Repairing Online Reputation

[Arthur Johnson]

What are the most effective ways to improve online ratings? Do you guys have creative ways of incentivizing tenants to post reviews? Do you engage a reputation consultant? Not sure what all of the options are, and out of those, which work best. Context for why I am asking is below.

We purchased an asset about a year ago. Pre-takeover, management was sub par, the tenant profile was lower than we liked, and occupancy was very low. Online reviews were horrible on all of the commonly visited review sites - yelp, apartment guide, google, etc.  Many of them were just a result of former residents who were evicted after cleaning up the tenant profile.   We have made great strides in the past year since our take-over, and tenant satisfaction is at an all-time high. All recent reviews have been 4-5 stars. The problem is all of the former reviews dragging our overall rating down to low 2's.  I'm assuming this is a factor in killing traffic; I know when I'm searching for a new apartment, I don't even look at the website of a property with lower than 3 stars.