Shiny Reputation

Do you long for the good, old days when there was no internet?  Are you running a small or medium sized business enterprise?  If the answers to both those questions are “Yes”, the chances are that you’ve been stung by a negative review posted about your business on review sites like Yelp.

The “good, old days” belonged to the corporate giants, who had too much muscle and capital that could enable them to dwarf most other business rivals.  The arrival of the internet evened things up, in the marketing world.  Where posters could fade away, advertizing jingles on the radio and television could be forgotten and print advertisements became stale with the passage of time, the internet showed up as a marketing billboard that never slept.  Further, it ensured that your products and services could be seen across the globe.  It worked for the giants of the corporate world; it also worked for small and midsize businesses.

Along with the internet came online shopping and then, online reviews.  Surveys conducted by various internet marketing firms have established one fact beyond any shadow of doubt: people do search for reviews on products and services on the internet.  Even worse, they do tend to go by other people’s experiences – whether good or bad – in making their decision.

The internet can never be switched off and it can never be erased either.  A negative review posted years back, can well manifest the reality of the proverb “Old sins cast long shadows”.  So, how can you ensure that your online reputation remains spotless and serves to bring the customers in?

• Monitor: Avail of Google Alerts so that you get to know what’s being said about your business online.  Check Yelp regularly as well as other social media sites.
• Deal with the Negative: Negative reviews do not necessarily need to be bad.  They give you an insight into the mind of your customer and what they want.  When the gap between expectations and reality is not bridged, a negative experience (and review) is born.  Analyze the negatives.  See if solutions have been suggested or come up with ways to improve.  Behind a negative review is a comforting thought too: “People are speaking about your business”.  Why not convert them into positive customers?
• Appreciate the Positive: Use positive remarks made by your customers as testimonials on your marketing material.  Engage with such customers and encourage them to post reviews of their experiences on other review sites as well.  You’ve already won their appreciation; win them over completely by giving your loyal customers special offers etc.

Former US President, Abraham Lincoln, said: “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.  The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing”.  In today’s world of online reviews and reputations, the shadow can well be your online reputation, even as the tree is what your business really is.

Moments to Seize – Capitalizing on Negative Reviews

Ever since it was founded in 2004, Yelp has become a very popular site for posting reviews about products and services.  Customers use Yelp to post their experiences with a business enterprise and give it a rating between 1 to 5 stars (with 5 being the top score).  It goes without saying that the better the reviews, the higher the Yelp ratings.  However, not many are aware of how many people actually read those reviews and base their decisions on them.  In other words, your advertisements and publicity may win you the customer’s attention; your Yelp rating will win you their business and loyalty.

Yelp recommends responding to reviews as it can be a great way of building goodwill as well as of staying in touch with your customers.  For this reason, they allow the feature of sending public or private messages.  Unsurprisingly, Yelp also provides tips on reverting to both positive and bad Yelp reviews.  For positive reviews, Yelp recommends a simple “thank you” with a positive assertion that you – as a business owner – care for their experience and feedback.  When it comes to a negative review that has been posted, the advice has a lot more to offer.

Yelp recommends business owners to thank the negative reviewer for taking the time to provide their feedback still – but only after taking a deep breath!  An honest assessment of the issues raised, as well as highlighting steps taken to prevent a recurrence is a good way to try and win back the customer.  In cases where your company policy is clear on the rights and wrongs of the incident, express (and elaborate) that.  Business owners have earned second chances merely by being polite.  While you may not win over the disgruntled customer every time, the fact remains that by showing your concern, you could well win over others who research your business and reviews on Yelp.

Refraining from appearing rude, angry or condescending is also crucial because the internet never sleeps.  People all over the world can access and read what has been posted and in trying to settle the issue, you could well end up driving other customers away.  Even though you may be in the right, it would do your reputation no good if prospective customers read your response to a negative reviewer and come away with the impression that you’re reacting as immaturely as the reviewer.

While businesses everywhere would love to earn good reviews and better Yelp ratings, the fact remains that a good review cannot help you in staying ahead of your competition.  A bad review, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to improve, innovate and maintain the pole position in the race of business enterprises.

When users type in keywords pertaining to your business on a search engine, the internet responds with anything remotely connected with those keywords.  Thus, your business, your business rivals, any press releases or any reviews on Yelp or Angie’s List – all these end up, merely a click away.  With smartphones making access to the internet even easier, prospective customers now have the resources available to pick and choose, weigh the pros and cons, before opting to do business with you.  The choice could well rest on the fact that you had only 1 Yelp review which was negative while your competitor had 3 reviews of which 1 was negative.  Building a reputation was difficult anyway; building a digital reputation is even more cumbersome.

With reviews on the internet accessible to users all over the world, erasing the negative reviews is almost impossible; handling the negative reviewer and convincing them takes time and effort and ascertaining the credibility of the source where it came from becomes immaterial.  The fact remains that whatever has been written is out there on the internet, open and accessible to all.  Therefore, keeping a close vigil on what is being spoken or written about your business on the internet – is a constant effort.

Cases have emerged where lawsuits have been used to fight back bad reviews, but these are expensive and do not guarantee the undoing of damage.  Therefore, the only weapon with which one can ensure a strong online presence and, in turn, a good digital reputation, comes from implementing a strategy that can keep you ahead of the competition.  A few steps to take to ensure this are:

• Manage online content for your business and ensue that the latest and most accurate information – from your products and services to your contact numbers – is listed correctly online.
• Use SEO to improve your rankings on the search engines so that prospective customers see you before they spot the competition.
• Use Twitter and Facebook regularly, to stay in touch with patrons who could well, lead others to you.
• Enhance your website so as to ensure that the message of your brand and values remains clear from those of your rival.  If your customers can think of your company’s name before the keywords associated with your business come to mind, you have succeeded.
• Monitor the review sites like Yelp, Google etc. to ensure that your reviews are positive and fair.  If you come across any negative reviews, try and put out the fire as soon as you can so that customers doing an internet search on you, see you as being concerned, proactive and solution-oriented.

The recent McKremie Online Reputation Management Survey 2012, set down certain facts that businesses would do well to heed.  The survey established that:

• 87% of people researched companies online before doing business with them.
• Only 3% of people did no research at all.
• 71% of people posted a product or service review online.
• Contrary to popular perception, 68% of the reviews posted had positive comments.
• 76% of people went through at least the first three pages of results generated by Google.
• 67% of people used social media to research the reputation of a company.
• 88% of people trusted the reviews posted on Google, Yelp and Angie’s List.

Each of the points mentioned above, serves to give you an idea of how people are turning to the internet, for the most routine of queries, before selecting a specific company to do business with.  The rise and rise of Reputation Management is something that many business enterprises are only coming to terms with now.  Go through that last observation once again.  What it effectively means is that 88 customers out of 100, who have never transacted business with you earlier, will only show up if what they find written about your business on the internet, is mostly positive.  It also means that they would be far more willing to trust the review of someone they’ve never seen, as opposed to taking your word for it.  Scary?  It should be.

So what can you do to ensure that your online reputation does not get tarnished by a negative review?  Small steps to take include:

• Using SEO on several pages of your website with the name of your business so as to convey the impression of being an authority on the subject.  The more pages returned by Google with your company, the lesser the chances of that negative review being noticed.
• Diversify the keywords that fall within your purview and ensure that your business appears in the Top 10 searches for those keywords.
• Use anchor text (hyperlinked words that lead to another, often authoritative and trustworthy website) to increase the search results ranking, as search engines use anchor text to determine the relevancy of the page being linked to.
• Monitor the content being posted on you by doing a Google search on your business regularly. If you do happen to find a negative posting, contact the reviewer and understand the issues being raised.  If possible, try and redress the situation or explain the reasons behind the incident.  At the very least, leave a comment behind that lists the steps you’ve taken to remedy the situation.

Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, said: “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it”.  Yelp wasn’t around when he said that, but the need to protect reputations, remains a constant even today.

Yelp is a review website that is run by the customers.  The general public, your clients, are the ones in charge and they can make or break a business with good or bad reviews.  Users of Yelp create a profile and then find businesses that they have been to and give their two cents on it.  When users are reviewing a business, they can choose different Stars.  1 Star being horrible and 5 Stars being amazing!!!!  They then go ahead and write about their personal experience and then press post.

Yelp then takes the average of the Stars your business received and attaches it to your businesses name so that when potential new clients search your business on Yelp, they can decide if they want to use your business or go somewhere else.  This is why Yelp can make or break your business!

Overall, the more positive and 5 Star reviews you have on your Yelp page, the better your business will do.  According to the Yelp Official Blog, 85% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses.  This 85% of people using the Internet is a crucial market that you could be missing out on if you are not making a conscious effort to get your customers to review you on Yelp.