I picked up on a terrific article in today’s New York Times entitled Managing an Online Reputation. The point is that your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening in. Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, Angie’s List, TripAdvisor, and Epinions are just a few of the websites where consumers can give feedback on their favorite and not so favorite stores. The article helps provide a better understanding of the phenomenon and gives some practical advice for hardworking and vigilant store managers on taming this ever growing and critically important challenge for art material retailers. Here is a peek at some of the valuable tips:
* Set up automatic alerts to notify you when your business is mentioned in a review or blog.
* Local search sites are the new Yellow Pages — make sure your business is listed. The more complete your listing, the more likely you are to get good search results.
* Respond to reviews to show readers that you are listening and that you care about customer service.
* Online reviews are a gold mine of business intelligence. Analyze metrics to get a better sense of your customer demographics.
* Don’t write false reviews to puff your business or trash a competitor. You can severely damage your reputation…and look really silly.
Read the entire article by clicking on this link: Managing an Online Reputation