Why do online reviews matter?

You already know that online reviews are feedback left by past customers on websites, but why should you even pay attention to them? There are hundreds of reasons why online reviews make a powerful online marketing tool. Most important of all is customer relationship management. Client satisfaction is the cornerstone of the success of any business venture regardless of its size.

Before online reviews there were testimonials, an affidavit of a business’s quality of service.  In today’s fast paced internet world most people (91%) regularly or occasionally read online reviews. Online reviews have become the new word-of-mouth communication tool for customers among each other.

Search engines that cater to these very same customers have noticed how much emphasis users place on reviews. Therefore, they have enacted algorithm changes to the way they present search results to favor better reviewed websites. Online reviews are invaluable to Search Engine Optimization, especially to small businesses.

Top 5 best online review websites

If you are a small local business, like Webtivity!, you don’t have a huge amount of resources to begin with. Let your friendly local web design marketing company make mastering your online reviews game a whole lot easier. Here is a list of the top five online review websites you should be focusing most of your efforts on:

• Google – Head on over to Google My Business and claim your profile if you haven’t already done so. Google the biggest search engine on earth now includes your business’s ranking within search engine result pages.
• Facebook – Facebook has its own review section for your business’s Facebook page. This ranking is now included in the Google Business Pack as well.
• Yelp – Yelp is the next contender. It receives over 145 million unique visitors on a monthly basis!
• Yellow Pages – This old classic is still favored by millions as their go-to business research landing page. This fact does not look to be changing, as they are position themselves as an online marketing service provider.
• Bing Places – Microsoft’s answer to Google My Business this powerful review engine is not to be ignored. This is the second most popular search engine after Google, and yes, it does indeed include ratings as part of its rankings calculation.

How can I ask customers to leave online reviews?

You understand how important online reviews are to your local business’s success, but how do you get or encourage clients to leave those reviews? There are several ways to encourage clients to leave reviews.

The easiest approach is after a sale is made or a service is provided. This is when the customer has your business fresh in their minds; they understand the benefit your business has provided so they are more likely to make the effort to leave a review. Strike while the iron is hot so to speak.

To acquire reviews indirectly, businesses have employed feedback cards, QR codes, emails, and even phone calls to encourage clients to leave reviews. When suggesting to a client to leave a review, remember to focus on one or two of the major sites we previously mentioned where you need reviews the most.

How do I track online reviews?

Now that your business has started receiving reviews how do you keep track of all the various review sites? There are various solutions out there but they cost money. If you currently have a search engine optimization partner managing your digital marketing efforts, give Webtivity a look (hint shameless plug).

If you are more of the do-it-yourself kind of person, look into setting up a Google Alert on your branded name. For example for us that would be “Webtivity Marketing and Designs”.  You’ll be notified any time your business is mentioned online.

Another nifty online tool for review management is Social Mention. They will track a variety of social media platforms for mentions of your branded name as mentioned above. It is free and it allows you to set up email alerts for specific keywords.

It bears mentioning that none of these tools beat regular manual checking of your listings on the review sites we mentioned earlier.

How do I handle negative reviews?

Just like positive reviews, you should strive to respond to each and every negative review. There are several guidelines you should follow however to ensure you do not make an already bad situation worse. You will only serve to alienate the customer and anyone else who reads that review.

Do not write anything argumentative or even defensive. Instead seek to resolve the customer’s issue as fast and as directly as possible. Reach out with a message offering to help solve the difficulty this client had with your product or service.

If the issue is resolved, ask the client to update their review, most happy clients will. If they do not respond your response should act as a great signal to potential customers that you care about client satisfaction.

Finally, bury negative reviews with positive ones. Redouble your efforts to acquire more reviews to balance out the negative reviews. Most clients looking for reviews will only pay attention to the final business review standing.

3 biggest mistakes small businesses make with online reviews

• Not being responsive – The easiest way to lose potential clients, and subsequently search engine rankings, is by not being responsive to your online review platforms. Strive to have a 100% score on thanking all reviewers, as well as asking them for more feedback. In other words, reviews represent a unique opportunity to directly engage your clientele.
• Combative responses – Even worse than being non-responsive, is responding in a negative and combative manner. This signals to users that whoever is managing this business is not a mature individual. A lack of tact can ruin any business.
• Self or fraudulent reviews – This is the biggest no-no since no-nos were invented. You should never engage in this unethical practice. Review platforms have gotten sophisticated enough to be able to track false reviews. This earns a negative mark for your business and sinks your already floundering reputation even lower.

If I leave you with one thing…

Engage, engage, and engage. Please do not disregard the online review marketplace as a non-issue in your marketing efforts. Make sure your business is taking advantage of this free source of direct client to business engagement opportunity.

If you are ready to make the first step give us a call at (941) 753-7574 or schedule a quick conversation with Tim!

For more facts about online reviews check out this awesome infrographic from our friends over at invespcro:

Infographic by- Invesp

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Every so often I check my Facebook settings to make sure they didn’t surreptitiously change my privacy settings.  Last night I checked my “Nearby Friends” setting to make sure I’m not sharing my current location to hundreds of people I don’t really know.  It was turned off.  Good! 

Except, wait a minute…  Near the bottom of the screen was a message that said: “100 friends are sharing their location with you” with thumbnails of a few friend’s profile pictures.    Looking at the profile pictures I instantly recognized many of them.  Some are likely sharing their location on purpose.  Some I’m pretty sure are unknowingly sharing their location.  If you want to double check your Nearby Friends setting read on.

Follow the instructions below to turn Nearby Friends on or off on an iPhone or Android (Android displayed below but instructions are the same):
1.  Tap More 

2.  Tap Nearby Friends

3.  Tap 

4.  In the Nearby Friends section slide to Off

If you do want to share your location but only with a select group of friends, you’ll need to log into Facebook on your laptop or desktop to create a custom Friends group.  Follow the instructions below:

1.  Go to your News Feed (easiest way to get there is to click on the Home button near the top right.) 

2.  Go the Friends section in the left column and hover your mouse over the word Friends.  A “More” option will pop up; click on it. 

3.  You will now see your current Lists.  You can either assign friends to an existing list that you want to use for Nearby Friends, or click on “Create List” to make a new one that you will use exclusively for this purpose.

4.  Now you can go to your phone, select the list you just created, and turn on Nearby Friends to share your location with that list of Friends.

There you go!  You now know how to turn off Facebook Nearby Friends or at least use it more responsibly. 

Good luck!

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Business owners are constantly bombarded with marketing messages from companies in our industry:

“#1 Google Rankings Guaranteed!”
“5000 Facebook Followers in a Week!”
“Get Rid of Negative Reviews!”

Yelp released a PSA to their business owners warning of reputation management companies who claim to work with Yelp to perform services such as removing negative reviews, boost ratings, etc.   We get these same SPAM emails, and we also get phone calls from people claiming to be with Google.  Not because they really think we need their help, but because they are blanketing the world with their scams in hopes to find those consumers still looking for the magic pill to solve all their marketing pains.  Think about your marketing solutions like this:  Remember those burn-fat-at-nite pills didn’t work for you, but exercise and a smart diet did?  Your marketing solutions are going to present themselves in the exact same way.  Fads will waste your time and money, but dedication and strategic planning will begin to solve your daily business challenges.

The content of the Yelp PSA is below for your reading enjoyment:

Important Public Service Announcement
Darnell Holloway, Business Outreach

We’ve recently seen several new reports about “reputation management” companies that claim to work with Yelp to remove your negative reviews, recommend certain reviews, or otherwise boost your ratings for a fee (of course!). If you’re wondering how these companies can make good on this offer, the answer is simple: they can’t. Consumer trust is our top concern, so businesses can’t pay Yelp or any third party to alter or remove their reviews. It’s also worth noting that brazen attempts to manipulate ratings and reviews on Yelp could result in a Consumer Alert being placed on your business profile.

If you’ve been contacted by someone offering something along these lines, we’d love to get the details so we can prevent them from preying on others. Please use this form to loop us in. For general questions, contact our user support team at www.yelp.com/contact.

Finally, as we’ve said in the past, the best strategy for reputation management is to provide great customer service and respond diplomatically to your reviewers.

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I love spam.  Not in the sense of actually loving it because really I HATE it.  (I’m using the word “hate” here, as Melvin Udall said.)  But I love it because it gives me so many topics to blog about and show our clients why the crap people are selling you on the internet is just that:  Crap. 

Take the spam message we received on our Facebook company page (see image below.)  People are still selling Facebook Likes, which means people are still buying them.  If consumers would wise up and stop buying this guff do you know how much spam would instantly go away?!  As long as there’s money to be made these people will still continue to fill your inbox with spam!

So why is buying Facebook Likes bad for your company and your Facebook page?

The Likers will never buy from you and will never be loyal to your brand
If the new Likes are generated by real people, those people are likely located in third world countries and made a nickel or a dime to Like your Facebook page.  They will never purchase anything from you, never have anything constructive to contribute to your Facebook page, and will never share your brand with a potential customer.  Even worse, the Like may have been generated by a bot, and as far as I know bots don’t have any buying power yet. (Yet.)

You won’t have those Likers for long
In 2012 Facebook announced they were taking extensive steps to weed out fake accounts and fake Likes.  The process is automated of course, so not only have companies seen fake Likes go away, they’ve also seen some legit ones scrubbed too.

Your Facebook page will still look like a ghost town
If your Likes are fake, people aren’t going to comment on and share your content.  When people comment on and share your content it helps to boost your message and get it in front of more people, and also helps your SEO.  

Facebook Promotions to fake Likers
If you plan on promoting your posts you’re going to pay to promote those posts to fake Likers.  Talk about throwing good money after bad!!

So just like absolutely everything else in the internet marketing industry, shortcuts will yield you fake short-term gains and absolutely no long-term payoff.  If a company is selling you tricks and sleight of hand it’s not because they care about your company, it’s because they are trying to make money off of you.  Any solid marketing company will be up front with you that marketing is honest, hard work and as long as you own your company you must be actively and effectively marketing if you want to thrive and grow.  It’s not as easy to sell that message but it’s just the way it is.

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In the headline-driven web and the bumper sticker world in which we live, misinformation is all around us.  Bloggers and news websites write candy-coated headlines to try to entice the all-important click to their website, and information consumers are so inundated with noise they don’t take the time to truly read any longer.  In the olden days (oh yeah I’m feeling old now) people would read the newspaper front to back.  It was their  daily source of written media and they would take the time to read it cover to cover.   Now we glance at our social media and blog feeds and scroll past tens and hundreds of messages per day all competing for our attention. 

As such bloggers and news sites have to write headlines that make you stop and click.  You’ll see things like “The Internet is Dead” and other bold headlines that make you go hmmm.  But then if you actually click through and read the story you’ll find toward the end of the story the writer may say something like, “So the internet isn’t REALLY dead, but…” and spin the story to fit the headline.  Sometimes I get mad when I actually get to the point of the story because I feel like I was duped into reading something that wasn’t really about the topic I thought it was in the first place.  Kind of like people who saw my title, “The Internet is Dead” and thought it may be some thought-provoking article from an internet marketing company about how our industry is dying.  (Sorry folks, but the internet is here to stay so you’d better learn how to leverage it for your business.)

Unfortunately these misleading headlines make it extremely difficult for information consumers to sort through the noise and make judgements as to whether the information they scan is accurate.  If our technology channels are molding a “scanning culture” I wonder how our children will fare in processing and learning new information?  People like me who grew up in the old-style media and is immersed in the new media understands what has happened.  That’s why when I see a ridiculous headline I immediately put my Skeptical Hat on and look for the angle in the story (after I actually read the whole story!)   If children grow up scanning and not fully reading, vetting and comprehending, what will they actually learn?  Does it change HOW they learn?  That’s for people smarter than me to figure out, but I am smart enough to know we’re doing our kids a disservice if we don’t teach them how to navigate this crazy world we’ve created for them.

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Over the past several months I’ve been unhappy about the new Facebook review feature they added, and many of my sentiments were outlined in this article released by ZDNet yesterday.  After having my feelings validated, I decided to write an article about our own experience with Facebook reviews.

What has amazed me over the past several months is that some of our competitors felt the need to go on our Facebook page and give us poor reviews to drive down our overall review score.  What’s funny is they didn’t check their settings to hide their identities when they posted their reviews.  That means other people can see they are going on their competitors’ Facebook pages and leaving bad reviews. 

I wonder how that makes them look in the eyes of their customers?

Because I have built many trust relationships over the years, some of the things our competitors have said about our company have gotten back to me.  Everything from “I heard they’re going out of business soon” to “they don’t use HTML5″.  These are tactics we never have used and never will use against our competitors.  Our staff have been trained that we never ‘bash the competition’.  Potential clients often ask the question, “tell me something bad about your competitors”.  Our staff are trained to reply with value statements about our company instead. 

Treat people the way you want to be treated.  Honesty is the best policy.  You get the same karma you give.

It’s my opinion that being ugly never pays off.  But I suppose in retrospect it is a high compliment to know our competitors are thinking about us and feel the need to attack us.  It must mean we’re doing something right.

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