Online Reputation Management – What is it?
Never before has it been so easy to publish content on the internet, making it unbelievably simple for disgruntled employees, customers or even your competitors to spread negative reviews about your business online. Online Reputation Management is the process of ensuring that this is counteracted and that a potential customer is given a positive impression of your business when carrying out research on search engines such as Google as well as review sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor and Google Places. When they search for your business by name, the results that are returned may well contain each bad review or comment made online, especially if your business has been operating for a number of years. We all work hard to build our business and it’s reputation, and with the ever-increasing popularity of the internet and it’s ease of access via social networking and smart phones, we must be vigilant and take a proactive approach to sustain that good reputation.
In days gone by, if someone wanted to tarnish your name the only real way to do so was to contact the local or national press which could leave a business devastated and there was no online reputation management equivalent in those days. These days that same power is literally at the fingertips of each and every current or ex-employee, customer or competitor and the effects can have a massive impact on your business.
Online Reputation Management – The new PR?
Online Reputation Management has become as equally important, if not more, than the traditional methods of Public Relations. Negative publicity and derogatory comments on blogs, forums and social media networks and more importantly, review sites, can appear in the search results when a customer is simply searching for your website address. All it takes is for one unhappy customer to post a negative review about your business which can then spread dissatisfaction exponentially across the web within days, if not hours, such is the nature of the virtual world. Search engines pick up the most recent information relevant to a specific business and put it at the top of search results where it is easily visible to potential customers. We never needed to worry about this before, until now. No business has an absolutely squeaky clean customer service record as it is impossible to please everyone all of the time, but just a single, highly visible complaint can damage your hard-earned business or personal reputation, which will only get worse if you fail to take action and implement some sort of online reputation management campaign.
Online Reputation Management – Stop the bleeding!
If you are in the hospitality industry you will probably relate to what I am about to say. Unfortunately, your industry is the most targeted industry for bad reviews. Please get in touch for a brief and frank discussion on how I can reduce the damage already being done with an online reputation management campaign tailored to your needs.
Many business owners, infact let me rephrase that, the majority of business owners are completely unaware that there are negative reviews online about them, and those that are aware simply do not know who to turn to to fix the problem, they may not know anyone that specialises in online reputation management. Instead of hiring someone to improve their online reputation, they more often than not do the only logical thing they can think of, creating fake positive reviews. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. When someone creates a review on sites like Google Places their IP address and other personal information is recorded and stored. If they then go on to create multiple positive reviews, Google picks this up and you can say goodbye to having any sort of online presence. You are likely to have that business blacklisted and the website removed from search engine results permanently. I’ve seen it happen and it’s not a position you want to be in and without a proper online reputation management campaign it is an easy trap to fall into. The online world is evolving every day and you never know how heavily you are going to rely on having an online presence in the future. Taking the chance and creating fake reviews certainly is not worth the risk of losing that completely.
Online Reputation Management – Your Prescription
The best way to ensure your online reputation is as good as it can be is by hiring someone to look after your online presence. At Fife SEO, I help well-meaning, honest business owners like you to repair their online reputation.
I have a number of systems and methods to implement a rock solid Online Reputation Management campaign and ensure that someone searching for your business will find nothing but good reviews and thus increase leads and/or sales for your business. All of my methods are above board and completely ethical. I have a 5-step system that will ensure not only that people will take the time to give you a review of your service, but also that the reviews will only be good ones and you will be completely in control of each and every review by:
- Putting a system in place for collecting reviews. Basic principles of human psychology are used to ensure each review is good.
- Showing you how to build a personal relationship with your customers and build a database for future marketing.
- Ensuring that you dominate the first page of Google for business name searches – putting bad reviews down the rankings to page 2 and beyond.
- Set up systems to monitor the entire internet for any mention of your company name and taking relevant action on any negative comments. A monthly or weekly report will be carried out.
- Once the review situation is resolved, some SEO work will be carried out to ensure your website is ranking high for several of your chosen keywords.
One last thing to remember – More people are using the internet every single day for research before they buy a product or service, I have done it myself when booking a hotel amongst other things and I’m sure you have at some point too. People want to know in advance what kind of service to expect, and this alone has a massive impact on their decision making process.
Get in touch for a quick chat about your requirements and lets project a positive image of your business and give potential customers the easiest decision possible.
