Every company should care about customer reviews, regardless of seniority and company size. However, just creating profiles on review sites is definitely not enough. Your customers are as busy as you are, so the chance that they will provide feedback on their own is not very high. Unless they are really satisfied or really disappointed. That’s why it is up to you to take the initiative and simply ask for feedback. Once you receive it, don’t forget to respond.

In fact, you will probably agree that trust is the foundation of any relationship. First of all, it gives us a sense of security – it’s what grows our commitment and attachment to the other person. The same is true regarding the relationship with your client. Consumers often treat companies like other people – they want to develop relationships with those brands they can trust. That’s why the process of building a customer’s experience with a brand needs to start long before the purchase. In order to convince consumers, it is worth using the power of recommendations, the value of which cannot be overestimated.

A well-conducted competitive analysis can be an extremely helpful element in developing your business strategy. A thorough interpretation of competitors enables to identify strengths and weaknesses both in own company and in the companies of your competitors, thus providing a chance to optimize your actions and strengthen position on the market. In addition, analyzing the behavior of your rivals will also allow you to learn about emerging trends in the market and clarify the needs of your customers. Therefore, how to do it best?

In the era of universal access to the Internet, well-run Internet marketing becomes increasingly important. Companies are not limited to just creating their own websites. They are also present in social media, run blogs related to their business, and invest in paid forms of advertising or outsource activities to marketing agencies. All this is aimed at reaching users who will be interested in the product or service of a given company.

In recent years, we have been inundated with research indicating that customer reviews help online stores grow. Consumers trust online reviews almost as much as personal recommendations of friends.

Abbreviation of the SERM comes from definition Search Engine Reputation Management. This tool is useful to manage the business reputable in internet search engines. In reality it consists of several activities taken in order to improve visibility and recognizability in the search results.

Reputation management describes the effort to influence and take control of a company's or individual's reputation. The concept stems from public relations, but along with the growth of social media and the internet the term had to be developed to adequately cover the new phenomena. Nowadays, it can be divided into two areas – offline and online reputation management, the latter focusing mainly on search engine results.

Customer reviews posted by users on various platforms such as Google My Business, Facebook, Amazon, Trustpilot, Foursquare, Yelp, or Trip Advisor can and will affect the way your business or brand is perceived. Finally, it may affect customers' final purchase decisions. That is why comments appearing on review sites should be managed, becoming an everyday task and part of a marketing plan.

Small businesses rely highly on reputation. The majority of their clients come from recommendations – nowadays found mainly online and rarely offline. But the good news is you don't always need large advertising budgets to drive sales. Word of mouth spread online can generate enough sales. Below we discuss the three steps that are important to every small business owner and that will hopefully inspire you to take care of your reputation online.

Almost 90% of consumers trust online reviews similarly to personal recommendations from their family and friends. The fact proves that taking care of a positive online image has a crucial role not only in online reputation management (ORM) but also in sales in general.