Leaving a review for a business now more than ever, couldn’t be easier thanks to the internet. The majority of businesses are listed in online directories. These directories allow customers to leave reviews of those businesses to let other potential customers know what they can expect. This is true across all industry sectors, from retail through to professional services. This can be a great thing as positive reviews can have a real positive impact on your business. But what would you do if negative reviews are left online about your business?

It’s an unfortunate fact that as a business grows and more clients are obtained, you run the risk of along with receiving positive reviews, also receiving negative reviews. If this happens to you, it will feel horrible and your initial response may be to panic. That’s why the experts at Total SEO Reviews explains how to deal with this part of your business and turn a negative into a positive.

Step 1: Listen / read

If a negative review is left about your business, our first piece of advice is to read through the review fully or listen, if it left on a site such as YouTube. You need to fully understand what is being said and why it is being said.

Step 2: Break it down

Once you have read or listened to the whole of the negative review, our next piece of advice is to break it down into points. This will help ensure you can understand what has been said and why it has been said.

Step 3: Address it

Whilst it can be tempting to ignore negative reviews as you won’t want to bring attention to them, this is the worst thing you can do. Whether you feel the review is justified or not, if left unchecked, other people who have seen the review will take it at face value. This is your chance to address what has been said and also publicly try to remedy the situation or put your points of view across. This is extremely important for damage limitation.

Step 4: Learn from it

Whether the reviewer leaving the negative review was right or wrong, it is important to learn from it and to understand how the situation arose in the first place. This should help with minimising any negative reviews in the future.

Step 5: Move on

It is extremely hard to not take negative reviews about your business to heart. In doing so, this shows you care about your business and the service you provide. However, don’t let it consume you. We are all human and errors can and will happen. All we can do is address them, learn from them and improve for the future.

See also: Why bad reviews aren’t all bad for brands