Reputation Matters! What customers think is a very important aspect for every brand and organization that works and deals with its users on a daily basis. These customers are more fond to trust a company that has positive reviews than one that only has complaints and issues.
Why Is Online Reputation Important?
It’s estimated that almost 92% of customers online, check a company’s review before making a purchase. If negative comments top the list, you could be losing a lot of potential customers.
The Importance of Reputation Managers
In order to fix your online reputation, it’s important to address what a reputation manager does. This process improves a company's status, engagement, and brand awareness, as well as online reviews and certain areas of high traffic.
Since users can not only watch this rating in search engines but also in social media, blogs, articles, and many other places, it’s vital to have an overall positive reception.
How to Fix Online Reputation to Gain Customers Back
Not taking quick measures to handle issues customers have with the product or company, can be extremely bad for the brand's popularity. These issues can snowball into bigger problems and consequently, get out of hand.
Fortunately, having a company with bad reviews or ratings isn’t the end of the world. There are a lot of resources, tips, tricks, and strategies to employ in order to recover not only the customer’s trust but also the positive ratings. These are some of the better strategies:
1- Adopt a Customer Review Manager Tool
Resources like Zidy can prove extremely useful in order to achieve a good reputation. Tracking comments, opinions, and reviews are able to let the brand know what the consumers think about their brand. This way, filtering every negative opinion will give a bigger picture of what needs to be changed.
Focusing the work on such areas in order to give the best consumer experience will improve, not only reviews, but also attract new users as well as old ones.
2- Claim and Maintain a Strong Online Presence
Sometimes targeting negative online reviews isn’t the only way to deal with fixing a brand’s reputation. It’s vital to ensure that the current client base, and those potential future ones, can find quick and easy information about the company when searching for it through all of your online posts.
Sites like Google and Yelp, as well as using the correct social media platform that’s suited for your business (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter), allow people to leave reviews. Filling out all the information boxes on these sites will make the brand pop up higher in the results.
For example, Facebook business not only allows to answer and leave reviews on its site, but it also appears on Google searches. Claiming Google’s and Yelp’s business listings is also vital to do. This allows you to manage and reply to online reviews of your site, as well as find the best solution to their problems.
In addition, social media platforms give the chance for customers to write their experiences freely. The company can also constantly monitor what people are saying or thinking, as well as promptly thank them for a positive message.
Remember to always keep your clients updated about your work. No matter what your social media platform is, post often for people to know what’s being done or developed. This also helps to maintain the websites and accounts active, increasing engagement and views.
3- Reply to Customer Reviews
Some reviews are made to be replied to. Not doing so can cause a bad impression on new customers, seeing that the other users’ requests are not being addressed. Replying to both negative and positive reviews can also give a huge popularity benefit: most users usually read customer reviews.
Showing appreciation and being thankful is important. Saying things such as “thanks for choosing us”, “we appreciate your message”, and the like, leave a positive image. Also, remember to always maintain a genuine and honest structure.
When it comes to replying to a negative review, it can be more complicated to do. It’s important to keep it simple but be professional, address the issue if possible, and apologize if it’s necessary. There are many examples all around the internet to know how to approach it.
4- Implement Marketing Campaigns
The number of stars and ratings will never improve if the company isn’t getting any new reviews. It’s obligatory to have a much bigger number of positive reviews in order to outnumber the negative ones, bringing more customers.
Implementing different plans will obtain these highly desired reviews. Everything needs to be done accordingly, in order to bring satisfaction to all clients, through e-mail drip campaigns, asking them personally face-to-face, or handing business cards on how to leave a review.
Other ways related to social media are also possible to realize. Tagging them on Instagram for example, using hashtags, making giveaways or similar activities can not only strengthen the bond but also increase visitors. A good example is asking people to comment on a post in order to participate in a raffle.
5- Create SEO-Minded Content
Effective and organic content can be the most natural and plausible way to improve a brand’s reviews, letting them appear in the first places of the search.
Creating new pages, blog posts, and related content to target the topics needed to address, can optimize what appears on the users’ screen. This makes the existing and new reviews appear first, using the best SEO practices.
Focusing on securing backlinks, promoting visibility, and the favorable brand sentiment is another great way to achieve it. Mixing all of these tips with Zidy’s tools and features will ensure that the company’s favorable reviews will increase the brand’s awareness and engagement.
Is It Possible to Delete Negative Reviews?
While it is not the most optimal way to get rid of certain negative reviews, there are a few processes that can be followed in order to delete opinions. Contacting the website owner or the individual who posted it is the most simple way, only if they’re willing to do so.
For unwilling cases and unresponsive sites, it is more complicated. Among the most common ways to address it, obtaining a court order, sending a cease, making an editorial request, and a DMCA request are the most popular ones.
Submitting a de-indexing request, removal from data broker websites, or flagging the content is also possible, but takes time and does not always end up as desired.
All of these examples are challenging tasks to achieve since the Communication Decency Act immunizes internet providers from lawsuits when a third-party posts something on their platform. Since most of these reviews are also anonymous, it can also take a while to find who was the real author of it.
Working with a professional can provide the best outcome when dealing with these situations, although it is advised to use the previously mentioned ways for a more organic result. This way, this solution not only gets rid of the review but also solves the issue the customer is having with the company.
Conclusion
It’s vital to fix online reputation with every resource, tool, and trick possible if a company is seeing its rating going down. Addressing every issue a customer has, not only will improve their happiness, but also the way they perceive the company. This can lead to them coming back, as well as attracting new buyers.
Customer relationship managers, manual marketing strategies, and even creating a social platform presence are some of the most used options to build trust between users.
Originally published by Zidy. View original article.