Negative search results for your business or brand name can hurt your business. That’s not a surprising fact. Imagine if your clients were searching for your business and got to land upon some pages having a discussion on a bad customer experience. Sounds too common right? But how can you handle negative reviews and search results? What do you do when one or two angry clients, or even a competing business, are ruining your business’ reputation online?
Usually, you turn to reputation management companies. But we’re here to tell you that you have more control over your online reputation than you think, and we’ve got some amazing reputation management tips and tricks to help business leaders control and improve their online reputation. The first step is to start thinking about online reputation management and what it means. Because it’s not all about fixing disasters when they happen!
Online reputation management is about keeping relevant, useful, and authoritative information about your business attached to Google searches for your brand or business, and about ensuring that negative information is downplayed, corrected, or otherwise dealt with. Think of it more as internet PR than negative review removal: it’s an ongoing process, not a one-off crisis-response plan.
Claim and Manage Your Brand Name
Did you know that some websites keep profiles of your business or brand which are just sitting out there on the internet? You can use websites like NameChk.com to quickly get a list of these. And once you have a list, you can set about claiming them and managing them. Doing so can ensure that search results for your business name turn up high-quality information on your business, rather than simply small blog reviews or competitor rants. It’s important to focus on the accounts available from high-quality websites, because it’s not uncommon that searches on these websites can turn up over 300 entries! Focus on websites like Google+, Twitter, Quora, Tumblr, Youtube, Yelp, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Facebook, and more.
Repairing Your Business Reputation
It’s almost impossible to keep an online reputation spotless over time, and one of the most important reasons businesses consider utilizing reputation management is because they got a blemish. If all preventative measures are out of the question, it’s time to take action! In general, if you control where a negative review is posted (such as it’s on your blog or facebook), you can simply remove it. If you don’t own the venue where the negative review was left, send a request to the website owner. If that’s impossible, you should always respond to the criticism with a sincere apology. Readers of the negative content will be far more likely to respect you after reading if it seems that you made a genuine attempt to respond.
Monitoring Your Business Name
The first step is always to be aware of what’s being said about your brand! Right from the get-go, you should put up a Google alert for your business name and/or any high-profile individuals within the company. After that, set aside time weekly to look over possible avenues, and do a quick search for these same terms on Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Bing to ensure that you’re well-aware of where your brand currently stands.
Provide Fantastic Customer Service
Prevention is the best medicine; and that’s not just true in the healthcare industry! Providing great customer service which puts your clients first will dramatically reduce the appearance of negative information about your brand. Apologize when you mess up, give discounts, accept returns, and do whatever it takes to keep clients happy… even if it’s at a loss! Remember, an unhappy client who posts a lot of negative reviews will kill far more sales than the money it takes to simply resolve their issue. So always have your eye on the ball, and do what must be done to create happy customers.