Build your reputation

Posted September 28th, 2011 / By Christopher in Go Further, Personal Brand

your online rep is everything

Want to create a name for yourself, grow your readership, gain the attention of those that inspire you, and become influential to other sin your niche?

If you’re taking blogging seriously and hope to take your blog to the next level, I imagine you do. If this is the case, then there’s one thing you need to focus your energy on. It’s something most bloggers overlook and under appreciate, yet it’s the one thing that sets us apart from the rest of our communities.

Reputation.

This little aspect of you as an individual online is everything in terms of connecting with your community, whether that includes the blogging community or another community. Your reputation is how the community views you and your work.

Without a reputation, you’re invisible to your community.

Here are a few ways you can build a positive reputation as a blogger — there’s an endless variety of reps out there, and which you chose to create is up to you, but there are the following suggestions are designed to help you build a positive rep no matter what niche you’re blogging in.

• Dedicate yourself to your topic completely
• Explore new ground
• Provide solutions that your community needs
• Spend time researching your topic
• Know your stuff and provide information others haven’t provided.
• Avoid getting trapped in the echo-chamber (re-hashing the same information as everyone else).
• Connect with people in your comments section … give each commenter the individual attention he or she deserves.
• Connect with your community socially (ask questions, RT their content, compliment them)
• Address your community’s concerns (listen to their questions and answer them in your posts).

Hopefully these either helped you or sparked some other ideas regarding your own reputation and how you might spend your time building it. What’s working for you so far? Any other suggestions you’d like to throw in here — feel free to add your comments below.

cc image by Randy Stewart

Christopher Rice is a publisher, entrepreneur, and abstract artist in Santa Monica. He’s a founder of Wearabl, editor of CreativeBlogger, and creator of Gumball. Friend him up at Twitter | Google+ | Facebook | Pinterest |