Online Reputation Management For Dummies

Deepening Your Relationships

Social media dynamics are all about relationships. Social media have a more face-to-face feeling than any other form of media because you’re expected to converse one to one. It’s about a million times more intimate than a noisy infomercial blaring out of a TV set. Because of that back-and-forth, there’s a lot of growth potential.

The following points show how you can maximize that potential to improve your relationships with evangelists — and everyone else — online.

Listen intently: The more you pay attention to what people say about you, your brand, and your industry, the more intelligence you have to make smart decisions about what you will do with your business. Listen to the way people describe their problems so that you can articulate answers to those problems in a way that they can better understand.

Make sure people “get” your message: The best way to make sure people “get” your message is to share a compelling, results-oriented story that makes your point. However, this isn’t the only way.

This morning, I read an excerpt from a CNN interview with the founder of Klout. The interviewer asked him whether it was true that the whole idea for the Klout platform came out of the founder’s love of burritos. It had, sort of, and that’s just the kind of ...