How to Start a Two-Bit Operation: Small Business Tips

Blogs and reviews can bite your business

Do you know what people are saying about your business online?

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

Justin August 7th, 2007

Posted In: Brand, reputation, review, search