Knowing how to manage your online reputation is vitally important for every business.
Reviews are a huge part of the vast majority of online purchases in this day and age. In fact, only 9 percent of consumers don’t research businesses online, which means that 91 percent of consumers are at least doing a quick Google search, if not diving into a company’s reviews, before deciding to work with a business.
Your business’s online reputation matters greatly, and the good news is that it’s largely in your control. No, you can’t control what your customers say in reviews, nor can you choose your business’s online rating. However, there are many things you can do to manage your online reputation.
Here are the top five reputation management tips that every business needs to be aware of:
#1. Be in the know about your reputation.
Regardless of whether you embrace your reviews and online ratings or you pretend like they don’t exist, prospective customers can still see them. And the only way to know whether what those prospective clients are seeing is positive or negative is for you to always be in the know about your business’s reputation. This means that you need to closely monitor your company’s brand.
How do you actually determine where your online reputation stands? While there’s no one tool that can give you a definitive answer across every single site, you can use many different tools to get a good understanding of your reputation. Reading your clients’ reviews is a great place to start, and it’s also a good idea to monitor how your business shows up in search results. There are several tools you can use to monitor your online reputation as well, including Google Alerts, Social Mention and Twitter Search, just to name a few.
#2. Claim your business listings.
Claiming your business’s online listings is important for its reputation for many reasons. At the very least, claiming your business on places, like Google+, Bing, Yelp, Yahoo and Top Rated Local®, allows you to keep your business information up to date. But the benefits don’t stop there. Here are a few more great reasons to claim your business’s listings:
- It builds trust and legitimacy – When your business is verified, it shows clients and prospective clients that your business is valid, and that you care enough to make sure that your business’s information is accurate. Whether you claim your business listings or not, they’re there, and when you claim them, you can add more information, like your hours, logo, address and photos.
- It’s good for your website’s organic visibility – Every business wants their website to rank well for relevant searches, and claiming your listings can help to direct more traffic to your website. This results from having links to your business’s website across multiple, verified websites.
- It allows you to respond to reviews – This is probably the biggest reason to claim your listings. Responding to reviews, both good and bad, is an essential part of managing your business’s online reputation.
#3. Get active on social media.
Social media plays a key role in reputation management. One big reason for this is that so many people are active on social media, and many use social media to help make purchasing decisions. In fact, 74 percent of consumers rely on social media for this very purpose. Plus, being active on social media allows you to develop a wider audience, steer the conversation and increase your influence with both current and prospective clients.
Another big reason why being active on social media is important is that, the more social media sites you are active on and rank for organically, the less likely it is for negative articles and reviews about your business to crowd the top of the organic search results. For example, when someone googles your business, it’s much better for the top search results to be your Facebook and Twitter profiles than a bad review or other negative press.
#4. Keep your website updated with quality content.
Much of online reputation management has to do with keeping the positive listings at the top of the search results for your business, which we discussed briefly in our last point. Not only is being active and engaged on social media an important part of this strategy, but it’s also important to consistently add quality content to your website.
When it comes to search engine optimization, content is king and always will be. Regularly posting valuable blogs and new pages on your website will not only help your website’s homepage to show up higher in the search results, but the individual pages and blogs you post will also show up in search results, too, pushing any negative press down more and more in the results where they are less visible.
#5. Ask your clients to share their experiences.
Some business owners scoff at other businesses that ask their clients for reviews, but you shouldn’t discount this strategy. Asking for reviews doesn’t make your business weak or mean that you provide subpar customer service. On the contrary, asking for reviews is simply asking for feedback on how you’re doing, and when clients see that you value their feedback, it shows them that you truly care and that you want to do your best for them.
Furthermore, when you actually ask your clients for reviews, you’re more likely to receive positive feedback. While some people will review a business after they’ve had a positive experience, most people don’t bother, especially if the experience was great but not out-of-the-ballpark phenomenal. However, when someone is upset about the service they received, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will share their experience with the world.
Sign up your business up for Top Rated Local today!
Are you ready to take the first step toward a better, more in control online reputation? If so, sign up for Top Rated Local today. Joining Top Rated Local is 100-percent free, and it’s one of the best things you can do to show up for more of those “near me” searches.
These are just a few of the many tips business owners need to be aware of when it comes to online reputation management. If you’d like to learn more helpful tips, stay tuned for our next blog!
