What Are You Doing to Protect Your Business from Bad Online Customer Reviews?
There was a recent article at www.BusinessWeek.com, written by Ricky McRoskey, titled, “Where Customers Go to Praise (or Bash) You.” The article cites a 2007 study that found that 24% of Internet users look at online reviews before making offline service purchases. The study also found that online review websites are attracting visitors at four times the rate at which overall Internet use is growing.
Given that your customers are using the Internet to find evidence of your reputation, what should you do? The article suggests asking your customers how they found your business so that you can learn where you’ve been reviewed and what the reviews are saying about you. That’s certainly a good idea to gather evidence of your online reputation and to assess the effectiveness of all of your marketing efforts.
However, what happens if someone has posted a negative review about you? Hopefully someone will tell you about it, but you should not depend on that happening. A much better approach for your business is to use the common search engines like Google and Yahoo! on a regular basis to search for references to your business name, your name, and your website address. You’ll find out very quickly when someone mentions you on the Web. If you’ve been praised, you can make use of it in your other marketing. If you’ve received negative feedback, you can do something to respond.
The one thing you shouldn’t do is “nothing” because ignoring the trend won’t make it go away. Make your reputation work for your business by responding to negative, as well as positive, feedback from your customers. If you need help getting started in managing your online reputation, please call IX Brand SEO Services at 281-343-3284.
Related articles
- Author Urges Online Reputation Management To Rewrite Truth (prweb.com)
- Online Reputation Management Pr: Crisis Pr and Orm (ronntorossian.com)
- Save Your Business Reputation (logicpath.com)
- Your Secret Weapon in the Battle of Online Reputation (smallbiztrends.com)
