Copyright (c) 2009 Alan Gillies

One key factor that can significantly advance your business is credibility. Being credible so people and the media view you as a highly knowledgeable expert in your domain adds to your overall success. Business consultants can help you to establish credibility by delving into several essential aspects of your business.

In business coaching, credibility is defined as someone who is seen to be consistently trustworthy. Business consultants can help you form this impression through communication, knowledge of a field, work accomplishments, perception, good values and personality.

In a competitive marketplace, credibility distinguishes your business from the rest. By using business coaching techniques and enhancing your communication, you can promote your business in a credible way to increase sales.

There are several elements towards obtaining credibility, which are taught through business coaching. A business coach or executive coach can work with you to solidify your competence, integrity, sound judgment, communication skills, sensitivity, persona and likeability.

Executive management training teaches the necessary communication skills so you can properly position yourself as an industry expert. Furthermore, a business coach or executive coach can offer assistance in these five areas:

1. Brand Yourself. With the help of a business coach or executive coach, you can promote yourself. This process begins with business coaching and involves establishing trust based on your credentials. As you proceed through executive management training, you’ll learn that your resume, solid communication skills, a positive self-image and confidence are all key points for building credibility.

2. Make Connections. Executive management training emphasizes the need to be more accessible to the public and media. According to business consultants, you can put yourself in the public eye by networking. Join business-related groups, chambers of commerce, trade associations, or other professional groups. Use your management and communication skills to volunteer for a nonprofit or a neighborhood group. Meeting others beyond your business circle, says business consultants, enhances your credibility and lands connections that could lead to great things.

3. Expand Your Knowledge. In any business industry, things constantly change and evolve. Keeping current and being aware of issues that impact people encourages credibility. A business coach or executive coach can turn your knowledge into opportunities where the media will seek you out as a credible source for an interview.

4. Marketing. Knowing how to market your business to portray credibility will get results. Business coaching works specifically on marketing principles that work to establish credibility.

5. Communication. How you talk about the issues in your industry gives you credibility. You can learn the necessary communication skills from a business coach or executive coach. Good communication is necessary, especially for media interviews. Both verbal and nonverbal communication is addressed in executive management training sessions, as is proper dress and presentation.

As business consultants say, there are quite a few perks to being a credible source. Your customer base will increase as more people become confident in your product or service. Your business will receive more media exposure, as the press turns to you as a spokesperson in your particular field to complement a news story. Good publicity, says executive management training experts, leads to increased sales.

In recent years, blogs and social media monitoring have become a fundamental part of the press office operation and many PR agencies’ bread and butter services.

As social networking has matured, companies need to engage proactively to ensure their brands are effectively supported.

Traditional media such as magazines, newspapers and TV channels have increasing numbers of journalist-written blogs as part of their online presence, meaning a top tier of blogs are seen as being just as influential in the media landscape as their e-zines and print media counterparts. There has also been an increase in the number of business-led social networks, business users of blogs and micro-blogging tools such as Twitter and Google-owned Jaiku, and multimedia social sites like Flickr.

However, a huge portion of the blogosphere and social media landscape is not professionally produced and individually these sites do not have huge audiences. Collectively though, these smaller outlets comprise as much as 99 per cent of the social media landscape and together form a powerful force that the PR industry is looking to harness. As the majority of blogs and social media sites contain personal content written in the first person, viral issues and stories can spread quickly. The sites connect people and when issues spread virally across social networks, they become big news for organisations that they affect. This is why tracking blog buzz across the whole of the web is critical for reporting on brand image, online coverage, and building a picture of customer perceptions.

An example of how effective a viral campaign can be, was when an online grass-roots campaign was formed on the social network Facebook. Protesting against an overdraft charge that the bank HSBC was imposing on recent graduate accounts, thousands of students joined forces online through a viral Facebook group which generated massive media attention, and forced a u-turn at HSBC. Within just a few weeks of the group launching, the bank scrapped the overdraft charges.

Over the last year, the fact that blogs impact a company’s brand image online has become more established. Marketing, PR and communications departments are increasingly exposed to the impact blogs have on a brand’s reputation, whether that’s negative coverage of a product or an online petition or a campaign across social networks. As this issue has gathered momentum, companies have realised that blogs and social media need to be actively managed not just monitored.

Some progressive brands are already doing this successfully. US retail bank Wells Fargo for example has a team dedicated to responding online to bloggers’ issues and complaints in order to increase positive sentiment around the brand online and reduce the amount of negativity that might emerge.

What caused the need to move from monitoring to engagement?  Early adopters have led the charge. And the masses have followed. We are seeing social media’s evolution in the business ecosystem move from early adopter to mass market status and web tactics are rapidly becoming better understood tactically and strategically as part of the PR mix. The challenge is to turn the opportunity into action.

Social media marketing is the very effective tool for marketing your products. There is no other alternative marketing strategy for social media marketing. Hence social media marketing is indispensable for any online business. Social media marketing needs a different approach when compared to the other online marketing strategies. For a social media marketing campaign to be successful, it is very much important to understand the tactics that work better. This article is all about the effective social media marketing tips.

1. Creating unique profiles in Social Networks

Social networking sites like myspace and facebook have great importance in business promotion. This part of social media marketing can get lots of traffic to your website along with building credibility among people worldwide. The social networks are now crowded with the online marketers and hence it is important to highlight your profile in the crowd. Though there are lots of customization options available in the social networking sites itself, it is always good to get some professional help for advanced customization. These social media marketing professionals will be able to provide you will very unique profiles which will get noticed by the social media crowd immediately.

2. Don’t try to sell anything in the Social Networks

Many social media marketers just advertise their products through their social media profiles. This is a wrong move. Social networks are for connecting to people and not for advertising the products, Hence your main motive in the social networks should be to connect to as many people as possible. The traffic to your website and the credibility to your services/ products will eventually increase as your networks grow.

3. Don’t leave any social media profiles unattended

Active participation is a basic necessity of any social media marketing campaign. Just creating some profiles in a handful of social media sites doesn’t do any good. You should post some content to the social media profiles frequently and make them look lively. Always remember the fact that Google crawls the profiles that are frequently updated. Moreover, the visitors of your profile will love to see many updates. You should also involve in activities like participating in polls, posting in forums, making comments and connecting with the people of similar interest.

Social Media marketing is a time consuming process and for the moment of truth it is really worth the time you spend. If you don’t have enough time for social media marketing in your tight schedule, there are professional social media marketers who are ready to help you. To the added advantage, these professional social media marketers can analyze your website and create the best marketing strategy. By paying them a nominal fee, you can just sit back and relax, watching your network grow along with the web traffic and business.