Cancel culture is in, consumers are watching, and it’s an unfortunate reality of 21st-century digital business that a company’s reputation can be destroyed more quickly than ever before in history. Reputation management is essential to keep track of your image across the web, ensuring that what you’re putting out there to the public is entirely positive. Ignoring your online reputation isn’t a risk worth taking.

1. Driving Away Customers

If you’re not actively monitoring your reputation online, you could easily miss a couple of negative reviews. Having a few of these is fine (and normal), but you can’t have too many; and you don’t want to let any reviews about serious issues go unanswered.

Here’s the reality: businesses that have about 4 stars get the most sales. Anything less than 3.5 and you’re done. Anything more than 4.5 and customers get suspicious. Businesses that maintain 4-4.5 star review averages earn an average of 28% more than the competition.

You Have to Reply

Another dose of reality: 75% of businesses don’t respond to their reviews, but companies that do respond and deal with negative reviews earn 35% more than their competition. But you can’t engage if you’re not aware of what’s being said about you.

It’s a huge job keeping track of all that, and an even bigger one to actually engage with reviews, and that’s why you need someone on your side. At BlueZone, we not only constantly solicit, monitor, and assess reviews for you, but we can also curate thoughtful responses that limit any potential for damage.

The Snowball Effect Saps Trust

If you ignore what seems like a small issue today, you could be dealing with ten times the amount of negative publicity just a few days or weeks down the line. The fact that you didn’t intervene and respond quickly works against you. If you let the bad reviews snowball, and then respond, cynical people won’t give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t see the reviews or were busy running your business. They’ll assume you don’t care about customers and only answered at all to save your skin.

Instead, intervene early. Establish a strong social media presence and then engage regularly there in addition to responding to reviews quickly. This will show people you’re paying attention and solidify your reputation as a trustworthy company.

2. Destroying Your Profit Margin Unnecessarily

It starts with fewer sales as customers look online, see all the negativity, and go somewhere else with their business. But it doesn’t stop there, because customers aren’t the only ones who care about your image. So do investors, stakeholders, and lenders.

It can get even worse. As your reputation tanks, you’ll have trouble hiring. The “good” people won’t want to work with you, and you might find yourself having to pay enormous employee retention costs just to keep your best people with you. What seems like a small thing–a couple of negative reviews on sites you don’t even look at yourself–could have a destructive effect on your bottom line.

These are just a few of the risks you’re running by ignoring your online reputation: but Blue Zone can help. Get in touch with Blue Zone today. We don’t want you to just maintain an online presence. We want to help you dominate!

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