Online Reputation. Your reputation is everything when it comes to the success of your law practice. A tarnished brand reputation can cause long-term damage that can be difficult to overcome.
Today’s online marketplace lets users share their ideas, opinions, and complaints quickly and publicly. Although you can leverage this immediacy to gain visibility for your law firm, it can also put your reputation at risk.
Foster Transparency Throughout Your Law Practice
The best way to address the feedback (positive or negative) from your audience is to fully embrace it. This demonstrates a willingness to listen to the needs of people and makes it easy to resolve issues quickly and begin moving forward.
You can create transparency by establishing a direct line of communication between customers and your business. This can be done through social media, email, or telephone. Be willing to hear everything without attempting to hide or dismiss criticism.
Optimize Your Online Reputation
What do users find when they put your firm’s name in the search engine? Will the content support your business, or will it cause concern among potential clients? These are questions you should consider in your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Many businesses have had to address getting high rankings for the wrong reasons. See what images and content appear when you Google yourself. You can use SEO strategies to increase the ranking of content that highlights the positive aspects of your practice.
A comprehensive SEO strategy should be the first step in managing your online reputation.
Respond to Feedback As Soon As Possible
Protecting your online reputation requires a quick response to any issues that arise. Even if you’re unable to rectify a situation or provide an immediate solution, it’s still important to let your audience know that they’re concerns are being heard.
The ability to listen to feedback builds trust, and the quicker you can establish that trust, the better off your reputation will be.
Criticism should be specifically addressed. Avoid being vague or not admitting when you’ve made a mistake. By addressing the specifics of an issue, you can begin to get the feedback that will lead to the solutions you need.
Monitor Social Media
Protecting your firm’s online reputation requires you to stay connected. Users are having conversations online. Connecting to the feelings, reactions, and emotions of your audience is essential to understanding their needs and preventing issues that hurt your online reputation.
You should have dedicated team members who actively monitor and participate in social media. They can post on your behalf and respond to the feedback from online users.
All social media managers should understand the brand message you wish to share and have a standard of operations for responding to online criticism.
Use tools such as Google Alerts, Twitter’s mention notifications, and hashtags to track the conversations related to your law firm. This provides invaluable information that can help you support your growing reputation.
Creating transparency in your practice and using SEO strategies allow you to make sure that positive information related to your law firm is presented to online users.
Monitoring the conversations around your brand and providing quick responses to feedback lets you provide solutions that minimize the damage to your online reputation.
Let us know what strategies your firm uses to manage and protect its online reputation. If you aren’t sure what steps to take, let us know in the comments section below.
Your reputation is a valuable asset to your practice. Make sure that it continues to work towards your business objectives.
