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Sep 16, 2026 Joe Ballard

Event Recap: Reviews and Reputation Management: Building Trust, Visibility & Growth

Past Event: Reviews and Reputation Management: Building Trust, Visibility & Growth

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By Joe Ballard | September 16, 2026 at StartingBlock Madison

Presented by Caroline During of KennedyC

Early in her talk, Caroline During looked around the room at StartingBlock and made a safe bet: nearly everyone there had read online reviews before buying something or choosing a business. Nobody argued. Reviews are how most of us decide, and at September’s Social Media Breakfast, During made the case that they now shape something bigger than a buyer’s gut feeling. They decide whether a business shows up in search at all, and increasingly, whether an AI assistant recommends it.

During is a digital marketing coordinator at KennedyC, where she optimizes business listings across a long list of platforms and manages reviews and reputation for clients. Her message was practical from start to finish: earn reviews on purpose, keep listings consistent everywhere, respond to everything, and understand that AI is now reading all of it.

Your Reputation Exists Whether You Manage It or Not

Most businesses already have online profiles, claimed or not, and customers are reading them either way. During framed those profiles as a digital storefront. A potential customer wants hours, photos, services and honest accounts of other people’s experiences in one place, often without ever clicking through to the website. The personal detail in a review is exactly what a company website can’t provide.

Three qualities matter: quantity, quality and recency. The numbers she shared made the stakes concrete. Listings averaging four and a half stars can see up to three times the click through rate of other local listings. Roughly 95 percent of consumers check reviews before purchasing. Ten to twenty authentic reviews over 90 days signals recency to search algorithms and large language models. And publicly responding to 75 to 100 percent of reviews can lift conversion from listing views to inquiries while building trust. Consistency beats bursts: ten great reviews in a single day tells an algorithm less than a steady stream over months.

The shift that framed the whole morning came from BrightLocal’s February 2026 consumer survey: generative AI tools have become the third most popular source of business recommendations, behind Google and Facebook, and they are gaining fast.

How to Earn Better Reviews

During’s process starts before anyone asks for anything. Identify the right customers, those with a recent positive experience or repeat purchases. Then ask inside the right window, ideally 24 to 72 hours after service for a service business. The ask can happen in person, by text or by email, but it has to remove every obstacle: direct links to the review page, a short personal message, and an automatic follow up for anyone who missed the first note. Anything that reads like a machine wrote it will get ignored.

She also coached the room on what to encourage customers to include. Search engines and AI reward reviews that are specific, experience based and written in natural language, including location and service details. Her example, pulled from ChatGPT, was a phone review noting the battery lasts almost two full days but low light photos come out grainy. That is the nitty gritty shoppers actually want, and it is what AI surfaces.

Some platforms need a different approach. Yelp prohibits soliciting reviews, so an email campaign can’t link there, but a “Find us on Yelp” window sign is fair game, and Yelp will even provide one. Her favorite tool was the QR code, and Google makes it free: the Ask for Reviews section of a Google Business Profile generates a link straight to the review page, ready to post by a register or pull up on a phone. As one attendee noted, you can’t offer gifts or discounts in exchange for reviews. Making it easy is the incentive.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Platform

Google is the biggest player, but During was emphatic that it can’t be the only one. Different platforms reach different people. Google has the broadest audience and is often where the final decision happens. Yelp serves people who deliberately seek out review platforms and is especially strong for restaurants, home services and beauty. Bing reaches Windows users across the Microsoft ecosystem.

The bigger reason is where AI gets its information. ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot pull from Bing Places for Business, so she recommended setting up the weekly sync that imports a Google Business Profile into Bing, a five second task that keeps both current without doing the work twice. Bing and Apple Maps pull reviews directly from Yelp. Yelp now runs its own conversational AI assistant and recently partnered with OpenAI to give ChatGPT access to its reviews, photos and business information. Even a business whose Yelp page gets little direct traffic is showing up through Yelp in places its customers do look.

The listing fundamentals tie it together. Keep name, address and phone number consistent everywhere, along with hours and website links. Choose the most relevant primary and secondary categories, using competitors’ choices as a guide. Keep services, descriptions and products current, add location specific photos regularly, and fill in every field. Inconsistent information confuses customers and gives AI systems less reason to trust you.

Respond to Everything, Especially the Hard Ones

Reputation management goes beyond replying to reviews. During described it as social listening: knowing what customers are saying so you can get ahead of problems instead of reacting to a crisis.

Positive reviews deserve real replies. Thank the customer, reference something specific they mentioned, and keep it conversational. Even the blank five star reviews should get varied responses, because future customers notice copy and paste.

Negative reviews are where businesses win or lose trust. A one star review is often emotional, and the common instinct, a defensive reply, escalates things in public. Her process: acknowledge the reviewer and thank them, apologize for the experience without admitting legal liability (“We’re sorry your experience did not meet your expectations”), clarify facts where appropriate, and offer a direct phone number or email to continue privately. Then follow through, and follow up if you don’t hear back. Handled well, customers often update their own reviews, and the reply itself shows every future reader how the business treats people.

From the Q&A

Several questions came from people living with these problems every day. On Google reviews that vanish and sometimes reappear, During and a KennedyC colleague pointed to a wave of Google Business Profile bugs, including disappearing reviews, failed user invites and products removed at random. Their fix: screenshot reviews ahead of time, submit a Google support ticket with the evidence, and subscribe to industry newsletters like Search Engine Journal to hear about widespread bugs early. They have had strong success getting reviews reinstated that way.

A home based service business owner asked how to handle photos with no storefront to show. Her answer: show yourself at work and showcase completed projects you can share publicly. Photos of every kind strengthen a profile, and Google recently added photo view counts, a sign of how much weight it now puts on them.

Another attendee described an industry that avoids Yelp because of its advertising tactics. During acknowledged the frustration and argued for keeping the listing optimized anyway, since Yelp data now flows into Bing, Apple Maps and ChatGPT whether a business likes it or not.

Three Takeaways

Ask at the right time and make it effortless. Keep every listing accurate and consistent, well beyond Google. Respond to every review as if future customers are reading, because they are, and so is AI.

Tyler Wagner closed the morning with a homework assignment in the same spirit: leave a review for this month’s sponsors, and make it specific. Name the coffee you drank and where you drank it. That is the kind of review that helps.

Watch the Presentation


View the slides Reviews and Reputation Management_ Building Trust, Visibility & Growth.

Nonprofit Spotlight: Camp Creatability

This month we welcomed Camp Creatability, which provides arts programming for kids, teens and adults with autism and other disabilities. Amanda joined us to share upcoming events, including a Gallery Night showcase, and the organization is actively looking for volunteers.

Connect with them at:

Thank You to Our Sponsors

A huge thank you to StartingBlock Madison, our venue and host, and to True Coffee Roasters for keeping the room caffeinated. Thanks to Bryant from VEDUB Media, our longtime photography sponsor, who also produces company and training videos for businesses. Thanks to Ethical Trade Co. for the gift card giveaway, and to the UW Madison Creative Futures Lab for donating a free conference ticket. And thank you to our creative partners and in kind sponsors who make these mornings possible: Melissa Carlson Creative, Suttle-Straus, Serendipity Labs and Talent CPA.

Coming Up

  • Register for upcoming events at smbmad.org, and join our Facebook group to ask marketing questions between events.
  • Creative Futures Lab Industry Conference: September 29 at UW Madison. The new campus lab’s first conference focuses on the impact of AI on creative work, with more than 20 speakers from across the country. SMBMad attendees received a discount code bringing admission to $100, including lunch and a drink ticket for the evening social hour.
  • Madison Social Media Marketing Awards — nominations are open now, voting takes place in September, and winners will be revealed October 21 at Serendipity Labs. Know someone crushing it on social or in their newsletter? Nominate them.
  • Snowflake Soirée: date to be announced.
  • Speak in 2027 — we’re building next year’s roster. If you’re an expert in social or digital marketing, connect with us.
  • Join the board or volunteer — we’re actively looking for event and volunteer coordinators, content writers, and sponsors.

Register for upcoming events at smbmad.org, and join our Facebook group to ask marketing questions between events.