Your business’ online reputation can truly make the difference between success and failure. Review sites and other sellers are soliciting customer feedback more than ever. Sites like Angie’s List, Yelp, and other reputable sites are scanned by many would-be customers needed your service or product. Social media sites, as well as forums and discussion boards, can also be a breeding ground for negative remarks.
Managing your online reputation can be tricky, but it is possible. You need a strategy in place to monitor, identify, and rectify your digital reputation and credibility online. An effective online reputation management strategy can also provide you with new opportunities and insight on increasing your brand awareness.
There are many reasons to build and maintain a favorable online reputation, but the basics come down to 3 very important ones.
1. Brand Protection.
Studies have proven that nearly 80 percent of people research a product or service online before making the final purchase decision. If a prospective customer is browsing and encounters considerable negative reviews and comments about your company, they will likely keep searching.
Having an active reputation management plan can protect your business from become overwhelmed by negative reviews and comments. Together with tools and other resources, it is possible to solicit good reviews from customers, to ensure that positive information is magnified and to remediate any negative comments and reviews before they do further damage.
An online reputation management strategy will increase the ability for current and potential customers to find you. With a social media strategy in place, and posting useful and interesting information on the platforms regularly, it will help to boost your visibility and reach audiences that would be inaccessible otherwise.
Implementing an SEO strategy that gains your business a higher ranking in the search results also increases visibility. This strategy must include creating great content, using appropriate keywords and phrases and other techniques. However, if you don’t also manage and maintain a positive online reputation, this may all be for naught.
Managing your online reputation will allow you to determine how your customers view your business. Your strategy can prevent negative criteria from appearing online. Tools and resources can be used to help in controlling what is out there in Cyberspace, even what the search engines see. This is especially important for businesses heavily involved in social networking.
A successful reputation management strategy will deliver a trustworthy image of your company across all sites and sources. That image must be consistent or customers may view you as incredible. Being portrayed by customers as a trusted source for your product or service will do wonders
Most business owners want to have satisfied customers who continue to use their product and refer them to others. Perhaps they’ve struggled for years to build their brand and gain trust.
Many business owners don’t even realize they need to be concerned about their online reputation. They are caught off-guard when they discover that there are customers who have written negative comments or reviews. By the time you realize it’s happening, you may be at a loss on what to do to remedy the situation. And if the reviews and comments are on reputable sites, they are even more damaging. Even if the comments are unfair and not entirely true, they still jeopardize your online reputation.
Managing your online reputation takes time and effort, but it is definitely worthwhile in the long run. Let Philadelphia SEO for Growth help you in improving your business presence and online reputation. We can help you create a review funnel to make it easier for your customers to write reviews, detect negative mentions of your brand to provide an opportunity for customer service, eliminate negative fake negative reviews, and keep your company’s reputation intact.