Do you need to keep track of the corporate reviews that people post about your brand on websites like Glassdoor, Trustpilot, and Consumer Reports?The short answer is yes.Corporate reviews can have an impact on a brand’s reputation. However, they usually play a less significant role in brand reputation than store-specific reviews; and because corporate reviews tend to focus only on the entire company, there are often fewer corporate reviews to worry about than the hundreds or thousands of store-specific reviews some brands can accumulate. Because of this, brands do not have to be quite as vigilant about tracking corporate reviews as they are about tracking store-specific reviews on platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Google.While local reviews posted on websites like Yelp and Facebook typically focus on specific store locations, corporate websites focus on the brand as a whole. These reviews are less significant when it comes to influencing the purchasing decisions made by consumers at the local level, though they can impact the brand’s overall reputation with consumers.As a best practice, it’s still a good idea to monitor corporate reviews on a weekly or monthly basis. Keeping tabs on these reviews is relatively straightforward since each site typically only has one profile page per company with one stream of reviews, instead of individual store-specific profile pages. There are reputation management tools available to help you monitor your reviews across the many sites where customers post reviews.Just as with local reviews, the effect of a negative corporate review can be mitigated by responding in a constructive way. If the review website makes the response functionality available, brand representatives should be sure to respond to negative reviews as promptly as possible. Positive reviews should be responded to, as well, usually with a simple “thank you.”
