Cassandra
Hey, guys. Welcome to Think Flame marketing Agency podcast ideas on fire. Today we are talking about online reputation management. I’m Cassandra Patrick. And with me, as always, is Jonathan Perea. When you think online reputation, what comes to mind?
Importance of Online Reputation?
Jonathan (00:40)
A lot of things actually come to mind. What’s your online presence? Who’s reviewing it? How many reviews are going, where they’re coming from, different places, different faces.
Cassandra
Do you even have any?
Jonathan
Yeah, that’s a big one. Is your rep coming mostly from your social media or is it coming from Google? Is it coming from other reputable sites like Yellow Pages or Yelp or Google? My business type stuff. That’s what I think right away. And how powerful is this? What do you think, Cass?
Cassandra
I think reputation, whether it’s online or in person, can make or break a business. How many times have you seen someone get a negative review and the business responds in an aggressive manner, trying to say that they didn’t do anything wrong as opposed to responding in a way that doesn’t necessarily placate but says that you understand where the person is coming from and then you take it offline so that people don’t see the full discussion. Right. I’ve seen a few places where people have gotten into really heated debates with the person who put up a poor review.
Jonathan
I mean, yeah, I’ve put up some negative reviews because I’ve explained to them. For example, there was a sushi restaurant that I used to go to every Friday and it was part of our thing and the service just got worse and worse. We’re talking 30 minutes just to get a glass of water. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. Like, that was literally the case. And of course it got to a point where I’m just like, hey, what’s going on? If we’re not going to be serviced correctly, I’ll just take my business elsewhere. Not a big deal. I’ll let people know on Google what’s good, like what’s happening, and they try to compensate, but it just got worse and worse and stayed the same. So basically I left a negative Google review and apparently 280 something people have looked at it and agreed with me.
Cassandra
Wow.
Jonathan
And that’s not even within a year. It’s pretty powerful.
Cassandra
Did you get any sort of response from the restaurant on that review?
Jonathan
I don’t think so. I’ve also left a bad review on a place I used to live because they deserved it and they actually tried to make a response out of it. Here’s the thing though. I’m not trying to make this a personal story time, but the key to that story was how important the reviews go. Your reputation, that shows over 283 people viewed it. Yes, some people outreach and they might outreach to make some sort of attempt to look like they’re not that bad of your review. Whatever. It is what it is and you’re going to get that. You’re going to get some trolls out there. You’re going to get people that are generally angry at everything if they don’t get exactly what they want. The 400 yard dash service when they’re only paying for breadsticks, yeah, you’re going to have that. But the truth is, that’s how powerful this is. You get a lot of people that look, you get a lot of people that want to see what they’re getting into. It’s powerful stuff. And you could tell that the people that actually put time into giving a good, bad, or whatever type of review, they don’t just write, oh yeah, they suck, or they actually tell their story.
Jonathan
That way if someone goes, it goes a long way. And generally as a business, you want a good story.
Cassandra
Absolutely. And what’s frustrating about it is that most people will leave reviews when they aren’t happy.
Jonathan
Absolutely. Again, going back to the personal stories, that was my weapon. That was my threat mechanism. That was, hey, if I don’t get good service, I’m going to leave a bad review because I know exactly how strong those are. And yes, again, in my opinion, people don’t change, they learn. So they didn’t change. They didn’t even care to learn. So the service still sucked, so they got a bad review. That’s it. That’s the way it was.
Cassandra
Because we’re doing story time recently, I had to deal with the ever so red tape world of Insurance. Yeah. And so the advisor that I was using when he stepped in, because I was just running into roadblock after roadblock, he stepped in and was absolutely fantastic, and he went above and beyond. He was doing daily follow ups and all this sort of stuff. And because we are in the business that we’re in, I know the power behind a really great review. When everything was said and done, I made sure that I gave him a really great review and talked about all those important things. Especially in insurance, when you’re dealing with that stuff, there needs to be trust. Absolutely. So I talked about all of those great things, and I also sent him an email afterwards and let him know that I left it, and he was very appreciative. Now, it was his first one on Google. He’s been in business for a couple decades, so he needs to work on that. And when it comes to your online reputation, what kind of sucks is you get a bad review, it takes ten good reviews to outweigh it.
Jonathan
Yeah. People don’t care. People don’t care about the good ones. They’re assuming that if they’re coming to you to spend their money, they’re assuming that they’re going to get what they’re looking for. They’re assuming they’re going to get the service that they deserve. But they do care about the bad ones because they want to see what I’m really getting myself into.
Responding to Online Reviews
Cassandra (07:50)
There’s also a time frame when it comes to responding to them. So if you’re a business that’s already set up right now and you’ve been in business for a few years and you discover a really old negative review, sadly the time frame to respond has come and gone. Yeah, I say I give you a leeway of a couple of months just because sometimes you don’t realise that they’re there, that you can work on. That is something called Google Alerts. It’s a free service and you can set it up so that when your business name or even your personal name appears in Google, this also helps with articles, any sort of blogs podcasts that you may be on as well as they’re posted, you get an alert. So someone tags your business in a negative review, you get an alert automatically because Google obviously being Google, everything gets posted there on any sort of platform.
Jonathan
Yeah, absolutely. And having that response helps.
Cassandra
It really does.
Jonathan
Again, it could potentially show the people that are just angry all the time and just want to angry type everybody that they meet, where it shows genuine poor service and a true story. If you respond quick enough, it generally they’re like, okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad.
Cassandra
Exactly. Maybe it’s a one time thing. Maybe the person is just angry about everything and you can kind of tell from the reviews too, the person who genuinely had a really bad experience or someone who’s just there to cause trouble.
Jonathan
Exactly.
Cassandra
We’ve all seen it. We’ve seen it on social media, we’ve seen it in reviews, we’ve seen it and people ranting on well, anything and everything.
Jonathan
No, definitely.
Why Google My Business is So Crucial
Cassandra (09:48)
So when people are searching for you, say whether you’re established or you’re new, one thing that you should do, because mobile search is so powerful is make sure that you have Google My Business set up. Okay, so Google my business. Basically what it does is it shows you the name of the company if your store or office hours. I mean, you can list that, you’re always open, but I say put some parameters around that even if you are a real estate agent, just so that you don’t get phone calls at three items. Because it can happen.
Jonathan
It can.
Cassandra
Your website, if you have one, your physical location if you have one with the location, if you don’t have a physical location or it’s your house because home run business, you can actually hide that and just put a city so that way you still come up in local searches, your phone number, your email. And one thing that’s key is some photos. So put up your logo or a picture of you and your team, if you have a team, an offer that you might have, things like that, just so people can get to know you with this. I do have a couple of clients who just they don’t have an official website, but they have landing pages link to that or even within that this will help you be seen online and can basically act as like a mini storefront for those people who are like, well, nobody’s online and no one’s looking for me there. This is a starting point.
Jonathan
The most important thing that I think for having a good mobile search presence is simply the reason that people, when they look on their phone, they want to press the directions. Let’s say I’m looking for the nearest dentist or something, and you pop up. They just want to press directions to the nearest dentist. Exactly. It needs to be easy. It needs to be there, it needs to be strong on your mobile and.
Cassandra
It needs to be correct.
Jonathan
Yeah, exactly. For it to have an online presence.
Cassandra
Absolutely. Sorry. Just to go back to the whole correct thing. If people find your business and if you haven’t claimed it, they can put up the wrong information.
Jonathan
That is true number someone else can do.
Cassandra
Exactly. So you need to make sure that you claim it. And Google is very fast about responding to things like that. And honestly, if there’s any questions, please reach out to us. That is the biggest thing, because you don’t want wrong information or negative information.
Jonathan
Absolutely.
Cassandra
If you’re aimed at families, you don’t want something that’s a bit more like sexualized appearing. When your name gets searched back to the trolls, there’s people who just want to make your life a living hell.
Jonathan
No, absolutely. I’ve actually searched for some sort of companies and I called them and it’s a company that they bought out like two, three years ago. Yeah. It’s one of those things that how could you build trust with somebody if you’re not showing yourself on their searches the way you want to on the mobile? It just doesn’t work.
Cassandra
It needs to be done correctly, like anything else. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. It doesn’t. The first tool that I always suggest is the Google Alerts. When you set up Google My Business, you can send out a link to all of your previous clients, current clients, people that you’ve done business with, if you’re just getting started in a new sort of area or niche. Right. Because some people are like, well, I’m starting a new business, I don’t have any clients. How am I going to build reviews? There’s many ways. If you are coming from, say, a corporate background, there’s no reason why people that you worked with there wouldn’t be willing to speak to your business manner and how professional you are and things like that. There’s ways to build it up, even at the very beginning. So you definitely want to see that on Google because it is the main search engine that people use.
Jonathan
It’s a giant echo that goes a lot farther than a lot of people actually think.
Cassandra
Absolutely. Also the way Google has Google my business. Bing has their own as well. Bing isn’t as big.
Jonathan
It’s still there.
Cassandra
Yeah, I can’t remember the exact stat. I’ll find it and we’ll add it.
How Important are Reputation Tools?
Jonathan (14:41)
In the you’ll have people that trust Bing and stuff like that. Yellow Pages. Google bizrate.com. You got people that trust those over Google. Now, Cass, my question to you though, is how important our reputation tools are. They a need. What do you think? Like, scale of one to ten with me on this one?
Cassandra
I think they’re really important. The reason that I think they’re important is because when someone’s starting to look for a new product, a new business to use, it takes anywhere from sometimes up to ten searches for someone to even reach out, monitoring your reputation, making sure that there is some information out there about yourself and your business, it starts to build that trust. People immediately see you not only as your product or business, but as a person. We’ll say it in every single thing that we say or put out there, but it’s human to human when it comes down to and so you want to make sure that you have a good reputation out there. Any content that you put out, you can link to it. Sometimes people need to sort of do the research prior to actually having that initial conversation because they may have been burned in the past or they’re really unsure, and if they reach out to you and all of a sudden start finding stuff after the fact, it may actually get them to flip the sale and walk away.
Jonathan
Yeah, I mean, I think reputation management tools are ten out of ten. I know that there are some people that are out there that they don’t care about their rep, they don’t care what people think about them. And more power to you, I get that. But you’re a professional. You’re a business. You’re part of a business. You’re a business owner, your boss, however you want to see it. Like, your reputation goes far. Sometimes your reputation is all you have. It’s better than your product. And what that means is that means like, okay, like, we’ll go buy an air conditioning at Bob shop because we know if we need anything from Bob, Bob got our back. Then on a personal level, your reputation could show the hard work and the person, like you said, the person you are. And that’s what people want. They don’t want business to business. They don’t want to be talking about this. They don’t want to be talking about money. They don’t want to be talking how much, you know, they’re going to see on their monthly bills. They won’t be talking to some human that, hey, if times get tough, they know that they’re going to be able to pull through, and they’re not going to be part of the problem, but part of the solution.
Cassandra
And also, more and more people want to buy local, right? They want to support their local support, and what better way to support your local community, then showcase what a great job you do, whether it’s by client video, testimonials, if they’re willing to do them. Also, if clients do that, make sure you have permission from them to utilise the video that they have shared.
Jonathan
Of course.
Cassandra
I mean, I know it’s of course to us, but there are people out there who were like, what do you mean? You’re putting like a picture of me or whatever. And they didn’t realise what it was going to be utilised for. Right. So one thing that you can showcase is you’re involved in your local community. So talk about it online, talk about you volunteer. Right. I am a Boys and Girls Club alumni, and so a couple of years ago, for, I think two or three, I volunteered on their annual gala and it was fantastic. It holds a special place in my heart, so I’ll always go back and probably attend and things like that. Those are important things because it also shows that you’re not just about the business.
Jonathan
Exactly. It’s like Boys and Girls Club gave you a lot, now you’re giving back and you got each other’s back. It’s a good relationship.
Cassandra
Yeah. Another one of our clients is involved with the Scouts, and so we told them we’re like, talk about it.
Jonathan
Yeah, absolutely.
Cassandra
Having testimonials and building the good reviews and letting people see what a great job you do yes, sometimes it can feel a little boastful, but it’s still important. And with a lot of the negative talk out there and people venting online, you need to remember that you got to showcase the good.
Jonathan
Very true.
How to Manage Social Media Reputation
Cassandra (19:42)
I know we’ve talked mostly about Google, Yelp, Yellow Pages, but you can’t forget that people also can leave reviews on your social media or tag you in posts where they’re talking about your business and things like that. So you want to make sure that you’re monitoring that as well.
Jonathan
One of the things that I’m noticing, and again, this is purely Jonathan’s opinion, don’t take this to heart, but I’m noticing that those Yellow Pages, Google, a lot of people are looking at them and they’re just brushing them off. They’re saying, oh, this person, obviously this person has been on Google, he has 100 something billion reviews. They want something more organic, they want something more real. So they cheque out the social media. Social media is booming. There’s videos that are coming out pretty hot now. I told a realtor team that I was with a couple of weeks ago that videos like the new fad, it’s like the new now, it’s like a must.
Cassandra
Like everybody yeah, it started as a fad, but now it’s a staple.
Jonathan
Now it’s a staple. Exactly. That’s what people are trusting. People are trusting social media. We’ve talked about this before in the previous podcast. Some people just live on social media. Some people need that, need to find out what’s going on, need to know what’s going on in your life and not in a creepy way. But that’s how they want to be involved. That’s how they are involved. Like back in the day when it used to be even before text messages, people used to call each other and hang out and stuff. That’s how people got involved. Now exactly. Now, social media, that’s how people are involved with each other, like we’ve talked about. Everyone knows it’s a great tool for their business.
Cassandra
Absolutely.
Jonathan
Now, another addition to how it’s a great tool for your business is that it also brings that organic feel to your Google review. And it’s done in a plethora of ways. It really is. I mean, there’s people that will comment on your page. There are people that you come out with a great deal or something, some sort of headliner and you got a bunch of your community just all ecstatic about supporting it. And then you put out a video and it gets 100 likes. The video might suck itself, the content might suck, but that person that did the video, everyone loves because they know what I’m saying. It goes so far. It keeps reaching and touching in different places where you’re just like, damn, social media. Is legit a serious thing in business?
Important Aspects of Making a Good Video
Cassandra (23:00)
Absolutely. Just one thing that’s like a bit off topic. When you do videos for social media or even for your website, it doesn’t have to be a huge production all the time. What I have found is people audiences are more forgiving on poor lighting than they are on sound. So if there’s one thing you’re going to get, you get a little lapel mic that links directly into your phone if that is your setup. And make sure your sound is on point.
Jonathan
True.
Cassandra
Because people want to hear the message. They want to know what you’re talking about. If the lighting is crap and there’s like a weird shadow across your face, so be it. Says the woman who needs to start doing more video.
Jonathan
I’ve also heard about the videos. Like you just said, it doesn’t have to be like a big production. Sometimes short and sweet is the key. It could be a 15 to 22nd clip of you getting your point across, maintaining that online presence, keeping it fun, keeping it social for the social media pattern that you’re trying to set up.
Cassandra
Absolutely.
Jonathan
Trying to expose and boom. It’s part of the staple and part of what you’re trying to get done.
Cassandra
If you’re not comfortable on camera like some people aren’t there’s different websites that you can use for basic videos when you’re first getting started. One of them is called in video. We talked about it before.
Jonathan
Yes, we did.
Cassandra
Put something together, right? If you’re more comfortable having your picture taken then speaking on a video because you feel like you might trip up or in my case, say stool instead of tool.
Jonathan
Nice.
Cassandra
It’s true. I totally did. It was like, nice, I got it. But you can put a series of images together really easily, especially if you’re still learning some video editing before you get into way more complicated stuff. And then that way you’re still getting your message across, and you’re still being seen with social media. Yes. On your Facebook page, you have reviews on LinkedIn, you have recommendations on Instagram. People do shoutouts. They try and get in with influencers and things like that. Social media works a bit more passively than, say, Google reviews. But when you get that organic reach, even if you’re not getting a huge amount of likes, but people are sharing it, to me, that’s where you’re hitting it off. Right. People not only can repost say, on Instagram, they also can share it to the stories. That’s how your reach can really blow up if you’re not getting a huge amount of likes.
Jonathan
I mean, think about it. Like, let’s say I put something out and you share it. Okay? So obviously me putting something out, I’m reaching out to my community. That’s obviously the intention. And then you share it, and then now passively, like you just said, I’m reaching out to your community as well.
Cassandra
Exactly.
Reputation Speaks Louder Than Words
Jonathan (26:30)
I’m not doing it in an aggressive way. I’m doing it passively because you shared it. You want your community to see it. And that’s basically how your rep spreads. That’s how it goes stronger. That’s how you build that social media presence. People are going to be like, okay, oh, Cassandra shared this. Let me cheque it out. And then they find me, and then they find me, and then they’re like, oh, if Cassandra trusts this person, let me see what I could do. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, it’s just too good. It’s too good not to give. It a really good attempt, a really good thought. And again, it’s your reputation, your persona. If you look at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, hell, I’m a hard worker. I’m out here. I’m putting my blood, sweat, and tears into my jobs. I am doing the best I can and all that stuff. Let people award you. Let your reputation speak for yourself. A lot of people want that. I played professional ball and back to story time. I was never that. Like, I played catcher, so I was the team captain, but I wasn’t that team captain yippity cheerleader in the dugout that tried to motivate people.
Jonathan
I was the type of player that if you want to get my back, then let’s go. I’m going to put out my 100%. Just that’s all. And if you put out your 100%, we’ll make things happen, I promise. Like, if that’s how you are, then basically your reputation is all. You have to speak for yourself because you’re not one of those guys that’s going to come knocking on your door and be like, oh, I’m the best, and frankly, no one is probably going to believe you anyways. No one’s going to believe someone that comes out and boasts about themselves and talks about themselves. But if you got a reputation where you got multiple or hundreds of millions or whatever, people saying, this guy is the best, I promise you, they’re probably going to believe that over you coming out and saying, I’m the best.
Cassandra
No, absolutely. Social proof and reviews, reputation management, whatever flavour you want to call it, is incredibly powerful to me. It’s one of the foundational sort of legs of business, because you can see it in the news, right? Somebody, some celebrity or politician or whoever acts like a complete and utter fool. We’re not going to get into specific. It can end careers. Careers, marriages, whatever. Oh, yeah, it literally ends them.
Jonathan
It does.
Cassandra
So if that’s the sort of context you need to think of it in, then think of it that way and apply it to your business, because you want to make sure, like, for a lot of people, their business is their life. So why wouldn’t you make sure that that is taken care of?
Jonathan
Exactly. It goes about everything. This is what a lot of people tend to kind of like, let it slip. Like, oh, our competitors. Let’s say I make sandwiches and my competitors sandwiches are $3 and mine are $5, and you know, someone is going to be like, oh, you know, let’s go get his competitors sandwiches because they’re cheaper. But then the person next to him is going to be like, no, let’s go pay those extra $2 because those are the best sandwiches in the world. I’ve actually had that happen to me personally. I’ve had people that I’m like, oh, I don’t know what to do about my phone. Where do I get it fixed or take it to this person? And I’m like, but those people are so expensive. And they’re like, well, they’re the best. You’re going to get your work. I mean, you’re going to get what you pay for, basically. Reputation is insane. It’s insane.
Cassandra
I’ve had people tell me, well, I sent out an email to previous clients asking for them to leave a review. It’s not working. It kind of sucks because people are more likely to leave a review. They’re not happy. This is very true of their own volition. So when you ask them, you’ll still get about a one in four response. What you can do is things like make sure that you have social sharing information at the bottom of any sort of marketing material that you send out. I know it sounds really basic, but I still get emails from people where they have no links to anything and I’m like, Well, I don’t really know you, so where’s that social proof? How am I going to find out about you? If you want me to buy something from you, you can also offer things like exclusive discounts or coupons on social media for anybody who shares your posts or leaves a review or sometimes even just shares their thoughts. Right. Start building that engagement, and that in and of itself will sort of propel you forward.
Ways to Encourage Reviews
Jonathan (31:46)
That’s an excellent point. The people that do this amazing ask for reviews on a good are the waiters and waitresses. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a restaurants and at the end, after your service and you’re paying the bill and stuff, they come to you. They write like a little thank you on the receipt circle. Like a little, hey, just a little info here. If you go to our website and fill out this survey, next time you come to us, you get a free whatever appetiser or something. And they basically say they don’t come out generally and say, if you don’t mind mentioning me, but they kind of like, kind of nudge it that way, and that goes a powerful way. It does require participation. And the waiters and waitresses, let’s take a note out of their book.
Cassandra
Absolutely.
Jonathan
They work hard all night to give you the best service. They show what type of person they are. And you know what? To be honest, they build their rep. They build a rep. Next time you go to that restaurant, you want a table that is waited or waitressed by that person.
Cassandra
Absolutely.
Jonathan
You want to be served by them because you know that you were taken care of. And it just continues like that. Yup.
Cassandra
No, that actually is like, the perfect analogy for it.
Jonathan
Exactly. Yeah. They’re consistently added I know. That makes it simple. Like, hey, someone that just got serviced for food and all that stuff, and then they have a receipt. Everything’s there. But I mean, social media, you could do that for social media. Like you just mentioned, I’ve had people when I was doing HVAC, I’ve had people that go, hey, what do people generally do after you’re done, like, asking if they tip us or they call in or something, and we just say, just give us a good review online. That goes a long way because then we have people that are requesting our team, our HVAC team, to go out there and do the install for them. And being active in your Google reviews or in just your reputation management, that will show that will open up more doors, that will open up more opportunities for you to just basically show the world who you are. That’s what you want.
Cassandra
Reputation management, like anything else in digital marketing, has a lot of layers. Absolutely.
Jonathan
Yeah. We could spend two more hours talking about this easily.
Cassandra
In my head now, I’m also seeing that scene from Shrek where Shrek’s like, yeah, perfect.
Jonathan
Yeah.
Cassandra
And like you mentioned, there’s Google reviews, there’s the social proof. One thing you can do, a lot of businesses have a newsletter, and it’s a great place to either ask for reviews if it’s specifically. Aimed at current or past clients, or just feature a client who is giving you permission again or has put a Google review up. You can add those because they’re online. It’s already given permission. The video ones are the ones that you really have to be careful about. But all of these strategies feed into letting people get to know your business before they pick up the phone and take that action and become a client. It’s a snowball, right? Once you get rolling and you start seeing them coming in and you remember all the great work that you’ve done on those hard days, it’s a bit of a boost so that you keep moving forward and keep doing the great service that you’ve been doing all these for however long that you’ve been in business. And if you have any questions, we’re over here.
Jonathan
Yes, we are. And we want those questions.
Cassandra
We sound like a broken record with that.
Jonathan
I know, but we want them. We want those questions. I’ll send those questions and see you. That’s pretty good.
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