How To Protect Your Brand From Bad Reviews

Posted by Nabin Shaw on February 21st, 2020

Since a large number of people trust online reviews, having a poor reputation can severely impact your online business and cause people to lose trust in your brand. The cost of poor online ratings not only affects sales, but it could also affect employee morale, the ability to hire and maintain good employees and increase costs associated with mitigating the bad press surrounding a company. Sales is a major factor for a business to generate revenue. With a bad online reputation, the bottom line for company revenue can be negatively impacted. The good news is this issue can be managed and handled properly to allow your business the opportunity to regain a great public image.

Implement a plan for positive reviews.

When you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you are inundated with negative reviews, there is a natural instinct to panic. Implementing a plan will assist you in managing the impact of these poor reviews. One effective method is establishing your business' online presence on multiple review sites. This will help to dilute the negative reviews. Improve on the issues that can be changed. If you find that you get a negative review that is valid, you may want to consider taking that review as constructive criticism and use it as a way to improve your on-site presence. Generating more positive reviews will also help to dilute the negative reviews.

Review the reviews.

It is important to know what is being said about you online. More importantly, it is good to see reviews to better gauge the performance of how you are doing with your customers. Not all reviews are frivolous. Some could actually be used to improve your company’s performance to become better at what you do. Analyzing your reviews are an excellent way to fix what is not working with your customers. There are, however, situations when you will have unmerited negative reviews intended for no other purpose than to get attention. This leads to the next management step - internet trolls.

Managing the trolls.

Internet trolls’ sole purpose is to sow discord using overly negative and derogatory comments. They are very good at what they do and love attention. For this reason, sometimes ignoring internet trolls is a good solution. While ignoring them can be one solution, it sometimes is not the best solution. Another way to manage the trolls is to take their issue offline. Since they love attention, it is important to eliminate or minimize their platform. By taking their issue offline, you're better able to identify what the true issue is and provide a more effective solution that works for your company and the trolls. You can accommodate them by offering them the opportunity to contact you or a company representative directly to discuss any issues they have.

Online reputation management services.

If you have enough money in your company's budget, an effective alternative is hiring the services of a reputation management company. These companies monitor social media and other online review platforms to ensure your company is receiving the best and fairest reviews. Oftentimes, it is best to retain the services of these reputation management companies to get ahead of any negative reviews.

If you are a business that has a large online presence, it is inevitable that at some point in time you will receive a negative review. Online reputation management can make the difference in how these negative reviews are managed. Negative customer reviews can be a critical aspect of your company's overall bottom line. When these issues are not handled properly, they can have an overall impact on employee morale and company revenue.