By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2010-07-13 18:22:51 | Word Count: 664
One of the most harmful things for your online reputation is a bad review. Popular shopping sites often allow people to post reviews – both positive and negative. Sometimes angry bloggers will make a post that manages to work its way up to the top of the search engine pages, and Facebook and Twitter are fertile grounds for discussion. As a responsible online business owner, one of your primary responsibilities should be controlling your online presence and image. Developing a plan to remove or address bad reviews is an important part of your marketing campaign. This is called ORM, or Online Reputation Management.
Your internet marketing team should make it a habit to regularly review the internet for information about your company, products or services, using alert tools keyed to your brand, keywords, and industry. While you are likely to find positive posts, in some cases, you will come across negative information. Your plan of action should include two targeted objectives. The first is an attempt to remove bad reviews completely while the second is to counteract them.
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Many review sites will not allow you to simply remove a review because you do not like it. Instead, you will have to work within the framework of their rules and regulations. For this reason, your first step should be a careful review of their guidelines. Check to see if the negative review violates any of their policies. If it does, contact the webmaster and request it be removed, being sure to cite their rules.
Another tactic is to simply request a removal. This technique requires you to eat a little bit of crow. Write a letter to the webmaster, explaining the problem and taking responsibility where possible. A kind letter may turn the tide, but it is the least effective tactic.
Perhaps your best chance at getting a negative review removed is to address the negative comment and contact the author. This may require a bit of detective work on your part, but it is time well spent. Once you track down the author of the negative review, write them a carefully worded letter. Apologize and ask if there is anything you can do to rectify the situation. If you get a response and it requests and action, be sure to comply whenever possible. Once you have satisfied the customer request, politely ask that they remove their negative review. If they will not remove it, they will often update it with more positive information.
If none of the above actives too remove bad reviews works, your next best bet is to ‘bury it.’ Just like search engine results, many people are not willing to sift through pages of information looking for bad reviews. Work with your internet marketing team to enhance the SEO of ‘good’ information about your company. A good SEO team will have a skilled pool of copywriters able to write compelling content for your company, effectively ‘bumping’ the bad review down the list where it will hopefully remain greatly ignored. Loyal and happy customers can also be encouraged to respond on the site where the comment is made, and of course, a reasoned and diplomatic response from someone in the company will help degrade the credibility of the complaint.
Don’t forget the importance of counteraction. If the complaint was legitimate, it is a great idea to write a response via an article or to use social media to explain the issue to your customer base while thoroughly explaining your solution to the problem.
Whenever dealing with a negative review attitude is essential. A customer who has had a poor experience whether real or imagined will not be swayed by a poor, unprofessional or unfriendly attitude. Treat reviewers, even those who give you a negative review, with courtesy and respect.
Contact us if you require assistance removing bad reviews, we can help.
