Reputation Management

How to Conduct a Monthly Reputation Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide for Executives

Your brand is being discussed across search results, social media, review sites, and AI platforms — whether you are monitoring it or not. A monthly reputation audit ensures you know exactly what stakeholders see when they look for you.

Team Legendary

— 4 min read

Why Monthly Reputation Audits Matter

In a hyper-connected digital environment, a solid reputation is not merely desirable — it is essential for business continuity, investor confidence, and talent acquisition. A single piece of negative content, an unflattering AI response, or a misleading search result can erode trust that took years to build.

The challenge for executives is that reputation shifts often happen gradually. A negative article climbs search rankings over weeks. A former employee's Glassdoor review accumulates upvotes over months. An AI platform's description of your company changes subtly as it ingests new training data. Without regular audits, these shifts go undetected until they reach a tipping point.

A structured monthly reputation audit takes approximately 90 minutes and provides a clear picture of your organization's reputation health across the surfaces that matter most.

Step 1: Search Engine Audit (20 Minutes)

Begin by searching your organization's name, your personal name, and key executive names on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. For each search, document the first three pages of results.

What to look for:

  • Position of owned properties: Where do your website, LinkedIn profile, and social accounts appear? Ideally, you control the majority of the first page.
  • Negative or inaccurate content: Articles, forum posts, or review site results that contain negative, misleading, or outdated information about your organization.
  • Competitor content: Are competitors appearing in search results for your brand name? This may indicate that your owned content is underperforming.
  • Wikipedia: If you have a Wikipedia article, check its accuracy and currency. Wikipedia results almost always appear on the first page and carry significant authority.

Pay attention to Google's autocomplete suggestions and "People also ask" boxes when you type your brand name. These reflect what people are actually searching for — and they directly influence perception. If negative terms appear in autocomplete alongside your brand name, that is a problem worth addressing.

Step 2: AI Platform Audit (20 Minutes)

This is the newest and most frequently overlooked component of a reputation audit. Query each of the major AI platforms with questions your stakeholders are likely to ask:

  • ChatGPT: "Tell me about [your company]" / "What do people think about [your company]?"
  • Claude: "What is [your company] known for?" / "Is [your company] reputable?"
  • Gemini: "Describe [your company]" / "How does [your company] compare to [competitor]?"
  • Perplexity: "What are the reviews of [your company]?" / "Who are the key people at [your company]?"

Document each response. Note whether the information is accurate, current, and complete. AI responses change over time as platforms ingest new data, so tracking these responses monthly reveals trends that one-time checks miss.

Legendary Labs' AI Visibility Audit automates this process, systematically querying AI platforms and scoring your brand's visibility, accuracy, and sentiment across each one.

Step 3: Review Platform Audit (15 Minutes)

Check all relevant review platforms for new reviews and rating changes:

  • Google Business Profile: New reviews, overall rating, response status
  • Glassdoor: Employee reviews, company rating, CEO approval
  • Industry-specific platforms: G2, Capterra, Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, Clutch, or whichever platforms are relevant to your industry
  • Better Business Bureau: Complaints and rating status

For each new review, note whether it has been acknowledged and responded to. Unresponded negative reviews signal indifference to both current and potential customers.

Step 4: Social Media Audit (15 Minutes)

Review your brand's presence across key social platforms:

  • Twitter/X: Search your brand name and key executive names. Note any negative threads, viral mentions, or emerging conversations.
  • LinkedIn: Check company page engagement, executive profile visibility, and any discussions mentioning your brand.
  • Reddit: Search your brand name across relevant subreddits. Reddit threads rank highly in search results and frequently surface in AI responses.

Focus on outliers — unusual spikes in mentions, negative sentiment from influential accounts, or emerging topics that could affect your reputation in coming weeks.

Step 5: Content and Visibility Assessment (15 Minutes)

Evaluate your owned content's performance:

  • Blog and website traffic: Are your key pages gaining or losing visibility?
  • Content gaps: Are there topics related to your brand that others are publishing about but you are not? Content gaps create vacuum spaces that competitors, critics, or AI platforms fill with their own narratives.
  • Structured data: Is your Organization schema, FAQ markup, and other structured data still rendering correctly? Use Google's Rich Results Test to verify.

Step 6: Compile and Act (15 Minutes)

Consolidate your findings into a one-page summary:

  • Green: Areas where your reputation is strong and well-controlled
  • Yellow: Areas showing early warning signs or gradual deterioration
  • Red: Issues requiring immediate attention

Assign owners to each yellow and red item with a clear timeline for resolution. The most valuable reputation audits are those that drive action — not those that produce impressive-looking reports that sit unread.

Making Reputation Audits Sustainable

The biggest challenge with monthly reputation audits is consistency. Executives and communications teams are busy, and reputation audits often fall off the calendar when urgent business demands arise — precisely when they are most needed.

Two strategies for maintaining consistency:

  1. Automate what you can: Tools like Legendary Labs' AI Visibility Audit automate the AI platform monitoring component. Google Alerts, social listening platforms, and review monitoring tools automate other components.
  2. Calendar it: Block 90 minutes on the first business day of each month. Treat it as a non-negotiable operational check, not an optional exercise.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a monthly reputation audit take?

A structured monthly audit takes approximately 90 minutes when following a consistent framework. The first audit may take longer as you establish baselines and identify the platforms most relevant to your organization.

Who should conduct the reputation audit?

Ideally, a senior communications or marketing professional who understands the business context well enough to distinguish between noise and genuine reputation signals. For executives who want to stay personally informed, a condensed version focused on search results and AI platform responses takes approximately 30 minutes.

What should I do if I discover a serious reputation issue during an audit?

The response depends on the severity and type of issue. For inaccurate content, pursue correction through the publishing platform's editorial process. For negative but accurate content, develop a content strategy to provide balance in search results and AI responses. For active threats — viral social media situations, emerging media investigations — activate your crisis response protocol immediately. Legendary Labs provides crisis management guidance for organizations facing active reputation threats.

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