Most companies adopt a wait-and-see approach to online reputation management. Not a lot of brands take the time to conduct the website reputation check Google provides.
Website reputation checks can be done by simply typing your brand or company on search engines like Google. Hopefully, the top results show positive information about your brand. If not, you have to look at the search results and analyze the data for an effective online reputation management audit.
By performing online reputation management audits, business owners and managers can ensure that possible reputation crises are averted with proactive monitoring and reacting to reviews as they are published. Having an action plan ready for every negative reputation scenario, companies need not to worry about a damaged reputation.
How do I Implement a Review Audit?
Brand audits are usually implemented to target several review sites. Most businesses focus on improving their Google reputation score, while others focus more on Yelp reputation management. The first step to a review audit involves review monitoring across multiple review platforms. For instance, you can conduct a Google reputation audit to mine data from Google reviews. It may sound complicated, but online reputation audits can be straightforward.
Here Are Some Basic Steps You Can Take to Start Your Reputation Management Audit Today:
1. List All The Review Platforms Where Customers Talk About Your Brand
From general review sites like Google, Yahoo and Yelp to more industry-specific sites like Healthgrades (for doctors), Avvo (for lawyers) or TripAdvisor (hotels and restaurants), you need to know where feedback is found for your brand. Doing this enables you to get complete and diverse data sources that provide reliable information about your customers.
Ensure a streamlined system to efficiently carry out each audit, including Google reputation management, which should be the first platform to focus on for any business.
2. Categorize And Analyze Reviews
Once you’ve listed your review sources and platforms, it’s time to take a look at the data. You need to sort through reviews and group them into three: positive, negative and neutral.
You can develop an online reputation management system to organize your data or hire a reputation management agency like Rize Reviews to handle data gathering and analysis that goes with a review management audit.
Either way, you should be able to glean the necessary information that will help you tweak your ORM strategy, improve your overall ratings and generate revenue growth.
3. Identify And Act on Areas of Improvement
Go back to your list of review platforms and create an action plan for each of them. You should have separate strategies for improving your Yelp reputation management and another one for improving your Google reputation score based on your Google reputation audit. Creating the right internet reputation brand audit for every review source is key to its effectiveness.
When you’ve identified the top-most causes of negative reviews, you can now implement an action plan to resolve or limit the same issues from causing more negative reviews. Whether it’s improving your customer service or changing some of your processes, acting immediately is key to a successful online reputation audit.
4. Define The Ideal Reputation For Your Brand
How do people view your brand? When you search for your business on Google, what kind of information do you find? As mentioned earlier, getting customer feedback that a website reputation check Google provides can answer many questions.
Once you have collected feedback, you need to identify the overall image of your brand. Does it match with what you want people to think about your brand? If there’s a gap between how consumers see your business and how you want them to see it, you need a strategy to shift their perception.
This is why having a solid reputation management plan is key to building a great brand image that you want for your business. Responding to reviews, asking long-time customers for feedback and brainstorming with your team are just some of the many ways that you can create and improve your brand’s reputation and reshape people’s opinions.
Some steps you can take to shape your brand’s identity include:
• Improve your product or service.
• Respond promptly and appropriately to all customer feedback.
• Conduct a survey and ask long-time customers how you can improve.
• Promote or announce major milestones or improvements made for your business.
• Apologize publicly if mistakes were made and state how you are moving forward to ensure it does not occur again.
Shifting and changing people’s minds won’t happen overnight. It needs to be done consistently and strategically. Being focused and intentional when conducting your reputation management audit can do more than just improve your ratings. It can bring in more customers who formed a renewed interest in your brand.
5. Create a Review Response Strategy
While monitoring your online reviews is paramount, it’s also important to respond to your customers taking the time to publish their feedback, and not just the negative reviews. Responding to all, if not most, reviews can sound tedious, but is a common practice in any comprehensive ORM strategy.
Don’t know how to respond to negative reviews? Check out our helpful guide on how to respond to online reviews that effectively improves your reputation. Alternatively, you can hire Rize Reviews for review response services as well as review generation.
The Impact of Reputation Audits vs Standard ORM Strategies
The biggest reason for conducting a reputation management audit is to learn how your customer’s opinions have a positive or negative effect on your revenue. An audit helps business owners uncover valuable insights into their operations and it simply can’t compare to the standard, reactive ORM strategies that most businesses use. In a world where consumers can learn about a company with the website reputation check Google provides, businesses need to have a proactive approach.
Rather than waiting for the reviews to pile up before acting on them, actively monitoring reviews as they appear gives you the advantage of pre-empting negative reviews before they happen. The faster you take action on negative feedback, the better your chances of improving your reputation.
Reputation audits also boost lead-generation and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns. Not only do you resolve issues and gain back customer’s trust, you are also showing potential customers how you handle current customer complaints and concerns. These are vital for attracting new leads and can greatly influence your brand’s image.
Conclusion
When it comes to taking care of your brand’s image, a well-defined internet reputation brand audit can be the one method that transforms your company from zero to hero. Making an effort to study customer feedback and respond to each review individually and on time can be laborious, but it is extremely effective.
If you are short on manpower to implement brand reputation audits, you can always check out Rize Reviews’ reputation management audit service. We provide a streamlined and scalable system of conducting audits so you can save time doing ORM tasks like Google reputation management while getting exceptional results.
Learn what your customers are saying about your brand with a reliable online reputation firm like Rize Reviews. Reach out to us and start building a better brand reputation that drives significant growth to your bottom line.
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