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Managing your image on the web: Create successful branding solutions online Tami Lancut Leibovitz
Today, we are celebrating the 24th anniversary of the first website ever. The actual first website, created by Tim Berners-Lee that also invented the first ever web browser cannot be found on the web anymore, but that’s how it looked like:
Now it’s hardly looks like a Word document, but it’s the beginning of times that changed our lives forever. It’s almost impossible to imagine our lives without the World Wide Web, it re-shaped society and the way humans and companies interact with one another. It also transformed our communication channels and options.
Most people often confuse “World Wide Web” and the “Internet”, a similar but two very different things. The internet is the actual mechanism of the system of networks, the platform for the communication. The World Wide Web is one of the services that exists on the networks and allows us to use web browsers and applications, an assortment of websites, each with its own address which called a domain.
When the World Wide Web became popular, companies and business entrepreneurs slowly moved to create their identity on the web. The web started as a place where people use avatars and never expose their identity. The social networks, led by Facebook, connected reality and technology even more and created a parallel universe between our reality and the online reality.
Nowadays, every business person or company has to have a web presence in order to be a competitive business, a web site and social media presence is a basic tool for success. More than that, our web presence is important and acute to our business survival and it is critical that what we demonstrate our abilities in a format that would transfer our personality, our values and our goals and reflect who we are in the business world – or in other words, our own personal brand.
Our image should be uniform across the board, the same rules for image in the real world, works symbiotically on the web. Let me walk you through the basic rules to create our image on the web in a way that will represent you best, because…
“You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression”:
- Professional image: That part is actually easier sometimes on the web than in reality! Professional image is everything that sends out your message of professionalism, skilled craft or product quality. Your picture on the site, the finishing touch and most importantly - the user experience in the website. Having a professional website says a lot about the person or the company, it send out a message of excellence, efficiency and expertise, a strong foundation to a message of professionalism. With a great picture, a strong quote and a smooth, slick user experience, your brand gets a boost. Users surf the web all day and enter websites constantly, the eye of the average user can easily spot a website that is beyond the average, a standard of professionalism brought by an expert.
- Visual Image: If you created your own brand or part of a company, you already know the importance of a logo. A logo represents who you are and what you stand for, the shape of it, the colors of the logo and its style - classic, contemporary or modern. Also, the picture you choose to represent yourself shows the world who you are – are you a casual CEO, a classic suit & tie manager etc. Are you smiling on the picture? Are you with people? Do you have a serious face on? All those indications sends a message about you and the type of business you do.
- Verbal and non-verbal: The way the website looks, is the way you look to your crowd and clients. The colors, the font, the choice of format and template, all sends a non-verbal message. The content and the uploads you choose for your website creates your language and delivers your verbal image. The quotes you choose, the keywords you insert, all have a great deal in the way you look to others around you.
- Behavioral image: The way you interact on the site and on social media, shows your interaction skill, your ability to engage, your listening skill and your availability, those all provide information about who you are to the visitors on your website. Facebook just added an extra parameter to business pages, checking the speed they answer questions and messages on the page, measuring how responsive you are and rating you for it on the top of the page, It shows you how different social networks value the behavioral part of the page on top of the original design and verbal messages on it.
You are your website and your website is you, it should be a direct channel of communication that serves you to develop more business opportunities, strengthen your brand and increase your financial gain.
If you are just starting your business and building your online presence and image, take into account the option of hiring a professional to consulate with about your site. If your site and networks are not up to par with your actual work and career, it can only hurt your business instead of doing just the opposite.
Today, 24 years after the first website ever launched, the web’s influence and business power is constantly growing and expending, join the web movement and gain superior momentum for your image, brand and business!
If you have any question about net etiquette, AKA “Netiquette” or any other etiquette issue, please feel free to visit the question section on my site and leave me one - http://bit.ly/AskTami or write me at tami@tll.co.il, I will be happy to help!
For more about social, political and business etiquette, please visit my website!
the web picture have been taken from : bit.ly/1gM0JC0