AboutOurWork Blog
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The millions of moments before “the moment” are what make the moment.
Think. Plan. Execute. Create.
Win.
John Jantsch of the Duct Tape Marketing blog wrote a piece a month or so ago called the 7 Most Important Tactics for Any Small Business. One section of his article discussed the importance of claiming “vast amounts of real estate” online in order to increase presence as a small business, even if you don’t intend to grow large followings on the various networks.
John’s article inspired us to create the “Small Business Social Media Monopoly” board, a take on the classic game of Monopoly. We designed the board to be a guide for small businesses looking to create profiles on the various networks in order to grow their online presence.
Feel free to download and use this board as a handy real estate buying guide… enjoy!
We’ve all done it. Call it egosurfing, vanity searching, egosearching… we’ve all searched our own first and last name to find out to see what pops up. Whether we’ve done it for entertainment purposes or to manage your personal rep, it’s actually smart to do so from time-to-time to ensure that you maintain a positive personal image online.
When it comes to your business though, it’s critically important to know what’s being said about your business in the press, by your customers, and even your competitors… in real-time.
There are several tools that can monitor your business and its brand - for a price. Luckily Google has a handy yet often overlooked tool that’s been around a little while to help you monitor your business online called Google Alerts. And the good news, it’s free.
Google Alerts is a monitoring/notification tool that monitors the web 24/7 for whatever keyword or phrase that you give it and emails you whenever it finds that phrase in a new web page, news story, video, or blog.
If you’re a small business, here are the top phrases to monitor:
Your Company Name: If you don’t monitor anything else, monitor your company name. You need to know when your name is mentioned, whether good or bad - immediately. If a customer praises you, thank them. If your competitor says something negative, address it.
Your Competition: It’s always good to know what the competition is up to and setting up an alert to track them is a good way to know what they’re up to in real time
Your Business Partners: Create alerts for your key business partners (customers, vendors, etc.) Whenever an alert pops up for them, be sure to let them know… good or bad. It’s an easy way to show that you care.
Google Alerts is a simple yet powerful tool to help monitor the reputation of your business online. It’s free, takes less than 5 minutes to set up and once you do, it’s in the background, only emailing you when it finds a phrase that you give it. Keep in mind though, Google Alerts only provides content from Google’s own search engine.
Check it out today. Google.com/Alerts.
Creating a free company profile for your business is the first step to creating a presence on AboutOurWork. Just pick a theme and in 5 minutes and 5 clicks be up and running on AboutOurWork.
Each of our themes are search engine optimized, mobile optimized and hand-crafted by one of the worlds leading interface designers. Simply put, they look great. So great, you may want to even use your Company Profile as your website. Luckily with AboutOurWork you can do so quickly and easily. And we’re the only network that allows you to do so.
Want to learn more about our themes or ready to create a Company Profile for your business? Visit us at www.aboutourwork.com. Your business will thank you.
I was in a board meeting yesterday that was extremely interesting.
The founder came to the meeting with a number of ideas on how to improve growth. The ideas ranged from stuff that he personally wanted to see fixed & improved combined with a number of ideas that came from the user data they had…
We’re excited to share the latest at AboutOurWork. From the homepage to our Company Profiles, you’ll notice quite a few changes with AboutOurWork. The biggest change is MatchUp™, our business-to-business recommendation engine.
What is MatchUp™?
MatchUp™ is the first and only B2B recommendation engine built to automate introductions between businesses. MatchUp™ identifies and introduces your company to potential client, vendor, or partner opportunities that you never knew existed - until now.
Think “eHarmony for small business.”
MatchUp™ - intelligently and automagically connecting you with other businesses to help your business grow.
How do we participate in MatchUp™?
MatchUp relies heavily on the information provided in the Company Profile. So, the first step in participating in MatchUp™ is to create a Company Profile if you haven’t created one yet. Once the Company Profile is complete, your company will automatically be included in MatchUp.
We’ll be rolling out MatchUp™ over the next few weeks so be sure to complete your Company Profile today if you haven’t already done so.
But wait, there’s more!
