Online reputation management is the ongoing practice of monitoring, influencing, and responding to how your business is perceived across search results, review sites, and social media.
Core components
- Monitoring reviews and mentions across the platforms your customers actually use
- Responding professionally and promptly to both positive and negative reviews
- Actively encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews, rather than only hearing from unhappy ones
- Ensuring accurate, consistent business information across directories (name, address, phone, hours)
Why it matters for small businesses specifically
Small businesses often have fewer total reviews, so each one has proportionally more impact on the overall rating and a prospective customer’s first impression, compared to a large company with thousands of reviews averaging out any single bad one.
FAQ
Can I ask customers to remove a negative review?
Directly asking can violate some platforms’ policies; the better approach is responding professionally and resolving the underlying issue, which sometimes leads the customer to update their review voluntarily.