Protecting your reputation online is very important. Our recent lecture at the Oregon VMA meeting showed that...

1. Online Reputation Management
Thomas F. Dock, BS, CVJ
Veterinary News Network
Board of Certification, American
Society of Veterinary Journalists

2. Why Online Reputation Mgt?
• In this world of universal, instant and fairly
anonymous communications using the Internet and
especially social media, both good and bad things can
happen.
• As we saw last hour, some people, fairly or not, will
use this medium to complain about your service or
facility to the same huge audience. On your business
site or social media pages you have good control, and
this is fairly easy to contain
• But on other large commercial ratings sites such as
Yelp, City Search or Yahoo Local it appears you have
little control and are at the mercy of some
unreasonable people

3. Why Online Reputation Mgt?
• One third to one half of all businesses failed to
respond to client concerns at all!
• Businesses that chose to respond to online
complaints and concerns have a much higher
retention rate for clients
• 18% of upset customers reverted to happy,
positive and regular clients
• 1/3 of those went back to repost positive
reviews
• 1/3 more REMOVED NEGATIVE POSTS!!

4. Respond Quickly
• First try old fashioned customer service
• Respond to recent complaints
• LockTite, United Airlines (x2)
• Satisfied clients – ask for positive reviews
• Sometimes all you can do is apologize and
leave the conversation
• Who are you dealing with?
• One time complainer?
• Multiple complainer?
• “Alert CNN” complainer?
• Loyal Customer, first complaint?

5. Steps for Protecting Your
Online Reputation
• Always be listening!
• Find the reviews!
• Claim ownership on review sites
• Respond as quickly as possible
• Use keywords to create positive “cloud” in
your responses
• Take offline if necessary
• Remove offensive or falsified reviews
• Use existing sites to move negative reviews
down in search engine results
• Don’t worry…there will be lots of pictures!!

6. Listen!
• Google Alerts/Search engines
• Twitter
• Social Mention
• Techorati
• Sproutsocial ($)
Review sites like:
• Yelp / Yahoo
• Google Places
• Citysearch
Keep Track of Comments:
• Word or Excel
• Record of actions

15. Reputation Management: Step 2
• Find all complaint sites that have
reviews about you and claim your
business. Without this you have no
voice!
• Be sure good key-words in descriptions

20. Add City Search Owner claim

22. Step 2: Remove Reviews
Yelp: look up your hospital
red flag reviews, inappropriate or false

25. Google Places: flag as inappropriate

27. City Search: flag when logged in “report
abuse”

31.  Due to Yelp’s rankings among the search
engines, our doctor was very worried that
this would NEVER go away.
 We looked at the review (10 days old at
first review) and tried to make a plan.
• Can we counteract this review?
• Is it correct or not?
• Should we contact this reviewer to try and rectify
this situation?

32.  Afterdiscussion, the practice attempted to
find out what led to this poor rating
• Review of medical records and appointments from
the time frame in question.
 VNN “reviewed the reviewer”

33.  Afterspending time on Yelp, VNN noted that
“Connie L” generated more than 100
reviews in just under a 7 month time frame
(about 3 per week).
 Her profile was geared towards promotion
of her books, blog and website.
• Multi-level marketing, residual incomes, etc
 She is a member of the Yelp Elite Squad
• We created the Yelp Elite Squad as a way of
recognizing the most passionate Yelpers that
makes our community so funny, useful and cool!
Yelp Elites get a nifty annual badge on their Yelp
profiles, and have the opportunity to get invited
to exclusive local events and parties hosted by
Yelp, where you can meet fellow Yelpers.

34.  Client
had not been to the practice in more
than 10 years when it was under different
ownership.
• Current owner remembers the “rude” receptionist
mentioned in the review and she had not worked
there for 8 years.
 Reviewerwas not the actual client, her
daughter was.

36.  Routinely checking search engines for your
hospital’s name (and even your doctors’ names)
can help find these types of reviews.
• Tip of the Hour…go home and do this tonight!
• Plan monthly searches to stay on top of things.
 Don’t fear the bad review
• If you have done your due diligence (i.e. you know you
have great customer service, etc) and you tried to reach out
to resolve the issue, the other side of the story will come
out.
• One person who gives you a bad review among several
glowing reviews will be seen for the person that they are.
 Importance of a website!

37. Step 3: Move Them Down!
• Using your web sites or blogs to move
higher with key word rich content
• Depends on your “key words” within
hospital name
• Social media helps - active Facebook
and Twitter accounts help!

38. Confirm You Are “Known”
• See if you are “indexed”
• Site:myvnn.com – and see results
• Use Webmaster tools from Google and
Bing
• Google.com/webmasters
• Bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

41. Up-To-Date Content
• Dynamic content (where?)
• Multi-media content
• Practice web site update (2X / month)
• Social sites update (2-3X/ week)

43. www.MyVNN.com

44. Become A Certified Veterinary Journalist!
American Society of Veterinary Journalists
www.ASVJ.org

45. Contact Information:
Tom Dock, CVJ
TomDock@MyVNN.com
719-495-7065
www.MyVNN.com