In present day, the online reputation of your business is just as important as its offline reputation. Failure to properly manage the online reputation of your business can lead to you not only missing out on major market opportunities, but also being unable to control how your brand is viewed by the general public.

To take control of your online reputation, take advantage of the following tips:

1. Encourage your satisfied customers to post reviews

Positive reviews from customers posted online concerning your brand, product and services is a great indicator of the reliability of your company and it also does wonders for your company’s image. Having your customers share their positive experience on your website or on social media shows potential customers that you are capable of delivering services as promised. If your customers aren’t keen about posting about your business, motivate them with an incentive such as discounts or a coupon

2. Build relationships

Regardless if you are a retailer who sells products or a service provide, it is important that you build a healthy relationship with your clients, especially as a means of building loyalty. If you have a healthy relationship, your customers are more likely to like you, and the more they like you, the more willing they’ll be to post positive reviews about your business. For every positive comment or review you get, be sure to show appreciation with at least a “thank you”.

3. Respond to Bad Reviews

Not all reviews will be positive. But instead of ignoring negative reviews, take them seriously by responding to them and addressing the complaint of the customer. Below are some useful tip for managing a dissatisfied customer:

• Endeavour to fully understand the customer’s complaint before responding

• Find a middle ground between what your business needs and what the dissatisfied client needs

• Be an ally of the disgruntled customer, not an opponent

• Use negative reviews to discover new ways to improve your product or service

• Avoid responding customers with negative words and phrases. Instead, agree with them as much as possible

• Follow up with most disgruntled customers to discover if their issue was solved to their satisfaction

• “What do you want me to do for you?” is the most important question to ask an unhappy customer

4. Get on social media

Social media is the new frontier and a powerful tool. In the right hands, it can make a business an overnight success. And in the wrong hands, it can destroy a business’ reputation in a night. At the moment, there are over a billion Facebook users and 75 million daily Instagram users. You can reach all these people via social media and communicate with them through positive, upbeat messages and media to make your business more likeable. For this purpose, you may create attractive content about the business and provide your details. Additionally, posting happy customer reviews might foster trust and generate potential leads. Moreover, creating a bot such as facebook messenger ai chatbot can help assist customers round the clock and resolve their queries instantly.

5. Track your posts

Keeping an eye on your online posts and how people are responding to them will put you in the best position to control any conversation surrounding your brand before it spirals out of control. By getting ahead of conversations, you can share your thoughts and disperse a rising issue. Of course, if your business doesn’t have time to try and find negative reviews, it might be worth looking into this sentiment analysis solution instead that uses artificial intelligence to scour the internet for mentions of your company. It also detects the sort of emotions used in the text, determining the review as positive or negative. This can help businesses to stay on top of their negative reviews.

Keep in mind that the most effective way to manage your online reputation is to represent yourself online the way you want to be seen, instead of letting strangers do it for you.