The importance of reputation management
In today’s day and age, your reputation is everything. You can’t do anything it seems without someone taking notice of all your actions. Welcome to the world of online reviews, where your reputation can skyrocket to the top, or fall to the ground.
I work in not only website design and SEO, but also reputation and review management services. I speak with businesses of all sizes, explaining how keeping your online rep in a positive light is the most important thing you can do for your business. Many of these businesses assumed that online reviews didn’t really matter to them. They were clearly wrong as they saw the benefit of a full reputation management campaign and how it brings in more customers.
Some of the businesses I speak with try and maintain their own reviews, but the problem with this is it takes time away from your business operations. Trying to keep up with just a couple of review sites and responding to reviewers can be a daunting task that many businesses just can not handle. Not only that, but not having the full monitoring APIs that we currently have to scour the entire internet for any mentions of you business will cause you problems in the long run.
Here are some reasons why having a reputation management firm can help your business;
People see and remember the negatives
This is a big one here. When potential customers are checking your reviews out, they will always remember the negatives and that will scare them away. It doesn’t matter how many positives you have, they will remember that negative and what the reviewer said about you. What makes this negative review worse, most businesses don’t even know it was left, resulting in no business reply to help remedy the situation.
Better reviews, better search engine rankings
It’s as simple as that, the more positive reviews you have on several of the industry’s top review sites, the better your search engine rankings will get. But, if your reviews slip and you start getting a lot of negatives, Google and Bing will punish you, dropping your search rankings, and making it harder for potential customers to find you. Remember, the search engines are the gateway for people to find you!
Business responses are key
When it comes to less than desirable reviews, businesses should make it a point to respond to each negative they receive. Why is this important? Well, if a potential customer sees a negative review and no business response, they could easily think that the business does not care, so they move on. However, if that potential customer sees a response from the business attempting to remedy the issue, it more than likely will help that person decide to at least give you a chance. Responding to these negative reviews is a must.
Those 3 points above are the mac daddy reasons why review management is important. However, it can be a full-time job to keep track of all the sites on the internet that matter to your business and all the reviews that can come in on a daily basis. The amount of traffic that comes in can be to much for any small to medium size business to handle, hence hiring a rep management agency. You provide great service, we monitor your online reputation.
That pretty much covers it, reputation management is almost a necessity in today’s consumer world, so don’t make a mistake and ignore it! If you would like to know more about reputation management services, just contact us today!
