One of the biggest hurdles that general contractors have to get past is the trust factor. Are we who we say we are? Will we do what we say we will do? Can we produce what we say we can produce? As a contractor we expect a total stranger to call us, schedule to meet, enter their home or business, tear something apart, then rebuild it to look awesome. That’s asking a lot from someone we just met or talked to on the phone.

That’s what it is all about in the service business – trust.

Today the property owner has ways of getting to know the contractor before ever meeting them face-to-face.

Thanks to social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, the general contractor can be “checked out” long before ever meeting him. Before the internet boom, you had a square box in the yellow pages, or a flyer shoved into your door as a first impression to the contractor.

Today we can look at companies and people in a different way. We can see the contractors work, comments they have posted, who they associate with – and maybe that trust can be increased a little by getting to know them better. And there is more that we can do.

In searching for the right contractor that you can trust you probably want someone near you. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way that we could finding someone that we could trust nearby. There are ways to look up general contractors in your area. Here are a few popular sites.

Google , Yahoo, and Bing all have local search directories. Yelp is another. These local searches may help pinpoint contractors near you to help get started on your quest for the trusted contractor. Are there any other ways to finding a service business? Many more. How about the most trusted source of finding a contractor ever – Word-Of-Mouth.

That’s right, people are most comfortable getting a referral based on what their friends and family have experienced. Someone they know has already tried using the contractor and was happy with the results. Don’t have friends and family that have used a general contractor?

Example: Customer Testimonials

Maybe the contractor has a list of past customers for you to contact. Don’t be afraid to make contact with the past customers, it may help you build that trust. And in this business, trust is very important to both you and the general contractor.

There are literally thousands of helpful, time saving tips. Any one of these tips could save you hours of time in a given year.

I’ll post these tips daily, so check back often

Contractor Marketing Tip #1 - Use military time to quickly enter hours in a website.

I’m constantly updating client’s directory listings on websites like YellowPages.com, InsiderPages, Yelp and others. Some allow you to enter your  business hours once and apply to all checked off days. And then there are others, where you must physically enter the hours for every day that you are opened.

So here’s the Quick Tip: Enter your time using the 24 hour standard(i.e., 500=5am, 1700=5pm, 1830=6:30pm, etc.). In most cases this will get you to the exact time without having to scroll through a long list.

And as a bonus…

Quick Tip #2 – Send a Text message with email.

Sometimes it’s helpful to send a text to a client via email. The reason you would do this is to keep a record of the text in your email box.

To send a text via email you need to know the phone number and the mobile phone service of your customer. And for that matter, you can also use this tip to send a text message out to your employees in the field.

In this case, the reviewer mistakenly gave a bad review to the customer because of a similarly spelled company. My customer, ABEL Garage Door, was mistaken for another contractor “ABLE Garage Door.” You might also be in a similar situation if you have a competitor in your market trying to piggy back your success. Or as in the majority of cases, we can’t please all of our customers all of the time. Especially when it comes to those “techie know it alls”, need I digress

All business owners have to take a proactive stance to make sure their reputation remains undamaged.

So the first question one has to ask is “How Do I Monitor How My Company Is Reviewed?” With the answer to this question, we can then discuss damage control.

The easy solution for monitoring your reviews on the internet is Google Alerts. With Google Alerts you can setup a notification that is sent directly to your email anytime anyone mentions your company.

Once notified of a problem, you can take steps at minimizing the damage. I found a great post in Google’s Help Center. While this advice is mainly targeting Google, it also works well with most user review type sites.

Hi Rick

I can understand your frustration. This is only my advice and it could work but no promises. First create some other accounts on review sites that Google pulls reviews from like
Yelp
Yellowbot
Tupalo
MojoPages
Judy’s Book
and ask your customers to give you some honest reviews about your business. Even if the false review still stays there it will push it down the list and people will see it is only once and not everybody.

Second have some other customers simply flag it as inappropriate with the reasons why and leave a good review on Google. Google would expect to have the business owner flag it as inappropriate and will give that little weight in the deletion on the listing but if you get a small group of people who can say this is false it will go a lot further.

It will take some time.

Let me know how it turns out.

Andy – LocalSEOInc

In particular, when it comes to a bad review on Yelp.com, as a business owner with a Yelp Business Owner’s Account, you have the ability to post a public response to a bad review. To capture your business owner’s account on Yelp go to biz.yelp.com

I hope you have found this information useful relating to damage control for handling a bad business review.

I never did explain Google Alerts. With that in mind, I will create a “Step by Step Guide to Setting Up Google Alerts” in another post.

Please feel free to leave your comments and questions below.

Thanks,

HomeBuildR

Whether you have a website or not. You are on the internet! Homeowners are increasingly turning to the internet for advice and reviews. Websites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Merchant Circle, Facebook and Twitter have become rich sources of information.

I don’t know about you, but when was the last time you flipped open the yellow pages? For me, unless I have seen of, or heard of, a particular company in my area, it is rare for me to get a number from the book.

Most consumers these days without the advice of family and friends, turn towards the internet as their primary source for research.

Which brings me back to the websites like Yelp and the others. These websites have one thing in common, they provide consumer reviews for restaurants, companies and service providers.

The chances are your construction company has a listing and you may have reviews.

Without getting into a lot of techie mumbo jumbo, you need to take the following 5 Simple Steps. In future articles, I will explain for you the merits of each service and how best to position your company.

1. Get a Gmail Account
   Gmail is a web based email service that you can sign up for free! With a Gmail account you will have access to
   • Google’s Local Business Center – Local Directory and Map functions for local searches
   • Analytics – Provides valuable information on your website’s traffic
   • and more
2. Take Charge of Your Company’s Listing on YelpYelp is rapidly becoming the premier source for user reviews and business listings on the internet.With a Yelp Business Owner’s Account, you can upload photos and logos, highlight featured services that your company provides and other useful information for your clients.A powerful feature for you, the business owner, is you can see how many times potential customers are viewing your listing.
3. MerchantCircle Provides a free listing for business owners. Here you can edit your business listing to show hours of operation, highlight services and offer coupon specials.
4. InsiderPages Simply put, another business directory with user reviews. But what I really like about this service is you can solicit, even bribe your customers into giving you a review. Unlike most review/directory sites like Yelp, who frowns on solicited reviews. InsiderPages encourages it!
5. Capture Your Twitter Username Twitter has had explosive growth even to the point that advertisers poke fun at the cliche type messages people post (called Tweets.) Well I’m not going to tell you to start Tweeting your diet. I will tell you, Twitter has an important business aspect which I will delve into in a future post. Realize too, companies like Milwaukee Tool, Porter Cable, Greenlee and others all have Twitter accounts. The important thing right now is to at least capture your username before you lose it forever.

So there you have it. 5 Simple Steps to promote your business on the internet.

Be sure to sign up for our updates in the top right hand corner of our website. We will be actively posting similar articles to help you gain more customers. In addition to the articles, we are in the process of creating step by step videos to walk you through the steps we recommend.

The last thing I want to do is overwhelm you in the techie mumbo jumbo. You will be able to accomplish these steps and many more without the need to spend the Big Bucks to have someone else do it for you. In the end, for a little bit of time and effort, you to can be well on your way to having more customers and money in your pocket.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Vogel, founder of HomeBuildR, helps Residential Contractors and Small Business Owners attract more clients. Be sure to sign up for email updates and lots of free tools for your business.

NOTE: Are you looking for fresh content for your ezine or website? Feel free to reprint this article as long as it’s kept intact and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint or link to david@homebuildr.net