How to Effectively Manage Your Business’ Digital Reputation
When you Google your business, what do you see?
I’d hope that you’d be viewing your brand at the top of the heap – complete with pages full of five-star reviews, links to helpful content and a sterling online reputation. If you’ve worked hard to achieve that, you’ve got a leg up on your competition.
Unfortunately, many laundry owners don’t always like what they see on Google’s results pages. In my experience, less-than-stellar online results typically come down to one of two reasons:
- The business lacks a strong, cohesive online reputation.
- The business has an outright poor online reputation.
In many ways, the case for building and maintaining a strong online reputation makes itself. In any business deal, the first impression is usually the most important. More than ever, that first impression – and the reputation it leads to – occurs online.
If you haven’t considered how you come across to an online audience, it’s time to start. A laundromat’s reputation can be one of its greatest assets, especially as you try to reach out to your local community. I want to share some of the reasons why your reputation matters, as well as provide a few simple ideas for how you can improve, maintain or take yours to the next level.
Reputations Don’t Stand Still
A business’ reputation is never stagnant. It’s either improving or declining.
What does that look like?
A declining reputation is perhaps the most obvious. It looks like bad reviews, negative press and possibly even purpose-built content from third parties that seeks to amplify negatives about your business. It drives shock value, preconceived notions about your brand and typically focuses on a few key negatives. It’s usually complicated by bad or poor content on your website, and is often shrouded in clouds of negativity.
An improving reputation utilizes the same cycle, but in a positive direction. You’ll see ample evidence of good press, positive third-party content and reviews, or even virality. Brands with positive reputations also engage with customers and their broader audience, essentially capitalizing on the momentum of positivity. This is powerful and can attract new customers to your business.
A factor to consider on both sides of this cycle is that positive and negative reputation growth can be amplified by search and social algorithms, as well as user habits. An uninterrupted cycle of negativity can be amplified by the platform itself to drive away current customers, prevent you from finding new ones, and ultimately lead to a business failing to grow. Depending on which side your laundry business is on, you’re either fighting an uphill battle to remove the stains on your brand, or facing an unparalleled opportunity to build momentum toward your business.
To make matters more complicated, these cycles can occur at the same time, if your brand is large enough and sufficiently well-known. However, in my experience, most laundry businesses find themselves on one side of the coin or the other.
The takeaway here is simple: if you’re not working on your reputation, it’s still working on you. Taking the reins is the more reliable path, even if it requires taking on some additional responsibilities.
Why Should You Care?
Before I discuss reputation management, I really want to drive home the reasons why you should even care about your brand’s reputation online. Yes, it’s tempting simply to conclude that online trends have minimal staying power in a world of 24-hour news cycles and clickbait headlines – but nothing could be further from the truth. At the very least, Google’s algorithm and the real estate of the SERPs (search engine results pages) have immense and proven staying power.
Almost everyone shops online and looks for social proof to make buying decisions. These are ingrained habits, even in smaller communities and rural areas. Small-town laundry businesses stand to benefit as much as their urban counterparts. A bad reputation can linger for the entire life of a business – but it doesn’t have to.
Here’s another factor to consider: if you let others create your reputation, you’re ultimately be at their mercy. Although you absolutely should rely on the goodwill of your customers, you shouldn’t presume that you’ll never see a negative experience with our business show up online. An ounce of preparation with regard to handling negative in-person and digital experiences is well worth the time you’ll save in having to try to clear your name.
Yet another consideration is that the line between online and offline experiences is growing thinner and thinner. Omnichannel strategies are gaining steam, virtual reality experiences are emergent, and consumers are more sophisticated than ever. To capitalize on any new marketing tactic, you need a strong brand reputation to lean on – without exception.
Your reputation is worth all of the attention you give it. At the end of the day, that should be enough to motivate you to action.
Building a ‘Clean’ Reputation
So, what can be done to build a clean online reputation? A lot. More than one column can cover. However, I’m not going to send you away empty-handed. I want to highlight some simple steps I’ve used to help laundry businesses manage their online reputations. They’re simple, actionable, and I truly believe anyone can use them to great success:
Determine how you want to be known. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you’ll never achieve it. That’s common sense.
Give this some thought. Do you want to be known as an altruistic, eco-friendly brand? Build it. The same applies for anything else you can imagine.
Hone in on your content. A brand’s reputation rests on how it engages, entertains and educates its audience. If you’re not building helpful content, you’re not doing all you can to build your reputation.
Consider both tact and tactic. It’s tempting to think that the truth, spoken in any fashion, will always win out. Unfortunately, the court of public opinion doesn’t hold to this logic. Consider that, while a reply to a review or comment may be truthful, a caustic tone (even if only in the perception of the reader) can do more harm than good.
Keep a schedule, but be flexible. Reputations take years to build, but just seconds to destroy. And some stains are permanent. It seems as if the reputation of some public figure or some popular brand is placed in a negative spotlight almost every day. Some people are denied college admission and some lose jobs due to online stains.
Don’t let your laundry business be the next casualty on the list. Consider how you manage your online reputation, and then start to build something better.
