Have you checked your online reputation lately?

As business owners you have a good deal of control over how you advertise, what stock to order, and your store layout and design.  However, you can’t control your customers – especially what they say about your business.  If a dissatisfied customer complains in your store or on the phone you can try to appease them and prove that you will do your best to correct the situation.  But, what if they don’t complain directly to you, or what if they post their complaint on their Facebook page, to Twitter, or on online review sites?  You may never know what customers, former employees, or others are saying about your or your business unless you take an active role.

Even if you don’t actively participate in social networking or don’t have a website, there is no excuse not to check what is being post about your business.  Recently, Jeff Hyde, Dana Ollendyke, and I released a series of podcasts with the goal of informing food businesses about social networking tools consumers use, what types of information (exclusive sales, recipes, etc.) they expect food businesses of post online, and how online reviews influence them and their purchasing decisions (the 19 Social Media and Food Retailer podcasts are available for viewing at: http://www.youtube.com/user/PSUFoodandFarmBiz).

Based on our research, and explained in more detail in podcast 18 and 19, 82% of our survey respondents read consumer reviews on the Internet.  Aside from the website where a product is purchased, at least a third of consumers rely on reviews posted on sites such as Yelp.com, Yahoo! Reviews, and Facebook.  Additional data, such as likelihood to post negative reviews based on age (see graph below), is also discussed in podcast 19.

So, the question is, are you aware of what is being said about your business online?  There are a number of strategies you could use to learn about potential chatter, good or bad:

1) Read what might be posted about your business on www.Yelp.com, www.local.yahoo.com, and similar review sites.  Be aware that consumers can add a business to the listings on some of these sites without the business owner’s permission, and then post at will.

2) Sign up for an alert service such as Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) or Yahoo! Alerts and create an alert for when your business name is mentioned online.  An email with links to articles, websites, blog postings, etc. that match the alert term (your business name) is then sent to your email “as-it-happens,” daily, or weekly.

3)  Run frequent searchers for your business’ name on sites like www.whostalkin.com, www.samepoint.com, www.spy.appspot.com, or similar.  These sites search for mentions on a variety of social networking sites such as Twitter, Flickr, and blogs.

Certainly, once you begin monitoring your online presence you’ll get a feel for what tools work best for you and what additional tools help you keep tabs on what is posted online.  The key is to incorporate frequent online monitoring into your scheduled operation tasks.  In a future blog posting I’ll describe some strategies that you can use to correctly respond to unfavorable and, yes, favorable reviews (you’ll want to do this!).  

What happens to your reputation when you unknowingly use deffective raw goods?

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Toyota recalls. The recalls were caused my manufacturing issues on Toyota’s part and have had a major effect on the company’s reputation. But what happens to the reputation of a company if the cause of a defect is not the manufacturer but the supplier of raw goods? This is exactly what happened to E&J Gallo, the largest family-owned winery in the United States.
Twelve employees of Ducasse and Sieur d'Arques, suppliers to Gallo, were convicted last week for selling incorrectly labeled wine to E&J Gallo. The accused sold 18 million bottles of wine that was labeled as Pinot Noir, but was actually made from less expensive local grape varieties. The fake Pinot Noir sold to Gallo was bottled and sold under the name “Red Bicyclette”. The scam lasted from 2006 to 2008 and profited about 7 million euros. A French judge sentenced the 12 to jail and fines ranging from 3,000 to 18,000 euros each.





It seems Gallo is trying to keep the situation quiet, unlike Toyota and their problems. On the Toyota website, there is a large box that says “Get the latest updates here”. On the Gallo website, I had to do some searching. Under the “Press Room” tab, I found 1 press release. In that 1 press release, Gallo leaves a statement only 7 lines long. In the statement, Gallo expresses their disappointment for the mislabeled bottles and declares that less than 20% of the imported wine used to make Pinot Noir was from the corrupt suppliers. Also, the press release states that the imposter wine has been removed from the marketplace.





As an agricultural business owner, do you think Gallo has done enough to reassure the public that their wines are labeled correctly? How would you handle a situation involving misrepresented raw goods that you use in making your agricultural product? As a consumer, is a single press release (only 1 paragraph long) sufficient? Do you think you will still trust Gallo even if this wasn’t their fault?

What are people saying about your business online?

If someone was talking about you (positively or negatively), you would want to know about it, right? If someone was speaking your praises, you would want to thank them. Conversely, if someone was speaking poorly about you, you would want to set the record straight. The same is true for your business. But today, someone can just as easily talk about your business face-to-face as they can post to a blog, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Your business's reputation is just as important in brick-and-mortar as it is online. Customers are not just going to your website to get information about your business. You must also manage your web presence for postings from people outside your organization. The internet is a place where anyone (fan or critic) can express their opinions about anyone and anything. Don't be oblivious (or vulnerable) to rumors, complaints, review sites, blogs, etc.

In a BusinessWeek article, Tom Kurz, co-founder of The Escapist, a video gaming site, explains what his company does to monitor their online reputation. With technology (especially social media) changing frequently, small businesses are feeling overwhelmed by trying to manage their web presence. Kurz warns, "If you don't control the message, somebody else does...For a small company with $1 million in sales, when a rumor flies about their product or service, it could sink their entire business."

Seems pretty scary, doesn't it? There are many free tools to help you manage your online reputation. Google Alerts, Google News, Yahoo Alerts, Technorati.com, BlogPulse.com, BoardTracker.com, Keotag.com, and BuzzLogic.com monitor blogs, forums, social networking sites, and/or news for your business's name (or any other search term). If you find posts about your business, you need to respond to it immediately. Kurz explains, "What we want to know is if people are talking positively about us, so we can link to it. If they're talking negatively, we want to address the issue right away...Oh, we've had to do some major damage control. I can't tell you how many times someone will post something and blame us for something we had nothing to do with. If we get there pretty quickly, we can address a negative comment directly with the person who made the post, or we can go to the site itself and make a post...If you go to the source and explain truthfully where you're coming from, you buy good will from people who were flaming you. There's nothing better than to turn an adversary into an advocate..."

business reputation article

As an entrepreneur, are you managing your business's online reputation? What tools are you using to find online information? If you have found negative posts, what have you done to curtail the negativity?