Online reviews are a natural extension of word-of-mouth marketing since customers who receive great service will often share their experiences with their peers. However, heavily negative reviews can harm your business and sully your reputation. Spammers, competitors, and upset customers may post fake reviews to sabotage your business.
How to Tell a Fake Review from a Genuine One
These are some things to look out for to recognize fake reviews if they show up on search engines, review sites, or social properties:
1. It Lacks Detail
Reviews that lack details and appear to be written in a rush are good signs of being fake. If the review is short and lacking in detail, it may be because the author doesn’t have much to say.
For example, if a reviewer says that the food at a restaurant is terrible and the service is poor, there’s not enough information to verify the review. Instead, try to find reviews that tell you precisely why the food and service are terrible.
2. It Includes a Lot of Verbs and Fewer Nouns
The verb is the action word in a sentence, while the noun is the thing or person being acted upon. Fake reviews tend to be written using verbs, while genuine reviews include nouns.
Real reviews use nouns and verbs to give a complete picture of the experience. For instance, an actual review may read, The fish tacos I ordered were served cold, which was the worst part. I ended up not eating them and ordered a hot dog instead.
3. The Review Has a Spotty History
Fake reviews typically are only posted on one site and aren’t shared locally or even nationwide. For example, if an angry customer writes a fake review about your business, it may only show up on Google, but not Yelp, Facebook, or even Google+ Local.
How to Get Fake Reviews Removed from Search Engines
As mentioned above, it’s unlikely that Google will remove fake reviews, but you can report them to Google, hoping that the search engine will remove them. If you report fake reviews to Google, it will take those reviews down from its search results.
However, Google will not do so automatically. Instead, you need to report the fake reviews at the individual websites hosting them. For example, you can use Yelp to report a fake review on Google. The business owner of Yelp will then check the review on Google and remove the review if it is fake.
Here’s how to report fake reviews to Google:
First, find out which site is hosting the fake review. You can do this by finding the URL of the review. You can do this by copying the URL from the search results for the review and pasting it into your browser’s address bar.
Next, you need to find the report abuse button to report the fake review. On Google+, for example, you need to click on the more button and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Finally, you need to click on Report Abuse and follow the instructions to fill out the form. Most companies cannot do much against fake reviews, but there are some things you can do to protect yourself.
Conclusion
Fake reviews are a threat to small businesses, but you don’t have to let them ruin your reputation. Use these tips to help your business and protect yourself from fake reviews.
Silo Hill Media offers digital marketing solutions in the Treasure Valley in the state of Idaho and around the country. We develop an affordable and effective strategy that allows all facets of your marketing to work in a symbiotic way. We know you don’t have the time to focus on marketing, much less deal with fake negative reviews that harm your business. That’s where we come in! If you need reputation management services in Caldwell, ID, get in touch with us! Let’s talk!
Your company makes every effort to satisfy your clients. To address the demands of your clients, you establish personal relationships with them and work relentlessly to develop new and improved products and services.
But sadly, even if a company provides the best customer service, its reputation will and can be harmed from time to time. There are times that an angry customer leaves a scathing review on the internet about your product or services for all to see. Another possibility is that a negative media report goes far further than anticipated.
To help you with that, you need online reputation management.
You may minimize negative customer comments and maintain a positive online reputation by actively managing your reputation.
Online reputation management (ORM) is regularly monitoring online mentions of your business to respond to any unfavorable or misleading remarks.
It focuses on responding to unfavorable feedback from customers and negative news in the media (social and conventional).
So here we’ll discuss some of the advantages of having ORM for your company:
1. Increase the Visibility and Improves the Reputation of Your Company
When done correctly, online reputation management can help your business gain more visibility to the public. They do this by giving people more friendly and personal information about your company. The goal here is to make your company appear more trustworthy to the public.
Online reputation management can help you craft a positive message that promotes your products or services. It can also help you counter any negative issues or complaints about your company.
2. Respond Promptly and With Empathy
The best ORM can occur before a negative review or comment is made public. Customers who contact you via email or social media expect an immediate response.
A survey found that 83% expect responses to their social media comments within a day or less, so don’t wait too long. Quick answers keep angry users from leaving bad reviews and show customers that you care a lot about helping them.
Responding with empathy is just as important.
Let the customer know that you care about helping them solve their problem and that you are there to assist in the end.
3. Increase in Sales
A good image of your company can help you improve your sales and boost your revenue because it can make your company more accessible to new customers.
Online reputation management promotes your products or services through trustworthy resources. This can help you make more sales and gain more customers over your competitors. People are more likely to do business with you.
4. Personalize Your Social Media Privacy Settings
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to control your privacy settings. You can control who sees what you’ve posted on your page. Online reputation management will enable you to decide what you’re willing to share with people about your company.
You can also control who sees the negative comments about your company. You can also monitor your online reputation and respond to statements related to your business.
Conclusion
Online reputation management is a valuable tool that allows you to control the information about your company that’s posted online. It’s an intelligent way to manage your brand or personal image and prevent damage to your company.
It’s simply a matter of making sure that the information about your company is in your hands. It gives you the power to craft a positive image about your company and promote it to the world.
Take advantage of online reputation management benefits by employing a company that provides digital marketing services in Boise. Silo Hill Media creates a cost-effective plan that allows all aspects of your marketing to function. Work with us today!
Building and maintaining a great online reputation is vital for any business. Whether you’re trying to build your brand and drive traffic to your website or protect and repair your online reputation, it’s essential to avoid making these simple mistakes.
Not Building a Positive Online Reputation
Before you take any action to manage your online reputation, start by thinking about what your online reputation is like right now. Try to figure out if your brand has any negative reviews or if you have any PR disasters. With a clear view of your current online reputation, you can start creating a plan to change the way people think about you.
Not Focusing on Important Reputation Management Tasks
You can do many different things to manage your reputation, but some tasks can be more effective than others. So, before you take action, it’s important to know what tasks are the most important.
Search engines like Google, for example, place a lot of importance on social media signals. So, it’s crucial to spend time and money working on your social media presence. You may also need to focus on specific tasks like getting local business citations, repairing negative reviews, and responding to customer complaints.
Focusing on Irrelevant Reputation Management Tasks
Once you’ve worked out the most critical reputation management tasks, you need to make sure you’re focusing on the right tasks. Try to avoid jobs like managing your website’s SEO. While SEO plays a substantial role in building your online reputation, it’s not the best reputation management task you can focus on. Ideally, you should focus on reputation management techniques that are most relevant and important to you and your business.
Failing to Control Your Negative Reputation
Bad reviews, negative comments, and complaints can really hurt your online reputation. When you hear that someone has posted a negative comment online, the last thing you want to do is ignore it.
Instead, you need to act quickly and address the bad review, complaint, or complaint. This could include reaching out to the person and offering a refund or a free product, or it could be as simple as acknowledging the problem and vowing to resolve it. If you don’t respond, the person who posted the comment will move on and forget about you.
Not Responding Quickly to Negative Reviews
The longer it takes you to respond to a bad review, the worse your reputation will become. If you don’t react quickly to a bad review, the other person will move on and forget about you. Worse, they may share their bad experience with others. Additionally, if you don’t respond to their complaint, you’ll lose a valuable opportunity to improve a negative situation.
Failing to Respond to Search Engine Complaints
If you receive a terrible review in the form of a complaint to a search engine like Google, you need to respond to the complaint as quickly and efficiently as possible. Google is known for monitoring complaints and customer feedback, and if you don’t respond, you could be penalized.
If you receive some negative feedback, don’t just ignore it. Instead, use it as an opportunity to improve your business. Monitoring your reputation allows you to identify customer issues and fix customer problems. As a result, you can build stronger relationships with your customers and reduce the likelihood of other negative feedback.
Not Monitoring Your Reputation
Monitoring your reputation is an integral part of any reputation management strategy. Not only does it allow you to identify problems as quickly as possible, but it also gives you a chance to resolve issues before they cause more damage.
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways to manage your online reputation. However, you can also avoid some simple mistakes when using the right strategies. There are clear benefits to building and maintaining a positive online reputation.
On the other hand, there are apparent drawbacks to making these common reputation management mistakes. Avoid these simple mistakes if you want to create a strong brand and protect your online reputation.
To grow your business, you have to master your customers’ experience of your product or service. The way potential customers find out about you—and the reputation you build for yourself in the process—varies from industry to industry.
You will need a positive brand reputation that establishes authority, builds consumer trust, and drives sales. Your brand reputation is built through consistent, authentic communication with your customers in the spaces they are already using.
Let’s take a look at how you can use Online Reputation Management (ORM) to improve your brand reputation.
1) Perform an Audit
An audit is the starting point to any attempt at ORM. You need to know your online reputation before you can make any improvements. This means understanding what’s already out there and what’s being said about you.
A review of your Google search results will give you an idea of what content about your business has been shared. Additionally, you’ll want to check for “bad reviews.” You’ll also want to evaluate the tone of the content and determine the intent of each piece.
2) Plan an SEO Strategy
Content marketing is one of the best ways to make sure that what you want people to know is what they’re hearing. You can also increase your chances of showing up in organic search results by creating quality content and optimizing it for search engines.
Successful SEO takes a lot of planning and preparation. It’s easy for your strategy to get out of touch with your business objectives, so be sure to keep your goals in mind when developing your content.
3) Keep Track of Your Social Media
Like your website, social media represents your public persona. It’s important to be active on the networks you choose and to connect with a wide variety of your customers. In this case, the value of social media is the two-way communication it allows. It’s a chance to directly connect with your customers and build relationships.
If you don’t want to manage your company’s social media directly, consider hiring someone who can. This person can then build trust, positive relationships with your customers, and engagement by responding to questions and comments.
4) Generate High-Quality Content
The content you feed your customers needs to be high-quality. This is critical for your ORM strategy. Your content should answer your customers’ frequently asked questions and give them a reason to stick around.
A well-constructed website with valuable content is the foundation of any ORM strategy. It helps you control the message that your customers receive. It also helps you generate new leads and nurture relationships.
Benefits of Online Reputation Management
The benefits of ORM are pretty straightforward: it helps you control your brand’s reputation, correct any errors, and build positive brand awareness.
If you want a successful business, you need a strong brand reputation. Your brand reputation is how your customers and potential customers perceive you, and it is what will define your business. When you control your brand reputation, you control the way you are perceived.
Conclusion
ORM is an essential part of any business plan. In today’s digital world, your customers are listening. You might not see them shouting from the sidelines, but they are definitely there. Whether your brand is new or established, it’s important that you make your presence known and that you have a unified message.
Evaluate your content plan and become better at online reputation management with the help of Silo Hill Media. We offer digital marketing services in Boise to boost the strength of your online presence. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
There’s no doubt that different factors need to be considered to successfully run a business. As business leaders—whether you own a big or small company— ensuring that you have your customers’ loyalty and trust is crucial for the growth of your brand.
Turning your customers into advocates of your small business is a dream, and you’re probably wondering how you could do it. Marketing campaigns and interactive efforts can help boost rapport with your target market, but there’s one thing many business owners tend to forget—your reputation.
Reputation management influences the way people think of you and your company. However, there are many layers to reputation, and it’s worth getting reputation management services to ensure all things are covered to have a consistent and clean reputation. But how do you manage your reputation?
Focus on Areas Where Your Customers Lurk In
If you start your day online, your customers do too. Because of this, it’s important to take care of your online reputation. Although word moves fast on the digital landscape, it can also be harmful to your business if bad press circulates the online world. Because of this, you must protect your brand always and be present online and offline.
Since you run a small business, keeping a good online reputation is crucial because you need positive feedback, word-of-mouth, and shares to reel in new customers. With that said, getting reputation management services can help manage your reputation as your business expands.
Build Effective Strategies That Can Mitigate Online Crisis
Nothing is quite worse than having to deal with an online crisis, especially if you’re running a small business. When bad press circulates, it can be incredibly damaging to your sales and marketing efforts. It’s only right that you invest time, energy and work with reputation management experts to build actionable solutions that could help mitigate an online crisis.
While the best way to avoid social media backlash is to avoid one, there are still instances when these are unavoidable. To remedy this, be mindful of your online presence—check your socials, customer feedback, and monitor other online platforms to address issues right away.
Create Content Your Market Can Trust
When you’re creating content, remember that you are your brand; this means that you need to remain personable to connect with your audience in social media, blog posts, and other online mediums. When you build trust, you essentially boost your online reputation.
A great way to manage your reputation is by providing digestible and relevant content to your audience. By doing this, you shed a positive light on your brand. With proper promotions, you get to establish yourselves as leaders in the industry.
The Bottom Line: Your Small Business Shouldn’t Sleep on Reputation Management
A common mistake of small business owners is that they don’t take reputation management seriously. Only when they start to see an online crisis will they begin to move. However, like any crisis or online issue, they are best prevented with a solid approach—you can create one by getting reputation management services.
With the help of professionals, you’ll get to create a customized strategy that could help your business prevent online backlash and manage online issues.
Where Can I Get Reputation Management Services?
When it comes to internet marketing, there are a plethora of things to consider. Fortunately, Silo Hill Media is here to help.
We offer affordable and effective strategies that allow you to boost your marketing efforts and take your business to the next level. If you’re looking for reputation management services for your brand, reach out to us today!
It doesn’t matter what your business does. The entire foundation of a company revolves around how happy your customers are with your product. Keeping them happy is important but not more than making sure customers aren’t unhappy. An unhappy client goes on to Twitter, Yelp, Google My Business, and literally every other platform they can find to bash your company endlessly. Such incidents are bad for your company’s image and require some reputation management. If you’re wondering how you can counter such negative reviews and get out of the situation without looking like a bad guy, you’re at just the right place. Here are three ways to respond to negative feedback.
Start Your Investigations Immediately
One of the worst things you can do to an angry customer is making them wait. So, when you notice that a customer left a negative comment anywhere, start off by replying to them. You don’t need to provide any details. You just need to tell them that you are looking into it. A simple message saying, “We’re sorry. We’re currently looking into your issue and will notify you as soon as we have some news,” goes a long way. Not only does it calm down the frustrated customer, but it also tells your audience that you’re quick at responding to problems whenever they come up.
Admit Your Mistakes
Let’s be honest; mistakes happen. Cyberpunk 2077 is a brilliant example of an amazing company making mistakes. They released an unfinished product with tons of bugs that rendered the video game unplayable. What did the developers do? Well, they started off by releasing a 10-minute apology video explaining that they made a mistake and are currently doing what they can to fix them. It was shallow, and no one really believed it, but it was an apology, nonetheless. If you know someone from your company made a mistake, own up to it. No one likes petty excuses and arguments coming from an organization. If you don’t admit your mistakes thinking that it’s bad PR, the one negative comment is going to turn into a dozen.
Offer Refunds, Exchanges, and Gift Coupons
So, the deed is done. You made a mistake, and you owed up to it. That’s progress, but the customer is still unhappy. They spent money to purchase your product/service and didn’t get their money’s worth. Well, in such a situation, you need to offer refunds, exchanges (where applicable), and gift coupons. These may seem like a waste of company resources, which they somewhat are. However, such measures ensure customer retention and are one of the best reputation management strategies in the market. Tons of fortune 500 companies, especially fast-food chains like McDonald’s, are using this trick to ensure customers keep coming back.
Closing Thoughts
A lot of companies think reputation management is a waste of time. We’re here to tell you it isn’t. Having a bad reputation on the internet is enough to kill your entire business. People go online and research before buying a product. That’s basic consumer behavior. If all they see are angry customers, the probability of them still purchasing from you drops down to zero.
