Reputation Management & The Professional Services Provider:

August 28, 2020

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We’ve likely mentioned before that it’s always a challenge to write our last blog of the week, our Friday blog for the Professional Services vertical. This difficulty doesn’t stem from the fact that it is Friday, and therefore the end of the traditional workweek. In truth, to have a blog live on our blog pages for Friday mornings, the blog itself needs to be completed & ready for publishing no later than the end of the day on Thursday; and often Friday’s blog is prepared by late Wednesday afternoon. This particular Friday blog was written on Tuesday afternoon, almost three full days before you will have the pleasure of reading it. Our only hope is that nothing of significance in the world of reputation management changes between now & Friday! Trusting that it’s safe to proceed as planned:

Top 3 Online Reputation Management Mistakes for The Professional Services Industry

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Our blogs mostly stem from the research performed when the accompanying White Papers were written some months back. More often than not, the information contained in each provides sufficient fuel for the fire that is blog writing. As such, the need to conduct additional research is rarely necessary, although, on occasion, we might wish to verify the content within those White Papers to double-check the validity of something stated therein. Using this blog as an example:

Reputation Management is near the top of many Clients’ lists as one of the most in-demand for-purchase services our digital marketing agency offers. In today’s case, the preparation for the writing of this blog only required a quick Google search for “reputation management mistakes.” If, for no other reason, we were interested to see what the (actual) geniuses within Google’s search engine optimization (SEO) department had achieved regarding optimizing their search engines. The results found on the search engine results page (SERP) yielded confirmation of something we already knew, and now know once again:

People love short, bullet-point style lists. They really do.

It seems that there is some logic behind the use & popularity of “Top x lists” after all. With our society’s ever-shrinking attention spans serving as a driving force, articles written in list-style have become so in-demand and dominant that they’ve earned a name: Listicles. Very clever, we know. You can do a listicle search on almost any topic you can think of – and be assured that you will find a bunch! If you’re going to try this for yourselves, we encourage you to be as creative as possible with the search, and see what comes up!

The top lists’ lengths will vary depending on the specific topic & number of points worth mentioning on the subject at hand. However, only a few are more extended than ten, and none are shorter than three – which makes sense, as a list only becomes a list when it contains at least three items! As such, we keep our lists as short as acceptable to still be called a “list.” Consider also that if we gave away long lists full of our collective knowledge, there wouldn’t be a need to hire us, now would there?

But (more) seriously: In most scenarios, the top three items on any list are most likely to be the most important, and have the most substantial impact on the list readers. For example: If we were to provide a complete list of all the reputation management mistakes we see made by members of the Professional Services community, we might be here all day & into the evening. Instead, let’s focus our discussion on the Top 3 Online Reputation Management Mistakes for the Professional Services Industry.

Waiting For a Problem First? Any Medical Professional will tell you that you shouldn’t wait for something to be wrong before scheduling an office visit. That whole “…ounce of prevention…” adage applies to online reputation management: Don’t wait for your reputation to already be in jeopardy before implementing a reputation management strategy. This strategy requires regular & constant monitoring of your “digital presence” – anything online connecting with you or your business. Always remember that it’s much easier to maintain an excellent online reputation than to attempt a repair on an already-damaged one.
Consistency Rules: Think upon your chosen professional practice; do you vary the way you perform the critical functions of your job day-by-day or client-to-client? Of course, you don’t; being consistent is one of the traits that clients appreciate most. For your unique online “brand,” be consistent with your messaging, both visual & verbal, and set the tone for prospective & current clients to anticipate.
Ignoring Them Won’t Make Them Go Away: You likely work very hard at making sure every client is satisfied with the services you provide. But even the best of us will fall short on occasion. Instead of receiving a positive experience, the client left feeling dissatisfied – so much so that they posted a negative review online. Inside, it’s okay to let the hurt feelings subside & not lose sleep over the issue. However, on the outside, you must respond to every single negative message and make every effort to resolve the matter before this one anomaly spreads like a virus and affects your business’s long-term prospects.

If your Professional Services business is already doing each of these three correctly, please contact us, and we will provide you with our complete list – there’s sure to be something on there on which you are missing the mark!

Is your Legal Services business in need of some professional assistance in managing your online reputation? Contact 1SEO’s experts for a free digital marketing assessment today!

About the Author

Matthew Adelman is a Content Creator & Strategist at 1SEO Digital Agency. His key skills are too numerous to list, but continue to evolve, and all stem from his love of spinning a great yarn. Married with 2 teenagers still at home, In his spare time he thinks about the day when he’ll actually have time to spare.

Author’s Note

I also Googled “why are Top x lists so popular,” and was greeted with pages full of links to articles discussing “The Top 10 Reasons that Top 10 Lists are so Popular.” Everyone’s a Comedian these days, including the search bots within Google!

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