Warren Buffett, Your Reputation, and Creating a High Growth Business

According to Warren Buffett, reputation is by far the most important asset of any kind of business. Evidence shows that this is especially true for rapidly growing businesses.

Arguably the most successful businessman ever, Warren Buffett, writes a biennial memo to his managers; the side-quote below is from this year’s memo:

Over 80% of companies search the internet for information about vendors before deciding who to talk with. Notice Before. The same is true for consumers before making a purchase.

What does this mean? It means that information and opinions about your business are being widely read by potential customers. It means that to protect your precious reputation, you must monitor and manage your online presence.

We live in a world where everyone is a potential publisher who can anonymously post venomous libel and negative opinion. So we must be constantly attentive to whatever is being written online in blogs, Facebook, Twitter, message boards, review sites, etc.

What should a business do?

1. Monitor your internet presence. Your protection begins with investigating what’s already out there. We recommend SocialMention or Trackur as programs to monitor the internet.
2. Get Proactive: the best defense is an offense. You should encourage your customers and friends to rate your business online. You should have at least 50 ratings. Over 150 positive ratings is the best protection, as any negative comments get buried beneath the avalanche of positive ones.
3. Get Reactive: ask a poster to change negative ratings. You can usually figure out who is responsible for the disapproving post. If not, just send them a message through the review site. If they won’t budge, ask review sites to verify the information or remove the comments. In 99% of cases, negative comments get removed.

You can learn from the world’s most successful businessman: protect your most valuable asset before you do any other type of marketing.