Tips on improving your brand’s standing online
Your online reputation is becoming increasingly vital to the success of your business.
With more than 90% of today’s customers searching online for local businesses before they visit them, it’s pivotal in ensuring that customers choose you.
Furthermore, a good online reputation improves your ranking on Google – ensuring customers actually find you.
So, here are a few simple and practical tips on improving your online reputation that any small business can utilise.
Provide amazing customer experiences
It sounds painfully obvious, but the key to building a great online reputation is making your customers happy.
And we speak from experience when we say that it works. We invested heavily in customer service in our business to ensure people loved their interactions with us. As a result, we’ve had thousands of 5-star reviews on Trustpilot, which has done wonders for our standing in the industry.
Monitor your online reputation
The next thing to consider is where your online reputation is now.
Head into Google and social media platforms and find out exactly what people are saying about you and why.
This will illustrate things you need to solve, but also where you might need to spend some time and effort. For example, if you’ve had tonnes of reviews on Facebook then it’s clear that you need to put out some content and respond to your base there.
Respond to reviews – good or bad
Customers want businesses to take them seriously and responding to their reviews is therefore vital.
It demonstrates that you care about your customers, and it’s also an opportunity to learn something and improve.
Whatever the reviews look like, take the time to write useful, fair and honest responses.
Encourage customers to leave reviews
Whether over the phone or through email, when you’re dealing with customers it’s a really good idea to ask for reviews on a particular platform like Trustpilot or in Google.
First and foremost, having lots of reviews shows that you’re a busy, sizeable, functioning business. But better still, the more reviews you have, the more likely you are to be found on Google. Many experts suggest that reviews are a big factor in how Google’s algorithms rank different websites.
Make it easy for your customers and send them a link to the platform of choice – the quicker it is for them to complete, the more likely they are to do it.
