Did you know that right now hundreds of people are having an online conversation about your business? Whether these discourses are singing your praises or blasting your service into next Tuesday, there are millions of potential customers witnessing these conversations and making assumptions about your business, organization, facility or brand.
Starting to sweat? Don’t worry! There are a few simple steps you can take to regain control of the conversation, all of which fall under the umbrella of Online Reputation Management.
My name is Jonah Blumenthal, and I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at TypoDuctions. Our digital marketing agency offers a wide range of services, primarily to the skilled nursing facility industry, from social media, website development, video production and everything in between.
However, our most popular service is our reputation management package.
What our team essentially does is act as your online eyes and ears. We scour the Internet for negative reviews about your business and address them. Due to our extensive knowledge of Google’s terms and conditions, we are able to find the minute details that can potentially have negative reviews removed. And, in order to boost star ratings, we help facilities and businesses generate more 5-star reviews so you can create an impeccable online reputation.
Our years of expertise in this area have taught us a thing or two about achieving and maintaining a squeaky clean online reputation. Here are a few tips that can help you take control of the conversation currently happening about you online.
Make sure you’re the owner of all online pages featuring your business. Did you know that Facebook automatically generates a page about your business? Do a search online and see if you can find yours. If yes, be sure to take ownership of it so you can reply to reviews. If you don’t, be sure to create one! These same steps apply to Google My Business, Yelp, Indeed, Glassdoor, caring.com, and hundreds of review sites that exist online. We recommend beginning with Google My Business and Facebook for most businesses.
Google is by far the most popular channel that people turn to for reviews, with approximately 59 percent of online visitors using it.
Once you have ownership of these pages, be sure to scour them daily/weekly/monthly, based on how much time you have. When a positive review comes in, thank the reviewer. When a negative review comes in, you have one of two choices: attempt to get it taken down or respond appropriately.
Getting reviews removed is possible, but there are terms and conditions that would get the review taken down. For example, if the review is deemed slanderous or based on false information, there are grounds for removal. Responding to reviews is a simpler process.
An additional benefit to responding is that Google identifies page owners who are more active and helps boost your SEO when you interact more. Addressing reviews appropriately – especially in a short time frame – let’s Google’s algorithm know that you are active and operational, so you’ll get boosted to a higher results ranking when you’re being looked up online. Quick response time also is critical to gaining and maintaining a 5-star rating – which is why our team makes it our highest priority to address reviews as soon as they are posted.
Did you know? Your Google Star Rating is more than just an average of your positive and negative reviews. Many factors are considered, including response time, how many reviews are responded to, and more!
Disregarding your online presence can harm you in a myriad of ways, but something business owners don’t consider enough when neglecting their pages is how those negative reviews will affect employment. Potential hires want to know that their future place of employment is a legitimate, positive and trustworthy business.
If you’re neglecting your Google reviews, and hoping that negative feedback will just fade into the background if you ignore it, you’re harming your Google ranking and losing potential customers while missing out on an incredible opportunity to increase your star rating.
84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends.
In the healthcare/skilled nursing facility space, reputation is everything. Maintaining census is dependent on keeping your intake numbers high, which can be hard to achieve if the top review on your Google My Business page says: “This facility killed my mother!” (We’ve actually seen reviews like these hundreds of times.) We like to call our online reputation management services “reputation insurance.” By taking preventative measures against the “haters” and the “scrubs,” you can control the narrative about your brand, gain more customers and rank higher on Google search results pages.
Of course, there are textbooks worth of information and helpful tips that our team has gathered over the years, but these tips are a great starting point for those who are ready to take the reins of their own online reputation. If you’re unsure on how to proceed from these steps, or if you’re interested in having our expert team manage your online reputation from start to finish, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally at jonah@typoductions.com .
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