The Benefits of Reputation Management for Your Small Business

Every business must worry about the quality of their online reputation. That’s because just about every potential customer takes the time to Google a business before making a decision to spend their money.

There are those that believe that a business has only to do great work in order to be rewarded with a stellar online reputation. This group of people believes that customers will then turn around and leave great reviews naturally, and that nobody will ever say anything detrimental. This all stems from a myth that any business which gets a bad review probably deserved it.

Of course, this same myth tends to perpetuate the idea that any business which gets a good review probably faked it.

Here’s the truth: good businesses develop reputation problems too. It happens for all kinds of reasons. Disgruntled former employees lash out at the business online. Competitors post fake negative reviews. Customers who don’t want to pay their bill try to intimidate you into leaving them alone by posting bad reviews.

So while it’s certainly important to do everything in your power to please customers and provide great value, you nevertheless have to think about positioning yourself in a way that wards off a potential crisis from Day 1.

How do you do this?

Build Your Web Presence

It’s often been said that today’s marketing strategies require you to “out-write the competition.” You can also “out-write” your detractors.

Expanding your web presence helps to position you as a trustworthy expert. This means that negative content carries a lot less power when it does appear on the Internet. It also means that negative content is less likely to obtain a top position in Google’s search results. The result? Fewer people ever see your detractor’s words. This means less disruption for your business.

Monitor Your Reputation

If you don’t know what’s being said about you then you can’t craft a strategy for dealing with it.

“Dealing with it” could involve ignoring the content, responding to the content, or burying the content. You’ll need a different strategy depending upon where the problem originated. But you can’t do anything at all if you’re not watchful and aware of what’s being said.

Choosing a Service vs. Doing it Yourself

Monitoring your reputation and managing your web presence can be a full-time job. That’s something you should take into account when you’re trying to decide whether you’re going to do this yourself or whether you’re going to hire a trustworthy company to do the job for you.

If there’s no immediate crisis then you can certainly start off on your own. But if time runs away from you or if you encounter a crisis that you can’t handle on your own, don’t be afraid to reach out to a trustworthy reputation management company. Even good businesses need help from time to time, and in today’s climate reaching for that help could mean the difference between helping your business and losing it altogether.