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Are You Giving the Wrong Online Impression?
The Sprocket Report
With your nose pressed against the grindstone, it’s difficult to see all that’s going on around you – or see all that’s going on ABOUT you. Every so often however, you'll need to check on and clean up your online image.
Directory Listings
Do you belong to a Chamber of Commerce, a Not-for-Profit Organization or an Industry Association? Was the last time you updated your listing when you joined – many years ago? You may be surprised to see how much your business has changed since then such as phone numbers, personnel, branding or more.
Your current listing could also be incomplete or broken. What kind of impression do you get from this Chamber of Commerce listing below? It's for a video production company that features an unavailable video. Would you hire them?
Review Websites
Check review sites like Yelp as well. You may not have created an account there, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one in your name up and running already – with reviews on it that people are reading.
There isn’t much you can control on Yelp, but it’s best you control all you can. Yelp won’t remove bad reviews, even if they don’t exactly tell the true story. Instead, it’s best to respond politely and promptly with an apology for the reviewer’s dissatisfaction and offer to continue the discussion offline.
Start the process by claiming the page in your name. You will see the word “Unclaimed” next to your business name on Yelp if you haven't yet claimed it. Other platforms will have similar designations.
Social Media Platforms
Another important place to claim your page is on Facebook. Facebook “helpfully” creates place pages that people are talking about, so you might have a page for your business even if you didn’t intend to, a page over which you have no control. It might look like this Rutgers University page below:
You might think it's sort of amusing, but something like this recently happened to a local grade school. Before petitioning Facebook to merge the extra page with the official one, some unsuitable comments were posted that the school wasn't able to remove.
Once you gain control of your organization's Facebook page, go ahead and take the next step to Verify the official page with Facebook as well.
Often the office feels a little dull during the last week of December. Between the holidays and travel and year-end exhaustion, you might find yourself working a little less than normal. One of those slow days could be the perfect time to see how your business looks online and update your listings. Check that you used the same full name and address consistently everywhere. Rewrite your descriptions to be more interesting. Freshen your page's look with new and better photos.
Would you rather have help creating your new and improved online presence for 2018? We’d be happy to do it for you! Just give us a call and we’ll get started.
Photo courtesy Nick Youngson
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Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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