Are users talking about your brand? Do you monitor their comments? Those and many other questions can be answered by the often misunderstood task of reputation management.
Some think it’s just PR while others believe it’s social media monitoring. The truth is reviews and comments left online about you and your company can have a substantial effect on your growth. If you get a Facebook update, Yelp review, comment on your blog or a negative tweet about a consumer experience, it shouldn’t go unnoticed. If you consider avoiding it by hiding or ignoring bad remarks, think again as 84% of users say they trust the feedback they get from friends and colleagues. The answer without a doubt is actively monitoring this type of activity on a regular basis, especially if there have been issues in the past. Negative reviews can extend to negative media coverage or even hate sites. If this type of behavior is left unsupervised or unanswered it can become a problem and seriously hurt your business. Depending on how severe the situation is there are a number of ways to counteract this.
1. All negative reviews have to be responded to. It is exactly the same as crisis management, you have to respond to the public and to the criticism directly. The tone of the response should be something along the lines of ‘ We are sorry, how can we help?
2. If unfavorable comments or websites pop up when someone googles you than a SEO strategy that boosts positive posts needs to be in place to outrank the negative ones.
3. You can block and report a user that you might think writes untruthful or inaccurate reviews about you. Reacting to this in a timely manner on the platform also increases your chances of them removing the review.
4. Fighting back and not consenting to certain types of behavior towards you is allowed. In some cases, legal action might be necessary if the damage done to your image is severe. Your response must be strong enough so that it won’t be interpreted as passive. You simply can not afford to have this type of event happen again.
5. You can use DIY methods to track it all such as creating Google alerts with your name or subscribing to brand listening tools. Hiring a professional might also be a good idea depending on the size of the problem and the business.
Getting feedback online shouldn’t always be counterproductive. We all have a bad day or two in the long run but turning it into a learning experience and improving is what matters. Not all reviews are negative but those that are can help you write content and create a message that addresses the public concerns about your product or service and therefore enhance your content marketing.