Episode 51 - Andy Beal, author of “Radically Transparent” on Creating Your Personal Brand, 26 DIY Reputation Management Freebies and Twitter as Mentor

Andy debuted "Radically Transparent," his book on online reputation management, this March. He said writing it pushed his edge harder than anything he's done so far in his life. It shows. This is a great book, chock full of step-by-step instructions and applicable examples that culminates in a "7 Step Action Plan" to execute your strategic goals for creating, understanding, managing, growing and if necessary, repairing the online reputation of you and/or your company.

Andy balances his advice with both personal and professional wisdom. From offering a "how to develop your personal brand" with "DIY reputation monitoring" for the guerilla marketer in all of us to more business-oriented objectives including the specific steps to execute a social media-optimized press release and how to leverage a videogenic CEO.

One of the gems of this interview is Andy's explicit instructions for targeting top bloggers in your space with your story. How can you tell who the best bloggers are for your news? Which bloggers might be interested in covering you? The secret in finding your most aligned targets is through the beauty of cross-tabbing data-points. Compare blog site traffic on Compete.com. Get a vibe for "citations" and the level of respect a blogger engenders from traditional media by checking if they've been quoted via Google News. Use Google Search to see which bloggers rank for your target keywords and phrases. Check the number of in-bound links a blogger gets and from whom they get them on Yahoo! Site Explorer. Type in your keywords and phrases and sort by "Authority" on Technorati. These are just some of the ideas Andy gives for helping you get your arms around the tricky process of targeting bloggers as a media channel.

Andy does a marvelous job explaining his new service, Trackur, which is like Google Alerts on anti-oxidant, pomegranate infused martinis. (Yum!) With Trackur's online reputation tracking technology you can keep track of any web content that mentions your name. Not just your personal name, but your executives, your company brands, and even your competition. And instead of filling up your inbox with Alerts, you get an optional dashboard, filters and all kinds of trend analysis.

Twitter - what would DishyMix be without a mention of Twitter and/or Facebook?  Andy leverages the collective knowledge or "crowd sourcing" of his 2,500 followers to learn about the market, test his ideas and promote his book and blog, MarketingPilgrim. Then he wraps up the show by taking us on a mental tour of his favorite spot in Hawaii. Sigh. I can feel the tropical air brushing my skin right now.