If you you’re not tracking your online reputation, you might be scratching your head when you see a sudden decrease in customers and revenue. For restaurants, 95% of dissatisfied customers will not tell the business directly; instead, they tell others offline and online in the form of reviews. In the world of search and Google, that means when people search for your business, the customer reviews that come right to the top may have equal or more weighting than all your other advertising and branding efforts. For many businesses and products, these online reviews are good since they contribute more to online purchasing decisions than ads, but if the reviews are bad then what’s a consumer to think? What if you don’t even have a web presence and the bad reviews occupy the top spot in the Google search?

According to Nielsen and WebVisible, 70 percent of those with internet access use online searches to find offline services.

A couple weeks I had a little rant about my dentist experience. Before I went to the dentist, I did a quick Google search and didn’t see a website or reviews so I wasn’t able to make a totally informed decision. Now when you do the google search, guess what comes up….my little ranting review. What are the 70 percent of internet users going to think when they search for the business?

I’m surprised I haven’t received any comment or email from them yet. I guess not everyone thinks to do the Google vanity search…

Businesses shouldn’t fear online reviews though. Sure, bad reviews sting at first, but they can be turned around into positives. There’s 2 things going for a business regarding user generated reviews:

1. Reviews are conversations. Participate in them!
2. Reviewers are people. Treat them nicely and respectfully and they may change their minds.

If your business made a mistake, apologize. Make it up to the customer and they’ll probably forgive you, maybe even turn into a loyal customer. The bad review can just as easily turn into a glowing story about how the company cares so much about customers that they did everything they could to make one unsatisfied customer happy. Everyone loves those stories. Blogs let anyone comment, and most review sites (like Menuism) let restaurant owners join for free and reply to user reviews.

If you don’t know how to track what people are saying, here are 2 services we use:

1. Serph – With Serph, you can set up an RSS feed to get updates of your company name mentions on the web. It seems to find things amazingly fast.
2. Google Alerts – Google lets you set up email alerts of mentions of your company. The mentions don’t seem as timely as Serph’s, but it seems to find some pretty obscure ones.

What other ways do people monitor and manage their online reputation?

- Justin

Here are my pre-trial thoughts:

1. TaxCut – So much advertising, it better be good. Anyways, “you got people” right? I used the brick and mortar H&R block service in the past and was not too impressed with it since the people didn’t seem too great and it was expensive. But, a few years has passed and they’re pushing the consumer side more so I figured it should be usable. Also, TaxCut is cheaper than TurboTax so that’s another plus.
2. TaxAct – The cheapest one out there. You can even do your federal for free!
3. TurboTax – Tried and true. TurboTax is the priciest one out there.

My intention in the beginning was not to try all of the tax services. I was pretty intent on using TaxCut this year since I had also read some other positive reviews. Here’s what happened.

1. Started using TaxCut. All is good so far. They have a nice clean interface and it’s very wizard-driven. They try to break things up in the small simple chunks and questions. Entered in my W2 from HP and K1 for Two-Bit.
2. Things get complicating. I get to another K1 I have for a fund I’m invested in that’s structured as a partnership. It has some special code on one of the lines. TaxCut is asking for what codes there are, so I figure it must handle it. I put in the code and hit Next. Here’s basically what it tells me (my words, not theirs – it transferred my account to the “online office” service so I can’t get back to the do-it-yourself screen):
• TaxCut doesn’t handle that particular code!
• If you want to continue your taxes, we’ll have to transfer you to your nearest H&R Block office.
• If you don’t do this and try to complete your taxes, they will be incomplete (and bad for you).
  
3. WTF. Did they not finish the software? Is TaxCut just a way to funnel people to H&R Block where they can ream you on the prices? I wasn’t about to find out. NEXT!
4. TaxAct. I normally love free stuff so I was curious to see how good free tax software could be. Surprisingly, TaxAct is pretty decent. It’s very straightforward. Not as wizardy or scenario-based as others, but it seems to get the job done. Apprarently, they show ads while you do your taxes so as you fill in your mortgage interest you can look to the side and see an ad for a lender that has a lower rate than yours. Great lead generation I’m sure. It handled both of my K1’s fine, but it didn’t seem to ask for too much information which was disconcerting. Maybe it only asks for the relevant and required things? I don’t claim to have any tax knowledge, but if I’ve got a form that has numbers entered in it that look important I would hope my tax software thinks it’s important too. Time to try TurboTax. NEXT!
   
5. TurboTax. TurboTax is pricier indeed, but let’s give it a shot. It’s very much wizard and scenario-based, which is pretty cool since it starts asking questions you might not even think about, like the Long-Distance Telephone Excise Tax Refund. The thing I always loved about TurboTax is how it can electronically download W2s and other tax documents (like my E*Trade tax forms). When I get to the K1s, it handles my weird one just fine and it asks for all the info on my Two-Bit small business K1 – how exciting! I’m sold!

My Conclusions

In my opinion, the extra money you pay for TurboTax shows. It’s an impressive web app that’s quite easy to use and navigate. The scenario and question driven wizards make you feel like everything is covered and the electronic downloads of tax forms really help streamline the number entry process.

TaxCut.com needs more work to compete head-to-head with TurboTax. It’s nice that “you got people”, but there are sometimes when I’d rather just do things myself.

TaxAct seems to be a great solution for those that have simple tax situations and even better for those who don’t have to file state taxes.

There’s my 2 cents on taxes.  What did you use this year?
Happy itemized deducting!
Justin