Ebook bulletproof your reputation in 30 days

l o u u let ro o r f p B nline RepYutation O in

Days 30 Days

the Step by Step Guide to managing your reviews

by Jodie Herbert

Public Relations Consultant

‘Don’t let a Bad Review RUIN Your Business’

Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

Contents BB

INTRODUCTION 3

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6 STEPS TO REVIEWING YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION 7

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WHAT ARE THEY SAYING ABOUT YOU ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

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ASSESSING THE SENTIMENT OF THE REVIEW

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REVIEWING YOUR BUSINESS REPUTATION ON BLOGS AND WEBSITES? 14

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MONITORING AND ADDRESSING YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION

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TIPS FOR WRITING A RESPONSE TO A NEGATIVE REVIEW

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RESEARCH AND ADDRESS THE ISSUES WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS 20

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ENHANCE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE

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BUILD AND PROMOTE YOUR REPUTATION

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ASK HAPPY CUSTOMERS FOR TESTIMONIALS 24

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COLLECT VIDEO AND WRITTEN TESTIMONIALS 26

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START SHARING GREAT TESTIMONIALS ONLINE

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CONCLUSION

31

BB

NEED HELP?

32

13

21

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

REPSAFE INTRODUCTION Your business reputation is the heart and soul of your business.

If someone is hurting the success of your business by the things they are saying online, they are also attacking your integrity as a business owner.

97%

of consumers wil research your business online before they engage with you.

Many business owners do not realise that a single negative review can destroy years of good will and best practice. The people that see this bad review do not necessarily care if the comment is true or not. All they understand is that there is somebody out there not pleased with the way you do things, and so, they consider this carefully before deciding to buy your product or engage with you.

Ultimately, when this happens you need to take back the power and control. Your main desire is to put it behind you and get on with the job of doing great business. But sometimes that is not an easy thing to accomplish.

Reputation Management is not a onetime exercise that you can check off the list. It’s an ongoing process that requires continual time and effort, resources and investment, and is absolutely critical for any business operating successfully in today’s environment.

There are many ways to think about your business reputation: the quality of your products and services, the experiences of your customers, and the opinions people share about your business all add important input into how your business is perceived among your peers and competitors.

In today’s world, everything posted about your business online has the potential to make a big impact on the consumer’s decision whether or not to do business with you. That’s because today, the Web is a vital resource consumers turn to when researching a purchase, and 97% of consumers do online research before making a buying decision.

Over the past 3-4 years, as we increasingly live out our lives online, we are also finding that there are many downsides to all of that social media over-sharing, and that we have little control over the way we are perceived by others online. And, if a person truly wants to do damage to your reputation, they will find few obstacles to stop them from tarnishing your good name, once they decide to take action.

Building your business Web Presence is one of the most critical components of conducting successful business. However, once you take that step into an online environment, you are also building your online reputation, which is where many businesses fall down, because wherever you have an online presence, you are now subjected to the scrutiny of consumer reviews. The more reviews you have online, the more sites they appear on, the better your business will rank in general. However that ranking will be drastically affected by any negative reviews, whether they are true customers or not.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

So what do people see when they research your business online? If you don’t know much about your online reputation, the answer might surprise you. Even some of the best businesses find that consumers aren’t afraid to express frustrations online.

In fact, a recent study showed that almost half of Internet users feel they can be “brutally honest” online, and over a quarter of social media users are likely to “share dissatisfaction with a company, brand or product via social media. That’s why it’s so important to keep a pulse on what consumers are saying about you online and learn how to manage your reputation.

So what is Reputation Management?

Reputation Management is the process of cultivating the reputation of your business. Your online reputation includes everything that consumers say and share about your business online – like reviews, social media posts, comments, blog posts, and articles – in addition to information that your business publishes online, such as content on your business blog, website, and social media channels.

Essentially, your entire business Web Presence can play a role your online reputation.

Your online reputation is absolutely critical in today’s consumer world as the role it plays in the modern purchase path continues to grow.

According to research, 86% of consumers look at business reviews online before they make a purchase decision and 90% of consumers trust the reviews they read (Source: Reuters). The bottom line is that what consumers see about you online ultimately determines whether they do business with you or a competitor.

Who should worry about Reputation Management? Whether you are a work-from-home business or a Fortune 500 company, your business reputation is the key to you operating a successful business today.

Most businesses try to maintain a stable of happy customers and clients, exercising maximum control over product and service quality wherever possible. However, even best laid plans can still have a few bumps in the road, and if almost 50% of consumers see online reviews as their opportunity to be brutally honest, you can expect even your most satisfied customers to make some discouraging comments online.

The 3 core components to managing your reputation BB Monitoring - Assess what is being said about your business on the Web, review sites, social

media sites, to gauge the overall sentiment that your current customers have about your business

BB

Manage & Respond - Address negative comments and reviews by working to resolve the issues within your business.

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Build - Post positive testimonials and content about your business online. © 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

The following are two different reviews posted for the same hotel within the same week on Tripadvisor.com …

“Do not book, look elsewhere!”

Reviewed 3 weeks ago “Wow ,where do I start, booked this hotel for a weekend away. Ok room was reasonably priced and was not expecting much but it is a terrible hotel, room was so small walked in to a real musty dirty smell, pillow cases and bed sheets had once been white but were a stained grey/yellow colour, bathroom door cannot shut with...”

“Our saving grace ” Reviewed 3 weeks ago “We happened to stumble across this hotel after booking with a hell hole 6 doors down called the grand beach hotel.

After leaving the hotel we had booked with we had nowhere to go I had a quick flick through booking.com & seen this one so we walked over to approach the owner. He agreed to honour the price shown on...”

As you can see, two totally different perspectives and two totally different star ratings. The interesting thing is that this particular hotel had several equally strong positive and negative reviews on Tripadvisor.com, resulting in only an average rating for the hotel. So which review would you use to guide your decision? Would you book this hotel based on this information?

So which sites should you monitor?

There are hundreds of review sites across all industries and topics. Not only is it important to identify which are the critical review sites for you to be on, it is also important to monitor ripoff, scam alert and complaint sites too, in case you fall victim to the rantings of a disgruntled employee, an unhappy customer or an angry spouse.

Have you claimed your page on these review sites?

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

Why do people leave reviews?

Every life transaction now begins and ends with an internet search. Not only do consumers check your business reviews, they also look at your personal LinkedIn reviews. Prospective employers do searches on job applicants. Singles google their friends and prospective partners or house mates. And Banks also search your business and personal profiles to ascertain the level of risk of lending you money.

Why should you manage your online reputation?

The rise of the internet has given birth to a lot of good things … online orders, easy targeting, speed to market, crowd funding … and a lot of not so good things … negative reviews, email spam and website hacking. Your good name can end up in the hands of people you can’t even identify and who are in places you may not be able to even find on a map.

People who don’t think they have a problem mostly have their proverbial head in the sand. They say, “I don’t disrepute other businesses, therefore the internet is fine for me.” That is actually short-sighted—the internet might be useful for you, but it isn’t working for you.

In truth, the internet can be quite vicious. Someone in your personal or professional life who wants to do damage to you or your business, can do so very easily. A former spouse can go after your small business because of a divorce, or employees, now superfluous due to groundbreaking new technology, can ultimately destroy your business and your life if you retrench them.

So how can you fight back and put this evil behind you, once out of its box? The first step in managing your online reputation is taking a good

look at what your current online reputation looks like, and getting a comprehensive understanding of what consumers see about your business when they search for it online. Decide what social media sites factor into the equation. These sites can determines whether your overall online pulse is positive or negative.

The importance of Reputation Management

80% Buy products recommended by family and friends check you out online when you apply 78% Recruiters for a job Believe the CEO’s reputation is just as important as the

87% company’s reputation

Believe online recommendations are a true and accurate

90% picture

Companies share price will fall 20%-30% as a direct

83% result of their online reputation

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

6 STEPS TO REVIEWING YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION 1.

70% of consumers look to search engines to find reviews

One of the most important factors is what search engines results pages (SERPs) show when consumers type a search word or phrase into a search engine like Google or Bing. To evaluate your online reputation and how your business looks to prospective customers, you will find your results are based on a variety of factors. Eg. If you are logged into a Google account at the time of your search, your search results will be based on the information Google has gathered from your past search and browsing history. This means that if you often visit your own business website, or click on positive content about your business, you may notice those pages ranking higher in a way that it entirely unique to you. To truly get an accurate picture of your online reputation, you should first log out of any browser accounts or sessions, before using a browser feature like Chrome “incognito” window or Firefox “Private Browsing” to perform your search in. It is also important to use the right keywords within your search, to see what really shows up when consumers search for you or your business.

Do the following exercise to get an accurate picture of your online reputation…

BB BB BB BB BB

Search by Business Name Search by Business Name + Location Search by Business Name (using common misspellings of your business name) Search by Business Name (using variations of your business name) Search by Business Name in Quotes (“All Toys”) If you have to resort to this search, you have a bigger reputation problem than you thought, in that local searchers most likely cannot find your business online at all.

Remember the first page of results has the biggest impact because this is the content about your business that searchers are seeing. Once you have your search results, identify any issues and track the results. On review sites, there may be a star or number rating that will help you identify if the feedback is good or bad. Sometimes the title is clear enough in its intent. However, sometimes the negativity is buried more deeply, and you may have to read all the content and make a judgement call. Just ask yourself “would a potential customer find the information presented to be positive or negative?” Then use this as your guide to tackle all identifying issues.

Tracking the results of the negative review can be more daunting. There are numerous ways to do this, and be aware that identifying the initial problem is only the tip of this iceberg. Make a chart of all the positive, neutral and negative content for each of your searches and then look at your overall score to identify if your overall online reputation tips toward the positive or the negative.

Doing this test will clearly identify if you need to take further action to manage any negative feedback pertaining to your business or product reputation. © 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

2. What do the review sites say?

Some of the content you find will be quite interesting and other content can be quite awakening.

Review content is important to your ongoing business success because future consumers will find it when they search your business name, and it will affect their judgement as to whether to do business with you or not. It is critical to manage the issues surrounding negative feedback, because some consumers will have found the reviews through performing a search, while others will have found the reviews because they are a fan of that site. Either way, being in denial about the state of your online reputation will only compound the problem as the negatives feed off each other in replies and further comments.

Sometimes you may come across internal reviews of your business from people that you thought were “on your team”. Employee reviews on sites like LinkedIn, Indeed and Seek should also be considered when looking at your overall reputation because they speak volumes about the heart of your business. A poor employment reputation can be just as damaging as a poor service or product reputation.

It is also important to identify if there are any critical review sites for your particular industry, because many things that affect your business reputation are literally out of your control. For example, if a cyclone has been through your town recently, and there is a lot of damage across the region, you may find reviews advising people not to holiday in the area which could really affect your hotel’s bookings. Another situation would be if there was a media scare about poisonous toxins found in salmon and you own a sushi restaurant; you may find your daily sales plummeting.

In these and similar situations, you will need to go into damage control, to fight back to strong positive content and offer alternative measures to mitigate the perceived risk by the consumer. It is also wise to make a list of the top review sites for your particular niche and industry/region and keep tabs on them.

3. Identify any review sites ranking well.

If you discover some previously unknown review sites where your business is ranking well, add these to your list of sites to monitor, because they will be affecting your reputation in SERPs as well. Using the good rankings on these sites and creating multiple back links to your own website through advertising and other content on these sites to strengthen your rating and improve your search ranking too.

4. Claim your business listing wherever you see it.

Many businesses don’t realise that reviewers can write comments on any review site they wish, suitable to your industry. There are literally hundreds of opportunities for consumers to review your business, and doubtful you have them all on your radar. If a search reveals a review about your business, it is important to officially claim your pages so you can respond to reviews or use other functionality, like building a profile. This is a critical step in Reputation Management, because it helps your business become part of the conversation and address reviews as they come up. New review sites are popping up all the time, so you need to stay on top of this, to make sure you have the whole picture. Do a quick Google search now to see where you pop up.

SEARCH NOW

“Meal wasn’t as nice as last time I ate here.”

STAY AHEAD OF THE EVER CHANGING CONSUMER?

Don’t be a Victim of Consumers Past!

Control the Impact of Negative Reviews BOOK A DEMO

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

5. Evaluate your reputation on review sites After you have identified the top sites, you need to look at the star or number rating on each site for your business, and develop a good understanding of what a positive and negative rating looks like, and what your business’s current reputation is on each site. Some sites use a 5 star system, while others use only 4 stars. Google+ has integrated a 30 point Zagat system into its listings.

While others use a decimal number system from 0 to 5. Start with a basic spreadsheet where you can list every review you find according to site. Note the rating on each review site. This will help you get a feel for your business’s overall reputation at a glance.

It is important to regularly update this document, as a single negative review can drop your site rating by 1 or even 2 stars overnight. And if a consumer really has a beef with your business over something, it is not unusual for them to post negative reviews on several sites in a single sitting.

And being fresh content, will show up in Google and Bing (including Yahoo) searches very quickly once posted.

Here is an example for you see how useful it can be to work out your online reputation score.

KEYWORDS

Four Square

Average Rating

4

4

3.8

3.5

5

3.6

3.5

4

3.8

2

2.5

2

2.7

3

2

3

3.5

3.5

1.5

1

2.8

4

3

3.5

2.5

3.2

4

2.5

3

2

3

4.5

4

3

2.5

4

3.6

3.7

3.4

3.2

2.9

3

SCORE 3.3

Google

Trip Advisor

Business Name

4.5

3.0

2.5

5

Melbourne

3.5

3

2.5

4

Sydney

4.3

4

4

3

Brisbane

4

3.5

2.5

Employee

5

4.5

4

Product 1

4

4

3

Product 2

3.5

3

Product 3

3

4

CEO

4

3.9

Average Rating

Yelp

Bing

Facebook

What is your business’ online reputation score? Take a moment to look at your current review scores and fill out your own online reputation matrix to see where you are currently sitting. The answer will either surprise you or scare you.

Either way, it is a great exercise to do. Remember to read the comments as well as record the stars so you can get the context around the feedback. It will give you a great starting point or base line for your new Reputation Management strategy, and may even identify some operational areas you need to attend to.

How will you know if your score is healthy?

B

4 stars or higher Positive Review Score

B

3 stars to 4 stars Neutral Review Score

B

0 stars to 3 stars Negative Review Score

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

6. The devil is in the detail Using the ratings systems to check the pulse of your online reputation on review sites will help you identify quickly if there is an issue or not. However, many times it is the comments themselves that are truly damaging to your business. Some people may leave ratings that are higher or lower than what their written comments reflect. And even positive reviews can contain critical commentary about your business. So it is important to get a full grasp of what people are saying about your business online.

The following reviews were found on obscure review sites through a simple Google search for “accommodation Neutral Bay” …

3.5 of 5 stars 28 Nov 2015 “No shampoo, no soap? Whaaaat???”

Good 58%

3.5 of 5 stars Reviewed 4 weeks ago Good 47% “Good beds, but towels could be used for planing skin...”

3.0 of 5 stars 25 Sep 2015 Average 54% “Decent for a Business Trip. BUT DO NOT STAY HERE WITH FAMILY!!”

Backhanded compliments like these can be both damaging and useful feedback, because they highlight issues within your operations that could be addressed if you know about them. However, if the reviewers do not put their feedback on mainstream sites, how would you know about them, if you are not diligently monitoring all of your online reputation on a daily basis?

Outstanding service! XX

Luv it!

Great Food!!

Shared!

Yummy!

So glad I found you.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

WHAT DO THEY SAY ABOUT YOU ON SOCIAL MEDIA? It’s no secret. These days, customers do their homework before choosing a company. So if you are not actively managing your online reputation, then you are throwing away thousands of dollars every month in ineffective marketing budgets, and your competition is down the road stealing your thunder and your business.

There is a reason why phone books and yellow pages directories are no longer dropped at your front door. Since 2005 more and more businesses, employers and customers are finding your business on the internet. Print advertising is becoming less and less effective, and your customers are using search engines to find you. Having an online presence is more than just having a website. And if you have no social media presence, then you have a serious problem, you are ignoring this valuable source of new customers.

Let’s say that you are a landscape architect. If you’re talking about landscape architecture and you’re identified with it in social media, you have a plausible résumé. But if someone looks you up, and finds someone else [with the same name] whose interest is kite surfing, that doesn’t do you any good. On the other hand, if all they can find is that you’re interested in cooking and own a dog, that’s not necessarily good, either.

So Reputation Management is not always about curing the negative—it’s also about accentuating your positive truth and personal branding, so that people can find you easily and have the dot points they need to evaluate your business and services quickly.

What consumers say about your business on social media sites can be an important part of your business reputation. Not only do fans seek out local business information directly on social sites, these sites can also show up in search results when someone searches for your business. But these sites can be a little trickier to evaluate, because not all of them have reputation-specific features like reviews or ratings to track.

Look at the top social media sites Would Your Customers Recommend Your Business?

Har vesting online business reviews and customer satisfaction can help your business thrive.

MONITOR the web

ALERT reviews

COLLECT testimonoials

SHARE online

BOOK A DEMO

There are literally hundreds of social media sites online, so it is important to focus on those sites that have the greatest population and audience when evaluating your online reputation. Many social sites can be industry specific, for the most part, however there are several sites that have a much broader reach that you should monitor regularly for negative content.

Since Google upgraded their service offering in 2015 to Google+ people can now merge their Google+ Local listing with their Google+ Business page. Many business owners do not realise that Google+ is possibly the most powerful social media site when it comes to your reputation. Your rating on this page not only shows up in desktop, mobile and maps search results for your business, but it also affects how well your page ranks in Google search, therefore affecting the likelihood of consumers wanting to do business with you. © 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

On Twitter, a negative mention of your business can spread like wildfire. It is important to monitor your business name on this platform, and run a search regularly to see what consumers are tweeting about you and to you.

On Facebook, people can damage your reputation in any number of different ways – the timeline posts, recommendations, business name tags and comments on photos and posts on your business page all reflect on your online reputation.

LinkedIn is a highly credible social platform where consumers can provide both positive and negative feedback on your business and your personal profile because site users can choose not only to leave recommendations about services listed under your company profile, but also leave personal recommendations on your personal profile as well. This can be highly damaging to your professional and personal life, and in some cases can affect your entire future career.

If videos are an important part of your marketing strategy, it is important to read the comments on your YouTube channel page and individual videos often to see what people are saying about you. In addition you can house video testimonials and reviews on the platform to promote your various businesses, products and services. However be aware that your videos will appear alongside your competitors promotional videos, allowing them to pull leads from your YouTube traffic, which is a whole other problem for another time. If you are using the YouTube platform for your business promotional videos, make sure you search on YouTube for your business name and keywords often to see if there are any reputation issues you need to know about. YouTube is also used by consumers to upload their negative video testimonies about businesses and products they are unhappy with. And getting YouTube or the consumer to remove the negative video content once live has been the start of some very costly and serious court battles.

Yelp is one of the largest review sites, and allows consumers of many industries to post reviews about businesses they have dealt with.

Although a great tool to spread the word about your company to potential customers, it can also be a tool used by competitors or dissatisfied customers to cause a big stink by posting negative information about your business.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

ASSESSING THE SENTIMENT OF THE REVIEW Since no two social media sites are exactly the same, you need to assess your ranking and content on each site individually, and assess the traffic and sharing statistics on each to get a good assessment of the overall sentiment of your online business reviews.

Google+Local and LinkedIn have built in review functionality that allows you to review the content and approve it prior to it going live on your business page. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube do not offer this service, and so you will get no warning when a negative review comes online. You will need to monitor these sites and read any posts, tags or comments that include your business name or product so that you can respond quickly to contain the situation. If, for example, your Facebook business page receives negative reviews or complaints, you will need to address these issues in a timely manner to reduce the impact of the content.

It is also wise to keep a tally of the number of negative comments, reviews or mentions you receive, and on which pages and sites. Make sure you also keep track of the topics mentioned in the negative feedback, so you can address them in the next steps of Reputation Management.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

REVIEWING YOUR BUSINESS REPUTATION ON BLOGS AND WEBSITES? Now with the introduction of social media, Websites and Blogs are much easier to share today, making it much easier to spread the news about your business as most sites now utilise follow me and social sharing links on every page.

To find specific content relating to your business name and online reputation, you can use a feature called Google Blog Search. This feature targets blogs specifically, and by plugging in some of your business and reputation keywords into the search function, you can quickly see if anything positive or negative shows up.

Blog and website content may not show up high in search results for your business, so to find this content you may need to be past Page 1 of SERPs. Even more worrying is that readers and subscribers to these sites will be able to find this content about your business far more easily than you can, because they can go straight to the source.

This poses as a serious problem for most business owners, because ignoring negative commentary about your business could cause the original blog to go viral and gain a much larger online audience and even media attention.

With more people following and clicking on this negative content, you will quickly find the original negative content ranking higher than even your webpage on search engines like Google or Bing. So, you need to make sure you look deep in the search results so you don’t miss the opportunity to proactively find Š 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

So, is it difficult to erase something negative once it’s online? In a nutshell… Yes! And there are significant deficiencies in the law in this area, where

sometimes even a lawsuit doesn’t work effectively. The truth certainly means very little to some people who write these reputation-ruining reviews. But it does mean a lot to those on the receiving end of complaints and negative feedback. And if the attack is unfounded, it can do a lot of damage to your bottom line. Also, when your reputation, and often your livelihood, is at stake simply because someone has taken issue against you personally, it can be very hard to see a way out.

Some sites are protected against litigation due to comments from their users, and those that are posting are likely to

93

%

Online experiences begin with a search engine Online harassment occurs on social media websites and apps

14

%

63

%

Inbound leads close, while only 1.7% of outbound leads (such as direct mail, print or telemarketing) close Face to face sales started with an online product or business search Consumers need to hear something at least three times before they believe it Recruiters and hiring managers have rejected candidates based on information found online

79

Consumers rate online reviews and personal recommendations as important

80

Users ignore paid advertising and focus on organic results

%

%

Buyers research products and business names on review sites before making a purchase decision

Reputation damage risks come from a mismatch between the buzz and the reality

%

85

Consumers use the internet for research before making a purchase decision

92

Internet users read product reviews with 89% of them say the reviews influence their purchase decision

%

Consumers see a business’s online reputation as indicativeof the business and the business owner

MOBILE RESPONSIVE FEEDBACK PROCESS

• • • • •

66

%

72

%

70% 90% 80% 75

%

Collect Written & Video Testimonials in under 2mins Intercept & Respond to bad reviews Before they go LIVE Mobile Responsive Feedback Apps Testimonials Upload Automatically to social media Sales can Increase up to 30% within 90 days BOOK A DEMO

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

MONITORING AND ADDRESSING YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION After completing your Business Reputation Matrix you should have a good overview of the status of your online reputation. The next step in Reputation Management is the ongoing monitoring of online content and feedback about your business, and addressing the issues you find there.

Without an effective monitoring system and a daily review in place, it is virtually impossible to stay on top of your online reputation. Not only will you remain oblivious to negative reviews about your business and products, you will also miss key opportunities to address issues and complaints in a timely fashion.

If you do see some negative reviews come up in SERPs about your business in searches, you will need to drop everything, and attend to the issues to stop the negativity from spreading before it is too late.

So how do you avert the spread of these negative comments? There are tools available to help track and monitor your reputation online. They

mostly work by scanning the Web for mentions of your business or keywords and alerting you when new reviews are posted online.

You can also set up alerts like Google Alerts and Yahoo! Alerts to notify you any time your business name, email address or keywords appear on the Web. Once set, you can check your alerts every day and update your reputation report on a weekly or monthly basis. It will still take considerable time to read through all the alerts, and to determine if they contain reputation-related content or if they are simply a business mention, or something you have posted on the Web yourself. Also, Facebook is not indexed by search engines, so you will still need to monitor your business and related pages manually.

Use tools and services to monitor the Web.

Monitoring tools and services can take care of some of the more tedious work when monitoring your online reputation, and some premium tools and services can also take the guesswork out of understanding those comments that are borderline or neutral in nature and rating.

It is important to setup these tools with the same business names, keywords and terms you initially used to research your online reputation, so that any new content is highlighted and identified.

Reply to negative reviews and issues.

When you discover a negative review, you must act immediately to mitigate the damage it is causing your business reputation. A strong customer service approach is always recommended when addressing reputation issues.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

Remember you are not alone.

When you see negative comments and complaints about your business online, remember every business has had its fair share of negative comments, and in this online age virtually everyone is empowered to say whatever they like about anyone or anything. Try searching for a brand you really love with the word “reviews” and you will see what I mean.

Remember that when they originally did the online review, the customer was probably in a different frame of mind, so no matter what the situation, it is critical to respond professionally and respectfully to any negativity. No business is 100% impervious to mistakes. Human error or emotions can play a big part in the sales scenario, and sometimes despite your best efforts, customer service falls short of the mark.

Responding in a negative or defensive manner can cause more harm than good. Giving the writer a uniformed or scripted response can also fan the flames of their distain even more.

Ultimately it is up to your discretion as a business owner to decide which reviews warrant a response. If a review is obviously not addressing a particular issue, product or person, it is probably best to leave it alone.

However, a review complaining about a service at a particular venue, day or specific product, or about interactions with a specific employee, will probably require you to respond, if only to let the customer know you are sorry for the experience and that you are looking into the issue.

Take it offline, whenever possible.

If you can engage the review writer online, you can suggest the discussion be taken offline to find a suitable resolution to the issue. Interestingly, 60% of consumers expect businesses to respond to reviews and comments on social media sites. That is why it is so important for you to claim as many of the review site pages about your business as you can, because many of them will only allow an account owner to respond to negative reviews.

It is important that your reviews be addressed on a case by case basis. Contacting the review writer directly can produce some reassuring results, especially if the entire issue grew from a case of simple miscommunication or a misunderstanding. Sometimes too, the customer review can be based on their own misguided expectations for the service, and a simple conversation around finding out what they were really expecting can be quite illuminating for everyone.

Ask the customer to take down their posting.

Once you have addressed the customer’s complaints, you can ask them if they would consider revising their negative post.

Be subtle, and always take this on a case by case basis. If the customer can see that their issue has been resolved, they will in many cases agree to take the negative posting down, or at least changing their rating to neutral (which is less damaging). However, if they are still quite upset, and feel that you deserve to be “taught a lesson”, then it is best not to ask them for the revision.

Don’t take it personally.

When you spend your every waking moment working on making your business great, it is easy to consider your business’s reputation an extension of your own.

Negative reviews and complaints can have a big impact on your marketing strategies, which will in turn affect your bottom line. So it is easy to feel like the negative business review is personal.

Getting defensive can sometimes blur the real issues, and with many review and social media sites allowing people to remain anonymous, many consumers feel obliged to reveal the “ugly truth” about your business, making their comment sound more critical and harsher than they might have been in a situation where their name is attached to their feedback.

It is important for you to remain focused and to gain a good understanding of what the real issue is. Where possible, try to narrow down the field by trying to identify their true identity by looking at what you know about them – what product did they buy, where did they buy it, and when. With a little research you could get lucky and reopen communications with a simple after sale customer service call. Although this method may resolve the actual issue, it may however, give you an opportunity to request for the negative review to be revised or removed, which is ultimately your main objective.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

Respond quickly, but not too quickly.

Reacting emotionally to the situation can result in your response time appearing desperate or anxious. It is important to respond quickly to negative reviews. To not respond can result in a far worse situation where their review goes viral or gets picked up by the media. However, you should not publish your first impulse response. Take some time to cool down and get some perspective. Let your frustration blow over so that you can respond professionally and with a cool head.

Many business owners react too emotionally, and take the “fight fire with fire” approach. However, this often only leads to drawing the wrath of the internet and even more uninvited negative publicity from other site users. An emotional response will only tarnish your reputation further, making you appear inadequate and unprofessional, instead of the cool headed, professional business owner that you are.

Remember that your reply will be public. I f you don’t respond appropriately you will be inviting even more criticism. Once you have calmed down, done a little research into the circumstances and have a handle on the situation, you will be much better equipped to craft a professional and reasonable response.

Follow through and follow up.

When a person writes a negative review, 90% of the time they want to see you are prepared to give your time and effort to resolving the issue. If they come back to your business, it is important that you follow through with your promise. Sometimes you can get lucky, and you can even win back the customer and even get an updated review, once the issue is resolved.

Sometimes too, other readers and subscribers to the blog or review can see that you addressed the concerns professionally, and will decide to do business with you based on that result.

Ultimately, the customer is a fickle creature, who can blow around like leaves going from review to review while they make up their mind whether to use your services or product. If they are happy, you may never even know they are there. But once disillusioned, they can turn on you with the ferocity of a wounded lion, accusing and attacking you and your business, requiring little or no proof to back up their complaints.

When dealing with the complaints online, transparency and calmness are your best weapons. Do what you say, deliver what you promise, and then confirm with them online that they have received your timely solution and are happy with the outcome. That way, even if they refuse to remove the negative review, others will see your response and actions in the review replies which will take some of the sting out of the initial complaint.

Failure Success

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

TIPS FOR WRITING A RESPONSE TO A NEGATIVE REVIEW Introduce yourself

DD DD DD

Taking ownership and responsibility to inspire confidence to anyone who may read your reply Use your real name and position in the company Encourage them to contact you offline

Use a professional, apologetic tone

D D D D

Keep your tone professional and even Don’t be defensive or argumentative Don’t attack the reviewer, call them names, or speculate about the authenticity of a review Start with an apology, acknowledging the customer’s incident

Address the facts of the negative review or complaint

D D D D

Don’t get caught up in their rant Let them air their concerns Stick to the facts Don’t address any inflammatory remarks

Offer a solution

D D D D

Get to the point quickly Offer a solution to the issue Offer a dedicated phone number or email for reviewers to contact you directly Offer complimentary services or product or replacement of the malfunctioning product

Check your grammar and language

DD DD

Check and recheck what you write as most sites do not allow comments to be edited once posted Then get someone else to check it for clarity, grammar and professionalism before you post

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

RESEARCH AND ADDRESS THE ISSUES WITHIN YOUR BUSINESS In order to address the customer’s issue mentioned in a negative review, you will need to research the behind the scenes story in order to prepare a suitable response.

During this process you will probably begin to see a pattern that will identify some difficult but important lessons about your business and its operations.

Perhaps the reviews will reveal the name of an employee who is being rude to your customers. They may show you that your cleaning staff are not doing their job as you have instructed. Maybe they will reveal a serious defect in a product you are the reseller for, and that your supplier’s after sales service is poor.

The reviews may also reveal an oversight that you had not thought of in your service offering, or had not realised would be important to your customers.

Whatever uncomfortable information you learn about your business and operations, you should look at it as a valuable learning opportunity. Immediately take steps to accommodate the necessary changes to remove this issue as quickly and effectively as possible. Not only can this help nip negative reviews in the bud, it can also help you build a better, more successful business.

Common complaints that appear regularly in negative reviews are…

BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB

Long or inaccurate wait times Poor customer service Poor quality product or service

HOW IMPORTANT ARE REVIEWS FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

Rude employees Unprofessional or untrained staff Overpricing Inadequate facilities Unclean environment

No matter what industry you are in, reviewing and tracking these eight common issues regularly as a part of your operational quality control, can effectively address the negative aspects of your business before your customers can air them as dirty laundry on the Web, and will be a big step towards building better customer relations and loyalty.

Don’t let a Bad Review RUIN Your Business!

• INTERCEPT Bad Reviews before they go live • SHARE good reviews on Social Media • AUTOMATICALLY monitor your online reputation • UPLOAD written & video testimonials to the Web • TAKE BACK control of your online reputation Easy as 1... 2... 3

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

ENHANCE YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE Set up customer service guidelines for your staff.

Setting up a system to monitor and address reputation issues for your business is a critical part of effectively managing your online reputation. However, Reputation Management does not just stop at fixing any problem areas you may find in negative online reviews. It is also important to make sure that outstanding customer service is a priority for everyone on your team.

Outlining your customer service expectations for every employee during onboarding will mean that every employee will know what great customer service means to you. Post these guidelines clearly within the workplace to remind your staff daily of what you expect from them when dealing with your customers.

Do formal customer service training.

It is important to train new

employees on how to provide excellent customer service.

Most people have a natural instinct for helping people, and tend to act intuitively when going that extra mile. However, it is still important that you provide additional formal training on what that should look like when working in your business.

Customer Service is a big topic when looking at reviews as it makes up more than 70% of the content.

Putting in personal development training based around strengthening employees’ phone skills, teaching them how to respond to customer questions and providing them with workflows and scripts around how to speak to and direct customers, will go a long way towards alleviating any bad will.

On the other hand it is also important to be mindful of trying to pigeonhole people into certain outcomes.

Sometimes, as a business you will need to admit you were wrong and take the hit to appease some unhappy customers.

Reward excellent customer service. Introduce a points system, or a customer satisfaction survey, and introduce a monthly reward for the employee who performs the best. Make it a part of each employee’s review and create an ongoing recognition program to help your staff to aspire to that higher level of service.

By introducing online and offline checks to monitor the activity of both your employees and your customers, you will effectively be keeping your finger on the pulse of your business reputation, and you will immediately be able to identify any issues before they arise.

By making great customer service a part of your culture, you will be better positioned to build a strong and positive online and offline reputation for your business.

2016 PR-assist.com 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com ©copywrite

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

BUILD AND PROMOTE YOUR REPUTATION Once negative reputation issues are resolved, you can then focus on sharing great content about your business online. This can be done through social media, blogs, publicity, testimonials and great after sales service.

Here are some ideas on how to build positive content about your business and promote a positive reputation online.

Claim all your listings – It Matters.

Claiming and optimising your local listings and review pages will help them to perform better in a Google or Bing search, helping consumers to find you online. Once claimed, you will be able to manage your business details like exact business name, correct contact details, service list and hours of operation, and if present, you will also be able to share any positive content about your business on that site. This way consumers will see the most positive and up-todate information about your business when they visit these sites.

Updating your listing information and profile on all your sites can be tedious and laborious, but it is important, because search engines like Google will cross reference this information across all your listings and pages to determine your page ranking. Consistency is the key to get the best result out of your SEO and URLs, so it is very important that you also check for accuracy of spelling, punctuation, special characters and abbreviations too, as these can affect your search results as well.

Claim all the top free listing sites first.

Some listing services are free and others are paid. Each local listing or review site setup their own unique claim process, but typically they require information about your business and a verification process and login to identify you as the correct business owner. Be aware to claim your Google+ business page can take up to 5 weeks while you wait for a code to arrive in the mail. So this is not going to be a quick process.

Check out the following links to claim your business listings and pages on these popular review sites. If you haven’t heard of some of these be aware that there are over 600 different sites that can collect reviews that you don’t know about across the Web and more coming every day.

Start a Blog to gather valuable reviews.

Blogging can be a valuable platform to promote positive content about your business and products. Gathering blog followers will help you to spread the good word, introduce new processes, products and positioning, and build a strong network of regular review junkies that love to see their comments on your site.

You can also then promote your Blog articles to specific target audiences via your Social Media platforms, encouraging even further interaction with consumers, who will in turn help to spread the word even more.

ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

DON’T LET A BAD REVIEW

RUIN

YOUR BUSINESS

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

So you have a Facebook business page. What now?

It is important to ensure your social media pages are claimed and optimised for your business before you start promoting it. They can rank highly for your business keywords and can help you to push positive content about your business and services up in search engine results.

Socialising and sharing positive news and content about your business is an important part of the Reputation Management process. As part of your Reputation Management plan, please make certain that you have setup or claimed your business pages to maximise and share the engagement between them.

Š 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

ASK HAPPY CUSTOMERS FOR TESTIMONIALS One of the best ways to build a positive reputation online is to ask happy customers to leave you reviews.

Regardless of how well you conduct your business, negative reviews are always easier to come by. I guess it is the old “tall poppy” syndrome that makes consumers 100% focused on receiving perfect service and perfect products 100% of the time. Unfortunately when businesses fall short of the mark, consumers are always quick to shout to the hills about your short comings as a business and as a business owner.

In short, people tend to be more proactive about complaints. Yet people who love your business and who are satisfied customers may be less likely to leave a positive review. There is no rhyme or reason for this, but with some small incentives you can rally your happy customers to build you a positive reputation for your business, online.

Do not pay for positive reviews.

It is a quick solution that many business owners and managers have considered, but monetising the review process for your customers or buying positive reviews from sites like Fiverr and Elance with cash, discounts or free products can be more damaging than you probably realise.

In order for the positive reviews to take the affect you want, it is always best to be truthful and realistic about your endorsements. There is no point paying reviewers to rave about your business if your product or services do not meet the consumer’s expectations. This will only lead to many more negative reviews than originally anticipated, simply because your paid reviewers are creating a fantasy that cannot be operationally achieved, and can be perceived as less genuine, causing consumers to question why the product or service they bought did not give them the same super-high.

As a final thought, it is also not okay to have your own employees pose as customers and positive reviewers about your business. Eventually, as more and more content is linked through search engine matching technology, you will be found out, and this would be far more damaging to your business reputation online.

Pick your targets and build your reputation on those sites.

Selecting a few high-impact review sites to build your positive reputation is an ideal way to begin. That way you can direct your customers to those sites to further build a strong and reputable business name and brand.

Google+ Local should be included in this hot list because it greatly impacts on your map listing and SERP ranking. And because the reviewers must have a Google account, their reviews are perceived as more genuine and more easily tracked.

When considering which sites to include on your hot list, select those that are already ranking well in search results for your business. For example, if a site ranks highly because of negative reviews, it is a good idea to direct happy customers to post positive reviews on that site. This will build a good volume of positive feedback which will swamp the negative reviews, pushing them down in the list so they are not as evident to researching consumers, thus losing their ‘power’. This activity is referred to as ‘damage control’ and can turn the tide in your favour if performed effectively.

Make sure you have address and replied to all complaints on this site before you begin your ‘damage control’ campaign, so that your current customers can see you are working to resolve any issues other people have experienced.

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

One of the best times to ask a customer to leave a review is after a great experience with your business.

Like when a couple get the keys to their newly built home for the first time, or when the garden make over is completed. Whatever your product, identify that perfect time or sweet spot in your product delivery when you will capture the most enthusiasm for your product or service, like Day 3 of a 10-day bus tour around Europe, when your travelers are settled and still fresh with enthusiasm for their journey. Day 10 they will probably be too tired, cramped and grumpy to ask for a testimonial, especially if you have just stopped at the 25th castle that week.

Here are a few cues that customers have had a great experience with your business:

B B B B B

They ask the waiter to congratulate the chef on a superb meal They write a note or a letter of thanks They motivate other customers sharing their experience to purchase a group gift They appear to be posting a lot of selfies on facebook to share their experience with their friends You overhear them telling a friend they are using your service

Actively collect positive reviews.

Creating a business card or postcard of your business’s preferred review sites and their links will help to remind employees and customers that you appreciate reviews about your product or service. It is also a good idea to create Point of Sale material like posters to let people know how much you appreciate their opinion and feedback.

Placing review site links into your email signature, on customer invoices or receipts and in your e-newsletters can also help to communicate this with your customer base.

Some businesses like hotels or restaurants choose to secure a tablet with an online survey open at their cash register as a Review Station. Some even offer a 10% discount if the customer places a review online.

Although this does encourage more awareness for the review process, studies have shown that this does not always produce genuine reviews, as most customers when pushed like this, will only write “great”, “good location” or “nice meal” as their review, which does not instil a lot of good will in other consumers’ minds.

Also, these same studies show that in this situation the customer is more likely to choose a neutral position, selecting 3 or 3.5 stars as their rating, when a truly enthusiastic review will usually write between 30-50 words and will give 4-5 stars as their rating. So although you may have the quantity of reviews, they are not always positive and the content is usually satisfactory or less.

The best reviews come from the people that are inspired by your business or product. They carry the most weight with consumers researching your business online, and they become your advocates in the real world, recommending your product to friends and associates both on and offline.

Get your team onboard.

It is critical to your online business reputation, that your entire team be on the same page when it comes to collecting reviews. Your employees are on the front line of this endeavour, and it is important that you embed the request for a review into the sales and aftersales process. Some businesses choose to give employees incentives to collect reviews as they go about their daily tasks. Others choose to have a blitz week event, where employees are each given a goal and there are prizes for the employee who collects the most reviews.

Whatever you decide, make your team part of the effort. This will not only increase the number of reviews you have online, it will also help them to ‘hear’ the feedback in a new light. Negative feedback is always best used as a tool to improve operations, and when an employee collects a negative or neutral review, it helps them to connect the dots between outstanding customer service and reputation goals.

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

COLLECT VIDEO AND WRITTEN TESTIMONIALS Although reviews are an important part of your online reputation, creating and optimising customer testimonials about your business can help you rank higher in SERPs for reputation keywords. But remember, you must obtain and save written permission from the customer if you feature their image and feedback in any of your business marketing.

Create a variety of testimonials about your business.

The important thing to remember is that if you are collecting the feedback yourself, then you must also collect the customer’s written agreement for you to use their testimony in your marketing material to promote your business.

To do this, some businesses decide to have a separate one-page blanket agreement form where the client signs away all rights to their testimonial. The other way to do this, is to embed the permission clause into your service agreement, or sales agreement process. One way to do this would be to have a disclaimer next to the buy button on your website that states that any feedback you give can be used for marketing purposes. By finalising the sale they are giving their universal permission for their testimony to be utilised for marketing purposes.

When considering how to collect your customer’s testimonial, you need to also consider how you plan to use their testimony to promote your business. Here are a few different forms of testimonial for you to consider…

B

Business testimonials – feature your customer talking about your business and their overall experience working with you

B

Case study – present the problem faced by the customer and how your business helped them to overcome it

B

Reverse testimonials – begin with the customer’s initial concern or objection to working with you, and then go on to describe how your business gave them fantastic results

B

Product or service testimonials – describe a specific solution your business offered, how it was implemented, and the outcome

B B

Benefits testimonials – focus on the benefits of a particular product or service

Day-in-the-life testimonials – feature your product or service and show what a difference your product or service has made to your customer’s daily routine.

During this process it is important to create both video and written testimonials. However when setting up your testimonial collection process, be aware that more than 80% of consumers consider a video testimonial to be more credible, and prefer to watch a short video testimonial than read the written testimony underneath it.

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

Optimise testimonials for reputation keywords. Once you have collected your testimonials, it is

important to then optimise each testimonial for reputation keywords.

Optimising your testimonials will build not only your Web presence, but also your reputation, and optimising them for important reputation keywords for your business and industry will make your content rank higher in SERPs.

For example, you could include a reputation term that you are monitoring in the title of a video review. Some examples for this are…

B B B

“[Business Name] Review: [Customer Name] Loves Product” “Review: [Business Name] Helps [Customer Name] with [Challenge]” “Does [Business Name] Really Work? One Customer’s Review”

Optimise your written content headlines, subheads and meta tag descriptions to include a reputation keyword. Remember to stuff your content with keywords and avoid writing misleading titles or content just to maximize searchability.

Bear in mind, that by framing your content in terms of the keywords consumers are using to research your business type, you can help potential customers to find the information that will help them make their purchase decision.

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

START SHARING GREAT TESTIMONIALS ONLINE After you collect your positive content, it is important to share that content online in order to build your positive reputation. There are several avenues at your disposal to do this.

On your website.

Your website is the heart and soul of your business marketing, so it is an important place to share positive content about your business for potential customers to find.

Many businesses make the mistake of hiding their testimonials in some forgotten back page of their website that can take 3 or even 4 clicks to reach. This is valuable content that has taken you considerable effort to collect. It should therefore be featured prominently on your home page, clearly labeled with big bold links to a devoted testimonial webpage. Depending on the software used to build your website, you could also add a rotating video gallery to your home page to immediately demonstrate to prospective customers that many of your customers place enough value on your product or service to want to share their experience with others.

It is a proven fact that when researching a business online, prospective customers highly value the opinions of previous customers when making a purchase decision, and that they use testimonials as a window to view and understand the journey that they have taken to resolve their issue and get to a better place.

On social media sites.

When monitoring your business reputation on the Web, it is always exciting to come across a new unsolicited positive review about your business. The fact that one of your customers took time out of their day to do this for your business, will affirm your self-belief in your product and will build your confidence in your business strategy. So it is important to post these reviews on your social media pages as social activity which will in turn help you rank better in search, build positive relationships with your followers and improve your brand reputation online.

Ensure your positive reviews and testimonials and other content is optimised with your reputation keywords. Use different combinations of your business name and the term “reviews” in each new post about a review that features your business. And make your posts sharable and interactive by encouraging fans to comment, like and share your posts with their networks.

92

%

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Internet users read product reviews with 89% of them saying the reviews influence their purchase decision.

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

Update other fresh and interesting content online.

To further build your reputation online, and to get your Web presence ranking better in general, be sure to create a fresh stream of interesting content about your business that is not focused on your business reviews and testimonials.

We do this to increase the amount of positive content about your business on the Web to improve your online ranking in SERPs.

Products

Blogs/Aritcles

Interviews

DIY Hints

Images/Videos

Content marketing builds your reputation online, and shares information on different topics around your positive reputation. Adding a broad range of topics based on your products, services, community, industry, region and business, will help your business appeal to a broader range of consumers, boosting social shares and brand awareness and ultimately building your Web presence online.

Optimise your content for SEO.

Optimisation will build your general Web presence as well as the searchability of positive content surrounding your business reputation keywords.

Optimising blog posts featuring your products or services for your product and service keywords will pull other content on that topic, such as testimonials, customer case studies and positive industry mentions higher in SERPs, which will in turn have a positive effect on your overall online reputation.

Having a diversified content strategy will establish you and your business as an industry expert, thus building your reputation online and providing a broad range of content readers and audience to draw your new customers from.

Building your business Web presence is a critical step in your Reputation Management strategy. If consumers researching your business can see a large quantity of quality content in SERPs under your domain or referring to your business, they will share the goodwill of your happy customers, and genuinely love doing business with you. By setting up a process to proactively build your business reputation online, you can help consumers to find the positive content they need when researching purchase decisions online.

Š 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

VIDEOS

DIY CASE STUDIES Webinar Events

BLOGS eBooks

MORE REVIEWS BETTER RANKINGS TRUSTED RELATIONSHIPS HIGHER REVENUE

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

OUR CONCLUSION Managing your business reputation online is not a one-off exercise, and is not something that you do only one day a year.

Reputation Management is an ongoing process that will require your continued time, effort and investment to be successful. At any moment, and for whatever reason, you or your product may give a less than satisfactory performance, that could result in a negative online review.

In today’s business environment, Reputation Management is an absolutely critical part of your online marketing strategy. Actively managing the organic reputational content of your customers and employees, and actively seeking to increase the weight of your positive content online can assist you to remain above the curve, but it is something that you should review and optimise on an almost daily basis.

However, once you get into the swing of it, you will quickly begin to see that the benefits you get from actively managing your online reputation will be far more than you originally anticipate, reputationally, operationally and financially.

You will also discover some hard cold facts about you, your service and your business, that could be difficult to swallow. This is not something to be afraid of. Embracing this opportunity and the feedback your read will probably be the best opportunity of your career and will help you to build a better business.

Being in business, time can sometimes be your most valuable commodity. If this is the case, there are tools available to help you monitor the Web for online reviews about your business, products and services.

Remember, even your industry, product line or location can sometimes affect your business reputation.

It does not have to be anything to do with the way you do operations or services that can be your undoing.

Sometimes even a government bushfire or flood warning can build a negative online reputation for your region and you will see this reflect in sales, seriously affecting your bottom line.

You may have started your business in what had been a nice area 20 years ago, but is now seen as a slum and high crime area. Simply operating your business in that location can result in bad reviews.

If the media report that your core product has just been found to be carcenogenic, or has been reported to be “tested on puppies”, you could be looking at some serious negative feedback surrounding these issues, which really are not caused by poor customer service or bad business operations.

So given that factors both in and out of your control can affect your online reputation, and that it is relatively easy for consumers to throw those reviews up on the Web, 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, it is wise to remain vigilant and to monitor your reputational keywords regularly.

And whether you get the thumbs up or the thumbs down, we hope this Step by Step Guide to Protecting Your Online Reputation will help you identify and address the issues that consumers perceive about your business., and that you can use these opportunities to develop better relationships with your customers.

© 2015 J.Herbert PR-assist.com

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Bulletproof Your Online Reputation in 30 Days

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” – Benjamin Franklin “Whether true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and particularly on their destinies, as what they do.” – Victor Hugo

Need Help?

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett “A good reputation is more valuable than money.” – Publilius Syrus

Get help to manage your online reputation!

Now that you can see the importance of managing your online reputation, you need to put a game plan together, and get started. Every day you delay, more and more unknown content is being posted about you and your business.

RepSafe can help you manage your online business reputation, build your business Web presence, create and promote content about your products and services, and claim directories and review site pages and to give you back control over your business reputation. We can show you ways to easily monitor the health of your online reputation, and to create a constant stream of both video and written testimonials to build and improve your Web presence and online business reputation.

About us.

RepSafe is a global leader in online Reputation Management. Part PR gurus, part tech heads, RepSafe specialises in providing online makeovers, removing the impact of negative search results and promoting content that accentuates your desired image.

Our mission is to help businesses all over the world to reach more local consumers online, through a combination of our smart technology and sharp professionals, we deliver affordable services and tools that get you the results you need.

We are the online Reputation Management specialists. We can show you some easy strategies to monitor your online reputation yourself, or show you an easier way to monitor your reputation using automated and semi-automated tools that will put the bad reviews behind you, and let you get on with the job of doing Great Business.

Want an easier way to manage your Online Reputation?

“RepSafe revealed to me just how easy it is to manage online reviews for my business.”

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“I was the victim of online sabotage. RepSafe collected so many good testimonials from happy customers, my competitors can no longer hurt my reputation.”

Antoni Sagalis - Executive Chef

“Inheriting the bar from my Dad meant I was also inheriting a long business history. Repsafe helped me put the past behind us.”

Michael James Hotelier “My personal reputation is the center of my dealership’s sales culture. RepSafe ensures I can easily stay on top of feedback about all areas of our operations.

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