Preventing online reputation damage
Prevention is the part of reputation management that is most often neglected. Sadly, repairing the damage is much harder, and in some cases impossible. So choose to act today and put all the safeguards you can to avoid reputation loss down the road. You probably have plenty to do in the day to day running of your business, and a crisis when your website is duplicated, drops off the Google rankings, or is targeted with malicious reviews, is not something you need on your hands. Long before I got interested in reputation management, I made all the classic mistakes and suffered the consequences. Although my business recovered, I don’t wish anyone that feeling when you are sitting by the phone and worrying why it is not ringing.
I will not lie – prevention measures are limited, as the Internet is a pretty wild and unregulated place. But here are some of the useful things that can be done:
You can protect against someone copying your website. Read more about why it’s a problem and what preventional measures you can take on our Plagiarism Protection page.
Why? Because if you don’t, someone else might. It might just be an innocent case where someone uses the same business name, but search engines will associate the account with your business. This can confuse potential customers and damage your reputation online. So if your cafe is called “Sweet Temptations” and someone runs a strip club with that name in a different part of the world, it could be a problem. Worse still, if customers rate the said strip club low (say, it has a two star rating), Google might display this as your business rating.
Would you call a business if you saw that other people only rated it two stars online?
Improving and growing the reputation of your business
If you have a long-term view for your business, you may or may not want to grow it. And while you may not necessarily want to expand, you will definitely want to grow your reputation. There is a famous gastropub, called The Black Swan, in the north of England, and you will come across it if you search for “the best restaurant in Yorkshire”. It doesn’t want to spawn 50 franchises, but it does benefit from its reputation growth online – in fact, so much so, that people make pilgrimages to eat there. Result? The Black Swan can charge an eye-watering £165 for their tasting menu with drinks. We can both learn something here.
So here is what you can do to grow your reputation online:
Play it right, and social media will bring you new customers and retain existing ones. This is a space to advertise your products, tempt customers with special offers and speak to your customers directly – while others are watching.
Use this opportunity. You don’t have to like it to know it’s effective.
Image by TodayTesting via Wikimedia Commons, licence CC 4.0.
Most review sites give the management of a business an opportunity to respond to reviews. Interaction shows you care. If you care, your customers trust your claims that little bit more.
Post a load of fake reviews and see your reputation nosedive when you are caught…OR encourage your customers to leave positive reviews. We can help you do this in a way that’s not intrusive or spammy.
To see what it is, do a Google search for “waxy o’connors london” and see the GMB profile of a much-beloved London pub on the right of the page. You business should have one too. You should also maintain your GMB account by posting news, offers and responding to customer queries.
We’re Here to Help You Go Further!
Put us in charge of your online presence and see your reputation grow.
