The online environment can be an unforgiving place. You can make one mistake with your social media, post something insensitive or offensive, and the internet won’t let you forget about it. You could end up in one of those lists of “top social media fails of 2017”, or get ongoing negative comments on your Facebook or Twitter account. But it’s not just the social media risk, either it is your entire online reputation.
Your online reputation isn’t simply about whether you tread carefully and say the right things, it’s about creating a strong enough presence for people to notice you and actively engage with you. Online reputation can also include the reviews that people leave on various platforms about your product, service, location and more.
So how do you improve your online reputation? Here are three tips that will help you boost yours.
1 – Pay attention to reviews
Most of your potential customers will read an online review about you before choosing whether to use your product or service. However, only a tiny percentage will write reviews and, unfortunately, unless they are completely in awe of how amazing you are, or, on the other side, utterly disgusted with you, they’re even less likely to leave a review. If someone is simply satisfied, having received what they expected, the chances are they won’t say a word.
Focus on encouraging people who are happy with your service to leave positive reviews for you. Make it as easy as possible for them to do so, and don’t be shy to just ask them to leave a review if they are happy. At the same time, if they are unhappy, actively work on changing them into a happy customer, then ask them to write a review for you.
Make it work: Consider looking for an industry-specific review platform, such as Dentacoin’s Trusted Review Platform, and ask customers to spend just a few short minutes completing a few questions, or writing a few words about you.
2 – Get your SEO and content working for you
Search engine optimization isn’t just about stuffing all kinds of keywords into your website – it’s a lot more complex than that. SEO is based on a sophisticated algorithm that Google and other search engines use to determine whether you are active online, engaged with users and contributing positively to your industry.
SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand, so to make sure your website is popping up in search results, spend the time and effort to write articles – both for your website and for industry-relevant syndicates. You can also build relationships with other experts in the field, working on a reciprocal link-sharing agreement, where they treat you like an authority, and you do likewise.
Make it work: SEO and content marketing can be very time-consuming, so we absolutely recommend either employing a specialist or hiring a freelance individual or agency to handle it for you. They will focus exclusively on making sure your online reputation is up to scratch.
3- Be socially active
Social media is no longer a nice to have for business, it’s a necessity. You can’t hope to engage with customers simply by having a website, and hoping for the nest. Even a super-SEO optimized website isn’t enough on its own. Content marketing and SEO rely on you having a robust online presence, and that includes a solid social media presence.
Build a good social media presence, where you are not only active, but are providing customers with insightful, entertaining, useful content via your various accounts. This is not only going to help improve your SEO, but it is also going to help improve your reputation with people. Positive feedback via social media can easily be turned into a positive review, for example, and a positive review can form part of your social media.
Make it work: Much like with SEO and content, it’s usually a good idea to have someone handling your social media for you. That said, social media is intensely personal, so make sure you are in constant communication with your social media person or agency to make sure they are getting the voice and emotion of your company right.
Online reputation has the power to make or break your company – isn’t it time you started working on it?
Article by Mariam Nishanian