The Wall Street Journal recently published an article entitled “Three Best Ways to Improve Your Online Reputation“. The article’s introduction was promising, but the tips to “improve” your online reputation, however, much left to be desired.
We would like to, then, make a few adjustments to the article from an online monitoring point of view in an effort to truly improve your online reputation:
1. Reach out immediately to dissatisfied and satisfied reviewers.
Before you do any “reaching out”, you have to know what people are saying about you online. Engaging can only make sense once you have listened and analyzed how Internet users are communicating about your brand. Identify influencers on both ends of the spectrum to know who the influential talking about your brand are. Reaching out to only dissatisfied customers may come across as being too defensive, plus it means that you are forgetting to include your brand advocates in the conversation. While companies may feel the impulse to respond to negative reviews first, positive conversations about their brand are important, too.
2. Don’t think you can Flood search engines with content you can control. You can’t control content online. You can control customer service.
The Internet is an unforgiving medium that does not delete the records of Internet users’ comments. Nor should you! One of the reasons for listening to online brand conversations is to hear the negative as well as the positive comments. Internet users’ comments can help management spot flaws in your marketing mix that may not have been previously identified. A customer online is the same as a customer standing in front of you; except all of your past, current, and future clients are watching how you handle his or her complaint.
3. Appeal to bloggers and others within your community to review your company or your product.
Influencers are present not only on blogs, but also in forums, on social networking sites, on online press sites, etc. Establishing trusting relationships with them can mean generating word of mouth. And who knows, maybe you’ll even earn a few whuffies in the meantime.
What do you think?If you’re interested, check out our tips for responding to negative comments online. Though it was written for hotel professionals, they can apply to a number of businesses.
by Michelle
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Michelle,
Nicely done as usual. I think I might have to question about always reaching out to negative reviews. Actually, I’d like your opinion on this. I had an instance where a competitor of my new company was trying to start a debate that did not exist. He kept prodding with inaccurate statements about Filtrbox, but I thought it was better not to take the bait as it appears he just wants attention on his project. I see that a competitor of both of ours is now in a similar debate and it appears as if he is using their online presence to fuel his own.
Would you engage or not engage?
Michael Fraietta
Filtrbox Community Manager & Chief Listener
@MichaelFraietta
Hi Michael,
Great question. It is always difficult to see someone attacking your brand, especially when you have come to be an integral part of the company and it feels as though they are attacking YOU.
I would say that I would first try to identify what the real problem is: Is there really a problem with your product/service? Was this person just not held enough as a child? Or do they really wanna go there?
Before you say “Let’s rumble”, try to figure out if you can’t get on their good side. Visit their blog and leave thoughtful comments, connect with them via Twitter, e-mail, Skype, etc. If there truly is no common ground to be found and this person really is just out to ransack you for no apparent reason, turn to the traditional community management techniques:
- question whether something you said or did could have been misinterpreted
- strengthen your own community and let your advocates speak in your defense
- trust in your product/service and let good reviews speak for themselves
According to what you are saying, it sounds like you did the right thing.
Thanks for stopping to comment. Great to hear from you as always.
Best,
Michelle
@Synthesio
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