How Much Time Should You Spend on Reputation Monitoring?
When finding work takes more time, and doing work takes even longer, few minutes are left over for tasks you don’t consider vital to the success of your company. In this hectic environment, you might even be tempted to leave reputation monitoring behind, allowing you more time to deliver a quality product at a decent price.
On the one hand, this isn’t a bad strategy, especially if you can convince your happy customers to share their stories of delight on review sites like Yelp. But, executives who don’t take the time to monitor their reputations could miss the subtle signs of an attack, and that delay could make recovery much more difficult.
Common Trouble Spots
In today’s connected world, a business can suffer a devastating reputation monitoring problem from a variety of sources, including:
- Review sites like Yelp
- Consumer sites like PissedConsumer
- Private blogs
One wee little mention on social media might not seem important at all, but a large number of negative comments can have a cumulative effect, making a company seem less than honest and ethical. Ignoring those comments can also make a company seem oblivious to the concerns of consumers, and that can also be damaging to a group’s reputation.
Quick Solutions
A 30-minute search performed every morning should provide you with all of the information you’ll need to plan your response. That search should involve several websites including:
- Google: Type in your company’s name, and watch what words Google adds to the end of that search. Words like “liars” and “frauds” should be red flags. Then, complete the search and look for negative entries appearing on Page 1 or Page 2 of the results.
- Facebook: Look for rants and raves on your page.
- Twitter: Again, look for rants on your page, or run a search for your company’s name and read the top 20 entries.
- Yelp: Scan your reviews, looking for one-starred entries.
Calm Complaint Response
If you find something negative, don’t panic. Get in touch with your inner Buddha before you do anything at all in response. Firing off an angry letter can make you feel better, but it also makes you seem a little unbalanced and out of touch, and it doesn’t address the problem at hand. Once you feel calm and relaxed, attempt to respond to those complaints with both humor and politeness. A simple comment such as, “We’re sorry you’ve had a bad experience,” can sometimes quench the fire.
Reputation Defense Strategies
If you’ve been tempted to hire a writer to fix the problem, however, it’s best to think again, as Yelp has been cracking down on fraudulent reviews, and other sites are likely to follow. But, hiring a company might be an excellent idea if you’re facing attacks that have no merit. SEO companies and reputation companies often have access to lawyers, writers, and programmers who can fight back against a slander campaign, leaving your time open for your vital business needs. Finding time to monitor your reputation monitoring can be difficult, to be sure, but fending off an attack before it begins could bring back intense benefits. In the end, it could be time well spent.