4 Tips for Managing the Reviews & Reputation of Your Multi-Location Business
January 19th, 2016 by
Managing your business’s online presence can help you set yourself apart, especially when it comes to big franchises and multi-location businesses that are often too large to handle things like responding to reviews.
1. Monitor What’s Being Said About Your Overall Brand
By using tools that monitor mentions of your brand name online, you can keep a pulse on the overall tone and sentiment customers express about your brand. Social Searcher is a simple, free tool that allows you to track mentions on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and to get alerts about the mentions in your email inbox. This can help you reply to feedback about your business that comes in forms other than review platforms like Twitter posts and Facebook statuses.
2. Address Reviews Both Good and Bad
Responding to reviews online is important for showing that you are a brand that is active and engaged in your widespread community. It is often assumed that large franchises and multi-location businesses are too big to handle the relatively large amount of feedback they receive. Being able to manage and respond to those reviews is a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors and show concern for and interest in your customers. While it’s much easier to respond to positive reviews, responding to negative reviews gracefully and respectfully can also lead to a greatly improved reputation for your business.
3. Check Out Industry-Specific Review Sites
Some industries have their own niche sites where you’ll find reviews. These are great opportunities for building and understanding your business’s online presence for those who are actively engaged in your industry. For example, GolfNow is a site that helps golfers locate courses all around the US and even internationally. Within each course’s listing, you can also find reviews from golfers that use the site. Another interesting feature of this review site, which can be seen on the Audubon Institute‘s Audubon Park Golf Course listing, is that reviewers who book their golfing experience through GolfNow are shown as “verified,” which gives more authority to the reviews. Having authoritative resources across the web pointing back to your business is also a great way to increase your business’s visibility in search engine results.
4. Get Creative with Review and Testimonial Opportunities
Think about what type of engagement your business attracts and try to come up with a way to engage and feature your customers’ feedback on your site. Everyone these days is taking pictures of their food, so restaurants would be smart to feature tags of their food in the form of an Instagram stream on their site using free tools like Instansive. These kinds of tools allow you to generate a code to implement on your website that shows photos from your username or using a unique tag. Similarly, business owners can take note from the clever Donaldson Plastic Surgery. Dr. Donaldson’s patients are proud to share their selfies and testimonial videos on site, so this is a great opportunity to leverage positive reviews for their business in a fun and engaging way.
Whether you’re a three-location local business or a countrywide franchise, it’s important to maintain control of your online presence. Check out the ways in which Search Influence can help your business grow its presence online on our services page.
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