How To Boost Pos­i­tive On­line Re­views For Your Business

The suc­cess or fail­ure of a busi­ness is sig­nif­i­cantly af­fected by cus­tomer reviews.

If the re­views are good, the rep­u­ta­tion, mar­ket share, and rev­enues of the busi­ness will all im­prove. It’s very likely that on­line cus­tomer re­views are among the first things cus­tomers read about your company.

Thus get­ting pos­i­tive re­views is es­sen­tial – and there are a few dif­fer­ent ways of achiev­ing this.

Key Web­sites

To start with, com­pa­nies should make sure that on­line re­views can be posted where po­ten­tial fu­ture cus­tomers can see them. That may mean al­low­ing com­ments on prod­ucts and ser­vices pages of your company’s own web­site. It also means es­tab­lish­ing a pres­ence on heav­ily traf­ficked sites like LinkedIn, Face­book, and Yelp.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most re­spected sites for busi­ness pro­files, re­views, and rec­om­men­da­tions. When you post in­for­ma­tion about your com­pany there, you raise its pro­file amongst search en­gines. This draws at­ten­tion from con­sumers brows­ing for the goods and ser­vices you offer.

You can con­vert those con­sumers to cus­tomers if the re­views they see on LinkedIn are good. One way to do that is by post­ing good re­views of other com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als. The site op­er­ates on the ba­sis of mu­tual ben­e­fit: if your com­pany posts pos­i­tive re­views of oth­ers, it will very likely get pos­i­tive re­views in response.

Sta­tis­ti­cally, the rate of re­turn tends to be about 50%, so if you post two dozen pos­i­tive re­views you can ex­pect at least a dozen back.

Each one you get will help your busi­ness, so pur­su­ing this strat­egy is def­i­nitely worth your time. Of course it is not wise to help your com­pe­ti­tion with pos­i­tive re­views but you can al­ways co­op­er­ate with your busi­ness part­ners in this.

Face­book

Cur­rently, Face­book is one of the most vis­ited sites on the web, with an es­ti­mated bil­lion users world­wide. If your com­pany gets pos­i­tive on­line re­views there, they will be seen by many peo­ple and the company’s im­age will be elevated.

Face­book is very con­tent dri­ven. Be­cause of this, the page you set up for your com­pany there should have lots of con­tent for peo­ple to com­ment on. This can in­clude flat­ter­ing pic­tures of your prod­ucts, your company’s suc­cess sto­ries or any­thing re­lated to your industry.

For ex­am­ple, if your busi­ness just got a new deal that puts one of your prod­ucts in an ad­di­tional store, post on your Face­book page about it. You will be telling cus­tomers that it is now even more con­ve­nient to get what your busi­ness of­fers. Many of them will re­spond by post­ing pos­i­tive on­line reviews.

By post­ing that kind of con­tent reg­u­larly, you can be con­fi­dent of be­ing seen in the news­feeds of many peo­ple who are fans of your page. You can en­cour­age them to share the posts you make as well so their friends can see them.

Yelp

Yelp (which stands for “yel­low pages”) is an in­creas­ingly pop­u­lar site that fea­tures re­views of busi­nesses. It is the first place many peo­ple go to if they want to know about a business’s reputation.

Con­sumers will visit Yelp, search for the kind of busi­ness they’re in­ter­ested in, and read the on­line re­views for each one. If the re­views for your busi­ness are good, you’ll get new customer.

Like with LinkedIn, a key to get­ting good on­line re­views at Yelp is by giv­ing them. Other busi­nesses will be grate­ful for pos­i­tive re­views from you, and will pro­vide them for your com­pany. It is worth ded­i­cat­ing the time to, since the more pos­i­tive on­line re­views you get, the more new cus­tomers you will have.

En­cour­ag­ing Cus­tomer Reviews

With LinkedIn, Face­book, Yelp, and other sites, it is im­por­tant to get your reg­u­lar cus­tomers to com­ment. This will in­crease the sheer vol­ume of re­views, rais­ing your company’s pro­file and mak­ing it more no­tice­able than the com­pe­ti­tion. One way of do­ing this is to ask them about your key prod­ucts and ser­vices in up­dates. If you have your own web­store, you also have to en­cour­age your cus­tomers there to write a re­view. The best thing to do this is af­ter checkout.

Once you have a con­sumer data­base, you can also send your re­quests via email. A typ­i­cal ap­proach is to email cur­rent cus­tomers ask­ing them to com­ment at spe­cific sites, and in­clud­ing a link to those sites. If you fol­low up with a re­minder email a few days later, that will sig­nif­i­cantly im­prove your chances of get­ting more on­line reviews.

Of course you have to be pre­pared for get­ting neg­a­tive re­views too. Be­cause Face­book, Yelp and other so­cial fo­rums are pub­lic, you can’t hide the neg­a­tive voices from your cus­tomers. You should al­ways lis­ten to these and try to help them with their prob­lems con­cern­ing your busi­ness. This is not al­ways easy to do, but an­swer­ing your cus­tomers’ con­cerns and ques­tions will also help you in achiev­ing a pos­i­tive im­age in so­cial media.