Your Guide To Online Reputation Management
It used to be that your business’ reputation relied solely on word of mouth. And although word of mouth is still absolutely an important thing to generate; now, it’s really not what people pay the most attention to when choosing a business to give their money to. In 2019, it’s all about online reputation management. Online reputation, when you first hear of it, can seem vague and maybe even a little bit confusing. What does it mean? Why is it important? How do you incorporate it into your business’ digital marketing strategy? If you don’t know what to do, need a refresher, or don’t even know where to start, we are here to help — Top Rated Local® to the rescue. In this blog, we will give you the rundown on what it takes to make your online reputation work for you.
What It Is
Reputation management is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a way to control how current and potential customers, competitors, or clients see your business. However, it goes far deeper than just that. Reputation management is vital for the success of any business. Nowhttps://www.topratedlocal.com/blog/reputation-management/reputation-management-101/adays, your customers are the ones who sculpt your reputation. Because of that, rather than just being a tool in your tool belt, reputation management should be approached with the same level of seriousness and effort as marketing or accounting for your business. By making it one of your main, day-to-day priorities and long-term goals, you can craft the image you want for your company and truly make your business stand out among the crowd — for the right reasons.
In action, managing your online reputation means managing your footprint online in its totality and involves everything from social media to SEO (social media optimization), but it stands mostly on online reviews. Those can be difficult to navigate, but it is completely doable. By incorporating reputation management into your digital marketing strategy, you take a more proactive role in the success of your business. Countless businesses have benefited from online reputation management, and yours will, too.
Why It’s Important
Now that you know what reputation management is, we can move on to why it matters. Let’s start out with the facts. Here are some quick statistics:
- Seventy percent of people will leave a review if they are asked
- Forty-two percent of people will not use a business with less than a three-star average rating
- Sixty-nine percent of job seekers won’t work for a company if it has a bad online reputation
- It only takes six reviews for 73 percent of your community to form an opinion about your business
- Up to 80 percent of people trust reviews as much as a recommendation
Knowing that, you can see why you would want to put as much work as possible into your online reputation. But, why should you start now? One of the most staggering reasons is time. It takes a while to build a truly phenomenal online reputation, and you really want to hit the ground running. That being said, that reputation can be destroyed very quickly by negative reviews if you aren’t careful. By taking a proactive role in managing your business’ online reputation, you can react appropriately and in a timely manner to poor reviews and save the situation before it gets too bad. Reputation management is an artful combination of offense and defense, which is what makes it such an impactful part of any marketing strategy.
What You Can Do
Now that you know what reputation management is and why it’s important, you’re almost certainly wondering how to implement it into your business’ digital marketing strategy. Although it can be incredibly valuable to hire professionals to manage your online reputation, there are certainly aspects you can handle yourself, at least while you’re getting started. Those come down to three things — monitoring, responding, and strategizing.
Monitor
The first step to building a stellar online reputation is monitoring. Take stock of your business’ online reputation by going through popular reviews sites, like Google, Facebook, and Yelp to see how you business is doing at the moment. After that, as you’re implementing the other aspects of online reputation management, continue to monitor your reviews, as well as your social media mentions and comments. Top Rated Local is a great place to station your reputation management, with our cumulative Rating Score™ system and convenient portals to tons of verified review sites.
Respond
Once you see what you’re working with, you can respond. Having an active conversation with your customer base is great for any business’ online reputation. This is particularly important when it comes to bad reviews and other negative feedback. You want to respond promptly (which is part of why you must monitor your online reputation often) and politely, as well as to actually learn and grow from the feedback you receive. After all, most issues are fixable, and resolving the issue quickly can result in return business 95 percent of the time.
Strategize
By addressing the more immediate tasks of monitoring and responding, you can start to strategize, based on the feedback you’ve received and the patterns you observe. One truly invaluable benefit reviews provide is real and direct feedback regarding how you did and what you can improve upon, which is kind of like playing the long game for a better reputation online and off.
Top Rated Local is an invaluable tool that any business looking to strengthen their online reputation can use! With our proprietary Rating Score system, you can get an in-depth look into your business’ online reputation. We collect reviews and ratings from dozens of verified sources all across the web to come up with a cumulative score that gives you a glimpse into where you stand with your online reputation, and even links directly to those review sites so you can easily strategize. Not only that, but your clients or customers can leave reviews directly on the Top Rated Local site or in our convenient app. Think of Top Rated Local as your one-stop shop for reputation management.
