Month: August 2014

Should Businesses Feel Threatened By Yelp and Other Review Sites?

Posted on by Boost My Media

YelpEvery businesses with any form of online presence dread the sound of review sites like Yelp. It’s the founder’s worst nightmare and the revenge of the displeased customer. For businesses without any form of online presence, Yelp and other well-trusted review sites may not pose a threat, but for any business whose customers must find through search engines like Google, it is a terror.

How does your business see Yelp? Are you threatened by the mention of review sites like Angie’s List and Yelp? If you are, then you should guard yourself early on before an irate customer turns your worst nightmare into reality.

Below are BoostMyMedia’s top ways to ensure your business is never threatened by a review site.

#1. Focus on Excellence in all Areas of Customer Interaction

Offering great services is not enough incentive to make a customer feel good about your business. Sure a lot of consumers are pleased with companies that offer top of the line quality services, but the quality of the service you’re offering your customer is only part of the satisfaction process.

Considering that it takes up to 12 positive experiences to make up for a negative one, you cannot afford to offend a customer with poor service.

To ensure your customers are enjoying a steady high level of satisfaction in all areas of transaction, you need to make sure your representatives are well trained and equipped to deliver that level of satisfaction. From the sales reps to your customer complaints manager down to the delivery-man and all attendants.

Drive home the idea that customer satisfaction is the core of your business. Let every employee have this idea at the back of their mind and make sure they’re living by it.

#2. Encourage Customers to Voice Their Dissatisfaction(s)

Today’s consumers are used to several levels of disappointments from various businesses. As a result, they usually don’t voice their dissatisfaction to the said company. Reports show that only 4% of customers voice their dissatisfaction.

If this low amount of customers are voicing their complaints to businesses, what are the others doing? Are they just keeping mute? Hell, no! You have among them customers that would tell all their friends not to do business with your company again. You have among them customers that will embrace the dreaded Yelp! You have among them customers that will blog about their bad experience with your brand and will also encourage their friends to do the same.

To tackle this problem, encourage your customers to voice their dissatisfaction to a representative of the company. One of the best way to do this is accompany every sales with a questionnaire or customer satisfaction survey.

#3. Hire an Online Monitoring Company

Review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Google Review and the rest have strengthened the importance of the services online reputation companies are offering. Don’t hesitate to sign up for your favorite ORM company and have them spring into action in protecting your online reputation from damage.

A good online reputation management company should be able to actively monitor your web mentions and notice quickly where negative mentions of your brand are coming up. The ORM firm should also be able to come with experienced suggestions on how to tackle negative online reviews.

It is highly recommended to have an ORM agency take control of you online monitoring as early on as possible. You should not wait till you get entangled in an online reputation crises before reaching out for on ORM provider.

Now that you know a few tips to protect your business from negative reviews on Yelp and other sites, is your business still feeling threatened by Yelp? If you’re interested in giving your brand a solid protection on the internet you should get in touch with an ORM expert today.

In the end, when asked if businesses should feel threatened by Yelp, my answer would be to embrace it.

Yelp image via Flickr (Yelp Inc.)

How Can You Save Your Company Image: 3 Online Reputation Management Tips

Posted on by Boost My Media

Online Reputation Management is all about your brand. What search says about your brand or your person. This results can determine weather people want to do business with you or not. After several researches, employers have admitted to doing a Google search of a potential employee’s name or business partner’s name before deciding to go into a relationship or not.

In the same light 40% of managers and decision makers admitted to halting a potential business patnership because of what results turned up for a brand’s name. In the U.S this has cost businesses several billions in lost business opportunities.

If a search for your business name is turning up undesirable results in Google, there are corrective measures that can be taken to give you the best representation in Google search. Today’s blog post will highlight 3 tips from an online reputation management approach that you can implement.

#1. Identify Who is Actually Showing Up for Your Name

In most cases, online reputation management is not only needed by companies that got into trouble with the press. Sometimes, you could be a victim of identity confusion, which is a major culprit in most online reputation crises situation. In order to know what steps you should be taking to get your business to rank for the what you love to see in Google search results, check out the results that are showing for your name and determine if you are actually the one ranking for your name.

Identifying who is ranking in Google search results for your brand name is the first step in tackling an online reputation crises.

#2. Build Original New Content

If you are skipping to method #3, we already assume that you’ve created enough content over a long period of time to showcase your brand and identity in Google search. In case you’ve not, then you still need to follow the methods advised in this section.

Content is the backbone of search engines like Google. For you to hold a significant presence in Google search result for your name, you have to produce enough high quality content that will represent your brand image. You can sign up for Boost My Media to use our unique writers to help your business create high quality content around your brand name and popularize it in search.

What Type of Content Should You Publish?

1. News: A good way to start creating content for your brand is to publish news events about your company. The best place for such type of content is on a company blog because it gives you full control and helps your website rank for your company name. However, of your company website is not yet well known, publishing on news sites is a better option.

2. Tutorials: Majority of search users use Google to find tutorials. Create tutorials educating web users on how your products and services are best used and publish the content on your website or on an authoritative website.

3. Reviews: Reviews are great ways to create content on the web. If your company has a lot of products or services, writing a review of each of them can help generate a lot of fresh content around your brand and help create more awareness.

#3. Optimize Contents about Your Brand for Better Search Rankings

When your company ranks for non-related results in Google, it usually means the positive content about your business are not well SEO optimized. If your brand has enough content, optimizing them for better search engine rankings is the best way to improve your company image.

Online reputation management becomes very necessary to combat undesirable search results turning up for a search of your name in Google. But it starts with promoting the positive content you want to associate your brand with. While getting a content page to rank higher for your brand name is one of the toughest aspects of ORM, it is also one of the basic steps to take.

Don’t know where to start from with your ORM needs? Get in touch with Boost My Media today and our experts will help you out.