By In our last lesson we discussed what might happen if you were to receive a negative customer review on your Google Places listing. One of the good things about Google Places is that those who leave reviews will need to be tied to a real social networking account. While that won’t necessarily stop bad reviews, it will discourage individuals from talking about things that were untruthful. Additionally, Google Places gives you the opportunity to respond to those who had a bad experience.
However, in some of the lesser used business directories you do not necessarily have the same kind of opportunity across the board. That means that those who use sites like Yelp.com, CitySearch.com or Angie’s List might go unanswered having left negative feedback. Answering them is not always going to be an option once their review is posted.
Additionally, it doesn’t always read well to a prospective customer if you are seemingly making excuses for what was perceived to be bad service. So you will need to be careful as to how you approach the situation.
The best way to manage your reputation online for your company is to make sure that you have as much positive information as you can posted and positioned online. That means having everything from blog posts to customer reviews, to emails, to personal conversations, to videos. Whenever you have positive feedback from your customers, make sure (with your customer’s permission of course) that this information is posted where people who are looking for your products and services will see it. The best way to weed out negative information online about your company is to make sure that there is honest and positive information that displaces it.
Additionally, make sure to monitor all of your keywords for reviews that are posted about your company. When you have the opportunity to do so, you should answer them. Moreover, you will want to make sure that those customers that have good experiences go through the trouble of rating you. Make sure to remind them with signage, emails and even their receipt when it is relevant. However, you will want to stop short of offering an incentive for customers who complete the review.
In our next lesson we will discuss what to consider when your company owners and executives have a considerable amount of negative information appearing about them online. If you see negative information in the business directory sites, the top ten listings or anyplace else online about your company call us so that we can help you to resolve it.
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