It is a fact that most shoppers today check the internet for reviews before buying. Your reputation on blogs, review sites and social media sites influence buying decisions. You have to take advantage of this word-of-mouth advertising for your local business to thrive.
There are many small business reputation management tools available. These simple yet powerful tools constantly monitor the Internet, hunting for mentions of your business.
You must share the positive reviews and suitably respond to negative comments. You should continually view and update your business information wherever you are listed. You must reply to local business reviews and ratings on various sites. It is worthwhile to compare your reputation to your competitors and carry out improvements.
Your local business reputation can have much broader impact than your reviews in sites like Yelp and Google.
Please know that there is no local business out there that does not occasionally confront customer complaints. It should be your endeavor to resolve all genuine complaints before they assume ugly dimensions.
The internet has become all too powerful like the Frankenstein’s monster that negative reviews/comments can now travel at the speed of light.
You must therefore adopt a planned approach to handle negative word-of-mouth comments about your local business. You should arrest the impact of adverse complaints and respond effectively and promptly.
If the complaint is genuine, do not hesitate to apologize and immediately make amends. If the complaint has been deliberately planted to defame you, send the wrong-doer legal notice.
If you are not proactive about the online reputation of your local business, then the repercussions can be far-reaching and you will slowly but surely lose business to competitors. It is therefore worth all the time and money you spend on safeguarding the online reputation of your local business.
Remember you will be pushed to a precarious position if an unscrupulous competitor creates a site to target your local business or even just posts something unpalatable on social media.
For well-established local business outlets, prospective buyers may quite often be searching for you by your business name. Having undesirable stuff rank in branded search results will directly affect your bottom line.
Local businesses are in many ways much more vulnerable to online reputation attacks. It is evident that if your local business does not invest in proactively defending your online reputation, you will more than likely suffer significant revenue loss.
Reputation and brand building have always been priority number one for me, through all my career. Making one brand to stand out of the crowd make you completely independent of many possible crashed in economy or Google algorithmic changes. Though, it is always advisable not to rely on one thing in strategy.