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Managing Your Business’
Online Reputation
Marketing Series
Cindy F. Solomon

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Founder, Movement for Product Excellence By Design, SUPA Product Academy,
Global Product Management Talk podcast
Organizer, SUPA Product Talks meetups, Product Therapy, Product Summit Conf
Contributing author, 42 Rules Of Product Marketing, and Guide To Product
Management & Marketing Body of Knowledge
30 years in tech: web development, services, software product marketing &
management at Apple, Vadem, NetObjects, start-ups & SMBs
Coach, Mentor, Consultant, Advisor, Speaker, Author
Cindy F. Solomon, CPM, CPMM
@cindyfsolomon

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Online shoppers rely heavily on customer reviews
and perceived reputation when deciding where to
spend their money.
Do you know how to manage your third party—aka
online—reputation?
What happens when people Google your business
and start reading reviews?

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Why You Need to Monitor Your Reputation
● Because of What Your Reputation Says to Customers
● Because of What It Says to Potential Business Partners
● Because of What It Says to Bloggers and Journalists
● Because of What It Says to Prospective Employees
● Because It’s actually critical and essential to growing your
business.
● Because you must keep tabs on the conversations surrounding
your brand so you can step in to resolve negative situations and
encourage positive ones.

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What Your Reputation Says to Customers
● 88% of consumers read reviews to determine the
quality of a local business
● 72% of consumers will take action after reading a
positive review
● Potential customers will be far more likely to do
business with you if they find positive reviews from
others that have already worked with or purchased
from you.

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Value of Customer Reviews
● Reviews affect customer buying decisions
● Google has been making changes in its local SEO algorithm – increasing
visibility and rankings for customer reviews.
● Higher conversion rate
● Reviews in general, good or bad, benefit the business.
○ Bad reviews humanizes the brand and depicts honesty.
○ Bad reviews are not all negative; it can be an avenue for you to
showcase how you value your customer’s feedback.
● increasing the number of reviews for your brand or product makes you more
relevant and puts you on a higher rank for search engines.
● Off-site reviews may have more significant impact to rankings compared to
those on your own site as Google’s local search algorithm aggregates data
from third party directories and review sites.

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What Your Reputation Says To
Potential Business Partners
● The first thing a potential partner will do is search for
your business.
● What they find could seal or break the deal
depending on what they find.

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What Your Reputation Says To
Bloggers And Journalists
● Getting any kind of media attention can send traffic
to your site, build your credibility, and provide free
advertising.
● As much as good PR can benefit your business,
negative PR can tear it apart.

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What Your Reputation Says To
Prospective Employees
● Sites like Glassdoor have made it possible for potential candidates to
review companies before joining the team.
● Negative reviews by former or current employees can limited the
number of people applying for jobs at your company and scare away
top talent.

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Where To Monitor Reputation
● Search Monitoring
● Social Media Monitoring
● Comment Monitoring
● Reviews Monitoring
● Competitive Insights Monitoring
● Webinar, Events & Community Monitoring

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● Search for yourself, your business name, and key words on major
search engines to track what information pops up when others
research you.
● Set up Google Alerts to notify you anytime something is published with
keywords related to your business.
● Set up alerts for your name, company name, product names, and any
common misspellings of those names.
Search Monitoring

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● Regularly check the mentions of your brand on major social sites.
● Use Twitter Dashboard for Small Business to monitor key words
● Use tools like Twitonomy to capture trends, themes and patterns of
customer behavior and interaction
● Set up a social media dashboard on a site like Hootsuite so that you
can easily follow mentions of your brand and comments on sites like
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.
Social Media Monitoring

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● If you write a post on your blog/website or a third-party blog/website,
monitor and respond to the comments on that post. You should do the
same on any post that mentions you or your brand.
● On most blogging platforms if you write a post, subscribe or register to
be notified of comments on that post. This makes it easy to stay
involved in the conversation.
● If you are mentioned in a post that you have not created, comment on
the post so that you can opt in for additional comment notifications to
stay in the conversation.
Comment Monitoring

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● Monitor the major review sites (Google, Yelp, Facebook, Angie’s List)
to see what people are saying about your business, products, or
services.
● Search for relevant directories, local press, forums and discussions
where people are sharing information and suggestions about related
services and issues
● Set up a page on your website to share all of your positive reviews in
one place to make it easy on customers trying to find reviews about
your business. Use quotes and ask permission to quote customers to
showcase them on your site.
Reviews Monitoring

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● Use software tools to watch trends and data about your business
space and competitors
● Read press releases and media mentions about competitors
● Review and analyze their keyword searches and advertising buys
online
● Tools such as Buzzstream Discovery, Linkedin, SimplyMeasured,
Raventools
● (Don’t purchase subscriptions until you can justify that you will use the
data consistently to improve your own marketing programs)
Competitive Insights Monitoring

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Webinar, Events & Community
Monitoring
● Subscribe to competitor’s newsletters to keep up on what they
are saying and where they are going to understand your own
customers’ experience and options
● Attend events online and offline that your competitor is
attending, speaking at or sponsoring
● Make sure you have a presence at relevant places both online
and offline where your customers will be exposed to other
choices

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Communicate A Concrete Value
Statement Across all Platforms
● Positioning starts with a value that needs to be communicated,
whether about a product, a service, a company, an idea, or even a
person.
● Communicate your unique positioning to your customers to plant
the value of your business in their minds
● Make sure the value you delivery is aligned with your value
statement promise
● Build Your Value Statement: Free Download
http://startupproduct.com/positioning/

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How to Handle Negative Situations
1. Have a plan in place ahead of time to anticipate policy and
procedure
2. Don’t delete the negative comments.
3. Respond quickly. Be human. Empathize. Listen to the
complaint or issue without ego.
4. Own up to mistakes. Don’t make excuses; create solutions.
5. Make It Right: Do what you need to do to resolve the situation. It is
possible to turn a negative situation into a positive one if you handle
it proactively and professionally.
6. Don’t Feed the Trolls: Of course there are people out there who
simply enjoy spreading negativity. If the situation is no longer
productive, get out of it.

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Resources
http://bentoforbusiness.com/top-10-online-reputation-management-tools-for-small-
businesses/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonha-revesencio/4-steps-to-managing-your-small-
business-online-reputation_b_7490026.html
http://localvox.com/resources/ebooks-white-papers/online-reputation-management-
for-small-businesses/

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Stay In Touch!
Cindy F. Solomon
510-499-6955
cfsolomon@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/cfsolomon
Twitter and skype @cindyfsolomon
Book time with me: http://bit.ly/2buadzZ
Forwarding passionate product people & product
excellence!