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Effective methods of boosting your online reputation 

Back in the days, businesses mainly gained popularity through references from existing customers. Putting in good word for a business meant great sales. Testimonials from existing customers, friends and family brought in heavy footfall.

Now that most customers have gone digital, how do you make sure you maintain the reputation of your business online? One review from an unhappy customers could potentially result in losing significant sales.

Like old times, reviews and ratings still matter the most. More now, since your virtual existence is all the customer has. Not exhibiting enough content to support your online presence can be as tarnishing as having negative one.

Negative content on the internet can be bad, but no content at all can also put your business on a weak spot. Smaller businesses are more vulnerable to being a target of bad reputation in the digital world. The lack of funds to boost your reputation or repair it, can cost a substantial loss in sales.

Let’s discuss different measures that you can take to restore customer’s faith in your brand and put together a glowing reputation for your business:

Actively pursue social media 

It comes as no surprise that more than 69 percent millennials spend most of their time on social media apps on their smartphones. It will be unwise to neglect the power of social media, especially in the current era.

Most businesses understand that you can use this platform not just to boost your sales but also to build a strong a reputation. Sometimes, you will see that Google chooses to rank your Facebook business page above your website, considering the high domain authority Facebook holds.

To get started, it is important that you dedicate sometime of your routine to your social media accounts. If you want this exercise to be cost-effective, you can avoid hiring a social media manager or an agency to do all the activities on your behalf.

Start by frequently posting content on all your social media accounts. You can publish blogs, creative posters and images of your best-sellers on popular channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

As a thumb rule, always remember to reply to negative comments and never delete them.

Frequently post content on your website 

Content is the primary means of reaching out to your customers and gaining a good reputation in the eyes of search engines, the only way you can be recognized in the digital world.

Writing meaningful and relevant content on your website can help in gaining good authority in the industry you fall in. Besides making people aware of your brand, you will also be inviting Google crawlers through fresh and unique content. This will help in boosting your ranking on relevant keywords in the longer run.

To make your website more discoverable, you can start including keywords in your content that will attract relevant traffic. Additionally, you can also start posting as a guest bloggers on third party website that are open to accepting your blogs.

Always remember that promotional content will never be helpful in engaging customers. Not only will you be driving away customers by upselling your products through your content, but also causing rejections from third party websites to accept to your blogs. Neither guest post websites, nor Google promotes content that promotes itself than the focussing on the problems of the audience.

You can also create an app that discusses the topics that are relevant to your audience. A trusted iOS & Android app maker like AppMySite can help you get started with codeless app development.

Take charge of your reviews

It is very easy to instigate an unhappy, angry customers to leave negative reviews all over your social media and review websites but equally difficult to encourage happy customer to drop in positive reviews.

We’re not saying that there is no scope for making mistakes. The aftermath of the blunder is all that matters. Sometimes, you will also come across fake reviews from customers you never serviced to but that’s exactly what you can take charge of.

The only way to get around negative reviews is ensuring a good comeback. It is important to take ownership of the mistakes you make and let the customer and the world know that you are willing to rectify it. Regardless of what you think, if a customer is found complaining, you must show compassion than blame them. If you do otherwise, you can certainly be taken as an unprofessional brand who no one wants to buy from.

Moving to positive reviews, try to promote them cross platforms even if they are a few in number. For instance: you can post pictures of positive reviews on your social media accounts.

Involve yourself in social work 

Social work

The millennials and the generation z love the idea of being associated with brands that are socially active. Besides helping your community, you can also build a social reputation among your customers.

The biggest brands in the market ensure they find ways to help the community and bag a socially strong reputation. You want to be among brands that are concerned about the social problems of your society and corporate social responsibility is the best way to go about it.

You can launch campaigns to help the society. For instance: Johnson and Johnson is giant company that took over the responsibility of using lesser power that they have been consuming for over three decades. To make a huge impact, they set up energy powers plants that helped achieve sustainable, economical and nature friendly supply of electricity.

We are not saying you will need to invest funds to give back to the community. You can start small and still be recognised for it. Take an example of companies that donate a part of their product price for the betterment of the society.

Like we said, people love the idea of buying from businesses who care about society and genuinely make efforts to be associated with them.

Roping in press releases 

Unlike all the methods we discusses in this post, this one actually lets you talk about the greatness of your brand. A press release is a good medium to boast about your products and services, and on a large scale.

While it may seem ethical to push press releases for all the benevolent work you contributed towards the society, it is wiser to promote what your business does.

We understand that you are wondering that a press release may cost a huge dent on your pocket, however, there are numerous press release websites that charge nominal but help post on thousands of platforms in a go. A single press release may even result in generating a huge traffic and high ranking on search engines.

Wrapping up 

While a cumulative effort into everything we spoke about in this post will improve your online reputation significantly, the truth is that you have to be patient. It takes years for biggest companies to build a strong name in the market.

Additionally, it is important that you don’t lose hope too quickly. The process of taking position can take time but in the end it will be worth it.

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