If you do business, you most certainly have some unhappy customers. Let us be your proactive virtual customer service.
Reputation management is the subset of Branding that focuses on the negative online perception of your brand. As we discussed in the Branding section, your website name, company name, product/service, and personal name need to be managed. Reputation Management issues can be in the form of negative reviews, blog comments, articles, news stories, social media, you tube videos, etc.. Dealing with online reputation problems is the most difficult component of brand management.
You are not in control. People have the right to their opinions but the internet gives individuals a disproportionate advantage to push out the online criticism compared to your ability to adequately rebut the criticism.
The search engines compound the issues because even if you mitigate the issue with the person with the grievance, the complaining party may not even be able to change the content that is on the site they originally vented their grievance on. The negative content may have been posted to other sites. It is very frustrating to see a negative review that has been around for years still showing well in search results for your name or brand. There should be a statute of limitations for bad reviews and I am sure search engines will get better a quantifying the negative response, but in the meantime, the negative impacts of old results and old issues continues on.
As we have written in blogs, some of the reviews are not even real. It may be a competitor that outsources people to place a bad review. Regardless of whether they are true, deserved, or fake – it does not matter. Consumers are heavily influence by bad reviews. No matter how many good reviews a brand has, consumers will almost always peek at a few negative to get a balanced perspective.
Entangle Media will help you develop outlets to get your positive messages and responses to criticism out on to the internet. We track what is being said about your brand and alert you to the sources and strategize an appropriate response. It is possible to actually gain business and positive exposure from a bad response that is tracking well.
Search Engines are essentially monopolies of content and it is important to be patient, but it is even more important to have a strategy. Let Entangle Media help you develop a plan and take control of your Reputation.