Freedom of Speech, Bad Google Reviews and Your Small Business ...

Did you ever think that the first amendment to the United States Constitution may be hurting your small business?

Unfortunately for thousands of small businesses, people exercising their right to? freedom of speech can be a serious problem and is responsible for thousands of dollars in lost revenue!

You are probably wondering, what the heck is he talking about? Simply put, it is all about people exercising their right to free speech and posting negative things online about your business.

The Internet is a wide open billboard that allows people to go online and talk about their experiences with local businesses. As a business owner you need to be aware of what people are saying about your business, both good and bad. Not knowing may be costing you business and it is definitely fixable.

Ignoring bad reviews and comments online is costing you money!

Most small business owners are not even aware that when people search for their business online the first thing they see may be bad reviews. In many cases finding bad reviews is the difference between a prospect using you or moving on.

Online Shoppers are looking for validation before they buy!

You must understand that people like to use online reviews to validate their decision to buy or fly from you. The problem is, you may run a great business and provide an excellent service, yet a few disgruntled ex customers decided to trash you online and those bad reviews are in front of interested prospects when they search for you.

Here are the biggest problems for most local businesses? plagued with bad reviews.

Most small businesses that are being hurt by bad reviews are not even aware that they are there or feel helpless to act upon them. We have found that many of these businesses do not have a website or have a poorly optimized website that has poor rankings in the Google results. This means that when an interested prospect types your business name into Google they see bad reviews up top and no website to offset those bad reviews. A professional and well optimized website should always appear at the top of the search results for your name.

Most small businesses still have not claimed their Free Google places business listing. You have a business listing in Google and it is your responsibility to claim it and optimize it. If your unclaimed business listing has bad reviews you have no way to respond or gather positive reviews from satisfied customers to counter the bad reviews.

Poor reputation management. All of the local businesses do not have and review monitoring mechanisms in place to alert them when someone posts a review (good or bad) about their business online. When people post comments about your business you need to know about them right away so you can react. You cannot respond to reviews if you do not know they are there!

How can you exercise your first amendment rights and combat negative reviews online?

Freedom of speech works both ways and you can easily counter bad reviews by first knowing about them and where they are located online. If they are in Google Places you can respond once you claim your free business page.

Are You Embarrassed, Angry, or Both?

First of all, there are usually 2 primary emotions that occur when a business owner first learns about negative reviews. The first emotion is usually embarrassment. They are embarrassed that this is their business and people are getting a negative impression about how they conduct business. It is personal and a poor reflection on you as the owner.

Then anger sets in. How dare that lousy sob write those obviously false things about my business. We run a great business here and this is probably my competition trying to trash me! Maybe so, but the review is still there and you need to address it.

The problem is not always the bad reviews themselves, it is how they are displayed and viewed online. Let?s be honest here, everybody has a bad day and nobody is perfect. In fact, a Google Places page with 50 5 star reviews and nothing negative is kind of fishy looking and may cause a viewer to doubt the validity of the review sources. Read my post from several months ago about buying fake reviews in Google Places.

How Should You Handle Bad Reviews Online?

What Should You Do Next? First and foremost, deal with bad reviews or comments head on! DO NOT ignore bad reviews or hope that people won?t find them. If they are coming up people will see them and you will lose customers. The good news is, you can overcome them and stop losing customers by taking action now!

First of all, find out where they are and what they are saying?

If you do not have a website yet and bad reviews are the first thing popping up on Google for your business name, you have a serious problem. First of all, if someone is simply looking for directions to your business, a phone number, or some general info and instead of finding your website they find a slew of negative reviews, you probably just lost a customer.

Hire a professional asap and get those reviews pushed down the page by posting positive information like blog posts, positive reviews from satisfied customers and above all, your website. If your website is not appearing number 1 in Google for your business name, you have problems!

Claim your Google Places page! If you are not sure how to do it or don?t have time, hire a professional! You cannot respond to reviews if you do not have control of your Google Places business listing. Claiming your business listing also allows you to edit inaccurate information and create offers. If you have control over your business listing and keep it updated and professional looking it also is helpful to send satisfied customers there to post positive reviews.

DO NOT hire a review company to post positive reviews in Google Places. It is illegal and against Google?s rules. Buying fake reviews will eventually come back to haunt you and more and more savvy Internet surfers are able to spot fake reviews. Contact past customers and encourage current customers to go online. Put a review page on your website and email a link to your review page to past customers. Remember, it only takes 5 positive reviews to push a negative on to page 2 of the Google reviews pages.

Respond professionally to all negative reviews! Do not respond right away if a negative review makes you angry. Your emotional response will be seen by everyone and you may end up looking like a total jackass. Always respond in a courteous manner and try to discover who this person is and try to make things right. In some cases you may have really screwed up and the reviewer just wants some kind of justice. Handle it professionally and you may win back a customer and have a positive review replace a negative. Above all, online shoppers will be impressed that you are proactive and trying to make things right!

Bottom line: If you really care about your business, you must know exactly what people are saying about you at all times. People are always exercising their freedom of speech and you should also. You cannot address a problem unless you are aware that it exists. Do not ignore negative comments or reviews online because they will not go away and thousands of potential customers will go away!

Jeffrey Taylor is an Local Internet Marketing consultant and works with small business owners that want to use the Internet to attract more customers in their local market. He is always available to answer questions and invites you to post any comments you have in the comments box below.

To contact Jeffrey direct, go to his website Local Goldmine.com

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