Peter Boyd is an attorney and the Founder of PaperStreet. He has successfully helped 1,500 law firms with their websites and marketing.
As attorneys, our hard-earned reputations mean everything. We dedicate countless hours to excelling in law school. We endure grueling workloads, both during our studies and in the early years of practice, and then comes the blow: a negative review online.
Bad reviews don’t have to kill the reputation of your law firm. While it can be disheartening and potentially damaging, it is essential to remember that one negative incident does not define the entirety of your professional journey. There are steps you can take to maintain a positive reputation online and downplay any negative feedback you receive.
Act Fast And Reply To Anything Negative Online
When faced with negative publicity (e.g., reviews or comments), swift action is necessary to mitigate potential damage to your reputation. A timely response demonstrates transparency, accountability and a commitment to resolving the issue. By promptly addressing concerns, offering clear explanations or apologies where necessary, and actively engaging with the public, you can regain trust and minimize the damage a negative review can do.
Depending on where the negative review or comment is posted, there are many steps you can take. For example, if a reviewer’s claim is fabricated or false, you can post a response that politely discredits it. You should also report the review as false to the company that manages the reviews or comments. Similarly, you can have co-workers and colleagues flag the review as spam.
In my experience, sites such as Google and Facebook don’t remove the reviews as quickly as many attorneys would like, but swift action by you is certainly better than nothing if the review or comment is fake or unsubstantiated.
If you know there may be merit to the negative feedback, I recommend posting a conciliatory response offering to speak with the client further.
Don’t Let Fear Prevent You From Soliciting Feedback
Even though a negative review can be problematic, client reviews play a vital role in your reputation management endeavors, so don’t avoid soliciting feedback out of fear. Consistently gathering reviews and establishing a positive online reputation is crucial. By proactively accumulating positive reviews, any potentially negative feedback will be more likely to be overshadowed.
There are several effective ways to obtain client reviews:
• You can request reviews during phone conversations or in-person meetings, expressing gratitude for their business and kindly asking for their feedback.
• Sending clients follow-up emails after you’ve provided service is another effective approach. You can get valuable testimonials from implementing an email campaign targeting past clients, inviting them to share their experiences working with your law firm.
• Lastly, paper materials are not entirely obsolete. Giving clients an exit pamphlet as their case wraps up can provide both helpful resources as well as a reminder to leave a review.
I highly recommend prioritizing reviews on your Google Business Profile. As the primary platform where most web users encounter your firm during searches, having a significant presence there is essential. Once you have collected at least five reviews on Google, you can expand your efforts to gather reviews on other platforms such as Facebook, Yelp or Avvo. Having testimonials spread across various online platforms contributes to showcasing an overall positive reputation, but focusing on one platform initially can help establish a strong foundation.
Further, reviews directly impact your SEO efforts. The more reviews you have, the higher your firm will typically appear in search results. In terms of paid ads, the more positive reviews you have, the better you can embrace Google’s Local Service Ads. LSAs appear at the top of the search engine results page, and you only pay for them if someone clicks on your ad. Your number of reviews and your star rating help determine where your ad will be ranked within LSAs.
Create A Results Page For Your Website—With Testimonials
After you’ve handled a few cases, create a dedicated results page to provide concrete proof of your expertise and success. Depending on the nature of the cases you handle, you can share descriptions of cases as well as the results. You also can incorporate reviews sourced from various platforms, along with video testimonials or quotes extracted from emails received from satisfied clients. By compiling these testimonials and data in one central location, you provide prospective clients with compelling evidence of your firm’s exceptional reputation and the positive experiences others have had working with you.
If you can’t provide case results, a page detailing “representative transactions” can also be beneficial. Some clients will let you share their names, but even if you can’t, detailing the resolution of your cases can still demonstrate how you’ve successfully helped others.
The icing on the cake, so to speak, is if you can get a written or video testimonial to add to these pages. Of course, your case numbers and results speak for themselves, but attaching feedback from an actual client will humanize the data and provide a higher level of veracity.
Final Thoughts
Overall, your online reputation is a key component in how potential clients view your law firm. Too many lawyers choose to stay out of the spotlight to avoid possible negative reviews, but that fear can prevent your law firm from thriving. As long as you have an overall positive reputation on the web—via your social media, reviews that you solicited and the power of your website itself—you’ll be able to transcend the consequences of a bad review or two.
Remember, if all you have is one online review and it’s negative, then your law firm’s reputation will certainly suffer. If, however, you’ve done the groundwork to prepare for when the inevitable occurs, that negative review will be a mere blip as opposed to the authority on what it’s like to work with you.
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