Enhance Your Online Profile

Have you ever engaged in the slightly embarrassing but ultimately satisfying game of Googling yourself and your business? Admit it, at some point we have all indulged in a little research to see how we come across online, trawling through the myriad references to our products and services that the key search engines can provide. When we started out in blogging, our name was unknown on the World Wide Web, with the exception perhaps of a few book reviews or testimonials.

Now, however, as experienced bloggers, we can expect a huge number of search returns when we input our name, brand identify or product set.

In a way, this activity can be put down to company research, while it may seem slightly egotistical or silly to Google ourselves, it actually serves an important purpose for business bloggers. Knowing what your projected online image is across the key search engines online is important when it comes to making sure that your brand is on track, and you’re achieving success as an internet entrepreneur.

How not to promote your online brand

In today’s world of social networking and communication, it’s possible to publish every single element of your day to day life online, with true abandon. People going out for too many drinks with a Smartphone are able to detail their indiscretions and frivolity at the touch of a few keys, leaving their customers, followers and colleagues in no doubt as to what they got up to the evening before. This penchant for sharing all elements of our life can have a disastrous result upon business and brand, leaving you exposed in moments of weakness in ways that can have a long-lasting impact upon your online brand identity.

Because of this, it’s important to make sure that you safeguard your reputation online, just as you do across all other areas of your life. Your customers don’t want to know the details of your inside leg measurement, nor do they probably want to scroll through lurid images of your last holiday abroad. Keeping your personal life personal is critical when it comes to developing your business integrity and safeguarding your professionalism, no matter how tempting it is to blog or Facebook about what you and your friends got up to on a particularly entertaining bachelor or bachelorette night.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said in favor of sharing online. Letting people know about your new range of products, service developments or other initiatives is invaluable, and there is no better place to do it than on the World Wide Web. Business owners who make sound decisions about what to publish end up generating greater readerships on their blogs, as people tune in to find out about their industry and learn more about company activities and launches.

The way in which you present yourself and your brand through your blog can make or break your business. Because of this, it’s worthwhile setting up a strategic approach to your blogging and social networking, thinking each time that you publish something – ‘how will my customers perceive me in light of this new communication’?

If you choose your updates wisely, you’ll be able to sit down, the next time you Google yourself and your brand, with a real sense of achievement as your business penetrates the online community and begins to make a real mark on your chosen field of expertise.