Building a ‘presence’ for your company is key to attracting clients and influencers; it’s also key to attracting buyers if you’re in the market to sell your business. But many small business owners are guilty of keeping their business a secret, or of merging their business and personal reputations, or both.  How can you separate the two?

Sherry Goldman recently sat down with Nina Kaufman, host of the popular business podcast Cash Out Big to discuss how business owners can build an identity and presence for their business that is separate and distinct from their own personal identity and reputation. Read more about it here or download the Podcast from iTunes.

Here are just a few of the tips Sherry shared with Nina:

• Create different online identities and accounts for yourself and your business. Write content in the third-person case (as in “our Sherry Goldman spoke at XYZ event ….”) when posting as your business. Key words like “we” and “our associate” will convey you have a team, whether the team is comprised of employees or strategic alliances.
• Make sure your brand matches your reputation. While you control what your brand is, your reputation is based on how others perceive your business. Consistently check on your reputation. One way is to do Google searches to see what others can find about you and your company.
• Use Google Alerts to stay on top of your game. Set them up for your business, yourself, and even your competitors.
• Be part of the conversation. Check out competitors and key influencers in your industry and follow their posts and conversations. Share their information with your audiences to demonstrate you are connected and involved in the conversations.
• Listen as well as participate. As you listen in, you have the power to change the way people think about and interact with you, and you can use this to your advantage to build up the reputation you need to cash out big with your business.