Today we’re talking about your online presence. Your online representation is so important because this is what new customers will look at before deciding to use your products or services. First impressions really do count in business, so let’s take a look at how you can monitor your online representation.
Reviews and Testimonials
So there’re lots of different places where people can leave reviews. I would suggest you go out there and find any industry-specific review sites and then add them to your watch list so that you can see what people are saying about you on these different review sites. Be right on top of it and get ready to send them a review back. There’re different sites that you can use or things called RSS feeds. They’ll let you set up alerts for different keywords that go out about you. We use a product called Sendible that lets us monitor a whole bunch of different websites and keywords around the internet.
Do you want to set up a system that helps you build and improve your customer relationships? Let’s chat!
Google Reviews
What we’re going to be talking about is Google Reviews to start off with. Check out your reviews, and make sure that you’re getting alerted when your reviews are going up. That’s important. You want to make sure that you’re getting any industry reviews that are going up about you coming to your inbox because if there is a problem, you need to jump on top of it. If you want to make sure that customers are happy, make them happy, talk to them and make sure that you’re leaving great reviews for them and in response to their reviews. Set up Google Alerts to make sure that you’re getting this input so you know what you’re doing.
Social Media Sites
The next thing is social sites. If you’re not updating your Facebook page and you’re not creating a community around it, there’s no point. It just looks stupid. Don’t do it. Just stay away from it. People know what Facebook is. You don’t need to be advertising that anymore. There’re no more than 2 billion accounts created on Facebook. There’s no need to be advertising it. If you have a Facebook page or a Twitter page or a Pinterest page or an Instagram page or any of these other technologies, make sure you’re updating it. Update it regularly. Update it once a week, or once a month depending on the industry you’re in. Show customers comments and feedback. If you don’t update it, delete it. Pull the sticker off, get new business cards, and delete the page. It’s not good for your online brand and online representation.
You want to make sure that you are doing what you’re meant to be doing on these sites and that is keeping your customers engaged and creating an environment for growth. Don’t have the growth mould. You won’t get happy people leaving comments on Facebook. You’ll get sad people leaving comments on Facebook unless you create an environment to have happy people leave comments.
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Have a Think About This
You can’t always be the best person you can be for every single customer. It’s just not how it works. Even if you’re operating a business that’s selling just one item that is absolutely amazing, there still could be a customer who’s not going to be happy with you. They might be having a bad day. You might be having a bad day.
If the system was perfect, it’d be perfect but it’s not, so embrace the flaws. If someone comes to you with a review on a site, you can then just try and keep your finger on the pulse, but spin it, help them out, and have them change the review if you are able to genuinely help them out. Read the book about embracing flaws called Flawsome, written by Ryan McDonald-Smith.
The Final Word
So in closing, we use Sendible and we find that is a fantastic tool for keeping track of things like page updates, as well as Google Alerts to different industry words that we might be involved in. They are the two tools that I would suggest you use heavily to find out what’s happening in your business and ditch all the sites that you don’t need to be on. There’s no advantage. I hope this has been helpful, stay good!
