Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says “The definition of a brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

If you want to be a successful business owner, you need to keep an eye on what people are saying about your brand.

One way to do this is to look for what people are saying about you on the internet.  (A side note: you might want to take a Valium BEFORE you do this!)  Go online and check out the local forums and bulliten boards. 

9 times out of 10, you’ll find something about your store.

Here’s some things to keep in mind:

The Internet is an unregulated wasteland.  Anyone can go onto forums and say whatever they want.  That means you’re open to commentary from competitors, angry ex-employees, people who just don’t like you, and more.

Guess what?  These people aren’t going to say nice things!  It’s a sad truth about human nature that people are more than happy to say bad things whenever they’ve got the opportunity — yet when the time comes to say positive things, you can almost hear the crickets chirping!

So what good comes from reading bad things about your organization?

First and foremost, you’ve always got to be open to the fact that some of what might be out there could be true.  If you’re reading that your stores are dirty, that your employees are rude, that your prices are the highest in town, you might want to investigate.  If the stores are dirty, if the employees are rude — well, these problems can be fixed.  If your prices are higher, you need to have a good reason why — and make sure that reason is clear to the public!

Use a mystery shopper!  Have someone investigate these claims for you. 

Other things you read aren’t going to be true.   For me, that’s the infuriating bit.  It’s very hard to read lies about your business, the one you’ve put your heart and soul and life into.

However, you’ve got to, absolutely HAVE to, set emotion aside when dealing with false commentary on the internet.  As good as it may feel to tell some random internet poster that they’re an idiot, the fact is you’re a business.  You need to be calm and professional. 

Defend your brand by presenting facts.  If you’ve got research you can link to, great!  Stay level-headed and make sure you’re representing yourself in a positive light.

This is hard to do.  I’ve screwed up in this area, and wound up alienating a lot of customers.  I regret that — but at the same time, at least I’ve had the experience and learned from it!  It’s hard to stomach that there are people who aren’t going to like you no matter what — but the more important fact is that there are a great many readers who judge you and your store by how you respond to that angry, unpleasant person.