Starting a successful company means starting a company with a focus on reputation management
Even startups need reputation management.
Don’t make the mistake of waiting until there’s a problem to start managing your business’ online reputation. Your online reputation can make or break your business — and that’s particularly true when it comes to startups. Your business’ online reputation dictates how potential customers see you, including how much they are willing to trust you and whether or not they’re willing to work with you.
Brand new baby businesses don’t have the added benefit of brand awareness and trust like more established companies do, and when you only have a handful of reviews, one or two negative ones could be a devastating blow to your business’ overall reputation.
In other words, new businesses have a lot to prove — and also a lot to lose — which means that startups can’t afford to allow their reputation to fall by the wayside. Even if you only have one or two customers at this point, reputation management should be at the top of your priority list. Luckily, the experts at Top Rated Local® are here to help you learn how.
Your Step-by-Step Guide to Reputation Management for Startups
Step #1. Determine what kind of reputation you want to build.
Reputation management is about more than just putting out fires and preventing molehills from becoming mountains. It’s about taking a proactive approach to making your reputation what you want it to be, which means that your first step needs to be determining what that is. The fact is that the vast majority of startups won’t face any major public relations disasters right away, and it’s important to build a reputation with plenty of positive associations.
Figuring out what kind of online reputation you want to build for your business starts by determining what you want to be known for. For example, if you own a restaurant, you obviously want your name to be synonymous with great food, but you might also want your restaurant to be known for great, super-fast service or for offering only the freshest, most high-quality ingredients.
Pro Tip: Your personal reputation can impact your startup’s reputation.
While your business is still young and doesn’t yet have an established reputation of its own, your reputation, as the founder or CEO, can have a huge impact on your business’ reputation. Whether you’re interacting with colleagues, customers or potential investors, or you’re updating your status on Facebook or tweeting about recent events from your personal account, it’s essential to keep in mind that, until your business has a reputation of its own, its reputation is synonymous with your personal reputation.
Step. #2. Build a website that ranks.
Reputation management and search engine optimization (SEO) go hand in hand. When someone searches for your brand on Google, you want the first result to be your website following by your social media pages and listings on review sites — not a one-star review from an unhappy customer or any other bad press. That’s why it’s essential that you have a website that ranks well for your business name, as well as for any applicable keywords that you’re business is attempting to rank for.
Ensuring that your website ranks highly on Google starts by building a website that looks good, is easy to use and loads quickly. But it also involves continuously adding relevant, high-quality content to your website on a regular basis, which you should do by writing blogs, videos and images.
Step #3. Establish your presence on social media.
Having an active presence on social media is a no-brainer for every business this day and age, and it gives you the added benefit of helping your brand rank on Google for things that you can control and that are positive, not bad reviews or negative press as we mentioned before. Plus, social media gives you a powerful avenue for connecting with both your existing customers and potential customers.
Don’t make the mistake of believing that your business needs to sign up for every social media platform. Instead, determine which platforms will best help you communicate your message and which platforms your customers are using. There’s no point in putting in a lot of time and effort into establishing your presence on Twitter if your targeted audience doesn’t use it. In this case, the phrase, “Work smarter not harder,” means working more strategically.
Once you’ve built your presence on applicable social media platforms, it’s important that you stay active on them. When you are consistently active, you can keep a close eye on how your audience responds to your brand, and you can also get your message out there on a daily basis.
Step #4. Claim your business’ listings.
Whether you like it or not, your business is listed on review sites all across the internet, including Google, Yelp and Top Rated Local. You don’t have the option of getting your business’ listing taken down from one of these sites, but you do have the option to claim your listing, making sure that all of your information is accurate and up to date and ensuring that you can respond to each and every review.
In addition to giving you the ability to ensure that your information is accurate and respond to your reviews, claiming your business listings will also help to build more trust with your audience, and it can even help to give your website a much-needed SEO boost to ensure that it always ranks number one for your brand. And when you claim multiple listings, you’ll be able to give your customers a choice of where to leave you a review.
Start by claiming your Top Rated Local listing!
Step #5. Make customer service your number one focus.
Here at Top Rated Local, we have an awards program that recognizes the top 100 businesses in every state and the top five businesses across a variety of categories in every state. Every award winner is given the option to have a featured article written about them, and by interviewing thousands of business owners, we’ve learned that most of them have one very important thing in common — they focus on customer service.
Reputation management is a complicated, multifaceted thing, but every successful reputation management strategy needs to have a focus on customer service above all else. When you provide next-level customer service, it makes managing your business’ online reputation that much easier because there will be fewer issues to overcome and because you will be providing the kind of service that makes people want to spread the word about it.
Step #6. Ask for reviews.
Top Rated Local provides every business with a Rating Score™, which gives them an overall look at how they are doing across multiple verified review platforms. There are several variables when it comes to determining that Rating Score, but one of the most important aspects is the number of reviews you have.
Most people won’t settle for reading one or two reviews when they’re researching a company to work with; they want to read several before making a buying decision. And you can’t rest on your laurels waiting for your customers to write those reviews on their own. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people won’t write reviews on their own, even if they were blown away by the service offered. However, research shows that most people will write a review when asked.
Asking for reviews is the easiest way to ensure that you’ll actually get them. That’s important because if you get one or two bad reviews, you need lots of good ones to dilute their power. And when your business is still in its infancy, you’re starting out with so few reviews as it is, and you simply can’t afford to wait for them to come organically.
Pro Tip: Never try to buy or fake reviews.
Businesses need reviews, and business owners who understand just how important reviews are may be tempted to buy them or write fake reviews on their own. The fact of the matter is that inauthentic reviews can be easily spotted by an audience with an eye for detail, and when you’re caught faking reviews, it will only hurt your business’ online reputation.
Step #7. Respond to reviews.
Responding to every review is an essential part of reputation management for any and every business, from brand-new, baby startups to well-established companies that have been around for decades. And it’s essential that you respond to every review, not just the bad ones.
When you take the time to respond to positive reviews, you’re demonstrating to your customers that you recognize the fact that they took the time to write the review as well as how thankful you are that they did so. And when you take the time to respond to negative reviews, it allows you to show off your customer service skills.
The first rule of reputation management is that you can’t control what other people say about your business online; you can only control how you respond to it. Whether a negative review is legitimate or not, you can help to share your side of the story in your response. And because there’s very little recourse for getting fake reviews taken down on most review platforms, your response may be the only way to set the record straight.
Pro Tip: Don’t wait to respond to reviews.
Responding to reviews is critical, but it’s also critical to ensure that you respond quickly. The simple fact is that people expect a quick response when they leave a review, and if you leave them hanging, it could make an unhappy customer even more upset and left feeling unheard.
Check out our previous blog — The Many Different Kinds of Reviews and How to Respond to Them — to learn how to respond to every kind of review, even fake ones!
Step #8. Keep an eye on what people are saying about your business.
While a strong reputation management strategy is more proactive than reactive, reacting to what your customers are saying about you online is unavoidable. People are going to say all kinds of things about your business online, and in order to stay ahead of it and maintain the kind of online reputation you want, you need to know what people are saying!
Every business should keep tabs on what people are saying about them by searching for their brand on Google. It’s also wise to set up Google Alerts so that you can be alerted any time someone says something new about your brand online.
Step #9. Take feedback to heart.
If you’re the type of business owner that doesn’t just want to be known for providing the best service but actually wants to provide it, then it’s important to pay close attention to the feedback you get from your customers. Of course, bad days come and go and not every negative interaction with a customer is indicative of your overall service, it’s essential that you learn from your mistakes — especially the ones that tend to be a theme across multiple reviews.
It’s often not enough to apologize for a mistake or a bad interaction; customers want to feel heard and they want to know that the feedback they took the time to give you is listened to. That’s why, when you respond to negative reviews, it’s important to tell the customer about how you’ve utilized their feedback to better your business.
Step #10. Never rest on your laurels.
If there’s anything that you take away from this article, we hope it’s that reputation management is an ongoing thing. An effective reputation management strategy takes a consistent effort on your part, and it should be one of your top priorities throughout the life of your business.
Think about it — there’s never going to be a time when your business doesn’t need a solid online reputation, and maintaining that reputation should always be at the top of your to-do list.
Become a reputation management guru with Top Rated Local!
By putting in the reputation management footwork from the get-go, your startup will have a leg up on your competition out of the gates. And there’s no easier or better way to start managing your business’ online reputation than by signing up for Top Rated Local!
Getting your business listed is free, and there are so many benefits to joining, including a boost to your Rating Score, real-time notifications when you get reviews and the use of the Top Rated Local badge on your website! It’s a no brainer; get started today!
