Tag: referral

    How to Bury Information You Don’t Want Known

    If you recently Googled yourself and found out that something shows up that you don’t want people to focus on or know about, there are a few steps you can take to bury the information. Depending on how active the people spreading the information are will affect your success, but if you work hard you can bury the negativity. Here’s how.

    Set Up Publically Viewed Profiles on Social Media

    The more public profiles and active social media accounts you can maintain that have positive information about you, the lower down the search results you’ll push any negativity. The key here is that each profile must be public, mention your company, your name or both, and the products and services that the negative information is about. If you can identify the keywords that resulted in the negative results, try to include them too.

    Engage Publically on Forums, Articles, Blog Posts, and Social Media

    Making positive and helpful comments online in public in your name whenever you can is an important way to negate negative content that is floating around out there about you and your business. Provide well thought-out comments and posts that use good grammar, proper spelling, and that sound intelligent. It will make you look a lot more trustworthy and smarter to the public.

    Ensure That All Your Online Real-Estate Connects Together

    Within the profile confines, be sure that every one of your social media profiles link to your website and blog and when possible each other. You want a connection to be known so that everyone knows that you are really you. Then be sure to use these accounts to make comments, post useful content, and share important industry news with your followers. Everything you can do on your online accounts to increase activity will help.

    Dominate Negative Keywords

    By negative keywords we mean the keywords that bring up the negative results that you found. Write blog posts that feature these words, and turn them into a positive. If you found the negative search with specific words, use those specific words in blog posts, videos, and tags for pictures and in titles of blog posts. The more you use it in a positive manner, the lower down the search results the negative issue will be found.

    Get Some Help

    Have some other people help you conduct searches to help identify more words and negative information. Google often provides results particular to you so it’s important to get others to help. There are firms you can hire, but you can also ask your virtual assistant to do it – as well as close family and friends that you don’t mind knowing about the negative information.

    Enlist Friends and Family to Say Good Things

    Your friends and family can comment on message boards, blogs, and in social media too. Instruct them to keep everything positive at all times but to casually mention your business in their comments in a positive way. Plus, ask them to leave positive feedback on rating sites.

    Ask Affiliates and Business Partners for Testimonials

    You don’t have to tell your affiliates or business partners about the negative search results, but you can increase your efforts asking for positive testimonials from them. Ask for a testimonial on LinkedIn, your website and more. Ask them to write blog posts about you and tell them you’ll write it yourself and they can edit it. Whatever you can do to increase the good words out there about you, the better.

    Do More Interviews

    Interviews are a great way to get rid of negative search results and bury them under goodness. You can go to your business partners, affiliates and colleagues again to get interviews. If you have a virtual assistant, task them with getting you at least one interview per week to talk about a few different subjects you can let the interviewees choose from. If you don’t have one, then you’ll have to do the leg work yourself, but opening yourself up to interviews will definitely help push down the negativity.

    Pushing down negativity may take some time, but it can be done if you put an all-out effort. In fact, shouldn’t you be doing this at all times anyway? If you do, you won’t have to worry that much about one online blunder.

    Categories: Customer Service, Run a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    How to Create Better Word-of-Mouth Marketing

    Word-of-mouth marketing is the oldest form of marketing that exists, and it’s still very effective. In fact, one of the best ways to get more clients for any business owner is to increase your word-of-mouth marketing efforts. People trust hearing from those whom they know, or respect, or have other connections with more than they trust a specific type of advertisement.

    1. Ask for Referrals – If you want your current customers or contacts to give you referrals, it is important that you tell them that is what you want. The more you tell your contacts that you want them to recommend you to others, the more likely they are to do it.

    2. Provide Sources with Details – A great way to ensure that you get the right type of referrals is to tell your customers and contacts exactly what type of clients you are looking for. That way they can be sure to tell the right people about you and your products and/or services.

    3. Be a True Resource – The more you can offer to everyone you come into contact with, even if you cannot service them directly, the more you’ll be seen as a resource to others. They will then trust enough in your skill to recommend people who can be your actual clients.

    4. Provide Incentives – There is nothing wrong with providing some incentives to your contacts to recommend you to others. You can do it before or after the fact. Some people have successfully given coupons and discounts to those who have recommended them, with great results.

    5. Promote Testimonials – Ask for testimonials from your currently satisfied clients to share with your social media followers, website visitors, and within your sales pages. Once you receive a testimonial there are many ways in which you can use them to get more business.

    6. Build a Community of Customers – One way to really catch your word-of-mouth marketing on fire is to build a community of customers who can speak with authority to your awesome services.

    7. Create an Affiliate Program – A really fabulous way to create momentum in your word-of-mouth marketing is to open an affiliate program for customers only. They are the ones who can really speak to the level and quality of your services you offer.

    8. Network Strategically – Many people with whom you have casual contact through networking events can be a wonderful resource for referrals. There are many networking groups that you can join to help you get the word out.

    Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the best forms of marketing available and one of the least expensive. All you have to do is live up to your reputation and continue to under promise and over deliver so that your clients are thrilled by your products and services enough to keep the word-of-mouth going.

    Categories: Customer Referral, Expert, Run a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    How to Gain More Qualitative Feedback from Customers

    It’s very important to get as much feedback from your customers as possible. Sometimes it can be difficult to ask for the feedback but there are times when you should. If you’re not getting natural feedback then do what you can to get more. Feedback can help you make your products and services better, as well as help you identify gaps in your product offerings.

    * Follow Up Often – When someone buys a product or uses a service, it’s important to give them an opportunity to tell you what they think. Most people will not just naturally give feedback unless they are super mad about something. Using email to follow up with customers is an excellent way to get the information that you seek.

    * Send a Survey – Once a customer has purchased from you, another way to find out how they felt about the products and services is to send a short survey to customers only. Ask the right questions so that you can get a lot of emotionally-based information from them.

    * Start a Customer Only Forum – You can use a message board system, or you can even start a customer only group on Facebook. This will help you get a lot of interesting feedback simply by watching and observing how the customers themselves interact and talk about your products.

    * Ask for Comments on Your Blog – When you post something on your blog, be sure to actually ask for comments that help provide insight into how customers are using your products. You can even make blog posts or video blogs to expand on various comments.

    * Ask for Product Reviews – If you really want reviews on your products and services, ask directly for them. Give them a link to your review software on your website, or send them to your business LinkedIn profile. Alternatively, you can ask them for a review with a picture and offer them a link to your website in exchange.

    * Have a Contest – Yes, you can have a contest that will help you learn more about what your customers think of your products and services. Ask for video reviews or blog posts to be written about your products and or services. You may be surprised by what they say.

    * Ask Them How They Use Your Products – A really interesting thing to do is to ask your customers to tell you what is their favorite way to use your product. You may learn new uses for your own products or services that you had not considered.

    The more information you can gather from your customers, the better. It’s not always going to just come naturally. You need to make it easy for your customers to tell you what they think about your products and services, by offering them easy to fill out surveys that are short and to the point, with open-ended questions too.

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