Protecting Your Online Identity

 

When we talk about protecting your online identity, we don’t mean avoiding identity theft. That’s a whole different subject. What we mean is ensuring that when a potential customer finds you online, they don’t see bad reviews, they don’t see ugly pictures of your product, and they don’t see poorly put together web pages. There are 2 different categories of people who will find you online, let’s look at each of them first. 

 

 

Your existing customers want to be convinced every time they see you that they made a good decision. If they find your company online somewhere and see some bad reviews, they’re going to question if they should remain a customer. They might start looking elsewhere if they see really bad reviews. 

 

 

This group is not your customer yet You not only need to make sure they don’t see negative things about you, but also that they see positive things about you. They require much more persuasion than someone who is already a customer. Finding new customers is hard, and you need every advantage possible online.

 

 

This is the most common problem for most businesses online. If you Google a company’s name, Google will often show a star rating and comments on the right side of the page. If you have negative ratings and reviews, this can instantly turn a potential customer into nothing. Someone who was interested in your roofing services will now avoid you completely, so work hard to avoid negative reviews. 

 

 

Posting pictures and videos of your crew working while they’re wearing dirty clothes, violating safety regulations, or not using proper technique is another major pitfall. Don’t let existing or potential customers see your crew in suboptimal condition as that can leave another very bad taste in their mouth. 

 

 

If a potential customer clicks onto your website off the Google search results, you don’t want them to see poorly put together web pages or blog posts. Bad grammar, typos, ugly formatting, or broken links can all be red flags to a potential customer. If you don’t pay attention to your online identity, will you pay attention to the details on their roof? 

 

Managing and protecting your online identity isn’t a particularly hard task, but it does take time. Companies that haven’t paid attention to their online reputation will have some initial cleaning up to do. But once you’ve gotten everything looking good, managing your online identity isn’t nearly as hard. It is extremely important to earning more customers that you take great care of how you appear online.