Social Media and Customer Reputation
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Search Engine Optimisation is crucial to the success of most businesses, but what is the best way to succeed on a limited budget? And why is Google+ increasing in popularity?
Back in the 1990's I used to work in printed media advertising for a leading South West group of Newspapers as an Area Manager. Fast forward 15 years and adverts in magazines or newspapers have declined by over 60% due to the internet. It has always been a widely-known and accepted fact that the best form of advertising was word of mouth, a personal recommendation from family and friends.
Word of mouth
Word of mouth will always be the top form of marketing for any company, and Google provides a global source of websites that offer reviews of products and services, a couple of negative reviews on eBay, or a few scathing remarks on Amazon will often leave the potential customer closing their wallet and looking elsewhere.
Always be confident to ask for a review
Internet reviews are now taken into consideration a whole lot more often and websites such as Yelp, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor grow in popularity with every month. Angry customers are 65% more likely to bother to take time out of their day to leave a bad comment on a product or service. Customers who experienced a smooth transaction won't think twice about spending time to create a new profile just to leave praise on the internet. Get ahead of the game and create social accounts as a company and invite reviews regularly, a one-click system reduces the time to leave a review and customers will be more likely to leave an approving compliment.
Be proactive not a firefighter
Business owners should always look for reviews of their own company if no social media campaign is in place. There could be a nasty surprise waiting from a disgruntled person who took to the internet after a less than perfect experience. The best way to stay on top of this is create accounts online where email alerts are sent when a new review is left. As ownership is proven this gives the opportunity to turn a negative review into a positive experience. If a customer left a review 6 months ago, the work entailed in
persuading the customer to delete or amend their review is much harder than to respond in a timely fashion and handle the manner as soon as possible.
Learn to be social and engaging
Large corporations now employ whole teams to manage online reputation, and offer an extra level of real-time customer service with Twitter and Facebook still maintaining the top two spots. Social Media teams are skilled in defusing anger in customers who rant online, and when a frustrated person receives an instant response to a question with an apology, much of this stress level can be reduced in a matter of minutes.
Engagement with customers online is a strong arrow to add to your customer service crossbow, aiming for the target of the problem and splitting the proverbial apple.
In 2014 it's more important than ever now to incorporate Social Media into SEO. Hashtags on Twitter, Google+ and blog comments stick around for ever.
Don't be afraid, as part of my SEO services I offer Social Media training for you to learn as we go along.
