Guide to make money online!

If you’re not in control of your digital identity, the odds are pretty good that someone else is, or will be if you have any brand recognition at all.
Consider the recent example of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, whose digital doppelganger created false identities spanning a range of social media sites and even claimed he had been diagnosed with skin cancer. ESPN advised in its NFL Rumor Central, “Not real, folks. In fact, if you see an athlete with a Twitter, you should assume — at least at first — that it’s fake. Assume it’s a Twitter twerp.”

What happens to celebrities happens to brands too. Identity hijacking is prevalent in social media largely because it’s easy to set up accounts and find an audience. The potential for the reach is enough of a lure. When I recently asked Facebook’s Chris Pan who Facebook’s audience is, he said something to the effect of, “Pretty soon it’ll be everyone.” He’s not that far off.

Major brands have increasing recourses in taking charge of their social identities online. If you’re in this elite group, you have a shot at pleading your case to sympathetic ears at various digital properties. MySpace has always restricted brand pages to paying marketers, Facebook is now aggressively cracking down on branded Pages not owned by someone affiliated with the brand, and Twitter will often turn over parked accounts to the rightful tweeter upon request.

Still, this strategy doesn’t solve two issues. One is that a reactive approach could occur after squatters have already damaged a marketer or brand. The other is that for the vast majority of businesses and brands, there’s no clear rightful owner. For instance, when I think of Sal’s Pizza, it’s the Sal’s Pizza on Mamaroneck Avenue in Mamaroneck, N.Y., with the best Sicilian slices I’ve ever eaten. But there are Sal’s Pizzas in Dallas, Boston, New Holland, Pa., and Little Neck, N.Y.; the last one even owns myspace.com/salspizza. On Twitter, @salspizza belongs to a restaurateur in Limerick, Ireland. I know the real Sal’s isn’t in Ireland - come on! - but it would be hard for Mamaroneck’s Sal to make a case, no matter how many of my old high school buddies sign a petition.

So, what’s a marketer to do? Here are ten steps to follow:

1. Run an audit of where your brands are. Note the usernames you use. If you have one flagship brand that’s also your company name, then it’s easy. If you have a stable of brands, this could be a long list.
2. Prioritize the usernames. In the Sal’s example, the business may be Sal’s Ristorante but it’s known as Sal’s Pizza, so salspizza (which is also easier to spell and type) would be the preferred name.
3. Use a site such as usernamecheck.com or knowem.com to enter see if your usernames are taken across scores of sites. Also check for other brand terms. Prioritize usernames that are both memorable and widely available — that’s the sweet spot.
4. For any sites that you know are priorities, register your key usernames. If you’re not sure which sites to prioritize, start with the ones you’ve heard of.
5. Eliminate any sites that are only for consumers and are off-limits for marketers or brands. For this and the next steps, call on the most social-media-savvy person you know, ideally someone you work with closely in your company, at an agency, or elsewhere.
6. Now you need to review all the other sites and prioritize further. If you’re at a total loss, use Compete or Quantcast’s free tools to see how much traffic the sites get, and pick a threshold. 7) For any of these sites, if you don’t plan on using them right away, fill in the minimal information required, post a link back to your homepage or the hub of your social marketing program, and adjust the privacy settings (where possible) so that’s they’re visible to the smallest audience. You don’t want to set false expectations for engaging consumers, and you don’t want to publicize a brand presence that falls short of your standards.
7. Check where competitors are. One easy way to do so is look for their most obvious usernames and visit those accounts to see if they’re really competitors or squatters. If you can’t find much, run some basic searches. Consider whether it’s worth joining competitors on those sites if you haven’t signed up already.
8. Share the list of registered usernames and passwords with a few trusted colleagues so you’re not the only one with the information.
9. Don’t be a jerk. You’ll find opportunities to undermine competitors throughout this process. Be one of the good guys. Try believing in karma.

Ideally, marketers will have clear-cut strategies for where they want to be and how they’ll develop their digital and social brand identities. But there are two problems with this approach. First, for many marketers, that’s just not the case. Second, if marketers think too hard about their strategy, they may never get around to covering some of the basic steps. If you don’t have a Twitter strategy, for instance, go ahead and register the most relevant usernames you can, make the profiles private, and then return to them when you know what you’re doing.

People will still impersonate celebrities and brands. It’s a price to pay for popularity, or notoriety if that’s the case. But if you’re in these arenas for real, it takes a lot of the fun off others trying to claim they’re you.

When you’re doing article submissions, you’ll notice a field on the submission page that asks for an article summary (aka, short description).

As an author, you may not realize all the places where your article summary is used, but the article summary is a prime opportunity for luring readers to your article.

How is the article summary used?

The short description of your article will appear on the summary page of an article directory and also in Google and the other search engines in search results pages.

There are a few different types of summary pages on an article directory–there’s a summary page for a particular category, for each individual author (usually a list of your articles with their summaries), and if your article appears on the main page of an article directory a reader will see your article title and your article summary.

Is the article summary important?

Yes!

Think of your short description as a billboard along the interstate miles away from your business. You can’t see the billboard from your business, but depending on what you write on the billboard, you can effectively lure someone from the interstate to your business.

Google is the interstate and your article summary is the content on your billboard. Don’t you want to take advantage of all that traffic and direct readers to your article?

A potential reader is doing a Google search and is scanning a list trying to decide what page to click through to, and your short description can be the deciding factor as to whether they click through to your article.

What makes a good short description?

Whether you know it or not, you probably already know the answer to this. Go to your favorite article directory and look at the list of titles and article summaries.

Some are better than others, right? Some of the short descriptions make you want to read more, while others make you say, “No thank you–next!”

When you’re doing your next article submission, here are a few tips for capturing a reader’s attention with your article summary:

1) Your short description should tell what your article is about. Give specific info–what is your article topic and what info will you be providing in your article?

2) Try to lead the reader into your article from your article summary. Here’s an example:

“With some creativity you can transform your articles into multiple pieces of marketing content which can save you time, extend your marketing reach, and create more doorways for potential customers to find you. If you’re in the mood to stretch your marketing content mileage, try one of these 3 creative uses for your articles.”

This summary tells the reader what the article is about, how the information can benefit them, and what awaits them when they click through to read the entire article.

3) Write in complete sentences.

Sometimes you will see an article summary that just says something like: “Article about windshield wipers”

That’s it–end of story. Not a very compelling enticement for a reader to click through and learn more, is it?

No matter what the topic of your article, you can phrase your article summary in such a way that readers interested in that topic will say, “Hmmm, I want to know more!”

4) A short cut may be to use your intro or closing paragraph or some other part of your article as your short description. You don’t necessarily have to write your short description from scratch. Lots of times I will look over my finished article and pick out phrases and sentences that I think represent the article and would be good at luring a reader in.

Bonus tips:

• Mind your word count–Usually a publisher will require a short description to be 450 words or less, including spaces.
• Do not mention your own business or website address in the article summary, as many publishers do not appreciate that. The article summary is not your resource box–the article summary is a description of your article, while your resource box is the place where you can talk about yourself, your business, and your website.

Writing an article summary is not hard, but you do need to put some thought into how your summary will appear to your readers.

Think of your article summary as being a little advertisement for your article. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who is looking at a long list of results in Google–what sort of summary would make you want to click through and read the entire article?