You Have to Manage Your Online Reputation to Run a Successful Business

To the outside world, reputation managers seem to be capable of some form of magic. They employ all kinds of secret ninja techniques that make negative content disappear. However, what they do isn't voodoo at all; it's simply thinking outside the box. Here are six creative reputation management methods you can use as well.

1. Domain Name Variations

Buy variations of your domain name, such as yourname.net, .org, .me, .co, and so on. Also, buy misspellings of your domain name. A competitor can get ahold of these domain names and use them to sully your reputation or steal your traffic (visitors that mistake .net for .com, for example).

2. Negative Domain Name Variations

Although it's unlikely that someone would create a website to smear you, it's a good idea to secure the most obvious negative domain names that include your name.

3. Viral Content Your Audience Loves

Create good content that your audience will love. The best content draws emotional responses and goes viral. Give them inspirational quotes, funny pictures or videos, important warnings people need to hear, or valuable content that solves their problems. If someone attacks you, the strength of your content and the loyalty it brings will protect you. Don't produce content that elicits anger or offends people.

4. Paid Search Ads to Positive Pages

In a crisis situation, create landing pages that say good things about your company. Then, take out paid search ads that lead to these pages. Paid search ads bring a large amount of traffic fast. These pages can bump the negative sites out of the search engine results pages.

5. Enlist Your Customers' Help

Ask your customers for testimonials and positive reviews. This is something your business should be doing anyway. If they're happy with your products or services, customers will be glad to leave a message to future customers. This positive feedback helps to offset anything negative posted about you.

6. Enlist Your Affiliates' Help

You can also enlist the help of your affiliates. Provide them with the content they need to promote you. This makes it easier for them to set up sites and get you sales. You can give them incentives by running contests or offering bonuses for clicks and commissions.

Remember that the more valuable information and good-will you put out there, and the more support you have from your fans, the better protected you'll be from attacks against your reputation. People will overlook one negative review if there are plenty of authentic positive ones surrounding it. Stay true to your audience and listen to their feedback so that you can constantly improve your services and give them exactly what they want.

Tonika Outerbridge Image and Style Consultant

Photo is from Pinterest

How to Start Your Business

No matter what kind of home business you're starting, there are always some things that need to be set up beforehand. It's not a pleasant experience to get started and then discover later that there are some essentials that you need immediately but never set up. It also ends up turning into an extra unexpected expense that you could do without.

Office Space

You need a good place to work and the kitchen table isn't going to cut it. The best workspace is sealed away from your daily life. If you can, set up an office room. Make sure it's comfortable. It should be a place you want to spend hours of time.

You'll need a computer with reliable internet connection and a phone. There are providers online that can set you up with your own 800 number and other goodies like voicemail for the phone at reasonable rates. Also, stock up on all the basic software you'll need, depending on the business you’re planning.

Become an Entity

You'll need to become a legal entity. Decide whether you're company will be a sole proprietorship, an LLC or a corporation. The main difference is who has control. With a sole proprietorship, you're the owner and company in one. An LLC (limited liability company) separates the business from the owner. A corporation is run by a board of directors. If you want to make all of the decisions yourself, be a sole proprietorship. If you think you may someday sell the business or pass it on to someone else, choose to be an LLC or corporation. Do your research and get advice from a lawyer or tax accountant to help you determine which is best for you.

Pay and Get Paid

If you're going to be selling anything, you need to decide which payment methods you'll use. You'll need some type of merchant account. This is a third party that processes payments for you. It can be an online provider like PayPal, a credit card company, a bank, or another provider. If you accept credit cards, you need to be PCI compliant. PCI stands for 'Payment Card Industry' and it's a standard for handling credit card information.

Work out Your Budget

Calculate to the best of your ability your projected income and expenses. It's tough to know when you haven't started yet and don’t have a track record, so set goals and have a back-up plan. Try to realistically estimate expenses and always assume that you'll make less and spend more. The important thing is to be organized and write down every penny you spend or take in. After a month or so, you'll start to get a realistic picture of how you're doing.

Track Your Finances

You'll need a system for tracking your finances. Keep your business and personal accounts separate. Open a separate checking account for your business. Write down a memo of every transaction and what it was for. Software programs can help you do this. Create a filing system for your documents and keep everything in labeled folders. You should also have some way to check your finances at a glance, such as an Excel Spreadsheet for easy reference.

Finally, there's one important thing many new entrepreneurs don't consider – make sure you have a Plan B. You hear great stories about how people sacrificed everything to start their business and it succeeded. You don't often hear the stories about people who lost everything. Always know what you're going to do if it doesn't work out.

Whats Your Klout Score?

Do you think you have clout online? There's a California-based startup that can tell you whether you really do or don’t. Klout is a website that measures your level of online influence through a special, proprietary algorithm. It looks at variables such as your number of followers, the sharing of your content, your likes, and other activity to create a 'Klout score.'

This score varies from 1 to 100. If your score is one, you've never even heard of 'the Facebook' before. If your score is 100, you're Barack Obama!

Social Signals

Klout uses 400 signals from a number of different sites including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, YouTube, and WordPress. It's constantly adding more.

The way to boost your Klout score is to connect each of these accounts to your Klout account. In fact, if you have a Twitter account, you already have a Klout score whether you want it or not. It's automatic and you have to opt-out if you don't want one. However, your Twitter account must be completely public in order to contribute to your score.

Klout values engagement rather than sheer numbers. If you have a small following of active supporters who interact with your content, this is better for your score than thousands of followers who never do anything. A hundred retweets from a handful of tweets counts for more than 1,000 retweets from 100 tweets. It doesn't reward people that are just hyperactive on these sites, but rather influencers.

How to Increase Your Klout Score

Of course, the site's algorithms are mysterious, but there are some things you can do to raise your Klout score. One is to build online relationships with people. Rather than simply broadcasting content from your social media profiles, engage your audience. Interact with their content and they'll reciprocate. Use your content to ask questions or get discussions going.

Make your content as easy to share as possible. Tailor it to your specific audience. Content that's extremely niche-specific is better for your Klout score than content with broader appeal. Remember that a small core group of followers that loves your content is more important than appealing to large numbers of people.

It also helps to make friends with influencers in your field. If you interact with people who have high Klout scores, this will raise yours as well. Identify these people and interact with them. The tricky part is doing it in a way that doesn't appear that you have ulterior motives.

Finally, you can monitor your Klout score at any time on their website. Conduct some experiments with the sites mentioned above and see which make a noticeable difference.

Why Bother with Your Klout Score?

Is your Klout score really so important? Isn't it just another online metric among many? No pun intended, but Klout is starting to have a bit of clout. Companies are increasingly looking at Klout scores to assess potential candidates for jobs and joint ventures. A high score can also get you discounts and exclusive access to services from airport lounges to restaurant deals.

Tonika Outerbridge Image and Style Consultant

Photo is from Pinterest

Live Your Dream and Start Your Business

When the economy is tanking and the job market's shrinking, making money via the Internet starts to sound like a good idea to many people. With the Web, it's easier than ever to start a home-based business, but still many people fail. Why is this? It's because it takes a certain type of person with almost fanatical gumption and incredibly thick skin. To start a home business, this is what you need (or need to learn).

Get Ready to Fail

One of the fundamental mindsets you have to acquire to work at home is that failure is a blessing in disguise. When you fail, you learn. When you fail hard, you learn something truly valuable that no book can teach you. Once you start on your work-at-home journey, you're going to be 'learning' every day.

In order to keep from cracking under the pressure, you have to develop the ability to bounce back quickly. You need to take an objective look at your failures and figure out what went wrong. It can take a ridiculous amount of courage to get back on the horse and keep riding every day.

Driven by Your Passion

How badly do you want to succeed in your home-based business? You need to be passionate about achieving that success. One way to assess your passion is to ask yourself whether you'd be doing this without the pay (partly because there may be none, at first anyway!). Passion is what helps you get through the tough times, even if these difficult times last a year or more.

Crazy Positivity

One thing that all successful entrepreneurs have is a positive outlook that borders on stupidity. No matter how bad things might get, you need to keep negative thoughts at bay. It can easily poison everything you do. The key to a positive mindset is to accept that things will work out one way or another, no matter what happens. Fortunately, positivity is something you can practice and get better at over time.

Disciplined or Willing to Try

To start a home business, you need to either be disciplined or willing to impose a little discipline on yourself. You have to set goals, formulate plans, stay on task, and stick to schedules. Sometimes, you'll get up early; other times, you'll stay up at night forsaking sleep. You'll often force yourself to work when you don't want to and with no time clock or boss urging you on.

If you totally lack discipline in any form, don't worry. You can acquire it. Lots of people have. All you need is the willingness to do so. It eventually becomes a habit.

Doing Your Homework

When you run a home business, you may have to do everything yourself. That's why you need to do your homework and learn all about the laws that regulate whatever business you’re planning. For example, you have to incorporate yourself and manage finances. Get ready to delve into all of this. It takes lots of study, but every person with a home business does it.

How do you really know if you have what it takes? There's one sure-fire way to find out. Talk to somebody who has successfully run their own home business. Have a chat over coffee and pick their brains. Don't expect them to hand you the key or show you where you'll find the magic button. Just listen to their experiences and ask yourself, 'Can I do that?'