Today's tech savvy consumer spends a lot of time online reading reviews, referencing social media and looking through countless websites before making a purchase decision. Since buying a home is one of the largest financial investments a consumer can make, you can bet they are doing extensive research to find the right person to help them through the home buying process. Are you confident in what they are finding about your business?

Building a positive online reputation for your brand should be top priority if you are serious about growing your business. Highly recognized brands like Target and Starbucks have spent millions, if not billions, of dollars growing their brand online. While it's unlikely you will ever need this amount of money to market your real estate business, it just goes to show how important your online image is.

Homes.com spokesperson Joe Sesso highlighted strategies that can help real estate professionals improve their online reputation during his "6 Steps to Building and Protecting Your Brand" presentation at NAR 2013. We've consolidated this presentation into six easy steps, so that you can use it to start taking control of your online reputation today!

1) Ask yourself three simple questions

• What does my business do the best? This will help you evaluate the strengths of your company. Sesso stresses not to do too much, rather spend your time focusing on the few things that you excel in. The best way to do this is to figure out what you're doing better than your competitors and build your brand off of those strengths.
• What does my business lack? Identifying your weaknesses may be the most difficult step of the process. Start by identifying what you can do better, recognizing the areas in which you lack will help you become better at what you do. Sesso has found that the most common weaknesses are inconsistent social media campaigns and lack of customer reviews. Consumers rely on one another for recommendations and these two resources are where they are gaining the most insight.
• What are my opportunities and potential threats? Determine what competitors you have in your area and find creative ways to stand out from them. If there's a local builder in your market, see if there are any partnership opportunities that allow you to both grow. Maybe there's a new construction neighborhood that has yet to sign an agent to help sell the homes, see if your business can fill that void. Always be on the look out for ways to extend your connections and opportunities to "one-up" the competition.