Do you know what people are saying about you? Determine your personal brand strategy and manage your reputation online to boost your biz!

Do you know what people are saying about you? This is important because everything you do – including the little things – can affect your company’s reputation. According to personal branding expert Liz Dennery Sanders, everything you put out there, from you personal appearance to how you communicate – both online and offline – can affect your reputation!

Liz is a branding visionary and successful entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in marketing, public relations and celebrity outreach. She is also the founder of SheBrand.com, a company dedicated to empowering other female entrepreneurs and small business owners to embrace success by building a powerful personal brand.

As Liz points out, you may not always have control over how your customers, the media or your competitors perceive you. But you can influence how you are perceived by others by having a consist and powerful brand strategy to boost your personal brand and enhance your company’s image!

In her article, What Are People Saying About You? Liz outlines the four important areas to consider when determining your personal brand strategy. Keep these things in mind when you manage your reputation online.

1. Brand Attributes – These are the adjectives or “descriptors” that best describe you. What are the qualities that you want to exude and be best known for? When you make decisions about your brand collateral, website, promotional materials etc., ask yourself if they truly represent the attributes that you have chosen.

2. Brand Identity – Visual continuity is a critical aspect of brand building. It’s important that you create a “face” for your business and that this is replicated in all facets of your image. This not only includes your logo, letterhead, packaging, website, advertising and promotional materials, but also your personal wardrobe and presentation style.

3. Brand Definition – Make sure you clearly define your brand in a way that you want others to perceive you. In one sentence (often referred to as your tagline), you should be able to eloquently communicate what you do and how you can help the other person. For example, my tagline is “I help female entrepreneurs build powerful, confident personal brands with style.”

4. Brand Message – In Politics, one of the Golden Rules is to stay “on message”. This means that everyone on the team understands and is able to clearly communicate the same brand message. A thread of continuity should run through all aspects of your business – from employees to your website and collateral materials. Whether I speak to an employee, peruse your website or receive a letter from you in the mail; I should walk away with a sense of your brand attributes and an understanding of your message.

Get more great tips on building a powerful personal brand at SheBrand and follow Liz on Twitter @SheBrandLiz

For more healthy marketing inspiration, follow me on Twitter @my_dog_ate_it

What are people saying about you online?

In the past, we’ve recommended web marketing must haves for monitoring your brand, including free tools like Google alerts. This recent article in MarketingProfs gives us Six Free Tools for Online Reputation Management! Yes, SIX great tools- and they’re all FREE.

This is perfect for those of us with control issues. You can learn how to leverage sites like backtype.com, boardtracker.com, and Friend Feed to connect with your target audience and take your marketing strategy to a whole new level!

As Dan Schawbel points out: Part of your brand is in the hands of others, so it’s critical that you monitor it before a flame becomes a forest fire.

So get busy employing these great web tool in your online reputation management program.

Thanks for the great tips, Dan. I’m looking forward to your Spring release

Additionally, we also like to employ a little tool we call - Go Google Yourself!

It’s always good to know what’s coming up on your search engine results pages (SERPs). The question that most people come to me with is: What if I see something undesirable in the search results?

There are several things you can do. You can join in the conversation with the goal of educating consumers and clarifying your business services and/or products. You can also contact certain sites and ask that any defamatory statements about your company be completely removed. It’s been my experience that ethical consumer advocacy sites will take down false and libelous statements.

What if you are unable to shake an online blemish? The good news is that if you are already engaged in web marketing best practices, you can make sure your online reputation won’t be permanently impacted by continuing to create quality content that outranks any online imperfections in the SERPs. That’s the beauty of publishing content that you can control yourself via your web site, blog, social marketing platforms, online press releases, etc.  By using these tools to control and fill your SERPs, you can preserve your online reputation and make sure that any negative associations with your brand never see the light of day!