The online world is growing at an unmatched pace. This presents both opportunities and hurdles for businesses. Business owners should not underestimate the impact of negative online reputation. Re-think the matter over with a long-term perspective.
A business brand is very valuable. In today’s world, the internet is being used for a wide range of reasons. From entertainment, job searching, and even basic research. The web allows any brand to be re-evaluated and examined.
It’s with this is in mind that we have compiled this guide to help you build and safeguard your online reputation. More so, you’ll also be in a better position to take advantage of online reviews in improving your brand’s image.
Many businesses get damned by client’s indictment. You don’t want your business to fall into this position. It’s with this in mind that I intend to highlight the importance of online reviews. Majority of the customers rely on reviews to guide and inform them about their buying decisions.
The marketing world has evolved from push marketing to pull marketing. Pull marketing refers to when other people talk about your products and services. The traditional push marketing was about businesses talking about themselves.
How you build a lasting reputation as you mitigate the effects of shattering reviews is key.
The First Page of Google
Understand that the first page of the search engine plays a significant role. Especially on the trajectory that your reputation will take.
Majority of the internet searches thrive on the first page. Few people will consider checking the second page.
You thus need to avoid having a bad review on the first page, this can wreck your business. Also, if you happen to have negative reviews on the first page, this is not the end of the world. We recommend that you burry with more positive reviews about your business.
Take the Initiative to Control your Online Reputation
When you don’t like what’s in the news about your business, create your own news. As a business owner, the ball is in your coat. Take the initiative to promote your business in a positive light.
If this happens, people will search for you on Google and find the positive reviews. This extends to the social media platforms, as a rule of the thumb, Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn. They should all have accurate information about your business.
This is how you reinforce your brand name. Always update the web with fresh content about your business. At this point, you can consider hiring the expertise of outside experts who will guide you. We have sophisticated systems out there that can modify internet search results. The devastating reviews can be out-searched and populated with positive search terms.
Much of the work should be in the Back-end
To meet all the requirements of an authoritative site, much effort needs to be done in the background.
Strategies such as increasing user engagements come in handy. You can use back-links to promote your business and the amount of traffic that you get. The same techniques should be used to highlight the best business offers that you have.
The first thing you’ll need is to have a team of professional journalists and bloggers. This teams will maintain high-quality content on your sites.
You’ll also have to create mini-sites that allow your customers to moderate and manage the reviews. Also, make sure that you use keywords to capture the glowing reviews and push them to the first page.
Handle Bad reviews with a Winning Attitude
Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to eliminate negative reviews once they’ve been posted. This might be the case even though the reviews are untruthful. A disgruntled employee or dishonest competitor might say terrible things about your business.
In such cases, you don’t have much power. We all know that most review sites have malicious, false, biased, and credible reviews. We highly recommend that you don’t respond to hateful attacks. This is because you’ll end up perpetuating the fire. It’s also advisable to avoid soliciting reviews.
Run a Good Business
Understand that the best thing you can do is to run a great business. This will go a long way to ensure that your reputation is intact and safeguarded. This is the best defense.
Take a look at the quality of your products and services. Ensure that the value you’re providing is great. Then you’ll not have to stress about the reviews and you’re reputation.
Get On Social Media and Brand Your Page
Understand the importance of networking at all fronts. This is especially effective on social media. To connect with your customers, make a point of listening to their views on social media.
This will give you the necessary feedback to make the needed changes. It will also improve on your products and services. This will improve your reputation.
Having decided on what platforms are best for your business, the next thing is to brand the pages.
Claim your Businesses Social Media Profiles
Claiming your business’s social media profile ensures that no one steals your identity. If this happens you’ll end up getting a lot of damage to your reputation. Conduct a thorough search on all social media sites and take control.
Research About Your Audience
Take the initiative to find out where your clients spend their time on social media. This varies depending on the niche of your business. You don’t want to preach to the wrong crowd. Customize your social media campaigns to the target audience.
Diversify
Your marketing campaigns should be spread out across all social media platforms. From Slideshare, Pinterest, to Twitter and Google+. All these platforms should be linked and branded in a similar fashion.
Be Active and Take Ownership
Frequent comments, posts, and replies will maintain a healthy reputation. Make sure that you respond professionally and quickly.
Create the impression that you do care about your audience. If confronted with a negative comment, respond well to criticism. Ensure that you offer sincere apologies if you make mistakes. The way you handle negativity will play a big part in how people judge your business.
Strive To Be an Authority in Your Niche
Create content that’s strategic and high-quality. The content should engage, educate, and inform. If you have quality content, you will be in a position to create a stellar reputation. Anytime someone searches for your business online, they’ll see the positive content.
Make sure you publish consistently. Whether you’re publishing videos, press releases or blog posts. Do this on a regular to ensure that you maintain a positive digital reputation.
Get Your Attention
A great strategy to get noticed is blogging. This will not only get the attention of the audience but also search engines. Blogs are ideal for optimizing search engines.
They’ll increase your rankings and you’ll end up standing out. Also, make sure that you publish new and fresh content on a regular.
Monitor Your Progress
Understand that this is a marathon, not a race. It will not happen as fast as you’d expect. But with consistent effort, you’ll get there.
Curate a diverse and all-around reputation management plan. Like any other marketing plan, make sure that you make the necessary adjustments.
Monitoring can easily be done from the comment section of your blogs. It’s also a great opportunity to engage with your customers. Handle both the negative and positive comments in an impartial way.
As you work on aligning your online reputation, you’ll need to determine the review sites that play the biggest role. This is where you need a system that can monitor what people are saying on this sites.
The reputation management tool functions as an automated service, this saves you both money and time. Investing in a review management software platform that can automate most of the functions is cost-effective.
There’s no doubt that checking your reviews manually is time-consuming. It’s also not effective, especially when negative comments need to be addressed immediately. We’re all aware that negative reviews have the potential of frightening prospective clients.
As a buyer or prospective client, you often have to choose between two high ranking competitors. In such cases, you can agree with me that a single negative review from one seller is enough to avoid them.
I bet you can now see where I’m coming from. This is why you need a reputation management software platform like MyReviewEngine.com. It will ease the whole monitoring process, thus enabling you to react fast to the negative reviews. This will go a long way in building a powerful online reputation.
MyReviewEngine has lots of benefits some of which include:
- The platform allows you to invite your clients so that they can review your business.
- It will also allow you to gauge the customer’s intent before the reviews are posted.
- The platform will allow you to increase your sales by earning lots of 5-star reviews.
- It also offers daily review monitoring, email notifications, detailed reporting, and an Auto-sharing feature for the good reviews to social media.
These are just some of the benefits that you’ll enjoy while using this platform. Feel free to start your free trial here https://www.myreviewengine.com/start-now.