There is no reason for the business owner to sit back and feel helpless in a state of despair over damaging and negative reviews on various websites about his company. Indeed you cannot stop people from writing negative reviews but there is no need to feel hopeless, and one can take matters into their own hands and do something about it.
Depending on how aggressive you want to be, there is a variety of actions you can take in order to ‘get in control’ of your business’s public image. Since negative reviews are there to stay and can’t be removed then strategy is to dilute the percentage of negative reviews with a tremendous amount of positive reviews, to the point where its over 90% positive.
Where to Start?
First, we need to know what websites people post reviews on. Here is a collection of the main ones which you should focus your campaign on, with the most important being (in order): Google Yahoo, Angie’s list, etc.
Angie’s List
Yelp
Google Places
Yahoo Local
Consumer Reports
Amazon
Soliciting Customers for Reviews
Now that we know where to look let’s examine what our options are. Unfortunately, just waiting to have people write positive reviews is not a viable course of action, as it could take a tremendous amount of time until enough of your customers review your site and thereby diluting the negative. Therefore you must take it upon yourself to start a dialogue with your most loyal and valued customers, appeal to their sense of kindness and ask them about their experience working with your company (remember not to ask them for positive feedback, just ask them for feedback). After giving you their feedback verbally you can then ask them if they would be willing to take what they just said and post it as a review on one of the aforementioned websites. As people generally like to help each other they would more often than not agree to do this favor for you; especially if you have given them excellent service!
Soliciting Customers for Reviews by Incentives
If you are not getting enough customers to review your site out of the kindness of their hearts then you can (if you are so aggressive) turn to incentives for reviewing. Such as a coupon for discounted products and services, discounts etc. You should however maintain the position and make it very clear that you are offering incentives just for their writing a review, and you are not offering incentives for positive reviews; in order to keep things kosher.
Fake Reviews
It is not recommended that you make fake accounts and fake reviews for your company. Remember to keep it real and honest.
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