what is online reputation management

What Is Online Reputation Management for Veterinarians?

Negative reviews or posts about your veterinary clinic can significantly harm your reputation. Maintaining credibility and trustworthiness online requires monitoring mentions of your clinic and acting quickly when there’s an issue. At New Wine Digital, we help veterinarians build good reputations with clean, modern website designs. We put together this guide on reputation management for veterinarians to help you maintain your clinic’s positive online presence. 

What Is Online Reputation Management for Veterinarians?

Online reputation management (ORM) is the act of monitoring what people are saying about your clinic online and responding appropriately. ORM mostly focuses on reviews of your clinic, because they are the most influential when pet owners consider contacting you for care. However, you should also be paying attention to social media posts and other mentions of your vet clinic online. 

Why Is Veterinary Online Reputation Management Important?

SEO and online reputation management work hand in hand to help you maintain an outstanding presence and build trust with potential and current clients. For instance, good reviews and a positive overall reputation can help optimize your website for search results by showing search engines that your business is trustworthy. 

Good SEO leads to higher search engine rankings, and higher rankings help you reach more local pet owners in need of veterinary services. When potential clients see your website as one of the top-ranking results, and notice that your clinic has good reviews, they’ll feel like they can trust you to care for their pets.

Five Veterinary Online Reputation Management Tips

1: Claim Your Vet Clinic’s Listing on Review Sites

One simple way to monitor reviews of your clinic is to claim your listing on popular review sites. Once you claim your business listing, you can start managing your profile and start getting notifications when someone leaves a review. Optimizing your clinic’s profile on these websites will also help boost your search engine rankings. 

Review websites where you should claim your listing include:

  • Google Business (formerly Google My Business)
  • Bing Places for Business
  • Facebook
  • Yellowpages
  • Foursquare
  • Yelp

2: Promptly Respond to Negative Reviews

No one likes to see a negative review of their business. However, encountering an unhappy client is inevitable, no matter what type of business you own. The negative feedback itself isn’t the only thing pet owners take into account when reading reviews—they also look at how you handle that feedback. 

While it may be tempting to simply ignore negative feedback, doing so can have dire consequences. Leaving negative reviews unanswered will only make the person who left the review more upset. Plus, potential clients will be less trusting of your clinic if they see that other pet owners’ issues aren’t being addressed or fixed. 

Because ORM involves monitoring reviews, it gives you the opportunity to respond to negative reviews as quickly as possible. A swift, polite response tells the reviewer that their issue is important to you. Make sure to thank them for their feedback and offer to resolve the problem offline through email or a phone call to your clinic. 

3: Respond to Positive Feedback

It’s just as important to respond to positive comments and reviews. Acknowledging positive feedback reinforces the client’s favorable perception of your business and makes them feel appreciated. You can even ask the reviewer’s permission to feature their positive review on your website or social media pages. 

4: Encourage Happy Clients to Leave Reviews

The more positive reviews your vet clinic gets, the better your online reputation will be. However, happy clients are less likely to leave reviews than unhappy ones. Asking happy clients at the end of their appointment to leave a review can help you get more five-star reviews of your clinic. Sending reminder emails or texts with a link to your Google Business Profile will also encourage satisfied clients to leave reviews by offering a quick and easy way to do so. 

5: Monitor Google Alerts and Social Media Mentions

Review sites aren’t the only places where people will talk about your vet clinic. People often turn to social media to complain about or praise a business. Luckily there are many tools you can use to monitor mentions of your business on social media. Make sure to promptly respond to feedback, answer questions, and engage with comments across different social media channels. 

You can also set up Google Alerts to notify you whenever there is a mention of your clinic on the internet. That way you won’t miss out on any conversations about your business happening on websites other than the ones you already monitor. 

Maintain Your Online Reputation with Digital Marketing Services

At New Wine Digital, we work with veterinarians across the country to boost their search engine rankings and attract new clients with our expert digital marketing services. We can help you start building your online presence with an attractive, user-friendly website. For more information about our SEO, content marketing, and web design services, give us a call at 480-516-1819 today. 

Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (6/20/2022). Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

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