Reputation Management in the Digital Age: Building Trust Online

As a business owner or leader, your company’s reputation is everything. A positive review can put the wind in your sails, and give a positive impression to potential customers. On the flip side, a negative review can feel like a slap in the face, especially when you have put your heart and soul into your business.

The threat of negative feedback, not to mention the sting of potential rejection, can be enough to try shutting down online reviews for your business entirely. But is that the correct approach?

Develop a Plan

As the saying goes, “Hope is not a plan.” So, let’s explore some strategies for developing a reputation management plan in a way that allows you to run your business, accept feedback, and come out looking like the savvy, customer-centric business owner that you are.

Give Each Channel a Purpose

Some review sites will exist outside of your control. Users can leave reviews about business on Google, Facebook, and dedicated review sites like Yelp and Niche. While social media sites like Facebook may allow you to turn off or hide customer feedback altogether, other sites will continue to be accessible to clients looking to make their opinions known.

It’s important to determine where you will focus your reputation management efforts, especially when it comes to reviews. Maybe you choose to use Facebook for basic information, and for posting about promotions and updates, but would rather not accept reviews on this platform. In that case, you would shut down reviews on your business page, but would still need to monitor other websites, like Google and Niche.

Establishing a purpose for each channel also helps when asking for customer feedback; there is no point in directing happy clients to leave a review on Facebook if you are not displaying reviews, and it’s not helpful to direct customers to Angi if you do not have an existing business profile that you manage on the site.

Figure out where customers are looking for businesses like yours, set up your business owner accounts or pages, and roll out your strategy from there.

Responding to Reviews

This is where it sometimes gets tricky.

The customer is not always right, but that customer likely has friends and an internet connection. There is always a chance that your business, no matter how reasonable and well-meaning you and your staff may be, will have a dissatisfied customer.

The worst possible thing that you can do is to take out your anger on a review that you dislike.

People understand that some situations are unfair and unreasonable. Responding with empathy and professionalism makes a big difference.

Many years ago, I supported a small business with its SEO and reputation management. This was a small business, serving a relatively local area. For this example (and this is completely anonymized), I will refer to the business as “Mr. Fixit.”

Mr. Fixit had a major reputation problem; the company’s online reputation was so negative, that the entire first page of search results, besides the official website at slot number 2, was flooded with horrible reviews, from sites with expletives in the title.

Imagine searching for your company, and seeing the very first search result, along with everything in spots 3 and below, starting with something like “worstcompaniesever-dot-com”.

I had my work cut out for me and did the usual work of keyword research, content creation, and more. I even worked with the business owners to theorize on business practices that could legitimately need to be changed in order to improve their reputation.

As their reputation improved, and I looked through the content that made up their digital footprint, the initial driver of this horrible reputation problem became clear. You see, the Mr. Fixit that I supported was serving a small area in one specific state. The name “Mr. Fixit” was extremely popular among similar companies throughout the country. Because this business did not have a plan in place before hiring me, they had spent endless hours combing the internet for negative mentions of Mr. Fixit and did not notice that a location was either not listed, or not relevant.

Their approach was to respond (good!) angrily (bad!) to every negative review (worse!) for every Mr. Fixit in the United States, unintentionally, providing their name and contact information for myriad businesses with the same name. Therefore, in the eyes of search engines, they were linking every instance of negative reviews for any Mr. Fixit in the country back to this one small business (really bad!).

It is much better, when responding to reviews, to take a breath, try to see it from the reviewer's perspective, and respond in a way that shows you are willing to help. A professional can help you develop a process and strategy to manage this.

Why Not Just Ignore It?

If this seems like a lot of trouble, it may be tempting to ignore online reviews altogether. After all, if you have a good following of clientele, word of mouth may seem like enough to keep your business afloat.

Consider a few points about your digital reputation:

• Word-of-mouth recommendations are fantastic, but nothing is stopping those who receive the recommendation from searching for reviews online. Further, if that potential customer sees a negative review online that was mishandled, it could dissuade them from using your services, and also prompt your existing client who made the recommendation to reconsider.

• Fear of negative feedback sometimes drives business owners to avoid supporting or requesting reviews at all. However, data shows that proactively requesting reviews from your client base improves your reputation. The reason? Many people are compelled to leave a review about a negative experience, but they may not feel the same passion about leaving a positive review online. Asking and making it easy to leave positive feedback can actually give you a more accurate representation of your work online.

Like what you see? Sip Social is here to help with your digital marketing and reputation management efforts. Reach out today for a complimentary consultation!