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Reputation Management

Blue Fusion Digital is a Reputation Management Company. Online Reputation Management also known in the digital marketing world as “ORM” is the process of burying harmful information into the deeper pages of the search engines. Business owners and marketing directors call us quite frequently and are often mistaken and usually because they been mislead or misinformed about what a reputation management campaign can and cannot do for a business.

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Reputation Management

We hope it doesn’t happen to your business but unfortunately almost every business will eventually get struck with some less than ideal criticisms about your product, service or customer service.

Here are 10 simple steps to try and make sure you can fix your online reputation.

Do Not Click on the bad press!

It seems so difficult but do not click on the bad press! This only strengthens its positioning in the search results.

Monitor your reputation!

One simple thing to help boost your online reputation is to make sure you are monitoring your reputation throughout the search engines, there are many brand monitoring software out there. Blue Fusion Digital also offers reputation monitoring on a monthly basis, we would love to give you a free trial for 30 days! Simply schedule a demo right here.

Unfortunately, sometimes these negative articles are not from legitimate clients or customers but instead they are from disgruntled ex-employees, competitors or even ex-spouses or significant others (we’ve seen it all). In these cases the steps above are really not going to apply because they are doing it just to hurt your business. The real bummer about those websites I mentioned earlier that are good at SEO are also known to be money hungry and not of the highest standing morals or ethics; what I mean by that is they don’t require any sort of validation or authentication of peoples claims. They literally want as many complaints against as many businesses as possible so it gives them the best chance to make money off of you. (Side note: DO NOT PAY those companies directly because they will not even remove the complaints, they only make them stronger). If this is the case you are going to have to start doing an online reputation management campaign. Here is how it works in a nutshell, you are going to need to beef up your digital footprint online, you are going to need to write a bunch of content and place it on trusted profiles and websites across the web that are going to essentially outrank the back press and fill the first pages of the search engines with good, more accurate content about your business.

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Ask For Reviews

While you are in the midst of creating all of this content and link building don’t forget to ask your happy clients for reviews! It takes 11 5 star reviews to negate a 1 star review but honestly, over 80% of people say they trust a company with a 4.6 star rating over a 5 star rating. People understand no business is perfect but a 5 star review always looks best.

We hope you found this article helpful in defeating the burden that is negative reviews and derogatory information that has been spread about you online. If you have any questions please contact us. We also offer full service Reputation Management from beginning to end. Ask us for our case studies.

%

of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal referral

%

of consumers would try a business with a 4 star rating or better

%

of consumers would try a business with 3 stars or less

Talk to customer

Before we go crazy and invest lots of time, effort and resources into what can be an intense digital marketing blitz to try and bury derogatory or negative press that has been written about your business. There are a few things you can try before that might be much easier and a cheaper alternative. What we have seen in our 6+ years of digital marketing and specifically in regards to online reputation management is customers want to be heard. Sounds so simple yet it is the number one reason businesses get bad reviews. Often times a customer will purchase a product or service and are unhappy with something during the sales cycle whether it is pre or post sale can vary but the common theme is something went wrong and they are unsatisfied with there purchase. In our experience a majority of the time this is not what leads to a negative review but it is the lack of communication after they attempt to give your business a chance to make the situation right (in their eyes).

Don’t engage with customer publicly.

Your natural instinct as a business owner is to react right away to any negative review or criticism you might receive which is totally understandable. Here is why it’s the wrong thing to do! Companies who specialize in offering a mega phone like platform to angry customers are annoying but also very smart, they have amazing SEO on their websites because it is also content driven and people inherently love to read bad press about people, why do you think all of the tabloids are always right at checkout at every grocery store – because people love reading about other peoples drama! So, when you comment or reply to a bad Yelp review or Rip Off Report, PissedConsumer, or Complaintsboard, etc. you are actually just making those things stronger and stronger which will make it harder and harder for you to rid yourself of these damaging articles! If you absolutely have to respond to these on say Yelp, make it something very neutral like, “Dear ______, we are extremely sorry to hear you had a bad experience with us. We would love to resolve this for you immediately, would you please contact us at (111)111-1111 or email us at __________?”

This lets other potential clients that you are active on social media which customers love and it doesn’t put you in a position where you are going to start a huge argument that goes back and forth which again will only strengthen this review or article. Please, pretty please do not resort to name calling, profanity, etc. this looks awful for you and your business and you are much more likely to lose new clients!

Build social media profiles

The big hitters in social media you probably already have Instagram, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest. If you do not have them please build them ASAP! Even if you don’t have a reputation management problem right now, build them and protect your brand from name squatters or even your competitors claiming the pages and then using them against you. (Again we have seen everything). Once you have each of these profiles created make sure you fill out each profile to its full completion, cover photos, profile picture, descriptions, about us, hours of operation, etc.

Make sure you treat these profiles like your website and update them frequently. Make sure your website links to each of these social media profiles and the profiles link to your website. This helps the search engines connect them together.

Be proactive

This bring us to our next point! Be proactive, it is so much easier and more cost effective to spend a little bit of time consistently to add content to your social media profiles and blogs now when you don’t have an issue which will in turn build a natural barrier on the first page of the search engines and help prevent negative press to creep up out of nowhere. Even in industries where you might think social media doesn’t generate new leads it can help with your online reputation management. Not only does it keep bad press off of the first page but it also can help your overall brand visibility and branding and you might even notice a nice bump in your organic SEO! Talk about two birds…

Let Us Help You Re-Gain Your Reputation

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