The internet age has changed the way that business communicate and compete with one another. Internet review
s can have a drastic effect on your brand, whether positive or negative. Google hasn’t missed this. This is why they offered $550 million to buy Yelp, which contains about nine million local reviews of various businesses.
Local business reviews are a new kind of social media, in which customers review their experiences with brands over the internet. Business directories such as Yelp, Citysearch, and Yellowpages.com allow for customers to post what they think of the businesses that they have dealt with.
These reviews are seen by the customers who visit such sites, and can serve to gauge the public opinion people have of your brand. The ability of customers to do this has caused the business world to react in many different ways, ranging all the way from ignoring it altogether to overreacting and becoming paranoid. The important thing about this type of social media is that it is transparent. It cannot be altered or removed by the businesses that are being reviewed.
These reviews are important because they affect your brand reputation, they allow you to get feedback from your customers, and they get your brand in the search engines. Because of this, as much as is possible, businesses should respond to the negative reviews to the extent that they can. In many cases this can cause the customer to become a bigger fan of your business than if they hadn’t experienced any problems to begin with, which has a tremendous effect on word of mouth regarding your brand.
One way to do this is through the use of several programs that allow you to track these reviews, such as Cymfony, Trackur, and Marchex. In addition to responding to negative reviews, you can also use these tools to publicly thank people who have given you heartfelt, five-star, positive reviews.
