There’s a little breakfast place down the street from me that my wife and I used to frequent, but after a while we stopped going there for two reasons. First, the food looked increasingly mediocre and, to make matters worse, we saw a report on the local news that the city health inspector had given the place a failing grade.
Nasty.
Local websites were full of negative comments, so we weren’t surprised when the place closed soon after.
The good news (or so we thought) was that about four months later, the place reopened with a new coat of paint and a new name.
We decided to give it a try. Imagine our surprise when the same owner greeted us at the door. It turned out that their online reputation was so damaged that they had no choice but to hit control-alt-delete on their small business and reboot.
It was a radical solution to a problem every business has to some degree, namely how to protect its name, brand and online identity.
It all boils down to this: when you get bad press or bad reviews, you basically have two options: ignore it or deal with it.
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Case study: What Tylenol can teach us
Here’s a famous example of how one company got it right: In the 1980s, several people died when someone walked into some supermarkets and smeared bottles of Tylenol with cyanide.
The onslaught of negative publicity would have crippled many companies, but the makers of Tylenol were proactive. They voluntarily and immediately pulled the product off the shelf and then invented safety caps and packaging. They turned what could have been a disaster into a lesson in brand management as Tylenol became known as a business committed to customers and product safety.
Brand management is especially critical for small businesses because if our business name is tarnished, we don’t have the resources that large businesses have to counter bad publicity. So the first lesson in protecting your brand is that these days, with social media being what it is, brand management requires commitment and constant vigilance.
Not sure where to start? Here are the steps you need to take:
1. Know where to look
The number of places someone can post negative comments is huge: Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, Angie’s List, Google reviews, Next Door, blogs, local news sites, and more.
2. Create a Google Alert (and more)
Through Google, you can create a keyword alert for your name or business. Then, every time the search engine finds the keywords that are in the alert you created, it fires you an email.
The key is to understand the keywords that can match potential complaints about your business. This is not always easy, especially since you do not know in advance what kinds of complications cause horror.
Also, sometimes Google Alerts don’t always work properly and don’t alert you to all the things that might be out there. Therefore, regularly searching the sites listed above is still in order.
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3. Take action
It’s your job to find and root out those voice customers who are so unhappy they want to tell the world about it.
Be proactive and when you find an unhappy customer, find out what went wrong and be prepared to fix it – even if it’s not your fault. Be humble. Fix it and then ask politely if they will remove any negative review. Often they will, but even if they don’t, be sure to add your comment that you fixed the problem.
4. Hire a reputation management service
You don’t have to do this alone, and maybe you shouldn’t. That’s why there are numerous reputation management companies that can help you.
5. Get positive reviews and publicity
Let people know the good things you do. Publish them on your site and on social networks. Get the word out about your involvement in the community and perhaps most critically, ask for help. Get your satisfied customers to write positive online comments about your business. Since these will be newer than old bad reviews, they may be found first in a search.
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