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7 Reputation Management Hacks for Your Business

Reputation Management Hacks

Your business’s reputation is reliant on its approach to digital conversations surrounding your brand. Just a few bad reviews can deter potential customers from buying your products or using your services.

Reputation management is the optimal way to ensure your business’s digital position remains distinguished among new and returning customers. Our 7 favorite reputation management hacks will keep your business’s reputation squeaky clean, steadily increasing its credibility.

1) Set up Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to be alerted via email every time your business name or other related keywords are mentioned in the digital space. This means if someone mentions your business in a digital review, good or bad, you’ll be aware of it immediately and able to respond appropriately in a timely manner. Include setting up alerts for a few different keywords like the name of your business, any nicknames for your business, and the names of the key leaders in case they are mentioned in a review. This increases your chances of catching a review that could be directly or indirectly related to your company. 

2) Prewrite review responses

Gather common review scenarios and prewrite customizable responses. For example, you might form a response to a bad review of customer service or a question about your website. A pre-written response will ensure you can respond quickly, appropriately, and on-brand. It also considers any discrepancies in tone and voice that can occur when different people are responding to reviews. With pre-written responses, each message is sure to be consistent and employees can be held accountable if it is inappropriate or out of line.  

3) Encourage reviews from past clients & customers

Build a system to encourage clients or customers to positively review your business. Drive them to do so on the most popular review sites like Google and Facebook. This can be encouraged through an email campaign, collateral after sales, or verbally. Try incentivizing employees who have driven their customers to leave a positive review. As a business owner, you can’t sit and wait for reviews to just happen. People often forget until reminded.

4) Encourage reviews from your employees

Reputation management is often a numbers game. For consumers in a hurry, they’re just looking at the star number of your company on Google or Facebook. They typically don’t take the time to read the reviews. The more 5-star reviews, the better. Encourage your employees or offer them incentives to leave positive reviews about working at the company or being a part of the team.

5) Create order

It’s important to never let positive or negative reviews sit on your site unresponded to for over 24 hours. Quick responses prove your commitment to your brand and can help reverse the effects of a negative review. They may also further justify the truth behind positive reviews. Build a document that specifies first, second, and third employees responsible for responding to reviews within 24 hours.

6) Take it offline

We care about our businesses. This means we are often driven to approach negative reviews with defensiveness. This is especially true for ones that include allegations or false claims. Accusing the reviewer of lying or questioning their claims publically can give consumers a sense of distrust, and drive the reviewer to leave more comments, leaving you with a messy situation. Instead, respond with a brief message apologizing for the poor experience. Encourage them to reach out to a higher-up via email or phone. You can also read about Tips to Boost Your Business’ Google Reviews.

7) Personalize it

Show them that you care. Take a few extra minutes to customize pre-written responses and choose your words carefully. Don’t just apologize for their poor experience with a customer service representative. Be specific and come from a place of curiosity. At the end of the day, they’re human too and want to feel the same respect as you’d expect from others.

Ready to fully craft your critical response plan to aid in reputation management? If you need help growing your business and averaging 400% or more ROI from your digital efforts, give us a call today or schedule a free strategy session with one of our experts in digital marketing. You will have an opportunity to discuss your business and your marketing goals, and we will provide recommendations on what you should be doing based on our BOOST Method. This is a sales-pitch-free no-obligation meeting, just real advice.

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