Relationships are so important-- they are really the backbone of your business. A significant part of relationships is building your reputation.

Unfortunately, there is so much scamming and spamming around the internet. It is getting harder and harder to get visitors to your site to even part with an email address. No one is going to part with their hard earned cash without a healthy amount of trust being established first.

So, building your reputation and branding yourself is the first step. It takes time and effort to do this. It is an ongoing process that requires you to think all the time and be very aware of the ramifications of your actions. The social media properties are a good place to start.

Of course, you want to capture attention. Sometimes you will even hear other marketers recommend creating a controversy to get noticed and speed matters up. This advice works if you think things through. Just make sure the attention you get is the kind you’re aiming for. All the work you’ve put into building a good reputation can be gone in a second. Human nature is such: that all the good you’ve done before gets forgotten the minute you do something that looks like it is bad, and all anyone remembers is the misstep.

Recently, in a forum I and a lot of other marketers frequent, a newer marketer made an ill advised post detailing a scam method of getting business. When another poster pointed out this fact, he tried to pass it off as just an idea. I suspect, he was looking for attention and hoping to have a hot thread in the making. This was a very public way of crashing and burning. Of course, he can just make another account alias and start over.

But, time is something you never get back, and he wasted any time he spent trying to make himself a name there with that alias.

So what is a good way of getting attention? Giving out good content and advice--Answering questions is a good way of doing this. If you don’t have enough knowledge to trust yourself in the advice department, you can pose the questions and keep the conversation going by adding to the discussion.

You are not only reaching out to others but giving knowledge back to them. The act of giving builds trust...the quality of the content you give attracts attention and makes others take notice of you. Both grow over time improving your reputation and relationships.