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“Unless you are a trust fund baby, or maybe a honey badger, you probably care very much what people think about you and the impression that you make when people meet you.„

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 You may be a well respected professional in your community, a college student nearing graduation or perhaps a small business owner trying to grow your business and network, your future success is very likely going to be influenced to a large degree by those immediate impressions that prospective customers or employers have when they interview you or inquire about your services or product.

Finely crafted resumés and well polished LinkedIn pages are very important, but what do you look like on Facebook? or in a Google search? Have you been tagged in photos on your friends’ pages at a party where things may have gotten a bit wild? Are there posts directly attributable to you that reveal your intense dislike for another person or company? Or perhaps you have been active in web forums posting on controversial topics? Are there photos or even videos of you that show you in a less than professional manner?

 In the increasing flurry of participation in social media, and the often unrestrained sharing of personal information, photos, videos, thoughts, reactions and general commentary, some people are forgetting one critical thing…what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet.

Just about everything that you blog about, comment on, or post online lingers in digital vaults ready to reemerge at the command of the correct search term! A recent survey by CareerBuilder.com shows that 53% of employers use social networking sites to screen candidates as part of the hiring process. You can rest assured that your customers and clients are doing the same before engaging you and your services and products.

 Now, before panic sets in, there are steps that you can take to remove the unsavory items that people may be finding and there are methods to reduce the chances of again being victim of a bad online reputation. In short, you need to clean up your act using the three step process of Repair, Restrict and Replace.

 First things first, do a simple Google search for your name with quotation marks at the beginning and end to restrict the search parameters to just your name. Then try searches using any easily identifiable user names that would be a quick match for your real name. Do the same using Bing and Yahoo searches as well. If there are any questionable or negative results about you coming up in searches, then you start the first step which is repair.

Repair...

If the items are coming from your own social media pages then it is simply a matter of deleting them at the source. Be aware that this will not make the items disappear from the search engines’ caches immediately. It can actually take weeks and sometimes months before search results are updated after the offending image or questionable posts have been deleted.

Now if you are finding images, posts and references on other people’s pages, then you will need to make contact with the person that has posted the items or has administrative control over the content and request that it be removed. If you have difficulties with this, there are legal actions that can be taken to force the removal of unauthorized photos or content from other person’s sites.

You should also do searches within the social networking sites that you are active on to scan for any posts, images or references there. You may also need to take a hard look at the “friends” that you may have on your pages and whether their own public images or content might be detrimental to your goals. While you can control what you are putting out so far as your personal image, you cannot control what others are doing. Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made about removing people from your social media pages unless you have effectively segregated your networks into private and public groups.

My niece who is now a few years into her corporate career was shocked when a Google search revealed her full name on several posts on some of her relatives and friends' Myspace pages and her pictures had been tagged there with her name. While there was no harmful information directly about my niece on these pages, her friends' Myspace pages were quite an affront to decency in terms of lewd graphic content and degrading depictions of women. Her full name and her own pictures were coming up in searches and linking directly back to the other parties' pages. The sad part was that due to her lack of understanding of the power of personal branding at that time, there was no other information being found in searches that reflected her true identity, professional credentials or professional image.

Fortunately, she was able to have her name removed from the offending pages. She then deleted all the content and personal information off her own forgotten Myspace page, then she deleted that account. In short, it is a good idea to use an alias for your private social networking pages where only those people whom you know well can be part of the conversations and where your privacy settings are on high to prevent these occurrences. In addition, be aware of how others may judge you based on your friends and acquaintances even if they are just online friends.

Restrict

So now that you have completed the repair process, you take steps to prevent unwanted personal content from reaching the search engines again. This is the restrict phase. The goal here is to prevent having to do another big clean up in the future. All social media sites provide varying levels of privacy controls to restrict what information is being made public or available for searching.

Your goal is not to make yourself invisible, but rather to restrict what can be seen publicly by other parties and who can post on your pages. Once your clean up has been completed, you should lock down your privacy settings on Facebook, MySpace or other social media sites that you use to prevent image tagging by others and having your wall posts unrestricted. You may wish to restrict some photos to only friends, while leaving others open for the public. The desired outcome is to allow searchers to see that you are a normal, interesting, well rounded person with friends and activities, not some Unibomber crackpot or a exhibitionist barfly.

Replace

The final step is replace, here you are going to take a very strategic effort to replace all the images and online content that you have now removed with fresh new digital content that reflects your personal brand, that image of you that you want the world to see and the one that will make you the successful person that you want to be. This is a really important stage and one that should be done whether you had to repair or not, and it’s also the part that I enjoy the most when working with our clients at Redberry Designs, because you are going to be getting pictures taken, you will be making videos, writing about yourself and creating that dynamic online persona that reflects the image that you want the world to see.

1. You have to take the reins and show the search engines who you are. You will first go and get your own web domain in your own name, then proceed to register your own Facebook name, your own Twitter name, YouTube channel name, LinkedIn name…etc.
2. Then create a Google profile that highlights you, your skills, talents, professional achievements and then link all of your new social media networking sites and your "repaired" pages to your new Google profile.
3. Point your new web domain name to your Google profile or to the publically accessible Social Media page that best provides a complete reference, such as your LinkedIn account.
4. Post your new professional images on new Flickr, Picassa and Photobucket accounts taking care to tag each picture with your name.
5. Upload your new videos to YouTube also making sure that they are tagged with your name, and post your new articles on your new personal blog.

In no time at all, sometimes within a matter of an hour depending on the site you are posting to, the search engines will begin finding all the new content now online and those potential clients, customers, employers and even dates! will start seeing what you want them to see about you. Continue to check the progress of your clean up act every couple of days. You will have now effectively cleaned up your act using the three step process of Repair, Restrict and Replace.

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About the Author: Shafik Mansur is CEO and Director of Marketing of Redberry Services and Redberry Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business conversational marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the Redberry Services or Redberry Designs website at http://www.redberryservices.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.

It's all about the 4C's...Content - Credibility - Conversion - Customer, so let's take a closer look at the first C - Content.

This is one of my favorite sections of the valuable 4C's conversation, because if you do not get anything else out of it you need to get this part!

The truth about the web - If you are not really ready to brand yourself properly on the Internet then it is probably better that you stay off of it until you are ready to do it right because...

A professionally branded website needs to tie in and integrate seamlessly with your business growth and marketing goals.  Because as I have told my clients many times before you, your produces and your services are your true brand, you need to be diligent not to muddy and ruin your brand by putting yourself and your business out on the web improperly.

Redberry Designs provides our clients with websites that are fully integrated on the right business platform to contribute to their success... It's All About the 4C's... The 4C's explain how your website should work with your business and if it does not, then you really should not be doing it at all...

It needs to be...Fresh and Updated

It needs to have a...Clear Message

It needs to be...Creditable

The web is a visual medium!!

We have all universally had this experience...and so have your potential prospects.

You land on a website of someone or something that you are trying to learn more about either to purchase a product, service or get information from an expert.

First impressions - when you land on the page if it does not look right, not quite laid out right, graphics are off, unprofessional, not clean, crisp or clear...You get a negative gut reaction from the visual messages that this site conveys...

Now imagine for a moment that this is your site that we just landed on from our search that is triggers a thoughts of "red flags", or "questions of legitimacy", "lack of credibility" or even "questions of integrity"....Now what do you think this person's reaction will be?  Yes, you are right first if you said that "you have lost every opportunity to ever do any business with this customer forever." They will leave quickly and never return and might even advise their friends and colleagues of the same.

Anyway who could blame them for that reaction, because unfortunately there are a lot of shady people in this online "playground".  So the take-away here is that you need to make sure whatever you are putting out there as your content is well branded and lends to your credibility. You want to be sure that those prospects and customers that land on your site have the instant feeling that "Yes, I am in the right place! I found the right people to help me"... Oh and of course you reinforce this when they call you by providing your consistently great customer service.... So you have a vision for your future, but is that vision infused into your website as well your online business strategy? Well it should be!  Website design begins with great content and ends with satisfied customers.

• Win #1 Good content addresses your customers’ information needs!
  • Many people still believe that building a website is a static medium. That you just put it out there then forget it. But the truth and what they are missing is that 90+ percent of the web users of today are searching for content.  Whether it is to make a buying decision, to get information on a specific topic that they find of interest, or just to be entertained, they are looking for good, fresh and valuable content.

• Win #2 Search engines and "Social Media Mavens" love fresh, high quality content.
  • This is all about helping your Search Engine Ranking efforts. It is true that the search engines will "crawl" your site again and again devouring fresh high quality content. And the same can be said about "Social Media Mavens".  They are that set of Internet users who have not touched a "phone book" or "Yellow-Pages business listings book" in years and may not even know what I am referring to as a business listings book.
  • Win #3 achieving the first two wins ensure you own your traffic. "If you don’t own your traffic, you don’t own your online business."

What does owning your traffic really mean?  

Well, owning your traffic means that through a combination of things like your articles and blog postings, content from your social media sites and email newsletters, you are putting out valuable free content to your audience that establishes your business as a credible authority.

Giving things like for example

ü  "How-tos"

ü  Product Reviews

ü  Latest Tips

ü  History-Of

ü  Customer Interviews

 For an example we had a client who had been a lingerie buyer for many years for a major retail chain.  She had started a lingerie business selling out of her home to her friends, was ready to take her business to the next level.  She approached us to design a lingerie site for her. In our process of developing her branding and marketing strategy we suggested that she provide her online customers with how-to articles and post on a blog from her site.  This turned out to be a really big win for her that she had not really thought of before.  By putting out how-to information for mothers in a certain age group who may have teen and pre-teen daughters who are buying certain types of lingerie for the first time and giving them information on how to determine the proper bra fit and what styles of undergarment are best paired with what clothing to achieve popular looks. This is just an example of the types of information that you can provide that set you up as a creditable authority within your field.

Tying social media pages into website content strategy 

Here are my top three tips on the best way to make your social media sites work with your website and overall online marketing strategy.  This is what we have found works with all of our customers regardless of the industry, product or service that they are offering.

Tip#1: It's all about "Building a Community" and keeping them engaged!

The website tools of a well developed online community strategy are...

ü  Blogs

ü  Forums

ü  Journals

ü  Comments sections

ü  FAQs

ü  Newsletters

ü  Secure Zones

ü  Podcasts

ü  Videos

Use these tools to make it social! Don't let your business be left behind. Keep your audience up to date on your business, trends in your services, new developments, how to tricks and tips and industry updates.

Tip#2: Take advantage of the whole social media revolution going on in the web today!

Create a space for you to engage your audience where they are spending an increasing amount of their time with the things, people and places that are important in their lives.

If you have not already done so...Create a Facebook page today and use it.  Let me give you something to think about.

Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004

The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide.

Tip#3:Always lead them back home. 

Yes engage them where they are, but make sure that you are leading them back home (to your website).  Remember that owning your traffic means that you own your online business. Simply put, use your social media sites and really any external website as a tool to drive traffic back to you own website. The Redberry Designs hosting solution has a powerful blog and forum built right into our platform.  This allows our clients to keep all the search engine optimization (SEO) created from posting on the blog and forums on their site.  So we advise our clients to post a great article on their blog, and then share the link to that article to their social media sites.  That way when someone engages to post they are led back to the website; where you have an opportunity for them to see all of your products and services in a single visit, so now you own your own traffic.

So to sum it all up, when we are talking about great content it is the combination of using your articles and blog posts, your content from your social media sites, and email newsletters in a way that keeps you fresh and top of mind, keeps your relevant with what is actually going on the world at large.

It is all about content that starts with you giving them resources! Just keep in mind that it is not marketing through interruption, it is about providing value and don't be afraid to promote others who have valuable information that your audience will appreciate knowing about.  Content sharing is a great opportunity to showcase other great vendors, because you are only as good as your resources, if you have great contacts with other businesses that offer services that compliment and partner well with yours and your audiences needs, it is a great win for you and them!

Just keep this in mind...

About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur is CEO and Managing Director of Redberry Services and Redberry Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business conversational marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the Redberry Services or Redberry Designs website at http://www.redberryservices.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.

1. Has your truly unique personality all over it

2. Tells your story in an engaging way

3. Accurately sets your readers expectations

Your “About” page should highlight your distinct personality, share a quick story or two about yourself and what readers can expect in the future from your updates.

What is an “About Page”?

An ”About Page” is a single page of the blog devoted to telling  readers a little bit about yourself and the topics you’ll be covering on your blog.

Your “About Page” gives readers a contextual reference point and quickly tells them if this a topic that they will enjoy learning more and engaging with you on. This way readers make a choice to participate or not.

The key is finding your voice! When you tell your story you also need to bring the reader along.  Just think about it this way.  The stories that really get your attention are those told in an interesting way.  This can be challenging when writing, but through the use of vividly robust words and descriptions you can make your stories come alive and resonate with the reader.

Share your back-story!

Your readers will appreciate learning about why you took to blogging in the first place. So don’t hold back tell your unique story and let them see behind the curtain.

Happy Blogging!

Jannice Almansur of Redberry Designs discusses new trends and methods in marketing and the move from interruption marketing to conversation marketing, niche marketing and content marketing that are uniquely well-suited for small business.

Article below reposted from CMI Blog: 

20 Ways to Deliver Content that Engages at Face-to-Face Meetings 

By JOHN NAWN | Published: JULY 8, 2010

First, what do we know about how adults learn in order to deliver content that engages them?

Today’s meeting attendees are:

• Self-directed: Involve them in the learning process
• Knowledgeable: Leverage their experience
• Goal-oriented: Define clear objective and outcomes
• Relevancy-oriented: Learning must be applicable to their work
• Internally motivated: Relate learning to their interests.

Given these characteristics, it’s no wonder that the traditional ‘sage from the stage’ lecture format used in most meetings is no longer cutting it. Today’s attendees are looking for a more immersive meeting experience and following are 20 ideas for delivering one.

Appreciative Inquiry: A process for approaching change from a holistic framework using three core phases: discovery, dream, and design.

Body Voting: For any size group, ask individuals to stand or sit based on their answers to questions.

Buzz Group: A small group (the buzz group) breaks off from a larger group in order to generate ideas to take back to the larger group for disucssion or decision making.

Case Study: An in-depth investigation of a single individual, group, or event to explore causation in order to find underlying principles.

Critical Incident: The telling of an individual experience (a critical incident) in story format, which is analyzed for its significant contribution to an activity or phenomenon.

Fishbowl: A small group discussion or demonstration observed by a larger, surrounding group. Open fishbowls have an open chair available for audience members to cycle in and out of the conversation. Closed fishbowls don’t allow for substitutions but the entire group can be replaced by another.

Graphic Recording: A visual record of an event using images, symbols and words. Great for summarizing conversations and connections.

Ignite: Similar to Pecha-Kucha (see below) except using 15 slides for 20 seconds per slide. (5:00 minutes total)

Jigsaw: A small group technique where participants are paired with experts to learn a subset of material and then rejoin the group as instructor on the subset material.

Mashups: Like it’s musical roots implies, a collection of seemingly randon people and their ideas making beautiful conversation together.

Mini-Lecture or Lecturette: An abbreviated presentation, sometimes followed by a facilitated discussion for the remainder of time alloted.

Open Space: A flexible format focused on an important purpose or task, but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme.

Pecha Kucha: A fast-paced, fun presentation using 20 sides for 20 seconds per slide. (6:40 minutes total)

Poster Session: A presentation of peer-reviewed research information with an academic or professional focus. Prominent at scientific or medical conferences.

Simulated Encounter: An experiential format designed to represent real-life scenarios like a sales call or customer service interaction.

Spectrogram: An interactive exercise which highlights the range of perspectives in a group. A facilitator asks a question and participants line up along a continum.

StorySLAMs: Like a poetry slam but no rhyming required. Topics can be open or themed. (5 minutes per story)

Tweettups: Sometimes planned, sometimes spontaneous group meetings, think ‘Happy Hour’ for the Twitterati. Invite and R.S.V.P. via Twitter only.

Unconference: A facilitated, participant-driven conference format centered around a theme or purpose.

World Café: A conversational process based on established design principles.

Each of these presentation formats are designed to increase engagement and foster a greater sense of community among your attendees. And who can argue with that?

So when it comes to a content delivery strategy for your conference, meeting or event, keep these design principles in mind:

Promote interactivity: Active learners retain more and apply more of what they learn to their jobs. Stop lecturing to your attendees. Get them more engaged with each other using a wider variety of presentation formats.

Create (more) informal learning opportunities: Research shows that approximately 80% of what we know we acquire through informal learning opportunities, not formal training programs. Don’t leave this to chance at your meeting via coffee breaks, luncheons, or social hours. Create contests, challenges, or assignments, complete with goals and objectives, which your attendees will want to participate in. They’ll leave better prepared to implement the new ideas they’ve been exposed to.

Empower PowerPoint: A tool’s utility is only as good as its user’s ability. If you must use a presentation tool, give more thought to what you’re trying to communicate and how best to do so. For some fresh perspectives on presenting ideas or data, see http://www.presentationzen.com/ and http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/.

	Redberry Support Services, LLC offers clients a professional office assistant service that operates with consistent quality control and client care as directed by our management team.  Most importantly, our professionals customize services to meet the objectives and goals of each individual client.Supporting small business owners, by giving them more time to do what they are passionate about – Our goal is to give back to our clients some of the precious time to improve their lives and grow their businesses.

Feel free to grab a cup of tea and a cookie, put your feet up and take a look around. You'll find heaps of great content and information about my business, and there's plenty of goodies.

I hope you enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think!

Redberry Services is an agency built out of a passion for making our clients the best that they can be. We are not a template mill nor are we driven by self promotion. We do not believe in the me, me, me marketing that alot of folks practice in the online social media marketing space.

We are small, but we are equally very high touch. We care too much about getting it right to worry about fads. The work matters to us and we are not strangers to working hard for our clients. We do the heavy lifting so that you can do your core business. Our folks don't fit the mold; we are creating our own way each day. We're thinkers driven by action. We are what every small business owner needs in order to compete. Our agency specializes in research, discovery, action, and implementation. We are not trying to change you only shine a bright light on your positive features. Like any lover of art would, we are bringing to bear the creativity; technology and strategic marketing supported by a world class platform all delivered in a complete partnership driven online business solution.

www.RedberryServices.com | www.RedberryDesigns.com

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Why We Blog?

Simply because we have so much to say...We are discovering so much new information every day, that even we find it hard to keep up with it all. So we know that our clients will find the resources we provide here helpful in making sense of it all. We specialize in working with small business owners, who have an overwhelming need for high quality professional marketing and branding solutions that are budget friendly.

Every day we monitor the many channels out there with excellent and valuable content, then consolidate the best of these messages and break them down into easily understandable tips, resources and how-tos. So when we say that we do the heavy lifting for you, this is an example of what we are talking about. Our value to our clients, and really to anyone that comes in contact with us is our ability to listen, comprehend, quickly find resources that support your needs and to act as a guide in implementation. Our gift to ourselves is being a gift to others. Here in the "Berry Patch" blog we share resources and information on everything from marketing, branding, online presence development and management, social media, and website strategies that are uniquely well suited for small businesses.

Why We are in Business?

Shafik Mansur is my husband and business partner.  We started this agency out of a desire to make a difference in and to connect with our local area.  He has always had an excellent eye for new trends in art, music and is a historian with a love of great music and languages.

 I, on the other hand, tend to be a consummate workaholic. I truly get excited by creating a great plan, laying out a project and strategic plan.  It may sound a little odd to others, but to each his own.  Our concept for Redberry Designs and Redberry Services is all-about providing a comprehensive solution for small businesses.  In many ways we want to provide for our clients the affordable high quality solutions that we had wished were available to us as a small business owners.  


So here we have combined a solution that takes into consideration branding, marketing  and providing more that just a website, but more so a  full service hosting platform with a powerful completely integrated database, content management, eCommerce and email marketing solution.  We give you as a small business operator the powerful tools to level the playing field, allowing you to compete with the big guys...We put you back in control of creating lasting success!