Drive Home With A New Online Presence

Gone are the days of door-to-door salesmen. Now we’re in the era of virtual salesmanship, where first impressions are often established online. A car salesman may still practice the same techniques he did fifty years ago, giving away turkeys with each vehicle purchased during the holiday season, but nowadays, if such marketing campaigns aren’t broadcast on social networking sites, those turkeys may rot in the company freezer.

There are some practical methods your dealership can implement to ensure your online reputation matches the good (honest, patient, friendly) appearance that your staff promises to uphold in person. First, you should look up your brand on search engines. See what sites potential customers are visiting, and if you find something questionable or offensive related to your dealership, take action to remove it immediately. In some areas of the internet, removal is impossible. Centel Media™ negative suppression services can fix such problems by rearranging the search results so your dealership's name isn’t linked to slanderous material.  

As a business minded individual, it’s important to promote and encourage customer interaction. This includes testimonies, reviews and comments. Think along the lines of those old-school suggestion boxes, only replaced by the instant power of social networking tools such as Facebook comments and Tweets. Centel Media™ can help your dealership establish and build a following on your social networking site with Social Media Optimization.

Even though your social media pages belong to you or your dealership, don’t forget that anything you write will be viewed by the public. When you are working to build an online reputation, be careful about posting personal, political, or religious messages that are inappropriate for a professional business. Centel Media™ has a highly knowledgeable staff of writers to create blog postings for your website and press releases.

Take advantage of all that Centel Media, the top-rated online reputation management company, has to offer you and your dealership. Bring your business into the fast-paced and ever-growing reality of social media with Centel Media™ online reputation development tactics. These services will increase foot traffic to your lots and lead to a positive growth in what matters most -- car sales.

Maintaining a good online reputation could lead any car dealership to a highly profitable fall season.

Expand Awareness of Your Business With Wikipedia

All businesses should take advantage of the tools available to them online. Wikipedia can be an enormous asset, encouraging knowledge of your brand. However, creating a page can be difficult and tedious.  Centel Media™ can create content on Wikipedia that will improve public awareness of your business.

Wikipedia gains half its traffic from search engines, and appears on the first page of results in 95% of all Google searches. It’s a great opportunity to increase traffic to your site, but remember, not all businesses end up on Wikipedia’s pages. Take the time to assess the state of your business and the market you're after, because it makes all the difference to the success of your Wikipedia page.

First, it’s important to understand why people visit Wikipedia. Nearly all Wikipedia users go to the site with a desired topic already in mind. If they’re looking up your business, then they’re already familiar with your brand name and are simply looking to find more information about who you are and what you do. Wikipedia is a good way to raise awareness of your business, but it shouldn’t be used by companies with low visibility. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be a celebrity or big-time corporation to use Wikipedia, it just means that your market needs to be accessible, something within the public eye, or else it won’t be noticed.

It may seem that Wikipedia favors large businesses, but in reality it just favors better-known companies. If your online presence is low, your best course of action is to build up a reputation over the Internet before committing to a Wikipedia page. Creating a ‘better known’ company or brand can be taxing, but with the help of a reputation management company, it’s possible to gain a wider audience. After constructing a stronger foundation online, a Wikipedia page can then be utilized to its full potential.

Centel Media™, the leading online reputation management company, works with individuals and businesses alike to create content for Wikipedia, along with other social media outlets. Centel Media™ writers create Wiki pages with legitimate sources and provide links in order to give your potential customers and clients more information about your company. You may be hesitant about creating a page in Wikipedia, and feel your other social media sites are enough, but keep in mind that if you wait, your competitors may beat you to it. With today’s tough economy, it would be wise to take any opportunity to get ahead. Centel Media™ team of trained professionals will help you create an official Wikipedia submission that can draw more attention to your brand.

Wikipedia is a great resource for business development. However, it may be daunting to start a Wiki page on your own. Maximize your online potential by using Centel Media’s Wikipedia Page Submission services.  

Blog Your Way To Success

There are many reasons to start a blog. Maybe you want share your experiences, write reviews or promote your brand. No matter the reason, writing original, creative content will help improve your blog and earn a greater presence online.

Creating a blog worth reading is the easy part, finding an audience that will actually read your blog is what’s hard, and it’s not going to happen over night. The first step in effective blog creation is finding a blogger who is knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. This may or may not be you, but in either case, it’s crucial to have a blogger with these prerequisites. Ones that do, find it much easier to write interesting posts.

When creating your blog, keep in mind that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  Use the tools available to you. Research other, successful blogs similar to your subject and take notes on the aspects that make them accessible and popular.

Just going through the motions of writing won’t make your blog successful. Your content needs to be interesting, something that will lure people into coming back. The easiest way to ensure a solid, long-lasting blog is to use a theme that has a wide pool of information to draw from, so that your material never grows stale.

Write your blogs with authority, be persuasive, but don’t act pompous or overconfident. Doing so will only alienate you from your reader. Address your audience with the respect they deserve and be appreciative that they are spending their time reading your blog instead of the other 100 blogs on the same subject.

The main goal of your writing should be to continue providing value to your readers as time goes on. Most blogs are momentary, they focus on fashion, breaking news, gossips or trending gadgets. That type of writing draws a big crowd, until the moment is over and their blog becomes obsolete. Don’t focus on that type of content style, redirect your focus on creating a blog with substance, something that contributes not only to your brand but your industry or interest as a whole.

If your blog is lacking and you need help, there are services available to do the work for you. Centel Media™ offers blog creation service at an affordable price.

Blogging is a great way to gain recognition from the public. If you know how to write blogs effectively, you can reach out to new people and expand your audience.

Delta Needs A New Dawn

Among the top 100 acclaimed businesses, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are tied at number one for being the most recognizable and respected. The major American airline, Delta, is considered one of the least respected. It’s not the difference in industry that contributes to this gap, but the way these companies have handled their public affairs in the past.

PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are two of the largest corporations in the world. Both have a long history and, over the course of time, have gained experience tackling crises. But experience hasn’t helped Delta, they too have a long history. So why is Delta the one with the poor public image? The brand does have a fairly high level of brand recognition, but the overall perception of the company remains negative. Well, it boils down to how their public image is reflected in their marketing campaigns.

One aspect of proper online reputation management is through the use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. While Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have a solid standing online, Delta, on the other hand, is lacking. The inactivity of Delta in social media isn’t the only reason why customers dislike the brand, but it could be a tool they can use to improve their image. Social media may provide the jumpstart they need to redirect their brand’s online reputation.

Social media sites have made it possible for large corporations and brands, such as Coca-Cola, to connect with millions of people on a daily basis. Making the most of these sites is crucial for success in any industry. If a company wishes to survive today’s tough market, then they must grab at any chance to build their online presence.  

Taking advantage of social media can be the difference between having some publicity and having strong publicity.  Brand reputation management companies, such as Centel Media™, offer social media optimization to any online group or individual. In order to optimize a client’s social media page, Centel Media™ web experts can promote you or your brand, helping to attract the necessary number of likes and followers needed to grow an audience on Facebook and Twitter. With a newfound fan base, you can publish content to social media sites and feel confident that it will be seen.  Once a following is established, it’s up to you to create strong, memorable content that can positively influence how you’re perceived online.

Establishing a reputable and recognizable brand name is now easier with the help of social media sites. Brands lacking in customer satisfaction should reevaluate their presence online.

4 Tips For Online Success

In our daily ‘feed’ of social media, there are endless lists of tips and advice, shortcuts and reminders that we bookmark to read later, we skim over the headlines to gather the “gist” of the article, and never really give it a second glance. We see tips on subjects like “how to organize your closet for maximum space potential,” or “the best advice when meeting your partner’s parents.” These are topics you may read out of slight interest, and never really take seriously. But when it comes to managing your online presence, especially if your livelihood depends on it, then it’s key to take these few tips into consideration:

Remember -- It Always Starts Offline

Complaints towards your brand name originate in the real world. Even if you’re a virtual company, and all correspondence takes place online, the root of the problem, and the fuel that keeps it burning, is always the person behind it. Things that are aired online, are aired by someone who experienced something real and are expressing it in a virtual way.

Stay in the Loop

Whatever the problem may be, don’t ignore it!  As they say, ‘knowledge is power.’ If you don’t stay in the know about your own brand and your own reputation, how are you supposed to defend it if and when it comes under attack? How are you supposed to address your audience if you don’t have all the information they have? Do your research, and keep up to date.

Know When to Respond

As with the previous tip, don’t ignore! You should always respond, but don’t underestimate the importance of proper timing. Jumping into a conversation or comment thread out of anger will accomplish you nothing. Let it settle so you can look at it objectively.

Promote Yourself

Last but not least, promote your name. Be proactive and diligent about spreading the good word about your brand. Don’t be shy or embarrassed about tooting your own horn, if you don’t do it, no one else will.

These are just four things you can do to manage your online reputation, but there are countless others. Centel Media™ is a company that offers solutions to all your online reputation management needs, no matter how deep-rooted the issue may be.

The correct steps to online success are doable, but not always easy. Keep these tips in mind  when approaching the management of your reputation.

Don't Be Mugged by Mugshots

It’s tough to be brought down by negative images after all you’ve done to improve your personal or professional reputation. There are dozens of websites specializing in and promoting such images, whose sole purpose is to perpetuate mugshots and other slanderous material centered around any given individual, whether they are guilty of a crime or not.

For many affected by sites like these, options are limited. It’s not as simple as contacting the webmaster and requesting they remove the negative image. Some websites will flat out refuse to take it down. Others will charge astronomical fees, claim they’ll take it down, and then continue to display it anyway. Companies and individuals have gone to great legal lengths to have negative images removed, only to hit an impasse.

Images are more dangerous than written articles or reviews, simply due to their accessibility. They can spread quickly over the Internet, seen by a countless number of people in a very short amount of time. Any random individual can take your image and use it to promote negative publicity about you or your brand. These images need to be handled so interested parties don’t see you for something other than what you truly are. Often, when you use a search engine to research your online presence, you tend to find images that are copyrighted or used illegally without your authorization.

Images used without your permission can have a very large impact on the way people view you or your company. Centel Media™ offers a service in negative image suppression. Our team of experts will suppress any image for you, and all you need is access to the image in question. Our loyal employees here at Centel Media™ will investigate the image and make sure no one else has the rights to use it. Then, we will contact the person who stole your image and work to take the image down.

The professionals at Centel Media™ also create original images for you or your company to use in order to create favorable publicity in hopes of reaching more potential clients. We post fresh, positive images, and work to ensure they can be seen first in keyword searches. With the help of Centel Media™, the negative images will be suppressed and buried under images you choose to properly represent your interests.

Inappropriate images can severely and negatively impact your online reputation. Centel Media™ offers you suggestions and solutions to remove these images from the public eye.

Weather the Storm of a Negative Online Reputation

There is no way to remove negative reviews about your brand once they're uploaded online. However, there are ways you can handle them. If you want to improve your online reputation, you need to know the appropriate response to such situations and how to contain them. With the right tools, you can take back control of your online presence.

You can’t stop the rain from falling, but you can use an umbrella. The same mentality applies to your online reputation: you cannot stop bad reviews, but you can protect yourself. The range of damage that can occur from negative online reviews has just as many possible variations as a brewing rain storm. It could be one small comment that takes little effort to contain, or it could be a flood of negative reviews that take thousands of dollars and months of hard work to repair. This widespread damage isn't unusual, it’s a result of the growing number of platforms that allow people to express their displeasure online.

The first step in damage control is measurement. Measuring rain can be as simple as placing a bucket outside on a stormy day. The same is true in monitoring your online reputation, it’s as simple as being involved, collecting the data, and observing what is being said about your brand. Join industry-specific social networking sites. While Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are absolute musts, industry-specific sites will be just as beneficial.

Unfortunately, you may have the strong desire to fight for your reputation, taking strides to battle back against negative reviews. While it's important to respond and confront negative reviews, doing so the wrong way may come off as unprofessional, which can then encourage further activity around that particular situation, and thus push its ranking higher on search engines. The best way to discourage and combat negativity is with positivity.

Centel Media™ offers services in all areas of online reputationmanagement, including negative review suppression. To decrease the influence of such reviews, Centel Media™ works tirelessly to create an abundance of positive reviews to outshine the negative.

There's no way to stop any negativity from reaching you or your business, but Centel Media™ can provide you with options to prevent damage and rescue your reputation. For more information on negative review suppression, click here.

To recover an online reputation, you must tread lightly. Know which actions  you should take and which you shouldn't.

Courtney Fisher,

Assistant Press Secretary

Centel Media™