We’ll discuss 3 simple steps you can take to make sure you’re aware of your online reputation and the best way to address any issues you may have.
Step 1 – Tracking Your Online Presence
First you need to be aware of what people are saying about your business online. Here is a quick list of things you can do every week to regularly monitor your online presence.
1) Search – Do a Google search for your company name, your URL and any possible misspellings. Note any negative reviews and where they are ranked in the search engine results. Tip: Include searches for phrases such as “your business review”.
2) Social Media Searches – Do site specific searches for your business on Facebook and Twitter. An easy way to do this is by typing into google:
Your business name site:facebook.com
Your business name site:yelp.com
3) Search Review Websites – search for your business name and URL on review sites such as Yelp and Kudzu. Also search the local business section of Google Plus for reviews.
4) Sign up for Google Alerts – Google Alerts allows you to track mentions of keywords, such as your business name, this will help you monitor any new information that is published on the internet about your business. It’s completely free and can be setup to send you emails as mentions happen, daily or weekly.
5) Use A Service – Consider using a paid service such as BrandsEye or RelevantNoise to track your online presence for you.
Step 2 – Address Issues
The next step is to address any negative feedback you find.
1) Read Reviews – Read all (positive and negative) reviews you found about your business online. Make sure you note any issues that need resolving and where you found them.
2) Respond – Use this opportunity to thank people for positive reviews and constructively respond to negative reviews.
3) Deal With Complaints – Respond to complaints by apologizing and trying to repair the problem. It won’t be easy to turn every complaint into a happy outcome, but at least future customers will be able to see that you are committed to fixing problems and building relationships with customers.
Step 3 – Repair The Damage
Now that you have addressed any issues it’s time to repair any damage that may have been caused. The aim here is to increase positive customer engagement with your business, remove false information, and move negative search engine results further down in the rankings.
1) Contact Websites – If you find any false or unnecessarily vindictive information contact the website and request that it be removed.
2) Connect Through Social Media – Engage with your customers through social media and help them get to know you and your business. Provide high quality, informative, and interesting content and try to encourage interaction and feedback from your audience. This isn’t the time or the place for sales pitches nor to post dry, business-related information. This will only further disengage your customers and do more harm to your business than it will do good.
3) Create Content – Create great original content to help displace negative content in search engine results. Use all of your available web properties, website, Facebook, blog, etc. to add content to. Keep adding content at least 3 times a week until the negative reviews have at least been removed from the top 30 search results.
4) Stay On Top – Usually, bad things have a way of spreading very quickly, and it’s possible that negative information can damage your business if you don’t handle it efficiently or don’t handle it at all. Set aside 1 or 2 hours twice a week to monitor your online presence and you should be able to prevent negative reviews and feedback from becoming a problem for your business.
5) Encourage Customer Reviews – Provide some form of incentive for customers to leave a review of your business. You’ll find that only people who are going to write something positive will take you up on this offer and it will help dilute any negative reviews.
6) Consider Hiring a Reputation Management Firm – If you’re finding some negative feedback impossible to get away from then consider hiring a professional reputation management firm. Assessing, responding, and repairing negative feedback can be a time-consuming task for any business owner. A Reputation Management Firm will take all of the hard work out of it for you and also have the knowledge and expertise to make sure you get results.
