As a business owner and especially a small business owner, your online presence is a lifeblood of your success. That being said, your reputation online is just as valuable as your brick and mortar reputation. In order to maintain a good rep and mage it when things go wrong is what we’ll look for here.
The Technicalities Of Reputation Management
Not going to get too technical here, because the technical stuff that monitors your online rep only works as well as your handling of problems before they occur and after. The old do’s and don’ts apply here, but the difficulty is that with online rep your customers and competition and saboteurs hit you from a distance or even a world away.
The first thing to do is be as informative and professional as you can be. Your website has to be attractive and pertinent to the surfer’s needs and wants. You also need to make sure your site is accommodating in every form and fashion. Mobile is the big gorilla in the room here, and voice search is moving in quickly. If people can’t see your site properly nor navigate it so, then they’ll post all over that you don’t know what you’re doing, and that kind of information can break you.
The reason being is today’s social media is like a lightning bolt to success and trouble. You do one thing wrong and the next thing it’s blasted all over the planet. You do one thing right and your rep can shoot through the roof.
Reviews Are Important
Here is where reviews come in. Reviews are vital, and you should encourage happy customers to post them. Offer discount or something if they do. This way, even if one dissatisfied customer posts, there will be ten more positive reviews.
If a review is harmful, you need to address it immediately. You do this with a smile on your face and not attack the reviewer. If Joe Shmoe writes about how he bought your t-shirt online but it had a tear in it, don’t debate with him that he’s a clumsy package opener or that he should have kept his dog away from the shirt.
Instead, offer an apology that you don’t know how that happened and offer him a refund and a new shirt. If they don’t accept either, then they’ll look like a general sore loser, and no one will approve of their complaint in the first place.
Ask customers to post reviews on their blogs and sites and social media with a link to your site. If you have an affiliate program, all the better. They’ll send organic traffic, and you’ll both come out on top.
Ask Your Customers To Join In
This is where surfers are missing out on a goldmine. They’ll chat on and on about some company or product and miss out on the option of making money via an affiliate code. You have to make them realize this because they can make money across the board and you get a big reputation.
Local SEO benefits from this greatly. People looking for goods and services that you provide in your area have to see your site in the top search engine results, or you’re just wasting your time. Good Local SEO means having reviews, content, across platform social media that Google approves of.
Be Honest
Don’t try to be slick and copy and paste other reviews to your site but instead link to the reviews from your site. People miss out on this tactic because they know Google will only count on the original review and not copy and paste stuff, but, if there’s a link to the review, all the better especially if the reviewer is a popular person known for quality reviews.
Another trick is to find those top reviewers and find their main websites. Ask for exchanging links and so on. It’s not sneaky; it’s just reciprocal and appreciative.
There are very many variations on a theme for reputation management and Local SEO and to be on the safe side, it’s best to contact a professional regarding such things especially if you end up getting attacked by a competitor or some vile upset customer.
Get A Local SEO Reputation Management Specialist
The professional reputation management specialist will know how to solve things in the short and long term. Just give them some time and sit back and when things simmer down, you’ll be back to normal or better.
