Cormac Reynolds of VelSEOity’s 5 Tips to Improve your Professional Business Reputation

The Coronavirus pandemic might have spawned the new work-from-home economy, but it’s time you get used to it since it’s most likely not going anywhere. Your online presence should reflect your professional reputation now more than ever.

If you take the 5 simple steps discussed here with founder of VelSEOity Cormac Reynolds – then  you can enhance how you are perceived and portrayed. These are the sort of personal reputation management tips you can put into action today. Enjoy!

1. Google Yourself

Try this: Open a second browser and type in your name while in “incognito” mode. The incognito browser will give you an authentic prospect experience without cheating. When a prospect hears about you from a referral for the very first time, chances are he/she will google you and/or the name of your business before doing anything else. You want to know what their search will yield.

Assess the search results. How difficult or easy is it actually to find you. Do you appear on the first page? How about the top 3 results? What are the websites that came up? Is it your LinkedIn profile, company website, or something different?

Search is not the only result you should review; head over to video and images to find out what other information or details you can find online about you.

You need to ask yourself, how satisfied am I with the results? If you like them, great. If you don’t like them, however, the good news is that the Internet can be edited. It requires just a bit of persistence and patience. To do this, post additional content by and about you so that Google can index it.

Tips:

– Own your name in the literal sense. Buy yourname.com if you don’t already own it and redirect to your professional bio or website.

– Wear a digital name tag. If you weren’t so satisfied with your image results, take your most recent, high-quality headshots and rename them with your name and that of your company and repost them everywhere.

2. Use banners

Head over to your LinkedIn profile while still in incognito mode. What do you see? Is it a smiling face that’s looking back at you or a weird-looking silhouette? What about a banner? The great thing about custom banners is that they add personality and depth to your social media profile.

Tip: Head over to canva.com to create a custom banner. As an idea, you can use your company’s logo, a lovely landscape, a stock photo of a boardroom, and/or design your own.

3. QC Your Website

Find an hour that works next Tuesday and block it off. Then review your website in that allotted hour. The navigation should be first. Then read the text. Do you see any typos, out-of-place spacing, or misalignments? Next, look at the images. Do they tell a story?

If you have any “coming soon” pages, be sure to hide them. Assess your brand consistency: what fonts and colors are used; are they consistent enough? What’s the copyright year on your website? When was the last blog post? What else could be updated?

You should also not forget about mobile. Repeat the QC exercise on your phone. How does the website appear? Is the font too big or too small? How’s the spacing? What about the navigation? Today most searches are conducted on mobile devices, so while mobile might not seem as important as desktop is, it is actually more important. To ensure a great digital impression, shore up your mobile website.

After completing your list of preferred edits, send it to the website team. Give them 1 week and schedule a call for the following Tuesday to review together.

4. Record a Company Video

A company video is a great way for prospective customers to “meet” you especially during the pandemic. It has the power to showcase your personality and professionalism and demonstrate your experience.

You don’t even need to make your videos long; 60 to 90 seconds should be enough. Video can be effectively used to introduce who you are, what you do, and how you can help clients. Finally, post the video on your social media profile, website, and YouTube. Doing that ensures the video is indexed with Google and therefore improve your search results immediately.

5. Get Social

Social distancing might have shut down most in-person events, but there isn’t any reason for that to prevent you from connecting.  Today, much of the networking has moved to video conferencing and social media, which presents the opportunity for engagement without the need to commute, meaning more opportunities and time for connecting digitally.

Tip: Consider joining small business associations, LinkedIn groups, as well as local networking groups. You should also not forget to engage: connect with them on social media platforms, and comment, share, like, and interact with your new connections.

If you take the 5 steps discussed above, you will greatly improve your searchability. This will ensure that you are noticed online and enhance your professional digital reputation as an expert when it comes to retirement planning.

Tags:
, IPS, Wire, English

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Hafiz Sarmad