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Repairing Damaged Online Reputation

The healthcare industry is full of professionals, each trying to create brand awareness for their practice. Healthcare professionals need to closely guard their reputation to effectively market themselves since a simple slip can lead to irreparable damage. Despite efforts to present a positive reputation, your practice can easily fall victim to malicious content that portrays a negative image. Dealing with a bad reputation can affect your brand and lower your patient’s confidence in your facility. The worst part is that the world is a global village connected through online platforms – a simple text can be shared across multiple platforms in a short timeframe. However, you can take measures to mitigate this problem before it gets out of hand. Here are a few steps to follow:

Assess the Situation

The last thing you want to do is panic in these situations. The first step you need to take is to assess the situation. Take time to investigate the root cause of the problem and how it affects your online reputation. Your online reputation is often attached to your website and listing platforms where patients and partners post their reviews. Having a few negative reviews against several positive reviews is not a cause for alarm. Most people tend to overlook the negative reviews unless the negative outweighs the positive.

In most cases, the situation may not be as bad as you think. You should approach this more calmly to avoid causing more damage. Your assessment protocol should include:

  • Identifying the source of the negative reputation
  • Reviewing your online statistics to ascertain the impact of the situation
  • Look at the reactions since your brand took a hit

Determine your level of Control

Once you have a complete assessment of the situation, the next step is to focus your efforts on matters related to your reputation in your Control. A reputation management firm may be your best chance when it comes to damage control. These professionals have the qualifications and expertise required to arrest the situation. If your problem originates from a single issue, you can develop a counter-active measure to fix it. However, if you are dealing with several negative ratings and reviews, you need to get to the root of the problem and determine the validity of these remarks. Your negative reviews and ratings may be resulting from poor customer service, old-directory listings, and reposted negative reviews from the past.

Clearly show you’re Working on Improvements

One of the best approaches to repairing your reputation is to avoid dwelling on the problem; instead, you should spend time trying to rectify the situation. You should exercise a high level of transparency when addressing these issues to help boost your patient’s confidence and trust in you. Keep in mind that most people rely on search engines to find the best-rated healthcare professionals to seek services. This means you don’t have the luxury to ride the storm out. Take time to go over your service delivery and valid issues related to your practice and medical facility. Prospective leads are likely to forgive when you:

  • Willingly admit to valid issues related to your facility or practice
  • Openly make changes
  • Show commitment and concern to repairing your reputation

Think Big and Long Term

A reputation is a continuous process that takes time to mature. To prevent future problems, you should consider working with a marketing firm specializing in reputation management. This way, you can effectively manage a problem if it is widespread and not limited to negative reviews. In the era of information, people are likely to judge your practice or facility based on what they see on search engine results. A marketing firm will help make adjustments to your keywords and content to help you present a positive image to your audience.

How to Boost your Online Reputation

Having repaired your reputation, you need to come up with strategies to help boost your reputation. Here are a few options to pick from;

1. Implement Search Engine Optimization

Implementing an SEO strategy will help your practice rank higher on search engine results. Here, you will have to come up with creative and beneficial content for your audience while maximizing keywords that help boost your image. The more reliable your content, the more the negative reputation is forgotten.

2. Ask Google to Remove a Page or Site

An online reputation is essential for any business. Negative information related to your business can be difficult to bring down. Your practice or facility may also fall prey to malicious content that can cause irreparable damage. To mitigate this, you can ask Google to remove the pages or website from their listings.

3. Claim your Yelp Listing

Yelp is one of the leading platforms where people share their reviews on a company. Yelp ratings have a great impact on lead generation as well as conversion rates. By creating your yelp profile, you are able to view and respond to reviews on your facility or practice, positive and negative. This way, you can show your customer your dedication to providing excellent customer service.

4. Create Google Alert for your practice

Google Alerts helps you keep tabs on content related to your practice or medical facility. With this alert, you will receive email notifications for results about your company when it appears on search results. This tool also generates reports on the latest online mentions of your practice. This way, you can stay on top of every news related to your practice, products, or customer services. This tool keeps you in the loop, allowing you to take an active role in managing your online reputation.

5. Encourage Positive Reviews

You can as well take charge of your reputation by championing positive reviews about your practice. To generate positive reviews, you need to generate honest feedback from customers and partners. For example, when patients visit your facility, ask them to rate their experience and services. You can as well include a call to action to customers to review your services.

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