Have you ever heard of reputation management? Are you actively engaging in reputation management? As a business, if you are answering no to these questions, you should start embracing reputation management.

In today’s social media and internet world, stats for online reviews are impressive: 86% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. Yes, a whopping 86%. That is an eye-dropping number, therefore making online reviews something you have to be on top of (good or bad) for your business and an integral component to any marketing or SEO strategy.

So how should you handle these reviews?

Positive reviews:

The internet is extremely viral. We have all seen that funny youtube video get passed on to us via email or Facebook. Next thing you know it seems like everybody in the world has seen it. When you receive positive reviews, engage them and pass them along in all the social aspects of the web. Don’t just be happy with it on one site, but use it with your company’s marketing, publicize it through twitter, and showcase it on your company’s Facebook page.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask your consumers for positive feedback on the web. It can’t hurt to ask and you will be surprised by how many people will do. Believe it or not, people love to write positive things about companies and share with their friends their experience. Encourage them to do it about your business.

Negative reviews:

Lets be honest, you are not going to get 100% positive reviews all of the time, unless you are Neptune Local of course…Companies get too worked up with negative reviews and compound the problem. First step is to take a deep breath and work to turn the negative into a positive. If the negative review is 1 out of 130 positive reviews, then you have to assume that majority of people will not look negatively toward your business and still  go ahead and make that purchase.

But, if you are seeing a common theme in the negative reviews or they are more common, then put on your customer service hat and try and fix the issues. Offer up solutions and make the changes known on the review site, therefore future visitors will know that the “problems” have been solved.

Summary

Reputation management can make or break a business, particularly on the local level, and the best plan is to be proactive versus reactive. It is always much easier to reduce the chances of something damaging happening, then to have to reverse the damage.

Tags: Internet Marketing, Los Angeles, reputation management, SEO

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