Talking about Your Companies Reputation
WCD Speakers, works with Reputation Speaker David McBee, teaching the tip and tricks to understanding what having a reputation means and how to build and maintain your companies, good reputation.
So, you just Googled your business name and saw something there that didn’t please you. What was it? RipOffReport.com, ComplaintsBoard.com, Scamfound.com, or maybe just some negative reviews on Yelp or some other reputation site. What to do? What to do?
First of all, is it a big deal?
YES! In a recent survey performed by Cone, a brand marketing agency, results show that 80% of those interviewed have changed their purchase decision based upon a bad review they read, up from 68% in 2010.
Anyway, you want to get rid of this negative site. Most of these kinds of publishers won’t remove the content, so the best strategy is to move the negative result to the second page of the search engine – a strategy known as Online Reputation Management.
Let’s start with one of my legendary analogies.
You’re a photographer. You’re putting together this year’s “Hunky Firemen” calendar for a local charity so you go to meet the firemen at Station 114. Eleven of them live up to their stereotype and you know they are going look great with their shirts off. Unfortunately, one of them looks like he spends a little too much time eating chicken wings at the local pub. How are you going to put together a great calendar with this guy in it? (Sorry to all ugly or chubby firemen! No disrespect intended! You need to get yourself a new hot fireman if you want your calendar to be successful. Well, that’s exactly what you do. You go down to Station 116 and get a handful of cute firemen to volunteer. So that you don’t get any flack for playing favorites, you put all of the firemen up for a vote and at the end of the day, your ugly duck doesn’t make the cut. You end up with 12 great looking firemen for your calendar.
Let’s translate.
Of course, the firemen represent websites on page one of the search engine. Our rejected fireman is the RipOffReport.com website that kept coming up when people Googled your business name. The other firemen represent the other sites on page one and the firemen from station 116 are new sites that you create that are relevant to your business name. Votes are links. It’s that simple.
Okay, I’ll be a little more forthcoming. You have to get Google to rank ten sites that positively reflect your business on page one and get the bad site to page two. You do that by building links (votes) to all of the sites that are lower than RipOffReport.com. Maybe it’s your LinkedIn page, or your blog, or even your twitter page. Build lots of links to these sites until they outrank the ugly fireman.
Chances are, though, that there may not be ten great web properties about your business, so you may have to build some. That’s easy enough. Create fresh, relevant content about your business and build yourself a Web 2.0 property – something like a WordPress page or a squidoo lense. (These are the firemen from Station 116.) Then you build links to these too – lots and lots of links.
Bottom line, if there’s a negative website ranking for your business name, you have to optimize TEN other sites to ensure that it moves to page two. And that can be very time consuming and/or expensive. But what’s it worth? Or the better question – how much is that negative site hurting your businesses? If they’re looking you up by name, they’re considering doing business with you. You can’t ask for a better lead. When they see RipOffReport.com (whether the information is true or not, BTW), they’re likely to go on to the next business. And with so many people doing online research before making a buying decision, that can really put a damper on business!
When you work with our reputation and business growth speakers, you will increase the success of your business. Our core job is to help our clients run their businesses with confidence.