With more and more businesses appearing online every day, reputation management has become a crucial aspect of any business. Reputation is all about how a business identifies itself and how the public perceives it.
If you want your business to grow, you need to be aware of your public image because that image can make or break your business. Continue reading to explore what online reputation management is about, its importance, and its benefits.
What is Online Reputation Management (ORM)?
Online reputation management is a mix of marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and public relations strategies that promote and protect an online image.
ORM monitors what people are saying about your company. Promotes trust in your brand, and suppresses and addresses negative reviews.
Why Is It Important?
When people review a business, they post ratings, comments, blogs, or social media posts. To remain on top, businesses need to track what is being said about them online and how they can improve if people view them negatively.
Your customers drive your business, and social media allows you to build rapport naturally. It is normal to have dissatisfied customers, but how you handle it determines how other clients view your business. And what happens when you have multiple locations to keep tabs on?
Unfortunately, it’s hard to read tone through text. As everyone can read a response, here are a few things to keep in mind before responding to either positive or negative reviews.
Negative Reviews
The most important thing to keep in mind with negative reviews is the inability to make everyone happy. In some cases, you will have a customer who cannot be satisfied. Other times, you have customers who refuse to respond to your feedback. That’s why it is important to always respond in some way to complaints in a public manner. It will boost your credibility with potential customers because they will see you are responsive to criticism.
Positive Reviews
Anytime someone is thrilled with your service and shares about it, you will want to thank them for their feedback and business. However, you want to make sure you do not use their review as a time to come off as salesy. You want to foster an atmosphere where people wish to share their love for your product. Follow up with your customers and ask if you can use their reviews in future advertisements or on your website.
Standardize a Review Response Strategy
First and foremost: do not use a strict template when you are managing national or multiple-location businesses. We recommend using a loose “script” for responding to complaints or positive compliments.
Identify a point-person or team (such as SW1 Creative Marketing!) who can act as the brand’s “voice” and develop a strategy that includes responding quickly, empathizing with the customer, and pointing them toward a resolution.
The goal is to offer a more personalized response rather than a canned one. Personalization can enhance the reviewer’s experience, resulting in the updating or removal of their review.
With the vast number of places reviews can be placed, it is common for a business to fall behind on responses. Why not try SW1 Creative Marketing and let us help get your business ahead of the curve? Contact us today to learn more about our reputation management platform and our other services that will help you dominate your online presence.