With more and more people using the internet to make their travel plans, buy products online, a negative online reputation can severely limit a company’s ability to succeed today.

If your product has received criticism online and some negative reviews then you need a solid action plan to work around. Here is what you can do to deal with them.

Try and gather feedback.

This is very important aspect to deal with it. You should first know where, what people are saying. You can do the following to receive information. 

  • For Google: Google Alerts (email or RSS updates of the latest Google search results)
  • For Blog posts: Technorati (the largest blog search engine)
  • For Blog comments: Backtype (what people say about you in response to blog posts)
  • For Twitter: Twitter Search (monitor real time feedback)
  • For other social media: FriendFeed search, a social aggregator that combines YouTube, Delicious, Flickr and more

You can classify reviews into two:

  1. Constructive ( Music was good,  food could be better etc)
  2. Destructive( I hate this phone, Worst company to deal etc)

Respond to them

Always respond to a review in a calm, positive manner. It is very important that all reviews are answered.

  1. Thank the reviewer for their feedback
  2. Respond to any positive comments
  3. Apologize for any negative experience
  4. Explain the steps you’ll take to prevent that from happening again
  5. Allow the user to contact you offline if followup discussion is needed

Avoid:

  • Angry, abusive responses…or any type of personal attack
  • Questioning the reviewer’s legitimacy (yes, fake reviews do happen from time to time, but they can be very difficult to prove and it’s better to avoid this accusation)
  • Only replying with a discount or coupon (which indirectly encourages abuse

Tell people when problem is fixed

  • Tell the users directly –
  • Tell the story of how you did it –Post videos posted to YouTube
  • Tell the media – with a press release or full-scale PR campaign

Start building Positive Reputation

Effective online reputation management is more than just playing defense – it’s all about proactively building a positive buzz. This is very important aspect of building a reputation and helps in long run.

Ask satisfied Client for reviews & testimonials..

Launch a special blogger’s campaign.

Begin an aggressive content publishing effort.

Publishing a lot about you is the only way to build a positive repute, You can read more about this at:  
 
 Inspired by Josiah Mackenzie