Tips for Responding to Negative Reviews from Our Webinar with Yelp

Earlier this month, we hosted a joint webinar with Yelp to talk about best practices for managing online reviews and the impact those reviews have on your SEO results. On the webinar, Darnell Holloway from Yelp outlined a great method for dealing with negative reviews called “Stop, Drop, and Roll.”

• Stop: Don’t respond immediately to a negative review. A good rule of thumb is to sleep on it. Waiting to respond gives you time to calm down and compose a well-thought-out response.
• Drop: Drop any pride and defensiveness from your response. While you’re at it, have a trusted friend or coworker read your response before you post it.
• Roll: Roll with it. You can’t control the opinions of all of your customers or all of the reviews you get. Do your best to mend the issue with the angry customer, continue doing what you do best by providing outstanding service, and you’ll see positive reviews start to roll in.

For more on managing small business reviews and improving your SEO results, watch the on-demand recording of the webinar.

Jenni Williams

Jenni is a Senior Manager, Content Marketing at ReachLocal with over 11 years experience in digital marketing. Jenni specializes in helping SMBs amplify their marketing efforts online, and her marketing expertise includes social media marketing, online advertising, website content, and promotions. She frequently hosts webinars and has published published multiple blogs on online marketing topics for SMBs.

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