Archive for Online Business Manager
Advantages of Online Reputation Management for Companies
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Constantly maintaining online reputations is one of the reasons why Online Reputation Management exists. In real sense, Online Reputation Management (ORM) was created to help business owners and professionals deal with bad press.
Even a large company or a small one could not get rid of the receiving end of negative publicity. Remember that the internet never fails to forget. Everything we do online leaves a digital mark that will never go away. This gives a reason why Online Reputation Management serves as a necessity in the field of business today.
See the advantages of Online Reputation Management for companies:
- It improves customer satisfaction by gaining insights from consumers about what is good and bad about their product or services. This increases perceptions of brand/ product by creating opportunities to listen to and engage consumers.
- It helps on gaining insights about their competitors and their customers’ perceptions about their products and services. This helps in the understanding of the relationship between user generated content and traditional forms of online media, e.g. news, print, etc.
- It maintains shareholder value by mitigating risk by having ears close to the ground where opinions about a business are being formed and propagated.
- They’re likely to be engaged in more effective Public Relations by understanding who the real influencers are.
- ORM takes a role in providing early warning systems for reactive and defensive PR.
- This may also help in reducing marketing dollars by learning how to reach out to customers more cheaply.
- May reduce internal costs by employing services which save time and effort, as well as money.
- ORM helps to identify gaps for products and services which can be developed for profitable niche markets.
- It gains insight into online networks and keywords and key phrases found in user-generated content, which can help to bolster natural search results about the person, product, or business.
Tips for maximizing the efficiency of your online reputation management endeavors:
1. Set up your social networking sites with your own name.
In other words, you need to create an interlinked “web” of these powerful social networks – that all point to you. This is profoundly important because it establishes your presence in the major search engines like Google. Using aliases, pen names or otherwise will not help establish your branding effectiveness.
2. Try to get the same username set up for all of your social media engagement profiles.
3. When you add any type of content to your social networking sites, keep your online reputation management plan in mind. You should add relevant materials.
Seeing the advantages of Online Management training, I can say that it’s a mistake for companies to launch an online reputation management campaign after the damage of bad press has already spread which is a mistake. Everyone must take a preventative approach to protect business.
This great post was contributed by Eleanor Marks Prior, Wordpress Whiz and Social Media maven.
Online Business Manager Certification
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With great pride I would like to announce that I have received my certification to become an “official” online business manager. The training took place from March to August under the watchful eyes of Tina Forsyth and Andrea J. Lee, two very well know entitites in the world of multiple streams of income for online businesses.
If you are interested what the certification entails, check out the website: http://www.certifiedobm.com. The training was very thorough and brought all my virtual assistant skills and my management knowledge together in one sophisticated model that will support my clients’ businesses successfully in their growth and active maintenance periods.
Tina, herself a very successful online business manager and mentor of new and existing online business managers (OBMs) is the first to officially talk about the “OBM” role. People have worked unofficially in the role of an OBM before, but Tina has defined, finalized and announced the term of the OBM for everybody to see in her book: “How to become an online business manager”.
Most people I’ve talked to read this book with a strong interest as it offers ambitious virtual assistants a fresh career opportunity with more responsibility and added value. It is also a good read for business owners who want to know what this hype about online business management is all about. Business owners nowadays more and more realise that they need to let go of some tasks in their business to grow. There is simply no other way to achieve growth.
If you look in the offline world, the brick and mortar businesses never really function with one owner by him/herself for long! They either get their spouse, their children, family members and eventually outside help into the business to grow. It’s still a bit the “do it yourself” mentality online, though. The more you grow the more you realise how burned out you get if you don’t delegate. Your business is not simply a business. Most entrepreneurs and coaches start their online business based on their passion and life purpose (and that’s probably why it’s so hard to let go and delegate!), but to succeed and share your message with the world, you need to look outside and gracously receive help from other talented human beings who love your business (almost 
) as much as you do. Yes, this is possible.
When I look at some of my clients’ businesses and the amazing things they help their clients with I know that I’m in the right job. I like helping people and when I help you, I actually help a whole lot of other people because they are able to access you with my assistance. Without your OBM and VAs you don’t grow your online business and these people miss out because you only have so much time to serve clients one-on-one.
Thanks to Tina and Andrea for all your support and help with the online manager certification. You both are an inspiration! Check out my resource page for some excellent programs Andrea and Tina created to help you with your strategies.
5 Signs That You May Need to Hire an Online Business Manager, by Tina Forsyth
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Wondering if you should hire an Online Business Manager?
Here are 5 tell-tale signs that it may be time for you to add an OBM to your team.
- 1. Your business is growing while your own free-time is shrinking.
- I’m betting you started your business to create more freedom in your life yes? Freedom of time, money and choice. Let me ask you – as your business grows are you actually working more or less time?
If you are on the ‘working more time’ side of things you certainly aren’t alone… I can’t count how many times i’ve talked to business owners who have shared how they are actually working more hours in their own business than they ever did in their ‘old job’.
However it doesn’t have to be this way… as a business owner you have the ‘freedom of choice’ to be able to make changes in your business, including hiring the right help to get stuff off your plate.
This is exactly what an Online Business Manager does – their main focus is to free up the business owner so that they can focus their time and energy on the things that only THEY can do in their business.
2. You are having to turn away opportunities because you are so busy!
This is a sad by-product of the first point. Are you so busy that you can’t take advantage of the opportunities that are coming your way? Do you ever find yourself saying “I would love to do X and know it would be a great new revenue stream… but I simply don’t have the time for it right now… ”
Not only can an Online Business Manager help free up your own time to be able to explore these opportunities, they can also work on bringing some of these opportunities to life for you! An Online Business Manager is very focused on implementation, and can help manage the process of creating new revenue streams in your business from concept to launch.
3. You are still doing things the same things you were doing when you started your business.
Remember when you first started your business and had to wear many hats? You were the cook, hostess, waitress and busboy (so to speak, hehe.) Now that your business is growing, are you still doing the same things as you were in the beginning? Are you still updating your own website? Are you still managing your shopping cart? Are you still answering all your customer service emails?
As your business grows your role will (and should!) change. An Online Business Manager can lovingly ’slap your wrist’ when it comes to you doing some of these things… helping you let go of some of the ‘old’ stuff taking up your time that gets in the way of you growing your business.
4. You have a great team, but find yourself frustrated by them always ‘bugging’ you.
This is actually a very common complaint from business owners – they have a great team of VAs, webmasters and such. And yet they are constantly frustrated by how much their team needs from them. They feel like someone is always tapping them on the shoulder with a question or request. The thing is, your team does need someone to manage them. They need someone who they can turn to with questions, to get what they need to complete their projects quickly and on time.
And if there is not an Online Business Manager on the team who do they turn to? You – the business owner. As a colleague of mine so eloquently shared: “My VAs were doing a fine job – it was ME who was unhappy managing them.” Most business owners really don’t enjoying being managers, and i’m guessing this may be the same for you. An Online Business Manager becomes the key point of contact for your team – all questions, requests and such go to the OBM instead of you.
5. You are stuck at $X revenue and can’t seem to get past that point!
When you find yourself stuck at a certain point in revenue there is usually one thing getting in the way – you! My business partner Andrea Lee calls this the quarter million dollar speedbump (can be more or less than that of course) and a big part of the solution usually requires you removing yourself from the day-to-day of your business.
Start to ask yourself as you go about your day – do I need to be the person to do X? (with X being the many things you spend your time on each day.)
Chances are many things on your to-do list could be passed along to someone else on your team. And an Online Business Manager can help with that process by delegating and managing those tasks on your behalf.
Ready to hire an Online Business Manager?
Tina Forsyth is the author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with Your Clients and Yourself. She writes and consults in advanced online marketing and business systems for business owners and their support teams. www.OnlineBusinessManager.com
