by DG | Oct 12, 2018 | Digital Marketing, Business
Every business that has a presence online, would naturally want to be able to maintain a decent reputation. No business owner would want their business to generate negative reviews, which is why they always try to keep a keen eye on social media.
Online reputation management is the term that relates to this perusal of your brand’s reputation online. This term, like every other word related to SEO, has been thrown around quite a lot recently. So much so that brand managers now don’t really know to expect from online reputation management. This brings us to the question of what exactly is online reputation management.
Is it a proven method of maintaining your reputation and local SEO online, or is it just a buzzword? Can it really help you with your reputation online?
We answer these questions and many more in the lines below, by taking a look at the nuances involved in online reputation management, and how it can positively boost your Local SEO.
What is Online Reputation Management?
For starters, online reputation management is perhaps one of the best ways to enhance your presence online. At a layman level this practice relates to studying what people are saying about you, and trying to handle their problems. There’s hardly any business out there that doesn’t have issues arising with customers. While you would ideally prefer to have the issue resolved before the customer takes the matter online, that is usually not the case.
Customers share bad experiences online, and these bad experiences act as a deterrent for other potential customers coming your way. However, you can manage these online complaints through your online reputation management system.
When dealing with negative reviews it is important write a response as soon as possible, be polite, courteous and professional. NEVER be defensive. Try to understand their problem and offer to resolve the problem even if you think they are being ridiculous. You will never come out ahead if you try argue with them.
Here we will list down some amazing tips that you can follow to enhance the utility of your online reputation management system and maintain your Local SEO online while at it.
Be Present on all Web Portals
Social media is a must for every brand. It is best for your brand to be up on social media to not only interact with potential customers, but to also listen to their grievances. A company should have a Facebook, Twitter and Google+ account at least. You can further have an Instagram, Snapchat and other social media accounts to reach out to your customers through new channels.
Now, the journey to excellent reputation management online doesn’t stop with the creation of accounts on multiple social media platforms. The real effort lies in regularly regulating and reviewing these accounts. The worst that can happen for your brand is an online review or complaint by a customer that you haven’t addressed.
This negligence on your part would not just turn that one customer away from you, but would also leave a bad impression on others. Thus, the way forward is to review these accounts and all the complaints that come on them.
Local Listings Establish Your Presence
Search engines use complex algorithms to ensure that the information they are giving out is reliable and can be trusted. As part of this, they cross-reference company information from local listings present across the web to generate information related to your phone numbers, map pointers, email addresses, postal addresses and opening and closing times. Based on concrete evidence generated through these methods, a search engine gives out the required information to your customers.
Now, if your information across multiple local listings is not updated, your local SEO campaign will suffer due to this incorrect information. Search engines will direct customers to wrong addresses and might even give old numbers. To cut out the chances of this happening, ensure that all information pertaining to your company on local listings is updated so that search engines can reference the correct source.
Build a Profile of High Quality Local Reviews
User generated content is still content, and pretty successful at it. Individual reviews might not be able to generate the same impact as a blog or a video for that matter, but by building a profile of good reviews across social media and the internet, you can boost your local SEO.
Having potentially good information associated to your brand, from organic third parties, on highly trustworthy review and social media sites, gives your Local SEO the boost it needs. These valuable reviews give search engines quite a lot of contextual information about you, which they can use to rank your company locally.
Social Proof
Believe it or not, but search engines, including Google, tend to rank local companies with better reviews higher than others that have negative reviews or no reviews at all. This is a tried and tested method by these engines to take social proof as a performance of brands.
For example, Google usually takes a look at reviews coming on its own Google My Business platform, and from other partners that their algorithms trust, including Yelp and Facebook. Based on the information from this analysis, Google’s algorithms develop the social standing of a specific organization in its local setting. The social standing includes answers to questions such as, is the company well-liked and popular? Is there sufficient evidence to suggest that the company gives bad experiences and customer services? Then, based on star ratings and reviews, Google takes the ultimate decision of how suitable your brand is for a searcher’s query.
Make the Investment
Finally, you need to make a sufficient investment to get the best out of your online reputation management plan. Reputation development often requires investment both in the form of time and money. You will obviously need dedicated members to monitor your reputation online and generate results based on that.
Other than that, there is also the need for investment in catering to customer grievances. A simple apology doesn’t make the cut anymore. You would need something along the lines of a giveaway to win their trust again, and use that complaint as a means to leverage your reputation online.
Proactive reputation management might take some time and effort while setting up, but it is a worthy investment that will definitely pay off in the long run.
BONUS TIP – Make it easier for people to leave a Google review.
Here are steps to make it easier for people to leave a Google review about your business :
- Search for your company by name in Google.
- Click on the button “Write a review”.
- A Google review box has pops up, click away for the popup window and copy the URL from the address bar.
- Shorten the URL. The URL will be very long. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly to get a nice sort URL that you can share with people.
Here an example of ours – Click To Review: https://bit.ly/2PhcT7b
We hope these tips will be helpful. If you don’t have the time to deal with all this we do have Reputation Management Services to take care of it for you. It will help with your Local SEO efforts.
Also check our article about dealing with Fake Reviews. as well as Neil Patel’s Definitive Guide to Online Reputation Management.
by DG | Oct 8, 2018 | Branding, Digital Marketing
Fake reviews are an unfortunate reality that many businesses have to deal with.
It’s so easy for people to create a new anonymous account and leave a review that is positive or negative. The worst part is that it doesn’t matter if they are a customer or not, they are free to leave a review and say whatever they like. So what do you do when you want to remove Google reviews?
Before we go further I’ll just say that when dealing with negative reviews that are real it is important write a response as soon as possible, be polite, courteous and professional. DO NOT ever be defensive. Try to understand their problem and offer to resolve the problem.
The rest of this post is about dealing with reviews that you know are fake. I get asked about this often so let’s get to it…
Google Policies
Google has a huge list of policies around this topic but they do not do a very good job of catching policy violations. There is hope however! If you can track these fake reviews and make a case as to why the review is violating Google’s policy guidelines you can get them removed. To do so you can contact them through Facebook, Twitter or on the Google My Business forum.
When you are logged in to GMB find the review that you believe is a fake. You will see three dots stacked on top of one another, click those. Then you will see the option to “flag as inappropriate.” Fill out the form and that’s it. You can also expedite the process by calling GMB support. You will find their support number within your GMB account.
Why won’t Google remove that fake review?
If you can’t show that the reviewer has made a policy violation, they won’t remove the review. The most difficult reviews to get rid of are the ones with 1 star and no comments. Google’s response will likely be that it didn’t violate the guidelines — since there’s no text in the review. Personally I think that reviews without comments should not be accepted by Google – call me crazy – I guess it’s it too much to ask!
If the review is completely off-topic and complaining about a service you don’t even offer then you will most certainly be able to get it removed by Google.
What do you when Google won’t remove that fake review.
The huge problem with fake negative reviews is that Google doesn’t know your customers. Therefore, telling them that the person leaving a review is not an actual customer is not a strong enough case to get that review removed. If the reviewer is anonymous it’s very difficult to prove their identity.
Another problem is that they might not have been a customer. They are eligible to leave a review even if they just called you and you didn’t return their voicemail. Maybe you have a store and they couldn’t find parking… Oh yeah, it’s hard to make everyone happy.
Most small businesses bend over back wars to keep customers satisfied and you just know when you have an unhappy customer so when there’s a fake review, you can just smell it. It seems out of place and it seems to come out of nowhere.
Like I said, sometimes Google just won’t remove it, then what, should you just leave it sitting there?
Absolutely not, there are some strategies to deal with it. Encouraging your satisfied customers is of course one of the ways to help bring up your rating average. However that fake review is still festering and annoying you to no end.
What’s the best way to deal with a fake negative review that Google won’t remove?
Challenge that Faker! Be polite by writing a response something like: “We are quite certain that [username] is not a customer of ours. In fact we are so certain that we would like to offer a 100% refund if you send us the receipt from the gmail account you used to write this review.”
Give them a few days to respond. If they don’t respond to that, then you know it’s a fake review and you should update your review response.
Update your response with something like: “After waiting 1 week for a reply to our 100% refund offer we never got a response. Sadly, it is likely from one of our competitors engaging in the writing of fake reviews for their own gain.”
If by some miracle you are wrong and the review was real, they may send you a receipt. If their reasoning for the complaint is legitimate, then you might want to refund them and in return ask them to delete the review. It’s probably worth it for your business and you have learned something. You might also be able to settle it by fixing the problem that they have complained about.
USEFUL TIP – Make it easier for people to leave a Google review.
To make it easier for people to leave a positive Google review about your business, follow there steps:
- Search for your company by name in Google.
- Click on the button “Write a review”.
- A Google review box has pops up, click away for the popup window and copy the URL from the address bar (see image below).
- The URL will be very long. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly to get a nice short URL that you can share with people.
Here an example of ours – Click to review: https://bit.ly/2PhcT7b
We hope these tips will be helpful. We have a Reputation Management App to help you get control of your reviews. If you don’t have the time to deal with all this, we do have Reputation Management Services to take care of it for you.
Beyond Google
We have focused entirely on getting reviews on your Google My Business page in this post but you should of course not ignore other review sites, Google should be your prime focus though. There are many other review sites that you can benefit from like Yelp, Yahoo Local, Trip Advisor, Trust Link, Trust Pilot etc.
The more you list on, the more you will help build trust for your business, and boosting your local search rankings at the same time.
Have you experienced fake reviews? If have, we would love to hear about it, please leave a comment.
by DG | Nov 12, 2021 | Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Online Marketing, SEO
Updated: Nov, 12, 2021
You are likely well aware of the concept of content marketing by now. It’s a tactic that helps you engage and attract customers and prospects by delivering quality content that provides value for everyone who visits your site. And the strategy has a lot of staying power.
Here are just a few areas in which content marketing can help you.
Driving Conversion
A great benefit of content marketing is that it helps your company drive more conversions over time. Research shows that companies that create consistent marketing content experience conversion rates almost six times higher than their competitors.
Increasing Traffic and Brand Awareness
Publishing consistent blog posts that engage audiences will help you bring in more traffic to your site over time. According to HubSpot, companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month got almost three and a half times more traffic than those that only published fewer than four posts.
It also helps educate people about your brand and raises the level of brand awareness that is otherwise not there when you don’t publish blog posts outlining what your company does or sells.
Check out our Pro Blogging Packages
Building trust and Fostering Relationships
You can build real relationships with your customers through content driven marketing. It allows customers to really absorb your philosophy and thinking patterns and associate themselves with your values. This allows them to take a peek in to the way that your company does business. It’s a lot more personal and less presumptuous than an advertisement.
Building Credibility and Expertise
Well written and polished content automatically comes across as professional and authoritative. It allows people to see your company as an expert or an authority on the subject of your business. It also allows you to be seen as a major player in the industry.
Cost Effectiveness and SEO Visibility
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing even though it generates three times as many leads. It also helps your company and topics trend better in search engines, specifically Google. Allowing your content to trend well allows for greater visibility.
Targeting Specific Audiences
It’s important to know exactly who you’re selling to when you’re selling a product or a service. For this reason, content driven marketing is useful to get your message across to your target demographic. It sounds extremely cold and calculating, but it’s useful without a doubt.
Engaging Content Makes a Personal Connection
As outlined above, it’s more engaging and personal than an advertisement. The written word, when written well has a much better connection with your readers and customers than an ad ever can, hence, the emphasis on content driven marketing.
Can bring you Unexpected Customers
It’s incredible that content marketing can bring you customers from so many different places that are not your target demographic. You can use trends and current hot topics to market your products or services to people that won’t normally look twice in your direction.
Do you need great content for your website? As on of the top small business branding agencies, we have great writers standing by that can produce excellent, affordable content on any topic. Check out our packages.
It’s also important to get as many backlinks as you can in order to generate organic traffic. If you need help with that or any other SEO tasks, checkout our SEO services page.
by DG | Nov 13, 2017 | Branding, Digital Marketing, Website Design
When it comes to building your brand and gaining customer loyalty, brand consistency is key.
It provides a way for the public to recognize and bond with your identity. And brand consistency helps to create and maintain a lasting professional image and relationship that resonates with your audience.
According to Forbes, a widely trusted leading news source in the business industry, “It is the consistent, desired experience that builds trust and trust is the foundation for loyalty and promotion”.
As multiple marketing channels continue to emerge and evolve, companies must meet new challenges if they are to maintain a competitive, professional image.
The most effective marketing strategies are those that practice brand consistency across the board.
If your brand lacks consistency, you may not be reaching your maximum potential.
Read on to find out how to build a brand that drives lasting consumer connections and lends to your long-term success!
The Recipe for Effective Brand Consistency
First, you need to grasp the fundamentals of creating consistency. This is not only important for your own understanding, but it will help you to establish a critical point of reference and convey the message to employees.
Why Building a Consistent Brand Matters
Here are a few reasons that a consistent branding strategy is vital to the identity of your business:
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Conveys Authenticity and Builds Trust
Staying true to your brand’s image shows consumers that you are a stable force and that you’re confident in who you are and what you provide. Consumers are more likely to trust a brand that does not change over time according to the ebb and flow of passing trends.
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Provides Clarity and Simplicity For You and Your Audience
An unchanging branding strategy keeps it simple for you and speaks a clear message to your audience.
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Establishes Professionalism
Brands that project a professional image lead the competition over brands that appear to follow fads and lack composure.
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Guides the Direction of Your Company
A consistent brand works as an internal point of reference as to who your company is and what you aim to represent.
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Motivates Consumers to Emotionally Connect
Your brand and its history can evoke an emotional connection with consumers, which leads to increased loyalty and spending.
Where to Start
When formulating a branding strategy, it’s important that you lay a strong foundation. Creating a guide that outlines important factors relevant to your reputation and the image you want to project is a good starting point.
Suggested contents for your guide include:
- A Clearly Defined Mission
- Your Logo’s Design and Colors
- The Message You Want Your Logo to Convey
- Specifics Regarding Usage, Graphics, Fonts, and Color
- Guidelines on Personal Branding vs Business Brand
Once you have established a guide, then you need to make sure to equip your employees and departments with a copy of it so that everyone is on the same page.
Update Marketing Outlets and Materials
If you are creating a new logo or updating an existing one, your next step is to make sure that all of your marketing channels match up.
This includes revisiting business letterhead and in-print materials, social media accounts, your website design, and anywhere else your image is used to make sure that all sources brand consistency is in agreement.
The rise of social media creates an onslaught of brand images and messages in users daily feeds. And, your brand should take into consideration the impact that social media marketing plays in consumer approval.
Many brands have realized that their original logo may have worked fine for other marketing mediums, but have found that it isn’t effective across social media.
If this includes you, that’s a good indication that it’s time for an update.
Creating a Brand that’s Consistent Across Social Media
Social media is a huge force in today’s marketing arena, which means that it requires consideration for branding success. Your brand needs to be socially savvy if you want it to be shared, liked and followed.
Check out these social media statistics regarding the impact that brands have on consumer behavior:
71% of people are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that they follow on social media.
63% of consumers who perform online searches are likely to like or follow a brand on social media whose social media account information is listed.
58% of facebook account holders have liked a brand.
41% of social media account owners have shared a link, video or story about a particular brand.
These statistics prove that not only is your brand’s image shared and promoted through social media, but it also has carries the power to impact consumer buying decisions.
This is why creating brand consistency across social media, as well as other formats, is vital to brand recognition, visibility and your relation to potential customers.
Tips for Tweaking Your Social Media Strategy
The influx of platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, Tumblr, and YouTube have created multiple easy marketing opportunities for businesses. But, if your brand is not producing shareable images, content, videos or infographics then you are not likely to get the potential benefits that these platforms offer.
Use your logo to identify your content, website, and other links so that customers can clearly relate it to you. Make sure that your logo stands out by using clean lines, clear, easy to read font, appropriate colors, and a classic style.
Remember to keep brand consistency in mind when designing your logo. A logo should be simple and authentic, and should accurately represent the professional image you’re after.
Also, try to use catchy, sharable content headlines, accompanied by original, optimized images whenever possible.
If you share videos, aim for emotion evoking messages that are easily relatable or create a climactic narrative, memorable song lyrics, or are otherwise attention-grabbing.
These are most likely to be shared. And when your content and logo are shared, your brand will get more visibility, increased rankings, and an enlarged audience.
Keeping your brand consistency intact in all marketing mediums is crucial to getting the consumer attention that you crave.
Examples of Brands that are Nailing it
When you are contemplating your branding strategy, look to those who have gone before you and succeeded with nailing brand consistency across the board.
The most recognized and endeared brands are those tried and true stand-outs that we all can name instantly.
Coca-Cola remains a major top-notch brand and has managed to stay authentic while making small adjustments to suit the times. They have the largest following of 89 million on the ever-popular Facebook.
As for the other leading social media platforms, Red Bull is a major force among YouTube viewers, and Nike is a favorite on Instagram feeds, according to an infographic from business2community news.
Take a look at some of the common strategies among these brands: primary colors, classic, unwavering designed logos, and realistic depictions of who they are and what they represent.
Coca-Cola’s traditional red and white logo flows freely. The Nike “swoosh” appears ready for the activewear and shoes that the brand is famously known for.
Red Bull has a strong and energetic image that is associated with its lift in a can.
Their brand consistency resonates with audiences of all ages, demographics, and generations.
Tips to Make Your Brand Consistent Everywhere
Your brand consistency should extend beyond logo and web design, but it also needs to be able to naturally transition to the outside world, where you might encounter presentations and sales opportunities.
To create consistency in all areas of marketing, remember these three gold standards.
1. Know Who You Are
Understanding who you are, what you offer, and who your audience is will help you stay close to the brand behind these all-important components that make up your message.
2. Document What Branding Success Looks Like
Once you have experimented in multiple marketing arenas, create a presentation system that documents what works best. This can then be circulated company-wide to use as a point of reference among the various formats and marketing opportunities as a guidebook.
3. Value Authenticity Above All Else
No matter what, make sure that you don’t stray from your principles to please certain groups or follow fads. Even if it looks like this might be an easy way to get ahead in an immediate situation, it will hurt your brand in the long run. Your audience will grow to appreciate that you can be counted on to stay true to your original purpose.
Need Help Designing Your Perfect Brand?
If you are ready to get started, we can help you design the perfect branding strategy for your logo, brochure, and more.
Check out our site for marketing advice that will make sure you nail brand consistency and gain consumer respect and attention today!
