How Your Reputation is Being Destroyed Without Your Knowledge
Learn how your reputation is being destroyed without your knowledge and what you can do to stop the bleeding.
The first impression individuals, customers and clients see around your brand will leave a lasting impression. Whether that first impression is positive or negative will greatly influence bringing new business or sending them off to your competition instead.
Before looking at the different ways your reputation might get ruined, you must first understand where someone might first see your brand or a mention from someone else. We’ve listed three of the most common places for you below.
- Search Results: everyone starts at Google.
- Social Networks: over a billion users in one place.
- Review Sites: local reviews are always being searched.
Now, let’s examine how your reputation is being destroyed across the web and the steps you can take to fight back today.
How Your Reputation Is Bring Destroyed (Without You Knowing It)
Angry Customer Reviews
No matter your business or service, you can’t please everyone. Even if you offer every customer the best service and ensure their meal or product is perfect… someone will have a bad day and take it out on your business. This happens constantly on sites like Google, TripAdvisor, and many other business review sites. So, what can you do about it? In most cases, not much… but you can learn from these negative reviews and see how you can improve your business to address these issues so they won’t happen again for someone to complain about.
False Accusations and Defamatory Statements
The only thing worse than a customer complaint is a false statement, especially when your competition makes it! This happens all the time, mainly because many sites allow anyone to post anonymously. If you see consistent complaints and negative statements that you feel are false and from your competition, then it’s time to contact legal counsel. However, in most cases, you won’t be able to go after the site directly where the content is posted.
Social Media is an Endless Battlefield
With over 1.3 billion users on Facebook and another few hundred million on sites like Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram… everyone has an opinion. This means all businesses and brands need to not only have a presence on ALL social networks but also the ability to monitor and respond to all complaints, reviews, and updates—whether they are positive or negative. This is known as social media management.
Zomato: Local Reviews Directory
Zomato is a popular site on the internet for local restaurant reviews. If you were ever thinking about going to a new restaurant in your area or while on travel, you probably ended up on their site for a quick search of customer reviews and pictures of their food and also to get an idea of prices.
This might seem like all is well for restaurant owners until they realize Zomato allows nearly anyone to leave reviews on their site. This could open up a whole world of disaster for businesses listed on the site, as negative reviews, customer complaints, and defamatory statements can possibly damage their reputations.
Tips for How to Address Negative Reviews
We’ve listed some of the most common ways a brand can have its reputation ruined online without being aware of it.
To address such issues, you should monitor the activity and reviews posted on relevant sites like TripAdvisor, Ripoff Report, and PissedConsumer.
Contact the person with the complaint directly to address the issue.
Never try to resolve an issue in a public forum or area that is open for comments and discussion. You never know when a situation might get out of control and no longer be repairable.
Whether you want to believe it or not, your online reputation is at risk 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. If you aren’t monitoring your brand mentions, you might never know how bad your brand looks online to everyone else. To learn more about protecting your brand and good reputation, contact InternetReputation.com at 941-259-4554 or click here to set up a free consultation.
