Internet Reputation Management
Your Reputation is on the Line
Do you know what’s being said about you on the Internet? About your businesses or your product? By clients, customers or former employees? Its high time to pay attention; and for several reasons.
Once upon a time, if you had an unhappy customer, it was just that. One unhappy customer. his circle of influence most likely didn’t go beyond his friends and family. Now, one unhappy customer, justifiably or not, means a potential bad review on sites like Google Local, Yelp, Travelocity, Yahoo and the list goes on. Each comment reaches thousands and so its vital that you monitor the web and respond.
If you messed up, try to resolve it and learn from it. Don’t argue online back and forth. Add your comment “we are sorry about your experience, please contact us so we can resolve it… etc”
If you had a good review, which are so much harder to get, great! Most people now use the Internet to check reviews, especially in the travel industry, but also for services, products etc. So if you have a happy customer, ask him if he/she would review you online. Hand out a little card with website addresses to the sites you would like to see the review or even easier, post the links on your website to make it easy for your customer.
Do not review yourself – First off you can smell a self-review a mile away; and secondly its actually fraudulent and the search engines can track IP's that were used.
Do not have your employee review your products – unless its objective and they have actually used it.
Do not let your customers review your product from a computer station in your store/office. The same IP address for all review could trigger a red flag.
Do not hire a company that writes reviews for you.
Have a plan. Monitor the main sites, use Google Alerts and then have a clear plan on what you are going to do with the reviews you find.
If you have a few bad reviews you’ll have to work a bit harder and just get more good reviews. No visitor to the web expects only 5 Star reviews… In fact a 3 or 4 star review is more believable in most cases. Remember that everybody expects to see an occasional unhappy client leaving a review. As long as they don’t take over and the responses show that you tried to make good; potential customers will gain confidence that you are trying to do the right thing.
If you need help with monitoring your reviews and putting an action plan into please email me.
Do you know what’s being said about you on the Internet? About your businesses or your product? By clients, customers or former employees? Its high time to pay attention; and for several reasons.
Once upon a time, if you had an unhappy customer, it was just that. One unhappy customer. his circle of influence most likely didn’t go beyond his friends and family. Now, one unhappy customer, justifiably or not, means a potential bad review on sites like Google Local, Yelp, Travelocity, Yahoo and the list goes on. Each comment reaches thousands and so its vital that you monitor the web and respond.
If you messed up, try to resolve it and learn from it. Don’t argue online back and forth. Add your comment “we are sorry about your experience, please contact us so we can resolve it… etc”
If you had a good review, which are so much harder to get, great! Most people now use the Internet to check reviews, especially in the travel industry, but also for services, products etc. So if you have a happy customer, ask him if he/she would review you online. Hand out a little card with website addresses to the sites you would like to see the review or even easier, post the links on your website to make it easy for your customer.
Do not review yourself – First off you can smell a self-review a mile away; and secondly its actually fraudulent and the search engines can track IP's that were used.
Do not have your employee review your products – unless its objective and they have actually used it.
Do not let your customers review your product from a computer station in your store/office. The same IP address for all review could trigger a red flag.
Do not hire a company that writes reviews for you.
Have a plan. Monitor the main sites, use Google Alerts and then have a clear plan on what you are going to do with the reviews you find.
If you have a few bad reviews you’ll have to work a bit harder and just get more good reviews. No visitor to the web expects only 5 Star reviews… In fact a 3 or 4 star review is more believable in most cases. Remember that everybody expects to see an occasional unhappy client leaving a review. As long as they don’t take over and the responses show that you tried to make good; potential customers will gain confidence that you are trying to do the right thing.
If you need help with monitoring your reviews and putting an action plan into please email me.