How to Build a Strong Online Reputation - 6 Reputation Management Tips by JB Kellogg

Key Takeaways

so you want to improve your online reputation in this video we'll cover six tips that'll help you do just that hi I'm JB with marketing 360 and we help small businesses grow with our marketing and design Talent technology through our number one marketing platform marketing 360 we call marketing and design MTH we love MTH and hopefully these videos will help you fall in love with MTH too so make sure to follow us to learn tips tricks and strategies to grow your business and fuel your brain first off why is online reputation so important it's huge today everybody looks online for reviews before they call you or they fail out of form they first search your brand name and the word reviews on search engines like Google and if you don't look good or you don't have a reputation at all you're losing out on a lot of business in fact study Show recently that 86% of people when they go to your website and do some research and decide they might want to call you before they pick up that phone they go to Google and they search for your name and the word reviews if that looks good they then reach out but if it doesn't or there's no reviews at all you're missing out on that business so it's hugely important and in these six tips we're going to show you how you can improve that tip number one capture reviews from your past customer that's the easiest of all if you don't have any reviews or you don't have very many reviews first thing you want to do is send out for feedback to your past customers so the way that we recommend doing that send them out an email blast if you've had a thousand past customers let's say you're going to want to email those thousand customers for feedback on your business don't be afraid of bad reviews maybe have in your email a suggestion for them to if they have a good experience with you to click to leave a review and if they had a bad experience when they click there maybe you send them to a feedback form kind of funneling that traffic but capturing those good reviews the main thing is you want to capture that feedback and it's not so important to have every review be five stars it's actually okay to have some four stars and three stars and some lower ratings too because when people are looking at you and doing some research they're going to see that this is authentic if it's all five stars that might raise a red flag to them maybe think that you're gaming the system somehow so don't be afraid to get some low ratings for the most part if you do a great job which I'm sure you do you're going to get great reviews and overall you're going to get a lot more reviews which is going to help grow your online reputation tip number two okay so you've captured all these reviews from past customers but what about customers moving forward well you're going to want to automate that the best way that you can so if you send out any invoices if you send out any notifications or newsletters or thank you notes after you do business anything like that you're going to want to try to automate those processes so try to update those templates your invoice template or your maybe your email signature or your thank you emails that you send update those with a call to action there at the bottom that says hey we appreciate your business please take a second give us your feedback by doing that along the way as you're doing business you'll be capturing more more reviews in an automated way which is helping grow your online reputation tip number three ask your customers as you're working with them do this face to face if you have people out in the field such as you know visiting for Home Services or maybe it's even over the phone and you're just calling these customers on a one-onone basis or maybe they're coming into your office and you're seeing them on a daily basis face to face ask them when somebody's asked face to face the likelihood of them doing it is significantly easier but you're going to want to streamline that process have it ready maybe on an iPad maybe on your computer like a kiosk that they can enter the review in right away real time have it ready to go so when you ask them and they say sure you can just say here you go if you wouldn't mind taking a second and they're going to leave this review for you this is very easy to do and it's going to be a way for help to help you basically scale your reviews so you get more reviews and typically when you ask somebody face to face and they're leaving the review right in front of you they're going to typically leave a better review so take take that tip to the uh bank and see if you can grow your online reputation even more tip number four make sure to read and reply to all reviews good and bad even if it's just a good review and it's just it's just a matter of you saying thanks you know by responding it allows people that are analyzing your online reputation and reading your reviews to see that you care because you're you're clearly reading the reviews and you're responding and they can really understand that you care about your business when you get a bad review one tip here is you don't want to get negative you don't want to be combative with it you just want to State the facts it's a mini case that every lead or Prospect is looking at when they're looking at your online reputation they're going to see the customer side of the story and then in your response they're going to see your side of the story and if you seem super professional like you enjoy the feedback and that you're laying out the facts typically that's going to earn you brownie points and they're going to hopefully determine that they need to go with you uh for their overall business but also respond to the good reviews just respond read to every single review this is going to look you know really good for you and it's also going to build more content so that your online reputation ranks higher over your competitors tip number five don't skip doing these things invest time in your online reputation I know you're busy you got a million balls in the air you're running your own business if you don't have time to do it yourself put somebody on your staff in charge of it and if you don't have time even for them to do these types of things hire somebody to do it Market 360 we offer reputation management Services we can help you there's a lot of opportunity for you to really find the help that you need to build your online reputation you just need to do it so if you're not going to do it yourself make sure somebody does because it's not something that can be skipped and last tip tip number six do everything you can to avoid and remove fake and Anonymous reviews a lot of times your competitors are going to see you building this online reputation and they're going to try to put a fake negative review out there for you and it's super frustrating I get it a lot of review platforms have processes that you can follow to potentially remove some of those reviews and if they don't you're going to want to not get so caught up on it you're just going to want to bury it with good reviews so it just makes it all the more important to be capturing more and more positive feedback and here's the deal don't just have one review site that you're growing your reputation with build multiple review sites out there so you have lots of sources that you can control and lastly if you get a fake revieww or a review like a competitor leaves a review that potentially could hurt your business do everything you can to follow the processes to remove that review if you can some review sites allow you to submit things in such a way that they can potentially be removed if it's proven that they're fake if they don't allow that don't freak out just continually ask for good reviews they'll push it down it'll get buried and ultimately having a few bad ones will only make you look like a real business