Visibility is key to establishing your brand in this highly competitive online market. Google has provided the ease of searching a single word to generate results in the millions. Searching for a product, place, data, professional, event, organization and more has never been easier. To recognize the explosion of Internet use you need only note, Google Earth has been downloaded 1 Billion Times; a single app downloaded a billion times that provides the ability to search for satellite images from around the world, the population of Facebook users exceeds 700 million and over 80% of recruiters using Linkedin to search for potential candidates!
With billions of people creating and sharing infinite amounts of information online it is necessary to give serious consideration to how you will gain visibility as a professional to manage your career or business. Creating a Facebook Page, Twitter profile and Linkedin account are the absolute basics for an online profile and although these social media sites offer a significant google ranking, the key is being “social”.
Anyone can establish online profiles or a website but gaining the necessary visibility requires a great deal of input. Expanding networks, sharing content, providing comments; all are time consuming requirements but necessary to generate a positive, professional, genuine and visible brand. This is where caution is advised. Generating automated canned invitations, generating automated pages and comments are all becoming the norm but how beneficial is it?
Career or business, your reputation will be hinged on genuine, authentic content. Without it, you could be generating a negative impression. No one is interested in the millions of automated comments, which if not blocked are simply deleted as SPAM. A small network consisting of individuals you know based on personalized invitations will be more valuable than one twice the size consisting of total strangers.
Are you paying someone to send out these automated comments? “I like to read this. You have provided great information in your blog. I am very happy to read this blog.” Be sure you know what you are paying for, Automated SEO, The Pitfalls and-Risks of Taking Shortcuts and ask for that second opinion. Is it doing more harm than good?