How to Create a Strong Online Reputation for Your Business

The fundamentals to ensure you are buttoned up

Imagine you are at an event and meet a world class expert in their field. They have multiple advanced degrees, have worked at some of the most prestigious companies in the world, and are a cutting edge thought leader. Not only that, but they are perfectly equipped to help you solve the most pressing problems in your business, enabling you to accelerate your growth by orders of magnitude. There is only one issue: the conversation with this individual never happens. They have holes in their shoes, stains on their shirt, and bad breath, so you have an abysmal first impression and avoid them like the plague.

Many entrepreneurs and business owners do not realize it, but in the online arena, they are the person described above. They have a dazzling website they spent well into the 5-figures on, but are not noticing that they only have 2 out of 5 stars when someone Google’s their company name. They offer generous pay packages on par with the FANG companies, while neglecting the fact that their reputation on Glassdoor is horrendous. They are spending boatloads of money on Instagram Ads, while being oblivious to the mountain of negative comments on their last 10 Instagram posts.

“Hello, I’d like to share how I can help scale your business.”

Tracking and monitoring one’s online reputation does not need to be especially hard or time consuming. But, if you do not know where to look, or you fail to stay attentive to one of the key areas, you may be un-knowingly shooting yourself in the foot. In this article, we will cover the 6 key things to focus on in order to ensure you are putting your best foot forward.

#1 - Google My Business (GMB)

GMB is a free tool that helps businesses and organizations manage their online presence on Google. While it is usually associated with physical businesses, you should still be creating a compelling and well reviewed GMB page no matter what industry you operate in. To claim your business and create a GMB profile, click here and follow the steps listed.

While your GMB profile won’t show up on 100% of searches for your company name, it is almost guaranteed to show up if you search “company name [city company is based in].” For example, with MightyHive, the old company I worked for, no GMB page comes up if I search ‘MightyHive’, but it does show up if I search ‘MightyHive San Francisco’. Often though, a company’s GMB page will show up even if you just search the company name, making this an especially strong first impression for your brand. To show why this matters, I’d like to compare Stackmatix (the company I co-founded) with a former client of ours (redacted to protect their identity):

The Stackmatix GMB page is on the right, and you will see we have 20 reviews (all 5-stars) and a consciously curated first photo with our logo and brand colors. In comparison, here is what the GMB page for one of our former clients looked like before we started working together:

They have 3.1 / 5.0 stars, which is not particularly high, and the reviews that get displayed upfront say things like, “Management and staff are horrible to deal with.” and “Very poor experience.” Your GMB page is the first thing people will see when they search your brand - make sure it looks pristine!

We did help this client to level up their GMB profile, and if you do not yet have one or it is not as strong as you would like it to be, here is what I would suggest:

1). As mentioned above, click here and follow the steps to create your GMB page. You will need to prove you are the official owner of the business among a few other things.

2). Ask friends or trusted clients to give you 5-star reviews (aim for at least 10 reviews). If your rating is in the gutter, keep soliciting reviews until you are at least 4.0 stars - this is the bare minimum. While anyone can leave a review, I would suggest giving some tips to reviewers as far as benefits / features to call out as well as any language to avoid; you want the reviews to sound legit.

3). Flesh out the sections describing your business (e.g. hours of operation, phone #, ‘about’ section, etc.) and add photos that match your brand identity and reflect well on your brand.

#2 - Ensure you have strong product or service reviews on key review sites for your niche

No matter what industry or niche you are in, there are always going to be some flagship sites your customers will search to assess your brand’s quality and see how you stack up to the competition. Similar to the suggestion with GMB above, for each of the key sites, you should make sure you have strong reviews (4.0 stars bare minimum; ideally 4.5+ stars). While this is not an exhaustive list of all the key sites in each niche, it should give you a solid place to start:

-eComm: Amazon, Shopify, Trustpilot etc.

-B2B and B2C: Trustpilot, GetApp, Software Advice, Capterra, G2, App Stores (Google Play or iOS) if you have an app.

-Local Businesses: Yelp, Tripadvisor.

If you want to solicit reviews from friends or close customers, what is the best way to do it? My suggestion would be to reach out to close contacts in your network with a message such as the following:

"Hi _____,

Hope all has been well with you. We are seeking to build up our business’ online reputation and a key part of that is strong reviews. We were hoping you would be willing to leave us a review on a few of the sites we are featured on.

The whole process should take 5 minutes or less. The review only needs to be about 3 sentences and you can feel free to copy/paste a single review onto all sites listed below. Please just make sure the review sounds legitimate and not a two word answer. The review sites with links are here:

Amazon (link)
Shopify (link)
TrustPilot (link)

Thank you in advance for your support! If there is anything I can do to return the favor, please let me know.

-James

There are a few crucial elements to this message:

1). You provide a clear ‘why’ (‘we are seeking to build our online reputation and reviews are a big part of this’).
2). You remove as much friction as possible and make it easy for them to take action (‘the whole process should take 5 minutes or less’, ‘it only needs to be about 3 sentences’, ‘feel free to copy / paste’, ‘the review site links are here’).
3). You assume success (‘thank you in advance for your support!’).
4). You offer an act of reciprocity (‘If there is anything I can do to return the favor, please let me know’).

Of all these, I would say #2 is the most crucial. The difference between the message above versus a message saying, ‘We are trying to get more online reviews for our business - would you be open to giving us one?’ is likely a difference of 500% or more as far as getting responses from your network. Always make it easy for people to say yes.

#3 - Ensure you have a strong rating on Glassdoor

Glassdoor is a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies. It is exceedingly common that when employees or interns are deciding whether they want to join a specific company, the first place they will check is Glassdoor in order to assess what it might be like to work there. A strong Glassdoor rating can be the difference between someone joining your team or deciding to take their talents elsewhere (e.g. I recently passed on a series A company because they had 3.6 stars and a lot of negative feedback about the CEO).

Create a top brand to attract top talent

While you cannot fake Glassdoor reviews, you should have a process at your company to ask team members to leave a Glassdoor review after they have been at the company for a pre-determined amount of time. If your employees leave you negative feedback on Glassdoor, you should take it seriously and work to improve your company culture to boost your rating over time. Just like other review platforms - you should seek a minimum score of 4.0; ideally 4.5+.

#4 - Create and build solid social media profiles

Some businesses love social media and revel in sharing daily updates to their adoring followers. If that is not you, that is totally fine - just make sure you have a solid social media presence that establishes credibility. While some platforms are more or less important for different types of businesses (e.g. TikTok for eCommerce or LinkedIn for B2B), here is a good starter list of accounts to create:

-FB brand page
-IG brand page
-LinkedIn company page
-X.com company page
-TikTok company page (optional)
-YouTube company account (optional)

Aim for a minimum of 50 followers and 10 solid posts or videos on each account (asking friends or close contacts in your network for a ‘follow’ should get you there fast). If that is all you want to do, that is fine - you have more than covered the bases.

#5 - Do an Audit of Your Online Reputation

In addition to following steps 1 - 4 (please do these first), I would also highly recommend doing an audit of your online reputation to ensure it is looking good. Here are the steps I would take:

1). Do a Google search of your brand. Ensure there are no negative articles or negative press being written about you.
2). Do a search of your brand on YouTube. Ensure there are no negative videos being made about you.
3). Check the comments on your Facebook page, Instagram Page, and LinkedIn page and ensure there is nothing negative. If you find any, respond to them directly in the comment section, offering to help. I would also suggest Direct Messaging whoever left the negative comments to offer your support and see if you can resolve their issues quickly.
4). Do a search on X.com, LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com, and Instagram to see if anyone has mentioned or commented about your brand across the site. If there is any negative feedback, take note of it and assess its credibility.

#6 - Set up an ongoing reputation monitoring system

The steps described above are a decent amount of work and it is likely going to be overkill repeating them each day. Two options to consider are the following:

1). Pay for a premium brand monitoring tool such as ‘BrandWatch’ or ‘HootSuite’.
2). Set up a manual system to review each key item weekly and set up free automated scans where possible.

Option 1 will save you a lot of time, but these tools can be very expensive and impractical for SMBs (e.g. BrandWatch’s lower tier plans are around $1,000/month). Instead, I would opt for Option 2. To begin, I would set up automatic Google Alerts for your brand name, which should help you identify if there is any mention of you across Google platforms. Next, I would create your own manual checklist to do each week to ensure you are staying on top of your online brand (the steps outlined in #5 are a great place to start). Finally, if you have the resources for it, I would highly suggest doing a daily audit of your social media accounts to ensure you are proactively responding to any negative comments or feedback that are made.

Google Alerts

Conclusion

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and this is as true in the digital world as it is in the physical. In this article, we covered all of the key platforms and profiles where it is essential to have strong reviews, how to build a solid foundation on social media, as well as how to create a system to track and monitor negative feedback. Many of these are defensive measures, but in the next article in this series, I will focus on how to grow and expand your brand in a more aggressive manner.