Your company’s online reputation is vital for attracting new customers and keeping your existing ones. Poor customer service missed deadlines, and miscommunication will give you not just lower profits but a bad online reputation as well. Even if you don’t think you’ve done anything to warrant a bad review or negative article, your reputation can still suffer due to the reviews left on third-party websites. Read on to find out how to build, monitor, and repair your online business reputation.
The Importance Of Your Business’s Online Reputation
Your business’s online reputation is crucial when it comes to how potential customers see you and how much they trust you when it comes to spending money with you. A good reputation can be highly useful, encouraging more people to buy, but a negative reputation can have the opposite effect. There is so much competition that if your reputation isn’t a good one, customers will bypass you and find a business they can trust.
For example, a potential new customer or client might – and should if they are being sensible – search out reviews on your business before they spend any money with you. After all, if they’ve never used you before, they’ll want to know that you’re not only legitimate but that you do a good job and your products or services are of high quality. What would happen if they came across articles that were less than kind or reviews that talked about the bad points of your business more than the good ones? What if those negative reviews and discouraging articles were the first things that appeared when they searched for you, even before your own website? The result would probably be a lost sale.
The best thing you can do if this is the case is to work on fixing your online reputation as quickly and efficiently as possible, and online reputation management is the best route to take.
What Is Online Reputation Management?
Online reputation management (ORM) is about creating strategies and ideas that will have an influence on what information will be found when someone searches for your business. In other words, when done right, ORM can have a bearing on what potential customers see when they search for you.
The main objective of ORM is to push the positive news about your business and the good reviews to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and therefore outrank the negative information, pushing it much lower down and ideally away from the first page or two of results.
By implementing an online reputation management strategy, you may not be able to remove the negative reviews (although there is potential to appeal to them, depending on where they are posted and what they say), but you can effectively hide them from plain sight. If a customer digs deep enough, they will still come across them, but they will have seen positive stories first, which should help them make a purchasing decision in your favor.
What Is Your Online Reputation?
Now you know what ORM is and how useful it can be for your business, you need to know just what your online reputation is. Only then will you know whether it needs to be fixed or not, and you’ll be able to create a strategy that will work now and in the future so that your online reputation will always be as positive as possible.
The first thing you need to do is evaluate exactly where you are now. This is a simple matter of carrying out a Google search for your company name. You can also search for your products and services sold in your area and specifically search for reviews or reports that mention you. The first page of SERPs is where most people are going to focus their attention, so this is what you need to prioritize as well, but it is always worth looking at the first three pages in total, just to be sure about what is written about you online.
To ensure you don’t miss anything, sign up for Google Alerts. This is a free tool that allows you to input any search terms you are looking for, and when something is published that uses those terms, you will be sent an email with a link.
Don’t forget to search on social media as well. Many people like to write positive things about companies they have dealt with on their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram pages, but equally, people will voice concerns and complaints there too.
Once this is done, you’ll have a good idea of the kinds of things people are saying about your business. Ideally, these will be most (if not entirely) positive reviews and accounts of their dealings with you, but if you find there are more negative than positive articles, or that the negative articles are the first thing anyone would see when they search for you, then you’ll know something needs to be done to improve your reputation and enhance your online sales.
How Do You Want Your Business To Be Perceived?
Just like when you are creating your branding ideas and mission statement, it’s a good idea to have an understanding of what you want your online reputation to be and how you want your business to be perceived. Of course, you’ll want the perception to be a positive one no matter what route you choose, but this is your chance to align your reception online with your ultimate business aims, ensuring that your good work is cemented even further.
In order to work out what you should do and which direction you should turn in, you can talk to existing customers, clients, partners, even shareholders and investors if you have any. They will give you a much better overview of where your business is and how it is perceived than anyone else, and this will be an objective look as well, something that you as the business owner may not be able to achieve yourself.
How To Build Or Repair Your Online Reputation
You’ve put a lot of time, effort, and money into creating your business, so the last thing you’re going to want is for your online reputation to be more negative than positive and lose customers because of it. Therefore, you need to know how to repair that reputation should something go wrong and how to build it if it’s non-existent since having a good reputation is vital for success.
The first thing to think about is online reviews and your management of them. Online reviews can make or break a small business which is why it’s vital a business owner takes them seriously, whether they’re good or bad, and manages them. Never pay someone to create lots of positive but entirely fake reviews – this can backfire spectacularly, and if they are spotted, your reputation will certainly suffer because customers won’t be able to trust you. Plus, when search engines realize that the reviews are fake (and their algorithms are set up to detect such things), you will be penalized with low rankings.
However, if you want more reviews, you can ask for them. If you have had a good interaction with a customer or client, simply ask them to leave you a positive review. It’s free for them to do, and it won’t take them long. Most of the time, customers will forget or ignore the fact they can leave a good review (although if they have something negative to say, they won’t forget to leave a bad review), so by reminding them, you’re more likely to see one appear.
Managing Negative Feedback
Negative feedback will occur, however. No matter how hard you are trying, no matter what a good job you are doing, no matter what high quality products you’re selling or services you’re offering, sometimes people will be unhappy with that service, your products, or the way you’ve dealt with them, and they will automatically turn to review sites or social media or even their own blog to talk about it. This might be due to a misunderstanding, or you might have made a mistake that led to an unhappy customer. No matter what the reason or what the situation, you need to know how to manage negative feedback so that it doesn’t affect your business too badly.
There are several things that can help you manage this effectively. For example, when making a decision about what to respond, by studying for Suffolk University’s online MBA degree business intelligence concentration program, you have the opportunity to learn how to do so effectively. You also have the chance to improve your communication skills and gain even greater insights into the world of business.
If you have made a mistake, the best thing to do, even if it’s hard, is to own up to that mistake and apologize. An apology can go a long way to reducing anger and frustration, as long as you are genuine when you make it. Once you have apologized, try to find a solution that will help the customer feel better about the situation.
One of the worst things you can do when you receive a negative review online is to ignore it, even though that’s most likely what you want to do. Responding quickly and professionally is always the best option as it shows you care about your business, your customers, and doing the right thing. In fact, even a negative review can help your business when others can see how well you handled it and what the outcome was. This is why you must not ignore negative reviews, and why you must always be professional – as much as you might feel like writing a sarcastic comment or denying everything, this can look bad and may drive customers away even faster.
Content Removal
If there is a certain web article or review that you want to have removed because it is damaging your business, what can be done? It might be possible, although it will depend on a variety of factors. The first task is to search through Google’s content guidelines. If the article goes against any guidelines, you can contact Google with the information and have it removed.
If there is no violation and Google can’t, therefore, help you, the next step is to get in touch with the author or the review or article. Speak to them and see if they will take the information down; try to work out a mutual agreement that will offer a benefit to them for doing so (the benefit for you will be the removal of the information). Of course, if the author is particularly upset or feels their article is accurate, they may not be willing to remove it. In this case, if you feel your business has been defamed, you may choose to go to court to obtain an injunction.
It’s important to remember that the law says people are allowed to state their opinion, and they shouldn’t have to fear any repercussions or penalties for doing so. This is a good thing; this is freedom of speech. However, there is a big difference between writing your opinion about something and deliberately publishing false information, the goal of which is to ruin someone’s business. This is why there are legal precedents set to enable business owners to seek to cease and desist orders and similar to prevent this from happening.
Social Media
Social media is something we’ve briefly mentioned above, but it’s such an important part of your business marketing and your online reputation that it’s worth going into in more detail. No matter what you sell or provide, no matter what size your business is, having at least one social media account (and potentially more than one) is always worthwhile and is something your customers will expect these days. It’s also the ideal way to build an online reputation.
The key with social media is to post regularly and consistently and to engage with your followers and learn from any data you acquire. This is why a degree in business intelligence is so wise again. Your social media pages are just one of the ways that potential customers will learn more about your business, and a neglected page that hasn’t been posted on for a long time or comments that go unanswered – especially if they are questions – will always look bad. Even if there are no particularly negative reviews on your online social medial pages, this lack of engagement can spell trouble.
To build a good reputation, you need to commit to posting on your page, replying to queries and comments, and keep everything up to date. If you’re unable to do this, rather than deleting the profiles, you can hire a third party to manage this for you. Although it will cost you additional money, it can cement your positive reputation and will therefore be worth it.
A Positive Reputation Takes Time
Working hard at building a positive online reputation for your business is not difficult if you always put yourself in the mind of your customer. Responding professionally to negative reviews and offering to help, asking for positive reviews, and creating additional content to push your negative stories lower down in the search engine results pages are all ideal ways to enhance your reputation and to ensure that anyone searching for information about you sees the good long before they see anything that might dissuade them from making a purchase.
The important thing to remember is that your online reputation is not something that can be ignored. You must be aware of it, and you must know whether it’s good or bad. In this way, you can do what is required to either repair or maintain that reputation and grow your business because of it.
