It’s been said that the lifeblood of small businesses is positive word-of-mouth marketing. If that’s true, then social media is like word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. In the age of the iPhone, a dissatisfied customer can leave a Facebook status update warning their friends to stay away from your business, send out a tweet to thousands of potential customers complaining about your bad service, and leave you a 1-star rating on Yelp in about 10 minutes. Oh, and they can do it 24 hours a day.

Is your small business prepared to handle a negative review? What would you do if someone was trashing your business on Twitter, Facebook, or Yelp? A recent article for the Wall Street Journal shared three tactics to help improve your business’s online reputation after a negative review.

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From the article:

1. Reach out immediately to dissatisfied reviewers. Their negative comments don’t need to be the end of the conversation. Small-business owners should attempt a dialogue, experts say, as complainers might improve the review or take down the post.
2. Flood search engines with content you can control. Use digital media’s reach to your full advantage, says Evan Bailyn, founder of First Page Sage LLC, a New York search engine optimization company. Mr. Bailyn says he often helps clients put “good publicity on top to knock bad publicity off the first page” of search engine results. To do that, he suggests releasing press releases through prnewswire.com or pr.com and building Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts since these social-media sites show up high on search results.
3. Appeal to bloggers to review your company or your product. Getting others to weigh in can be an effective way to generate neutral or positive reviews to counteract negative ones. Influential bloggers in your niche market can bring instant credibility to a company. If you already know bloggers in your industry, read or reach others by simply scanning their blogrolls, a handy list (typically placed in the sidebar) of potential contacts. Alert them to news about your product or service as a first step in building the relationship.

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Here at the Reputation.com Blog, we’d like to suggest one more tip for small business owners: Proactively monitor your company’s name online! What do we mean by “proactive?” It’s simple. Don’t wait until someone complains about your business to talk to your customers.

Everyday, people are talking about your business in blogs and on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Do you know how to listen? With MyReputation from Reputation.com, you can easily monitor your name online in both the open Internet and on the “Invisible” web. If you proactively monitor your brand name online, you can head off problems before they come up and make decisions that will strategically grow and improve your business.