Set up Google Alerts and do regular searches to track your brand’s reputation online. You’re never too small to start building your brand, defining for the public who your company is and what sets you apart. Here are 25 practical, economic ideas for strengthening your image and letting people know you’re out there! Be Authentic. Rule #1,online or off, is to be genuine with business associates or potential clients. Be Unique. Establishing a solid brand is about communicating what distinguishes you and sets you apart. Be Consistent. Choose a Memorable Name. Guest Post. MORE >>

For collaborative projects, however, I find google docs to be very helpful. The "living" nature of a google doc means you never have to worry about version control. Blogging is hard work. You must consistently create and publish great content. Today's post is about saving yourself time and stress by implementing a simple editorial calendar. Sure, it's going to require a little work up front, but - trust me - you'll thank me once you're up and running. The Editorial Calendar - what is it? How do I create one? Sweet. Painful. Tragic. Unnecessary. Panic sets in. MORE >>

Passive conversation discovery, guided by the algorithms of Google and Bing and their analysis of vast amounts of social media data, may be the way we discover what conversations are happening that may be of interest. Much like Amazon’s book recommendation systems which looks at “people like us&# and sees what they are interested in, Google and Bing may soon be able to accurately detect and show specific conversations that are most likely to be of interest to each person. Google Buzz is one of the first, but Bing is likely not far behind. MORE >>

Use a tool like Google's Keyword Tool to see how much search volume any given keyword has. Again, the Google Keyword tool is great at providing suggestions. If you are running a program like Google Analytics, you can easily see which words people are using to get to your website. For instance, I was reviewing Google Analaytics for one of my clients this weekend, and they were getting traffic for a number of keywords. Something easily overlooked in content creation is the importance of keywords. As a starting place, consider these five tips. It depends. MORE >>

1) Create a Google spreadsheet for your calls to action. To help, we created a Google spreadsheet in which we listed all possible CTAs sorted by topic. Like many people, I’m motivated to get organized and be more productive in 2013. At the Content Marketing Institute, one of the things we work on is a daily blog. Even if you are not publishing 365 posts per year, your blog probably takes a substantial amount of time. And, you want it to result in the best possible outcome for your organization. All of our posts have a call to action at the end. 2) Get a handle on key posts. MORE >>