Many strategies and tactics can help with your online reputation management. Some include creating content, using SEO strategies, and generating and monitoring reviews for your company online.
What is Online Review Management?
Online review management is the process of generating, analyzing, and responding to online reviews. Generating reviews allows you to create a public image online.
Other customer reviews are the first stops for a potential customer before purchasing. Now, it’s unfortunate, but most people are more likely to share their negative interactions online than positive ones.
The negative reviews can be detrimental to a reputation online. Statistics show that a negative review has convinced 94% of potential buyers not to purchase.
Monitoring your online reviews is a marketing strategy that can help you be more in control of what people are saying about you and your brand. When monitoring online reviews, the company usually has the aim to improve your business’ image overall.
There are many different review sites; some are more niche than others, but all can influence how others view your brand and perceive your business.
How Do You Manage Your Reviews?
There are a few strategies that can help you manage your online reviews. All will help you improve your business processes, increase your online presence, and showcase your brand in the best light.
We will go into more detail about each of these strategies, but some of the best ways to manage your reviews online include:
- Generating reviews
- Monitoring reviews
- Responding to reviews
- Showcasing reviews
This article will detail how to use these tactics to grow your brand and how they can influence your reputation online.
Strategies for Managing Your Online Reviews
There are many different online review websites for customers to post on. Some popular review sites include Google, Amazon, Facebook, YELP, Tripadvisor, and Better Business Bureau.
If monitoring these websites is overwhelming, find where your business gets the most traffic and start there. If you are unsure, Google is a great place to start, as its monthly traffic is around 150 million.
Managing your online reviews can be daunting, but breaking into these four strategies will make it more manageable.
How To Generate Reviews
It can be beneficial to have a lot of reviews on a website as it appears your company is more trustworthy to the customer. However, just as important as quantity is the recency of reviews. This is an essential indicator for customers as well as the algorithm of the review site.
First, being consistent in generating reviews is critical. If hundreds of reviews are posted in one week, and there aren’t any for a few months, the review site will likely flag your page as this is not a very organic approach.
Instead, focus on reaching out to customers via email or SMS marketing, giving them an incentive for leaving a review. For instance, a few days after their product has arrived, send a text message asking for a review, and give them a 30% off code for their next purchase.
This is an excellent strategy for generating organic and consistent reviews. Sending an email or text is just one strategy for generating reviews; get creative and see what your team can come up with.
Another way to generate reviews is to see if your preferred review platform has a widget. If so, you can code this into your website so that it shows as a review button that customers can click on directly from your website.
These are a few ways to generate organic reviews on various websites. Generating consistent reviews will improve your overall online reputation, help drive customers to your business and allow repeat customers to return again and again.
How To Monitor Reviews
You can use software to alert you when a new review is published across various platforms. One of these is Google Alerts which is already built into your Google business profile; you just have to enable it.
This software alerts you when a new Google review is posted for your business or a new company mention is trending. This system allows you to see more than just reviews, but if you don’t have other software to monitor your online reviews, you will need to do it manually.
This is where hiring an online reputation company like BRANDefenders can help. Our experts know how to monitor and improve various review sites simultaneously so that you don’t have to worry about it or miss something important.
Monitoring reviews can be an enormous task depending on the size of your company and how many platforms customers post about your company. Hiring reputation management experts allows you to free up time for other things in your business. Plus, at BRANDefenders, we do more than just review management; we help improve your online reputation through many channels.
Responding To Reviews
As mentioned previously, reviews influence the purchaser’s decision. However, how companies respond to reviews can also influence a buyer’s decision-making process.
Responding to reviews can be beneficial to improve your online reviews and reputation, but it is also risky. When you build your brand, you often have bias’ in place, and when there is something negative said about your brand, it can be hurtful and lead to defensive or attacking responses.
Leaving negative reviews unanswered is not the best solution either. Instead, focus on responding positively, take the feedback, and implement it as best as possible.
Letting people know you care about their opinions and finding solutions to the problem can significantly benefit your online reputation and restore customers’ confidence in your business.
Now, responding to every review may take hours and hours to complete. Something that may be helpful is creating a few templates to help you respond quicker. You may also look into hiring an online reputation management company to do this for you, so you don’t spend too much time responding to reviews.
Showcasing Reviews
Showing the five-star reviews, you receive from customers on your website is a great way to showcase the positive aspects of your brand.
Many review sites have widgets you can install directly on your website to show the most recent and best reviews. This is simply a piece of code embedded into your website to consistently filter through the most recent reviews and showcase them on your website.
If the platform customers post reviews to most for your company does not have a widget available, you can manually publish reviews onto your website to showcase them.
Publishing these reviews manually is not a very efficient way to do things, but it is effective as it may influence a buyer’s decision. However, you will need to regularly set time aside to publish the most recent and relevant reviews.
These are just a few strategies to implement in your business to help you increase the number of reviews for your business and how to monitor them to best help your online reputation.
How Do Reviews Influence Online Reputation Management?
You first need to know that it is nearly impossible not to have negative reviews. Having negative reviews is good. If you have positive, five-star reviews, they may not feel organic.
But negative reviews can also affect your online reputation negatively. Suppose you are generating more negative reviews than positive and not doing anything to fix the negative comments. In that case, you will lose the trust of your customers and hurt your online reputation.
Negative review management is just as, if not more critical than positive review management. It can affect the way that others perceive your brand.
Conversely, positive reviews will only increase your business’s online reputation. Positive online reviews can drive profits, increase customer trust and loyalty, and increase the overall perception of your business.
Positive reviews have many effects and will only benefit your online reputation. Another thing to be wary of is ensuring you have some reviews online. Not having any reviews on an online review platform may be just as detrimental to your reputation as negative reviews.
Now, this is not to say that you need to have reviews on every single review platform, but instead, make sure that you focus on generating reviews on the most popular platforms. If consumers are doing their research before purchasing and you don’t have any reviews on a popular site, they are most likely to bail.
Overall, there is a lot that goes into online review management as well as online reputation management. Reviews are essential to your online reputation, so hiring experts at BRANDefenders can help you find the most success and free up your time for other projects for your business.