How To Gain & Maintain a 5-Star Online Reputation (PART 9)

 

How To Gain & Maintain a 5-Star Online Reputation (PART 9)

TRANSCRIPT: Alright. Now we fixed it, right? We determined the buzz, we found what was true, we repaired, we replaced things, we got a strategy, we identified the raving fans, we’re enlisting our raving fans, they’re leaving us these great 5 star reviews, now what? We can stop, right? No, we can’t. We have to assess faithfully. We have to assess constantly. This is step 1 again basically. We’re going to need to gauge the buzz on a regular basis. This means monthly or weekly or even daily assessments of your reputation looking for new reviews, so how often for you? Depends on the size of your business and your current star rating, so I created this chart. Let’s take a deep dive into this chart.

This is just a throw in together chart for you, but basically what this chart is saying is that the lower my star rating or the larger my business, the more frequently I need to assess and search for new reviews, so if I’ve got a one and a half star right now no matter if I’m a small business or a large business, I’m going to have to look daily, right? I’m going to have to go daily and look at my reviews. I got to get that up. Once I get to be a 5 star which is down at the bottom, I know it’s a little confusing, but if I’m a 5 star business who has maybe 20 customers a day, I can probably look monthly, right? I can probably go monthly and look at new reviews. There’s no reason to go everyday. I can work on other things, so create a chart like this.

There are no absolutes here and it’s never a bad idea to increase your frequency. If you were looking weekly and you want to look 3 or 4 times a week, do it, okay? Where you draw your lines on a chart like this has a lot to do with where your competition ranks as well, so you may want to, if you’re large enough, you’ll want to bring a third party in who can provide you with what we call “Instant assessments” where you can look in an instant, so let’s deep dive in this chart. For car dealers, the 3 Birds dashboard, it’s pretty stinking slick and allows you to instantly see where you are compared to the competition you designate, so right here I can see that Anytown Honda where I work, where I am, right? We’re a 3.57 on average and we’re below the average of all of our competitors in the area, okay?

I can see that at a glance and I can click on any of those competitors and see why they rank where they rank. I can also look at a chart like this on 3 Birds which will show not by competitor but by site. Now why is it important to look by which site I have the lower reviews than my competition? Well let’s just take a look at DealerRater for example. Second row down, 4 over is DealerRater. I’m 2.4, my average competitor is 3.4, so think about it. I’ve got to focus on DealerRater, don’t I? I’ve got to send some positive reviews to DealerRater.

I don’t have to work on Insider Pages, I’m pretty good on Google, not so good on Yahoo or Bing but those are going to be third tier probably for me, right? Citysearch, I have zero rating so I do want to get a couple there. I do need to work on Yelp but I’m good on Insider Pages, I’m great on Yellow Pages, I’m great on cars.com. Edmund’s needs a little work, DealerRater needs work, that’s where I need to focus on, Edmund’s sales and DealerRater, all right? My Facebook is fairly equal, so I can determine, right? I can determine where I need to work on those.

This type of assessment really allows you to create a real strategy but you don’t have to pay for all of this. You don’t. If you’re small enough or you got the time, there are free do it yourself assessment tools like Google Alerts, right? Google Alerts is great. You can go there, this is what you’re going to see. Type in a word, you’re going to type your business name, it’ll send you a daily alert as things happen. It’s google.com/alerts. The problem with Google Alerts though is they miss a lot of new reviews unfortunately, so you also want to do things like Twitter searches and setup Twitter notifications, you want to do Facebook searches and Facebook notifications when people talk about your company.

You can go to sites like icerocket.com and socialmention.com because they will search today’s blogs or yesterday’s blogs, and socialmention also looks at images posted that have your name attached to them, and so you can look at all of these things on a regular basis just with some quick searches. You’re also going to want to look at the top 5 or 6 review sites for your market and in your business. Now remember, we identified those in step 4, right? We identified our strategy, who the most important review sites are, that’s what we’re going to look at on a regular basis, but then you could also look at Google Search and a lot of people don’t know this. Let’s zoom in on this.

I can search by your company name, and I just put the word “Company name” here, but over on the right on Google right now, it’s something that says “Search tools.” When I click on that, when I click on that, I can select 24 hours, so I can just look at the stuff that’s been posted in the last 24 hours. That’s where a Google search becomes valuable and more valuable for example than Google Alerts. I can look at the things that have been written about me online just in the last 24 hours, so those are the do it yourself tools and I’m assessing regularly. Let’s say I’m doing it myself, I’m using the do it yourself tools, and I just found something terrible. I just found something rotten about me.

Be cool. Remember, your gut is what got you here, now let’s use our head, okay? It might be true, it might be untrue, or most likely it’s some mix of truth and fiction that somebody has just written about your business, so we must determine if it’s factual, right? Step 2, and we might want to start working on repairing or replacing. Step 3, but more importantly, we need to go to step 8. We need to address as we assess.