When you work hard and try to provide an excellent service to customers, it can be frustrating to see your business reputation take a hit.
Sometimes these things are out of your hands. No matter how exacting our standards, and how hard we work, customers can take issue with an aspect of the service they received for all kinds of reasons. Mistakes happen, things go wrong, while some people just get a kick from being difficult.
These are unavoidable events when you’re running a business. It’s easy for people to leave reviews across the web, and a rare bad customer experience can have an impact on your business way beyond its relevance. Alternatively, perhaps a less-than-flattering media report has created real problems.
Even the best businesses sometimes have dissatisfied customers, and occasionally that can cause problems.
Are business owners completely powerless to address poor online reviews, blogs, or media reports?
To keep track of how your business is being perceived online, you need to keep track of where your business or brand is mentioned on social media, review sites and other online forums.
Online reputation management (ORM) works by responding to negative customer comments online and reports in the media.
You can keep track of your online reputation by searching on Google, checking social media accounts, and looking at review sites pertinent to your business. You should be looking for inappropriate or misleading information on social media, message board posts, blog articles, comments, mentions and other web accounts. This can be time-consuming, and occasionally demoralising.
It’s easy to focus on the one per cent of negative reviews, rather than the other 99 per cent which are positive. If you don’t address the negative opinions, however, they can gain traction.
To save you time and frustration, another option is to use an online reputation management service.
Online reputation management services take the time and stress out of managing your online reputation. Your online presence is continually monitored, and then a range of strategies are used to reduce the visibility of negative content, wherever it’s found.
In some cases, it may even be possible to remove it from the internet altogether. So, when people search for your business, they only discover positive and importantly, accurate content. Online reputation management services go beyond just removing negative content from the internet; they take both a reactive and proactive approach. Where possible, negative content is addressed, removed and minimised, while positive content is created that overwhelms anything that can’t be.
This strategy can help to repair and rebuild your reputation when it’s taken a knock. Negative content about your business should be thought of in the same way as a computer virus.
Although it’s possible to tackle viruses yourself if you have the necessary know-how, it would be a time-consuming and often technical task. It’s best left to the people who develop anti-virus software, and tech experts who understand the evolving nature of the threat.
The same applies to online reputation management. To do it properly and thoroughly takes time and know-how, and the larger your business the bigger the job. Commissioning an online reputation management service to take care of it for you is like protecting your computer systems against viruses. It’s an insurance policy against the worst happening, but also one that can actually add value to your business.
All too often business owners get in touch with online reputation management providers after their reputation has already taken a hit. Although ORM services are well-prepared to firefight when negative reviews appear, it’s far better to be proactive, ensuring your reputation is strengthened and enhanced, not allowing space for negative content to have an impact.
One of the means through to do so is online reputation management marketing.
One of the best ways to reduce the impact of negative reviews, comments, blog content and media stories is by creating and promoting positive content about your business. By working to create high-ranking content, you can ensure that any negative stories about your business disappear from the first page of Google rankings. Positive content is one of the most effective ways in which to build your brand reputation, ensuring that negative stories about your business are, in effect, drowned out.
Online reputation management strategies bring with them a range of benefits.
Aqueous Digital are specialists at helping clients who are having problems online and provide a professional reputation management service that can help address these issues. We specialise in long-term solutions and prevention, as proactive reputation management is the surest way to protect your name. We can equally turn our hand to helping clients with specific short-term problems. From negative stories, posts and tweets about you, to direct personal attacks.
We know that individuals can be unfairly lampooned, lambasted and libelled and whilst you can take recourse from the law, that generally takes time. In the meantime, your reputation is being destroyed online. So when Google search brings up stories about you that you’d rather not see, where do you turn?
Our professional reputation management service is discreet, effective and focuses on long term solutions and prevention. We never make a song and dance about what we do, we prefer to just be quietly effective and help you get on with your life.
Call 0800 285 1424 or email hello@aqueous-digital.co.uk for a confidential consultation to find out how we can help you or your clients with online reputation.
Find out more about how we approach Reputation Management for individuals
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