Fixing Online Business Reputation

You Can Fix Your Online Business Reputation

You’ve worked hard to create your business and its reputation. Maybe you invested years getting the proper education or training or sunk thousands of dollars into building your brand.

And then one or two scathing reviews threaten to destroy all those years of work.

Sounds like the stuff of nightmares, doesn’t it?

But unfortunately, this is the reality we live in. While most people will leave honest and fair reviews. Recently angered customers often take out their frustration by including every hostile, savage, and damaging thought in their heads—and publishing it all for the world to see.

Does it really matter, you might ask? Does anyone pay attention to what a few trolls say?

Why Reviews Matter

The problem in the online world is that everyone doesn’t personally know the people posting the reviews. So while you as the business owner might recall the person, their complaint, and what you did to resolve it, the rest of the world won’t.

Later, when someone finds your business in a search and checks the reviews, those negative reviews are what they see. And they wonder if they really want to do business with you.

This is very important today now that customers’ buying decision is made by consulting reviews. This is why Amazon and Google place such an emphasis on reviews. And it’s the reason that companies like Yelp and Angie’s List even exist. Online shoppers want some kind of social proof from someone other than the business owner that they will be satisfied with the product or service.

So protecting your online reputation is vital to your business success. This reputation isn’t just built on customer reviews. It also includes any information that’s accessible online, whether it was from a press release, a smear campaign from a competitor or a disgruntled employee, or a lawsuit. Any negative information online can hurt your business.

Given the importance of your online reputation for your business’s health, why wouldn’t you put your best foot forward?

It makes sense to think about this, even for your personal brand. Suppose you got into trouble in your early twenties, and reports of that are still floating around online. Sure, it was a long time ago. But will that old incident hamper your growth opportunities at work? Prevent you from pursuing new career goals or aspirations?

Consider what a handful of bad reviews will do to your business or personal success. But even if you already have some harsh negative reviews, there’s no reason to feel helpless. There is something you can do to repair the damage.

Can Your Online Reputation Be Fixed?

The short answer is yes, you can. Reputation management campaigns can reduce or even eliminate the impact terrible reviews or negative information have on your business. They help you control or manage your online reputation.

In essence, what a reputation management campaign does is bury the negative reviews or information deep within the search results. If anyone does find them, they’ve already read lots of positive reviews or statements about you and your business. Having seen all that positive feedback diminishes the impact of the negative reviews.

As a business owner, you should absolutely be making use of reputation management services. The fact that we have this strategy available is fantastic to actually influence what information can be found about your business online.

And fixing your online reputation won’t be horribly expensive.

This is because you don’t necessarily have to do an extensive campaign to repair your online reputation. But you do need to do it properly.

All it takes is two steps:

1. Make sure you are delivering a quality product and good service to your customers
2. Run a reputation management campaign

Do not underestimate the importance of the first step. You must ensure that your product is quality and you have responsive customer service. Otherwise, you’ll just bury one batch of bad reviews only for another to surface. Your first defense is to provide value to your customers.

When you are ready for the second step, remember that your reputation management campaign doesn’t have to be huge. It depends on how much negative information there is online and how much you’re actually trying to fix. Some successful campaigns are small, others extensive.

One thing to note, though, if you are a business owner and have terrible reviews, you can fix that. But ultimately, no amount of reputation management will help if you are not providing good service. Perhaps there was a past issue that you’ve corrected. Great. Your reputation can be repaired. But not if you allow that old issue or a worse problem to come back.

Maybe you bought a business, and they had terrible reviews. You can fix those reviews and then follow up with actual good service to continue that trend of improving the business’s reputation. But the worst thing you can do is run a reputation management campaign, fix everything you find online, and still deliver poor service. You won’t achieve anything that way because there’s only so much that you’ll be able to cover up. As they say, there’s only so much you can do to polish the pig.

At the end of the day, it’s your exceptional service that will build your reputation. Running a reputation management campaign can help you repair the damage done by bad reviews.

This is why everybody should be using reputation management services to ensure that they’re putting the best possible light on their business or themselves online.

Does a reputation management campaign make sense for you?

If you’re interested in reputation management services for your business or your personal brand, give us a call. We can have a conversation to see if it makes sense to do some reputation management and discuss how it can help your business grow.