Building An Online Reputation
For years now many have noticed that quite a few people have made a name for themselves via the world of the internet.
From young teens discovering success with viral videos on popular sites like Youtube to people of all ages achieving full-time, hearty incomes via blogging, the internet has quickly become a vital tool for those seeking notoriety and success making money on the web. 
I’ve noticed on many occasions during my random web surfing that loads of people are trying to duplicate the success of others by literally copying their ideas to attempt to achieve the same popularity and wealth.
But is there success to be found in being a copy-cat? I’d have to say no.
This particular article is being written to encourage readers to be creative, fresh and innovative. Sure, you can take some one else’s idea and build upon it, but don’t copy it word for word, video for video and expect to see anything come of it. It doesn’t work that way.
There are some solid ways to increase your presence online as being unique and I’m going to share a few with you now.
First off let’s take a look at a few basic, but crucial, keys to building a positive online reputation.
These basics are:
- Being Original
- Being Creative
- Being Consistent
- Being Timely
These four points are probably the best rules of thumb to LIVE BY online. Let’s take a look at each one in further detail..
Being Original
This is by far the most important point of the four mentioned above. If you don’t learn anything else from this article, REMEMBER THIS.
Being original, or unique, is crucial to finding true success in making money on the web and also to keeping your viewer or reader’s interest in you or your website.
This especially applies to making money online with blogs.
Most people know what they are looking for and if they land on your website and see the exact same content they’ve seen a hundred times before on other pages they’ve been on before you can bet your sweet ass they’ll make use of their web browser’s back button!
Before you even sit down to write a post or article, upload a video or publish a photo of anything you need to go ahead and do a thorough search on the topic it’s related to.
Visit the links you see on the first page of the search results and compare their content to yours. Take not of similarities, differences and think of ways that you can provide more for the reader than they already have.
Remember, be unique. If you really want to build an online empire, you have to be better than the other guys. And in order to accomplish that you have to study your competition.
This leads smoothly into the next point on the list…
Being Creative
O.K., you have your topic or basic content picked out, now what?
Jazz it up by being creative.
As I mentioned earlier, analyze the search results you found that are relevant to the content that you’re about to publish. Really take notes on how it is presented, the mood it sets for you and even how the graphical or text content is placed on the page.
These may seem like tiny details to pay attention to but they could very well be the things that you can improve to provide better content for readers with.
Now that you’ve broken the content down think of ways that you can present your content differently. Ask a friend or relative to review it. See if they feel that it’s attractive, interesting and inviting.
And if you don’t tell them that the content is something you’ve created this proves to be a much better test as you will get a much more honest response from them when they aren’t thinking about if they’ll hurt your feelings or not!
Being Consistent
This is another major point that you need to follow. When I first started blogging and writing articles I fell short in this area and this is a lesson that I quickly learned and went on to perfect and prosper from.
You can post a single video or article and get lucky and manage to receive thousands upon thousands of hits on it but eventually that traffic will die off.
In order to keep an interested audience you need to consistently produce quality, relevant content tailored to their interests.
For bloggers this generally means posting articles three to four times a week, sometimes more. For those who produce videos or podcasts it can be once or twice a week that will keep viewers coming back for more.
As mentioned before, I didn’t do this the right way when I first started but now that I am following these very guidelines I have increased my readership by more than 5 times normal. That’s a significant increase for a simple change.
Consistency is powerful.
Finally the last point to building a successful, online reputation:
Being Timely
Being timely is something that will have your readers drooling in anticipation awaiting your next piece of content.
What does it mean to be timely?
Being timely means being one of the first to produce content on a particular subject, usually a new trend or information that hasn’t been addressed much yet.
This isn’t an easy task to say the least. It requires a lot of time and effort in research to pull this off. One thing that I’ve found to be very helpful is to keep up with the current trends and news that are relevant to your site’s content.
So, if you author a blog about dancing, keep with “hot”, relevant news like who the current top dancers on popular T.V. shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” are.
Being on the first to present breaking or current news in your niche can dramatically improve your website traffic and get your website name to places you can’t even begin to imagine.
KEEP UP WITH YOUR TOPIC.
