Online Reputation Repair Strategies that Have Been Proven to Work

Investing in online reputation repair might not be a main priority for you, that is until a scandal breaks out that tarnishes your once sterling reputation. Something as miniscule as a negative Yelp or Tripadvisor review can affect your reputation as quickly as you can say “online reputation repair”.

This is something that all company’s unfortunately have to deal with in 2019. With so much media coverage from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google and Youtube it can seem impossible to keep a positive customer perception for your brand.

It is difficult to maintain, build, and repair your reputation but we aren’t saying that it’s impossible. There are a few strategies that have been known to work within the field of online reputation management and repair. Here’s what they are.

Make monitoring as automated as possible

There is no need to spend all of your precious time monitoring your mentions, reviews, or social media following. You can automate the entire process with Google and Bing alerts which will send you notifications whenever your company-related terms are searched online.

Use several tools and resources for reputation monitoring

You do have to monitor your online reputation, but the good news is you don’t have to do it on your own! There are tons of tools and resources at your disposal that can help with monitoring your customers’ perception of your brand. The best part is that most of these tools are free. These are the top online options for reputation monitoring:

  • WhosTalkin’ – This resource offers a complete evaluation of what’s being mentioned about your company online. This includes everything from mentions on social media to comprehensive Google Alerts. You’ll also get notifications when online images and videos are marked with keywords linking to your brand.
  • Social Mention – This tool is helpful for monitoring what users are saying about your brand on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.
  • Technorati – Technorati enables you to peruse your keyword mentions throughout every blog in existence on the internet.

Give your customers the opportunity to vent (just not on Yelp)

Not matter how hard you try there will occasionally be days where you can’t avoid a negative review. Unhappy customers tend to go straight to Yelp or Amazon to start listing off your product’s less-than-perfect qualities. Try to channel their negativity away from public sites like Yelp by giving them the option to reach out directly to you about their complaints.

Maybe you’ll be able to solve the reason for the negativity and actually make the happy customer in the end. Just try to lead bad reviews away from regularly visited sites where hundreds of potential customers might read about this unhappy reviewer’s experience.

Encourage as many positive reviews as possible

According to PRdaily.com, one effective approach is “to be proactive in asking clients to leave reviews on your online review profiles, such as Yelp, Urbanspoon, or whatever else. You can’t really stop negative reviews from cropping up, but you can suppress them and minimize their impact by surrounding yourself with positive reviews.” Encouraging positive reviews is just as important as preventing negative ones.