It is exhilarating when you find existing and prospective customers share online reviews, photos, and comments about your brand /business except when the comments are adverse. To zealously protect and preserve the online reputation of your small business, you need to be constantly watchful about various mentions online about your small business.
Do not allow some stray misguided or adverse reviews tarnish the reputation you worked sedulously hard over the years to establish. Monitor closely what Internet users are saying about your small business. This will help you fix mistakes and find opportunities to highlight all positive reviews.
Gain that cutting edge over your competition by studying competitors’ reviews, mentions, and listing. Use this valuable information to identify sales or growth opportunities for your small business. In short, become an internet spy.
There are several free trackers like Google Alerts to help you monitor what others are saying about your small business. Google Alerts will send emails to you every time a new mention about your business is made online.
Blog Search Engines will let you know when someone writes a blog post about you. You can avail SocialMention which is social media search engine that tracks everything from blog comments to social bookmarking sites. You can also use that keeps tabs on any mention of your business on discussion boards and forums.
Positive word-of-mouth comments can be an online business owner’s greatest boon. But some stray negative word-of-mouth comments can immeasurably ruin your business – particularly if you do not handle them promptly and tactfully.
Make no mistake – today prospective buyers peruse online reviews while making a purchase decision. If some adverse comments catch their eyes, then rest assured they will turn to y our competitors.
You must ensure that all favorable reviews about you in the internet are highlighted to the extent possible and the stray negative comments are made obscure. You must be familiar with SEO techniques to ensure that all positive comments rank high in search pages and the negative comments are pushed to the third or fourth page of search results.
Although your business may be small now, it should obviously be your endeavor to grow big and expand your customer-base. This objective is attainable only if you take your online reputation seriously and either entrust the work to a full-time dedicated employee or hire the services of a professional agency.