By Riti Verma
Real estate professionals put a lot into building and maintaining their personal brand. A key component of this is the management of their online reputation. This involves more than having a Facebook page and website. Real estate professionals must be aware of the conversations that are taking place about them.
Try this little experiment: open your Internet browser and start typing in the name of your favourite car. Chances are that before you have completed typing the name of the car, the search engine will provide a few suggestions for search terms. One of them should be the make and model of the vehicle.
It is very likely that you will see an entry with the word “review” included with the other suggestions.
It seems that reviews are available on almost any product or service that you can think of. They have been known to crop up informally on social media (think about your Facebook news feed – have you seen your friends complain about or compliment a product or service?) and specialized platforms that serve a particular market niche.
There is still some hesitancy in the real estate industry in Canada to fully embrace online review platforms. This stems primarily from a concern that the “impossible-to-please” client (everyone has at least one!) will be more likely to submit a hurtful review than a happy client will be to provide a positive one.
Reviews do come with many benefits. A well-planned communications strategy and active maintenance of your online presence can generate new business by letting your satisfied clients endorse your services. Here are five tips to manage the reviews that you’ve received:
1. Have a plan. How do you go about your social media and online activity? Do you have a plan that includes goals, metrics and a “crisis” response protocol? It doesn’t have to be fancy, but a basic plan will take away the anxiety when a review does pop up. Don’t forget to set up Google Alerts with your name and a few associated keywords. That way you’ll be aware of any new reviews or content that comes up and can take active steps to manage how they affect your reputation.
2. Take a breath. Regardless of whether the review is positive or negative, take a minute to reflect on what is being said. Taking a step back will ensure that you don’t throw out an emotional response and gives you time to go back to your plan.
3. If it gets sensitive – take it offline. Instead of allowing your conversation with a client to degenerate into a war of comments and CAPITAL LETTERS, take the opportunity to engage offline. It will give you time to create measured responses and the chance to “be heard” might be enough to show the client that you care. Also, a telephone conversation or face-to-face meeting could go a long way in repairing a relationship.
4. Reflect on the review. Once you’ve had a chance to investigate and deal with the review, evaluate what it actually meant to you as a professional, to the client and for a potential client. Are there ways that you could improve your service? Are you doing something so well that it should become a focus of your marketing efforts? Critical introspection can yield some very powerful insight.
5. Ask for reviews from happy clients. It’s no secret that consumers are more likely to post a negative review on their own accord. If you have a list of happy clients a mile long, then you have a great source to begin with. Make it easy for happy clients to say a good word. The positive reviews will ensure that negative ones are seen as outliers – as crazy as it sounds, they might actually make your profile a little bit more believable too.
Riti Verma is the founder and president of RankMyAgent.com, a ratings and review platform that connects clients with reputable, recommended real estate agents in their area. The reviews include qualitative and quantitative data and must follow strict guidelines.
