Although Google has made it easy to go from zero to highly credible in a very short time, what goes up must come down. The reality is that you can’t please all the people all the time. Just one disgruntled customer can do some major damage to a startup business. Reviews can both make or break you, and if you aren’t paying attention, you just might go broke! If you are going to throw your resources into anything in the marketing arena, reputation management is a good choice!
What Is Reputation Management?
Since the dawn of time, companies and businesses have relied on word of mouth to stay afloat. Where once people turned to friends and family to find a referral and learn who had a good reputation, now the internet has become a consumer’s best friend. The Web is full of various places where people can leave a review or rating, or simply voice their opinion about a person or business. Reputation management is a way to monitor all the different channels to ensure that no one is disparaging you without your knowledge.
What Does a Reputation Management Company Do?
Think about how badly one hometown rumor can influence the perception of a company or organization, then multiply that by infinity. Whether you are operating online nationally, internationally, or just in one specific locale, one poor rating can have devastating effects. What’s worse, a poor review or rating can often be a mistake or unfounded. Google reviews and other forums stake their reputation on their credibility; therefore, getting them to act and remove a rating isn’t easy. In almost all instances, even when you can rectify it, it isn’t a quick process, and in the interim, you can lose a lot of existing and potential customers. A reputation management company can help to repair a tarnished reputation, remove vulnerabilities you might have, and help to solicit favorable reviews for your company.
Repair Reputation of Your Brand
If and when you do find a negative review or rating, there are several hoops that you have to jump through, especially when dealing with search engines. Google values people’s opinions, so they won’t take a post down just because you don’t like it. They have very specific guidelines about what a fraudulent review looks like. They are also guided by certain rules that deem a rating unfair or removable. If you don’t know what those guidelines are or how to fight against a poor review, it can take a very long time. That is time that many small business owners simply don’t have. A reputation management company already knows what it can and can’t do. Once more , it has the contacts and skills to get it done!
High-Quality Content and Solicitation
As important as staving away poor reviews is, so too are positive media and ratings. If you get one four-star review and you have ten in total with every other but nine favorable, it has a significant effect on your company’s reputation. If, however, you have 200 fives and one four, it doesn’t even make a dent in your rating. That’s why soliciting positive reviews, ratings, and media coverage is so important. It’s like stocking your arsenal to combat a customer if they’re determined to tell of their poor experience. A reputation management company should have systems in place to solicit reviews from your consumers to support the good work that you do and protect you from the harm of a few people who are never happy.
High-Ranking Media Connections
Reputation management is also about being forward-thinking and having connections in the media world. Those connections can help your overall exposure and positive customer perception. Being able to get news coverage, press releases released, and interviews with major publications and news outlets is not something that all companies understand the value of. When you are featured via interviews, media coverage, or even with backlinks to a credible source, it enhances your reputation. Reputation management companies with those connections can keep you looking squeaky clean. They also can gain you the exposure to make your brand familiar with your niche market.
Monitoring Is the Key
When it comes to your reputation, sometimes the hardest part is knowing what people are saying behind your back. A reputation management company will have software to monitor the entire internet. That way, they make sure that your company’s name doesn’t come up in a negative light. There is no way that you can potentially know what might creep up if you aren’t paying attention. With thousands of third-party review systems and places to leave comments, not paying attention can be business suicide.
The internet has definitely been a blessing for small businesses to be able to compete on a national level. It also provides a more level playing field, but with all good must come some bad. As you know, there is no way to please everyone all the time. No matter how hard you try, eventually, someone will find something negative to say about you. If you want to make sure that someone has your reputation and back, hiring our reputation management company is the only way to make sure that you are protected from poor reviews and ratings. We do all that we can to solicit positivity and show your brand in the best light possible. Contact us today and let us manage your reputation.
