With the rise of the Internet, email, social media, and review sites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, Google +, and others, your local business can now be showcased globally. Your customers now have the ability to post their first impressions of your business on their Facebook or Twitter pages and also complete a full review (good or bad) on review sites such as Google Local, Yelp, Yahoo, Yellow Pages, City Search, Urban Spoon, and about 100 other sites.
These online customer reviews can leave a lasting impression on future customers. The latest Nielsen Report shows that over 70% of consumers trust online reviews more than editorial content (such as an article on CNN or in the local news), more than your Web site, and even more than the local newspaper.
So what can you to do when others are posting online reviews about your local business?
Well, for starters, you can't just sit there and not engage with your customers. In the current environment, just standing by is as good an answer as a No Comment. This won't ensure any long-term success for your business.
You need to learn about the current thoughts and trends in reputation marketing, how you can use this new information to improve your local business and how to respond when those negative reviews pop up for one reason or another. And the negative reviews will appear - it is inevitable that there will be that one unhappy customer. The good news is that you don't have to let their unhappiness bring your business's reputation down.
When your business' reputation goes downhill, your sales will begin to decrease as well. But with the help I provide in this book, you won't have to worry about this happening to your local business because you will learn how to properly respond to the unhappy customers and properly engage your satisfied customers so that they can speak up and have their opinions heard.
The local online landscape has changed forever. You need to be ready for it o...
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