In my early days I was unknowingly ‘pigeonholed’ as a rebel in my corporate world and I quickly learned “perception is the only reality” from numerous managers whose agendas were either to suppress or encourage my sometimes perceived as disruptive behaviours.

In turn the people ‘affected’ by my antics often communicated their perceptions to other individuals and groups before I had actually engaged with them. As you might imagine if my ‘publicity’ was negative then it hindered and often halted my progress. Unfortunately the majority of my publicity was negative. My ‘corporate backlinks’ carried a lot of negative link juice.

The power of perception

It was only after a couple of significant career set backs that I learned that perception management was an art I simply had to master as a priority if I wanted to get ahead. As you might imagine this was not so easy, as I had to reposition my self in the minds of a fairly diverse and large group. This ‘makeover’ met with a lot of resistance and it took a long time and a lot of patience and effort to change perceptions and get positive references. But change I did and so did my fortunes.

Impressions count – it’s not what you know it’s who you know.

We all know that getting ahead in any society or business environment is substantially enhanced by paying attention to networking and making the right impression. The web is no different. Who you know and what they think of you is critical to establishing a solid, durable and lasting presence and reputation on the web.

Reputation = Backlinks

As a web site owner you have two key tasks establish backlinks from credible, related and authoritative sources and create valuable content that people will naturally link to and organically socialize on your behalf. You have to focus on building a reputation for your site and get others to spread the word. This sums up what Google wants. The more you can do this and satisfy Google the easier your SEO efforts should become. Get this right and the backlinks and the traffic will follow.

Whichever way you look at this the hard facts are it’s a lot of hard work. There are however quite a lot of things can you can do to make the work easier and get to where you want to be quicker. I will be sharing the details with you over the coming weeks on this blog.

Game changing events

A couple of events changed everything for me and there is no reason why following my advice shouldn’t do the same for you.

Being a Celebrity will get you backlinks

Now a celebrity is an individual who is famously recognized in a society or niche and their ‘level’ of celebrity status varies depending upon their field, location and marketability within their niche. For example an individual might be a celebrity to some people and to others he or she may be completely unknown. On the web you will find plenty of evidence of communities with backlinks or references to individuals or groups with ‘celebrity status.

The audience is listening

In every niche regardless of how obscure there are celebrity opportunities. The most obvious type of celebrity being the expert or trusted authority (sound familiar?) whose voice and opinions carry weight and influence. Experts enjoy more than passing curiosity they have the persistent or ‘sticky’ attention of the audience and on the net this translates into backlinks and subscribers to the experts feed (more on feeds when I discuss RSS in an up and coming post).

Whichever niche you choose you should focus on being an authority. To do this you must understand your market and over deliver on what it wants. Over delivery is a strategic mind set and is proven to work over and over again in all markets. Over delivery is always recognised and will inevitably spread the word. I will come to how and when use ‘events’ to capitalise or gain more ground from the spread of your reputation in a moment. But first I need you to think about the behaviours of what I call mainstream celebrities.

How celebrity behaviours create backlinks that Google loves

A mainstream celebrity is someone who is known by most people. These people are household names. For example, Virgin’s Richard Branson was just another CEO in a niche until he became a global celebrity after he tried to fly around the world in a hot air balloon to get the press and subsequently the world’s attention. Branson became an ‘A-List’ celebrity overnight.

It was a simply a well publicised and significant event that captured peoples attention and imagination. Branson actively and vigorously sought media attention and as a result became a trusted brand in his own right. As a result Virgin has become a trusted brand preferred by the masses in different markets.

In Part 4, I will share with you how it is possible for you to do the same

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