“What? Who did this analysis? They don’t know what their talking about”, says the current SEO person for the company I did the analysis for. If you do search engine strategies or web development for a living, I’m sure you have heard this many times before. Why are so many companies in such competition with each other?
When doing business marketing some companies will go so far out of their way to knock the competition that they lose focus on their own clients. I have read many competitive companies getting in arguments over forums and blog comments. Using these tactics never give your business any bonus. In fact, most of the time they just hurt you.
Someone writes a bad report about you and you (as a representative of your company) respond with a polite but disagreeing remark. The owner of that originally wrote the message responds, and you quickly add your retort. Now the visitors, showing their allegiance, get involved by disagreeing with you. Now you went from a single negative post that would have soon disappeared to an all out back and forth disagreement. Visitors of that site that had no opinion of you or your business, would now never use your services or buy your products. The power of suggestion is strong and it only takes someone 5 seconds to decide if they like you or not. Good going. You just screwed yourself, thinking you were helping yourself.
You didn’t think you could ruin your own business trust by defending your business name, did you? Most business owners don’t and that’s what makes articles like this so important. Some people are quick to respond to a negative post. Learning that this tactic usually has a negative effect on your business will help save you time in future reputation management. Responding may help, depending on what the poster wrote about your business, but chances are that it will just start a flaming war on you and your business.
What I would do -
If someone writes a negative post about me or seowebhelp, I would just read it and learn from it. What can I do to help improve my blog? Using your visitors negative outlook can help increase the positiveness of your site for your future visitors. I may even post saying, “thank you for the comment. I didn’t realize that the our customers felt this way. I will do what I can to resolve this issue”.
Listening to one, can help others as your business grows. Keep that in mind the next time you want to jump in on a thread and defend your business. You may still need to post but think about the consequences that could come from it. Taking care of your clients and customers will be your best option.
I mostly agree with this post, sometimes sticking up for what you think is right can end up harming your reputation and profitability in the long-term. But sometimes a controversial stance can act as super-charged linkbait.