How To Properly Work With Your Reputation On The Internet

The reputation of any company directly depends on the reviews that are published on the Internet. You can and should be able to deal with bad reviews. You also need to constantly monitor that customers leave positive comments as often as possible.

Some people think that reviews cannot be tracked. Others believe that it is not even worth analyzing them, since it does not make sense. Because of this, many marketers either do not work with a reputation at all or devote a minimum of time to it. Often, very little money is allocated for such cases.

The impact of comments on sales cannot be compared, for example, with advertising, but the success of the company also depends on them. Data Insight conducted research that showed a direct relationship between reputation and sales. The results show that every fifth customer decides to buy only after reading reviews.

But not all reviews have the same impact on the reputation, as several points are taken into account here:

• the accuracy of the presentation;
• relevance of opinions;
• feelings and experiences;
• the number of comments for each product.

Research also shows that almost 50% of customers will abandon a purchase if the above points are not taken into account or comments are missing completely.

The survey suggests that it is very important to monitor the company’s reputation since a large number of positive opinions directly affect lead generation.

Start with analytics.

First of all, you need to analyze the data about the company — this is one of the main responsibilities of a marketer. This can be done using search engines. You will need to study at least 20 resources in Google.

Any key phrases that you type in the search bar must contain the name of the company. You can add any suitable words to the phrase, for example, “company reviews” or “company in New York reviews”.

Tip: if you need the so-called “long tails”, you can use the tips that pop up in Google.

Then you need to determine the sites where reviews are desirable and find those sites where reviews have already been written by customers. You can work not only with Google but also with various thematic forums, reference books, and other similar services.

It should be noted that you should not use fewer than 20 positions. This is a fairly standard amount. The fact is that more appropriate comments can be placed on the second page, which needs to be moved higher in the SERP, and negative ones, on the contrary, farther away.

Study the sentiment of the reviews.

On sites from the search results, there may be a different ratio of positive, negative, and neutral reviews. And this ratio will need to be found out, and then to determine the mood — tonality. When there are more than 80% positive comments, the resource can be classified as positive. When less than 80%, but more than 60%, the site is considered neutral. Perhaps the worst scenario is if the number of positive reviews does not even reach 60%. This is a negative platform.

You need to start acting with the last option so that the mood on it becomes positive or at least neutral. Then you should work on sites where there are no comments at all.

Other types of resources can be distinguished:

• where there are no reviews, but they just haven’t been left yet;
• where there are no reviews and they cannot be posted at all;
• resources that are owned by the company itself, including groups on social networks.

By the way, the latter type is very important, since such sites can be easily controlled. And if on most resources there are no reviews at all about the company, it is better to re-check the search phrases.

Identify sites with a negative reputation.

Since you should work with negative sites, first of all, you need to find absolutely all negative reviews about your company. To do this, you can use two methods: manual and automatic.

Then you can move on to the most important work. You need to determine who wrote the review — a real customer or a dummy person. Just go and email him to figure it out. Most likely, the real client will start a dialogue, but the fake one will not even answer.

It couldn’t be easier than contacting a user for verification. If the client turned out to be real, you need to clarify with him some details.

We study the main complaint (let it be a long ordering process). Then we try to correct the situation (we apologize and explain why this happened), and in order to appease the client, we make him some interesting proposals with a request to correct the review for a positive one. But it all depends on the degree of dissatisfaction because some people sometimes cannot be reassured.

If the review is fake, the problem will have to be solved through the administration of the site. It is necessary to explain in detail to them that this is a fake client. And if the evidence is convincing, the comment will be removed. On some resources it will be done for free, on others you will have to pay.

Always write only from official profiles so that people can see your concern for your customers. It will not be possible to convince all customers, but other users will see the answer on behalf of the company and understand that you are always trying to correct the situation.

When bad reviews are constantly written about a company, it means that the work is not built correctly. Of course, some comments may indeed be written by competitors. But if real people leave the negative, you should think about modernizing business processes.

Place your company card on different sites.

New companies or individual products initially do not have any reviews, since they are not yet known to anyone. Therefore, you should act immediately, without waiting for the first reaction. After all, it is far from the fact that they will be positive.

First, you need to place the company card on the most popular resources.

Take care of the design. The design needs to be engaging and visible, but it’s far more important to include relevant information about your company (and always keep it updated) and links to social media.

Get busy with optimization. It is necessary to correctly register the meta tags. After all, search engines take them into account and can raise positions for queries that relate to the company.

Motivate to write positive comments.

We sorted out bad reviews, created and issued cards. Now you can work with the positive. On many services, fresh comments appear at the very top, so you need to make sure that they are positive. And for this, you need to motivate customers.

First, you need to communicate with them personally or through managers. In addition, you can create a survey, which will include an offer to post a positive review.

You can ask customers to take a survey after they have used a product. Mailing lists and SMS work well. You can also offer a bonus for a comment.

These bonuses help break down the psychological barrier. You do good, and people respond in kind.

There are many ways to motivate. For example, one company we worked with offered free pizza for a positive comment. And if without this almost no one wrote reviews, then 4–6 people out of 100 were noted.

Keep working.

Do not think that working on your reputation is a one-time job. You need to constantly monitor negative comments and try to correct them. At the same time, positive opinions also cannot be ignored.

And if you have no time to do this or you just do not understand what to do, seek help from specialists. They will help make the reputation of the company perfect.