Gaining and Improving Your WordPress Site’s Reputation

Working on the reputation of your business on the network is one of the most important and most complex tasks at the same time. The importance of reputation is justified by the open dissemination of information on the internet: one review can be read by millions of people around the world. The complexity of working on a reputation is based on a psychological factor: it is difficult to deal with angry or just negative people and respond to their reviews in a weighed and polite way, offering compensation in case of mistakes on your side.

However, working with a reputation does not end with the processing of feedback. Reputation depends on many nuances, and the main ones we will try to consider in this article. The good news is that the amount of work with reputation will always be correlated with the attendance of your site. This means that in the first months (and possibly years), this type of activity will not take much of your time. In addition, you can easily understand the level of popularity of your project in terms of the amount of time you spend working with a reputation.

At all stages of work on reputation you need to focus your attention on 9 critical aspects. Further we will consistently consider each of these aspects.

Track All Reviews of Your Business

Unfortunately, people are much more likely to give bad reviews than good ones. If a person is satisfied and pacified, then he needs to make an effort to make an additional action and write a response about your company or service. However, if a person is furious, he just needs to throw out his negative and he will do it with the help of a negative response. For this reason, keeping track of all references to your brand is a necessary task for any business.

At the moment, there are two simple and convenient services for tracking the mentions of your brand on the network: Google Alerts and Yelp. These services are easy to configure to send automatic emails as new mentions of your company’s name appear. After that, it remains only to periodically get acquainted with the content of articles or reviews, where the name of your company was mentioned in order to remain aware of your own reputation.

Do not forget to also periodically check the most popular social networks for the presence of mentions of your brand. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have their own search services to facilitate this task.

Naturally, the responses need to be handled correctly. If a dissatisfied customer finds himself on the network, you need to react as soon as possible to his message with a promise to understand the situation. After you find out the details, you must necessarily sum up. In case there is a fault of your company, you need to appease the client with a gift or a special discount for the subsequent services of your company.

Make It Easier to Write Reviews for Users

To simplify the task of writing reviews, you can use two simple principles: maximum openness and timely reminders. Both principles are aimed at increasing the number of satisfied customers who will want to leave their positive feedback on your website or in social networks.

The principle of openness is the availability of a simple and affordable way of communicating with you. Create a convenient feedback form on your WordPress site or blog and put a link to it in the header so everyone can easily find it. Do not neglect the creation of branded pages on Facebook and other social networks – users feel more relaxed there than on your company’s website. Do not forget that all appeals and responses need to be reacted (even to positive ones, which do not create problems).

The principle of timely reminders is easy tips to your customers about where and how they can write about their impressions. Email or SMS reminder are the most common tools to achieve this.

Modern email newsletter services offer simple tools for automatic distribution to users who bought your goods through the site. These emails express gratitude for the purchase and are reminded of the possibility of leaving feedback. It is important to give a direct link to that page of the site, where the user can immediately enter your feedback, without additional searches. Such mailings are often configured for a period of several days after the purchase, when the customer has already managed to evaluate the goods and did not have time to forget about their impressions.

Build Your Authority in the Community

You should be an expert in your field of activity. In addition, you should constantly confirm your status as an expert, helping people in problem situations related to your professional activities.

You can create your own community based on the WordPress site or blog, or join existing communities and help people out there. If your help is useful, then the audience will reach for you on any internet platform.

In the first place, social networks should be used to establish your authority. It is not just about Facebook and Twitter, but also about more specialized social networks, such as YouTube. If you shoot useful and interesting videos, then in time you will be able to attract a large number of people to the services of your company.

Show Your Satisfied Customers

A page with a list of satisfied customers should be on every serious site. In other words, this is your portfolio. Here it is important not only to show the list of companies that used your services, but also to bring their feedback, which will serve as evidence of the best qualities of your service.

The format of the responses can be different – feel free to use all possible options. The most common are written reviews on company letterheads that are satisfied with your service. These reviews should be scanned together with the seals and signatures of the officials of the respective companies.

A more interesting and effective format for feedback is video. It can be a simple and short interview with your customers about their impressions or a whole documentary about your company’s achievements with facts and evidence.

Boast of Any Awards

The phenomenon of awards is their popularity despite the subjectivity of the organizations and communities that provide these awards. We all know that the tastes and priorities of people are too different for one jury to be able to determine the best company from any of the existing fields of activity. However, we all highly appreciate the awards received and consider them an indicator of success.

Thus, you should not focus on the objectivity of the rewards available to you. Your goal should be to obtain the maximum possible number of awards for the initial attraction of potential customers’ attention. On the other hand, the desire for rewards will always force you to improve some aspects of your activity, so rewards will also be important for the development of your company.

Provide an Opportunity to Print Legal Documents

License agreements are often ignored by users of any services. However, this does not mean that they should be ignored by business owners. You should first of all worry about the legal side of providing your services and provide access to relevant information for your clients.

Such actions are not purely formal. There is always a certain percentage of people who carefully study the license agreements and the legal aspects of any transaction. You must be one of these people to lead a successful business.

Keep Your Site Secure

Security is a key element of trust. Many of us do not think about the security of our site until we find problems with burglary or spam. Remember that an inadequate level of security tells your potential customers of your incompetence.

Pay close attention to SSL data encryption. Online shops and other services that offer online payment for their services should definitely take care of encrypting their data. Otherwise, these data can be transferred by intruders. Your customers will be inclined to blame you in the event of such a force majeure situation, so it is better to prevent its occurrence.

Define Your Goal and Stick to It

A specific and precise goal plays a more important role than many businessmen imagine. The lack of a clear positioning of your services will inevitably lead to the fact that your customers will come up with ideas for your positioning. Will you be able to match them?

For example, you deliver all the goods with the help of couriers. Your customers get used to fast and high-quality delivery. Then you decide to cut shipping costs to increase or reallocate the company’s revenue. Quality of delivery falls, and your customers are disappointed in that aspect of your service, which they considered the key. Even if you never sounded fast delivery as your main advantage, you will inevitably suffer from the deceived expectations of your customers.

Create an Affiliate Program

Affiliate program is a modern legal drug for internet users. Once your potential customers become a member of the affiliate program, they start advertising your services themselves. Refusing to participate in the affiliate program means losing a certain profit, so very few people will take such a step.

Affiliate program allows you to get a good initial base of brand’s advocates, which will help you to get and strengthen your reputation. You should seriously approach the calculation of interest for the remuneration of participants in your affiliate program, so as not to be unprofitable with sales growth.