relevant keywords and displays a text or image ad next to search results or within social media. While searching to these specific keywords, firms can target their advertisements for specific audiences. The advertisements will more than likely pop up on social media, but can also show up just on websites that customers would visit. This increases the firm's online presence and makes their products or services more visible to potential consumers. The first steps in developing and managing a company's reputation require the business to define their image, identify a target market and develop a core message. Next, the company should plan a detailed media strategy emphasizing issues management, message development and media preparation. Once these aspects are defined, the company can build effective communication strategies on how and where to get these messages across. These strategies should include how to address and involve the customer in all the firm's activities. This will impact reputation because engaged customers can contribute to the long term relationship of a firm by creating and disseminating information. Management of a company's online reputation should include maintaining a social platform. Four main objectives for creating a positive reputation on a social web platform are building trust, promoting quality, facilitating member matching and sustaining loyalty. Ideally, this platform should emphasize a company's culture, industry news and valuable company information. Companies should consider what the consumer finds valuable when developing this platform. Finding the right combination of information and how to present it will require research into the target markets. Managing a firm's reputation requires constant oversight to stay on top of current topics or news, and to update online sites and manage content as needed. It is difficult to control how someone might view a company, product or service and negative opinions are bound to happen. With the internet and multiple social media outlets, information is everywhere and is hard to control. It is how managers react and oversee these opinions or reviews that is critical. Digital media offers the possibility to monitor customer opinions almost in real time. It is imperative that businesses constantly track what their customers think of them and work proactively to ensure the conversation remains positive toward them. In today's business environment, consumers have unlimited accessible information about a company, product or service on social network sites. How a company is perceived or their reputation can make or break a business. For these reasons, businesses cannot afford not to monitor, communicate and maintain their online reputation.
Social media marketing Social media marketing uses social media platforms to create and foster communities and relationships among people and businesses. Social media is one of the most prevalent forms of communication and marketing today and businesses reach massive amounts of potential customers through it. Social media marketing is focused on creating content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share content with their social networks. Social messages are often effective because they usually come from a trusted, third-party source, rather than the brand itself. However, a brand having their own specific voice through social media can also be very effective for keeping loyal customers close and attracting new ones. Understanding what tools are available and how to use them effectively is key to success in social media marketing. Some of these tools include: • Social media content management • Social media publishing and scheduling •
Social media monitoring • Social aggregation •
Social bookmarking and tagging • Social analytics and reporting • Automation • Validation It is also important to understand the different effects that social media marketing has on past, current, or future customers. Having a clean social media platform can increase brand loyalty among the customers who already purchase a specific product or brand. It can also affect a customer's future purchase intentions. Both of these effects have been studied and go hand in hand with one another. Although there is always more research to be done, specific studies have supported that when a business has a positive social media campaign, it influences the potential customers and their prospective purchases. All of these ideas tie back to a company having a strong sense of their online presence and managing it well.
Social media management Many of the tools listed above are often found in a
social media management system. This is a collection of procedures used to manage
workflow in a disparate
social media environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based and enable the manager (or managing team) to listen, aggregate, publish, and manage multiple social media channels from one tool. Social media management systems effectively promote businesses to prospective clients. A firm could hire one of many social media managers to oversee the operations of this are for their team. Because the social network has changed how customers are reached and how they view products, it is incredibly important to manage a firm's social media responsibly. These social media managers can research effective ways on how to market the brand through social media platforms like
Facebook,
Twitter,
LinkedIn,
Instagram, and
TikTok, along with other social media platforms. Companies pay on average $68,000 a year for someone to perform these services for them, however, that number is expected to rise. With the ongoing improvement and need for social media, it makes sense that this number would eventually surpass 6 digits. All in all, managing a firm's social media can boost their online presence by targeting their marketing to a specific group, improving on their existing marketing tactics, and keeping the brand name organized with their prospective goals in mind.
Web presence pyramid model This kind of model is widely used by smaller businesses by following certain steps and stages. These models help for a business to better represent who they are and what they are trying to sell. A stage model, for example, may consist of stages such as
promotional,
provisional and
processing. These stages are extremely important in the marketing and selling of any given product. The promotional stage is where networking and advertising are extremely prominent. These are essential to grow
brand awareness and create sales. The provisional stage consists of adding features to the webpage for the product so that the consumers can have a better understanding of things such as price of a product. The processing stage is the financial part of the model. This is when the product is being sold to its customers and the actual order goes through with their payment.
Data visualization is used in the Web Presence Pyramid Model because it gives a more simplistic look at the companies data received from their products sales rates and web pages views. Using a step-by-step stage model is an effective way for small businesses to develop a strong online presence and showcase their products to potential customers. These models help businesses to create a clear representation of who they are and what they offer. The various stages of the model, such as promotional, provisional and processing, all play crucial roles in the marketing and selling of a product. Overall, the use of a step-by-step model can help small businesses create a strong online presence and effectively market their products to a wider audience. == References ==