Online Reputation Management: What Businesses Need to Know
A 2010 decision framework for how much a business should invest in monitoring reviews and mentions, built around what mattered that year on Yelp and Google.
Start with a search, not a strategy
The simplest way for a business to figure out where it stood in 2010 was to search its own name and see what came back: a Yelp listing with a handful of reviews, a Google Places listing with directions and photos or maybe nothing at all beyond a bare website. What showed up on that first page, and how old and how one-sided it was, told most businesses more about their real reputation risk than any internal assumption did.
Why this had become harder to ignore
Yelp had grown into a genuine factor in local buying decisions by 2010, and Google was pulling local listings, ratings and reviews more directly into its own results, which meant a business’s reputation was visible before a customer ever visited its website. Yelp itself came under public scrutiny in 2010 over allegations, aired in news coverage and a string of small business lawsuits, that its sales team pressured businesses to advertise in exchange for more favorable review placement, claims Yelp denied. Whatever the truth of individual cases, the controversy made one thing clear to business owners: reviews carried real weight, and the businesses that understood the platforms shaping their reputation had an advantage over those that didn’t.
Questions worth asking before investing
- How many reviews do you already have, and are they recent? A handful of reviews from two years ago reads differently to a prospective customer than a steady, current stream.
- Do you have a process for responding to negative reviews calmly and specifically, rather than ignoring them or reacting defensively?
- Are you checking for mentions somewhere other than the review sites you already know about, since customers increasingly complain on Twitter first and a review site second?
- Is anyone responsible for this, or does it fall through the cracks between whoever answers the phone and whoever runs the website?
What a reasonable level of investment looks like
Most small businesses in 2010 didn’t need dedicated monitoring software. A recurring weekly check of Google, Yelp and Twitter mentions, plus a Google Alert for the business name, covered the majority of what mattered. What mattered more than the tools was the habit: responding to negative feedback within a day or two, thanking positive reviewers and never letting a public complaint sit unanswered long enough to look like it was being ignored.
When it’s time to take it more seriously
If your business depends on local, in-person customers, a restaurant, a salon, a contractor, reputation management in 2010 wasn’t optional, it was closer to table stakes, since a search for your name was often the last step before someone decided whether to show up. Businesses that sold mostly through referrals or direct relationships had more room to treat it lightly, though even they benefited from at least knowing what would come up if a prospective client searched their name before a first meeting.
The bigger picture
By 2010, review sites and search results had become the default reference check for a huge range of purchase decisions. Businesses that treated their online reputation as something to actively tend, rather than something to worry about only after a crisis, were consistently the ones with the strongest, most current reviews when it counted.
Keep browsing: additional social media guides, everything from 2010 or the Digital Business Marketing Awards.
