The idea behind most businesses is to grow big and build a reputation so that you can put food on the table and take the kids to Disney Land.

The problem that most businesses have is the growing big part… and the building a reputation part.

There are two primary parts to reputation: Quality and Quantity.

Quality addresses what you say and how you say it.  Do you finesse your words, or do you prefer to say it like it is?  No matter how you say it, you’re setting up the quality of your message.

Quantity addresses where you say it, and who says it for you.  Do you write only on your blog, or do you write articles in magazines, and trade journals?  Do you write once a month, or once a day?

So if you can find a way to have a positive reputation with high quality and sufficient quantity, you’ll be building on your company’s reputation in no time.

Does a good reputation guarantee growth?  No.  But you have a better chance of growing if you do.

So if building a reputation is a matter of quality and quantity, is there a way to combine them?

I mean to really get the word out in lots of places and with high quality that customers would like to see?

Well, sure, there’s lots of ways to get your message out there, and to get build your reputation.  You can write articles every month and submit them to article directories.  That is one way, and has a reputation for being successful.

However, I’m proposing an entirely new system of building trust with your clients and reputation for your company.

Do you happen to remember the old web-rings?  They were fairly tacky, and unprofessional, but they did serve a purpose of promoting sites. It was common in several industries in the 90′s, but none of the professional industries that I can remember.

And, before I lose your trust in me, I’m not recommending that you join one a web-ring.

They were designed to band categories of web-pages together and have a link on everyone’s page that would point to the next website in the group.

I refer to this as the website on your right, since there was often an arrow pointing to the right indicating that it would take you to the next website in the web ring.

In today’s online world, link exchanges are still popular for linking sites to one another, but they are done mostly for search engine rankings, and doesn’t help promote your reputation.

There’s also the idea of asking someone to write a review of your service or product, but tends to be limited in scope and doesn’t portray your business to it’s fullest.

So how else can we build our reputations quality and quantity, in pursuit of establishing business growth?

Well, here’s the idea that we’re putting together….

We’re pulling together several of our local social media experts (4-5 is about right), and we’re asking a common question that we all have to answer on our blogs.

This can be as simple as “What’s your favorite online social networking tool” or it can be more restrictive, like “What single online social media tool do you use to promote your business, and why”.

The kicker here is that each of us will link to each other’s blog post that is answering the same question, but giving a potentially different view or opinion.  This is a great advantage to your readers that want to get a different perspective or insight into specific topics.

Not only will this build your reputation, it will build the reputation of those that you banded together to power post with.

From an SEO and SEM perspective, each author gets extra exposure from shared readership and an increase in backlinks, which can only help in search engine rankings.

Set a schedule to do this every week, and you will get to complete the reputation cycle by combining quality with quantity.

Over time this enhanced reputation will build trust, and eventually growth in your business.

Because of the efficiency and effectiveness of this idea, and it’s Win-Win strategy for everyone, I’m honestly surprised that it’s not implemented more often.

You can bet that Kettlewell Enterprises is going to be utilizing this mechanism a lot in the near future.

Go ahead and try power posting in your industry, and let us know how it works for you.