After releasing Episode 3 – The Importance Of Reviews I wanted to release a blog diving a bit more in detail about the subject from the different platforms in which your reviews can appear to the process I take in gaining you more reviews. Without the use of software to manage your reviews it can prove quite daunting, but not impossible if one is determined enough to set up each platform and follow up on reviews.
The benefit in utilizing software is consolidation of information and making it easier for a client to leave a review. That being said let’s get into some of the various review websites that I currently manage while keeping in mind that there are more out there, but I try and cover all the main ones. At the bottom of this blog I will include a complete list of U.S. Based review platforms that I cover (I do maintain a few in Australia and the UK as well).
Firstly, let’s talk about the major players in reviews which is two fold. At the top of our list is always Google, Yahoo!, and Yelp. These are all well known platforms that clients and customers alike are aware of immediately upon mentioning the names. When I say this is two fold I mean that there are other major players in the game now in the form of Social Media. According to Statista.com 72.4% of North America (not just the U.S.) uses Facebook alone which is currently the king of Social Media platforms. That means a good portion of the country may be checking your Facebook page and/or reviews before making their purchasing decisions.
With the above statistics in mind I would categorize Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn as major review contributors as well. In addition I would likely consider Yellow Pages online directory a fairly large contributor because of the trust some have for Yellow Pages in general even if they were not aware of the platform in an online sense.
I would definitely recommend that you maintain accounts on each of these platforms. That’s 8 platforms and quite a bit of work to setup, maintain, and request for people to review your business on. You may be gathering reviews on these services as we speak, but there are ways you can increase the frequency of reviews left, the number left on various platforms, and the quality of reviews given that we will go over here in a moment.
As I stated before I will add a list of all the review platforms I cover at the bottom, so feel free to utilize this list to locate and create accounts on those platforms. You may want to create a separate email to manage these platforms as they all have various notifications that you may not want to mix up in your everyday work email. Sometimes you may even have to claim a location when creating an account if the public has already left reviews related to your business. There is quite a bit you can do on these various platforms like add a profile picture, phone number, hours of operation, and more. These will all help customers recognize your business via the online profile so it is highly recommended that you fill out as much as you can.
Now that you have your various accounts setup and have properly fixed your notifications to keep track of what is going on in these platforms it’s time to get more reviews. The best way to get reviews is simply to ask! There are of course various ways to ask for reviews and one of the most obvious is just to verbally ask or mention that you would appreciate an online review to whatever platform you wish. Another method is to print out stickers, cards, sheets of paper, or really anything requesting that someone leave you a review.
Don’t forget to specify which platforms you are looking for reviews on or the platforms you happen to be on in general to help people with the process. A few more methods include adding a request for reviews to your email signature so everyday correspondence can gain you reviews, create an email campaign through a service such as MailChimp where you can upload emails to send requests to, sending hand-written holiday cards or thank you cards, sending other forms of “snail mail” to request a review, or adding a request and links to your website.
Once the reviews begin pouring in you really want to answer those reviews whether they are good or bad, but especially if they are bad. If you reply to a 1-star rating with apologies and offers to rectify the situation then other people see that you are trying to fix the issue and may disregard the 1-star rating. Also you may be able to salvage your relationship with that one customer which could get the rating changed or just help you retain the customer while coming across as a reasonable business to those looking through reviews.
It is very very important for you to respond to negative reviews with tact as you do not want to push other customers away in the process. Think about how you would like to be treated by a company even if you may have been in the wrong regarding the situation. Really take to heart the old saying “treat others as you would like to be treated” when dealing with responses to reviews.
Aside from the major review contributors there are quite a few industry specific review platforms such as WeddingWire.com CarGurus.com and more that may benefit your business because they specifically relate to your products or services. I definitely recommend looking into the list I have below and doing a bit of research yourself to find which industry specific platforms you should be a part of. While this may not be a “mainstream” form of reviews it very well may be for your industry.
For example, I know for a fact WeddingWire and TheKnot are fantastic places for Wedding service reviews. If you’re in that industry and not on these platforms you are severely hurting yourself in the marketplace. My wife used both wedding review platforms to do research on the venue, entertainment, flowers, and food. I also happen to represent an entertainment company that does work with weddings.
Everything I have described here is congruent with the way I run my review management service although I have invested in software for me to manage multiple accounts and grow multiple businesses reviews as I do run a marketing agency. Manually doing this can be a full-time job and if you find yourself bogged down or just not enjoying the process at all I will definitely be here to help you along the way.
I will be implementing a Review Management page on this website within the next week to provide more information and pricing to all my visitors, so if this is something you’re interested in then please reach out to me via the contact form or even the listed phone number so we can talk about increasing the number of 5-star reviews your business has across multiple platforms.
I hope this information has helped and would appreciate any feedback or questions you may have about reviews here in the comment section or even directly through my contact form. Thanks again and keep plugging away at your digital marketing journey!
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Internet marketing includes a variety of different services, from social media to search engine optimization and UX design. No matter which online marketing services you choose, they all require the same foundation: a high quality website. However, many Internet marketing services will keep your business in the dark when it comes to showing you the techniques involved in your organization’s online success. I believe in shining light on the techniques I use to help your organization get ahead of the game. You can guarantee I will be transparent in my process and that I’ll take the time to make sure you understand what I’m doing and why.
As a business owner, you should know that building a website is just the first step in any internet marketing plan. If you actually want to drive traffic to your site, build a vibrant brand image, and generate leads, then you’re going to need something more. I believe in taking a mindful and metrics-based approach to online marketing challenges. As an internet marketing consultant, I believe in the power of data-based practices. That’s why I focus on Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound approaches (S.M.A.R.T.). Through my series of blogs, podcasts, and videos I’m going to talk about how you can also follow these practices.
While you can create these in almost any order I’m going to recommend you follow this path in order:
There are other options and services you might be interested in, but if you’re covering all of these bases then you should be covering the core of your digital marketing journey. If a business had no digital marketing at all then I would begin their journey in the order described above. By starting with the website, which will take some time, I am ensuring that I can learn as much as possible about the business and really develop the brand. Sometimes creating a website will also uncover other issues with branding such as a weak logo, bad color scheme, or inconsistencies in general with branding. After bringing everything together into a website it’s much easier to put together Social Media platforms and do further keyword research for both PPC campaigns and SEO.
There are 1.3 billion websites online and counting. With all of the noise and competition in the online space, creating a powerful online presence can be an intimidating task. Whether your business operates primarily online or offline, you should know that simply building a website isn’t enough to get your business the attention it needs to survive. In the new digital world, only the most powerful online marketing and premium websites will survive. There are quite a few builders out there that can assist you in building a website that will work great for your small business, but it’s important to keep improving upon the website as your first attempt will likely need some tweaking to really function and convert customers like you want.
Your organization’s website is one of the most important investments you’ll make. This is because your website reflects back on your business. Premium websites that are professionally designed and user-friendly will always win out over flashy, home-brew websites. More than that, your business needs a website that is engineered from the source code up to convert leads. You should use branding, content management, programming, professional web design, and search marketing techniques to give your organization the best online presence possible.
There are quite a few different Social Media platforms and new ones being created as we speak. Each platform specializes in different things that allow them to stand-out from their competitors. Facebook has been king for quite some time and I wouldn’t rule it out in the future as continuing to be king. That being said there are different platforms such as LinkedIn that focus more on B2B or professional lives of their users. Take some time and really consider what Social Media platforms would be best for your business and also how to use them. Below is a short list of Social Media platforms I put together.
Of course there are quite a few more that may be useful to you, but this can be entirely dependent upon what industry you are in. For example TikTok, formerly Musical.ly, can benefit many different artists or even businesses that involves music. Gary Vaynerchuk actually had an example in his book Crushing It that involved the owner of a children’s camp using TikTok to show herself and her kids singing songs and performing music videos through the app to push the musical side of their camp. When other children in the area hear about what their friends are a part of and they are also already on TikTok they will want to be part of the camp to take part in the fun. This is only one example of the power of Social Media. Once again do a bit more research into various platforms, don’t be afraid to test new ones, and decide how your business should utilize the platforms.
I’ll dive more into specific platforms in later blogs, but I wanted to give a bit of information on my process and the importance of doing proper planning as well as research. We’ll also get into SEO, PPC, and more as more content flows in. Hope this helped and you’re enjoying the posts!
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Occasionally I’ll run across an individual that asks me one specific question or just puts it in the form of a statement. That question or statement generally sounds like this: “Do you really need a website today? I mean I have a Facebook” or “I don’t need a website”. Generally the people saying these things have limited knowledge about Digital Marketing and that’s ok! I’m assuming that may even be why some people are reading this blog. I want to address this mentality by explaining how I view Social Media, Websites, and an entire Digital Marketing process. There are quite a few aspects to Digital Marketing and all of them work together to accomplish the same overall goal of getting your brand, message, products, and services out there to the general public. Let’s dive in to a little bit more detail by talking about websites and how I believe they function best.
Generally speaking your website is an online representation of your business just as your brick and mortar location is a physical representation of your business. If you wouldn’t have trash laying around, broken signs, or various other issues plaguing your businesses physical location why would you want a subpar website representing your business? You don’t want the website to load slow, images to look bad, content to contain errors, or the design to be off putting.
The above issues would be the equivalent of your physical location having broken light bulbs, holes in the wall, a falling sign, or just being generally dirty. No one wants to go to a hole in the wall location and no one will want to use a crappy website. If you’re already wanting to create a website then that is great, but please take the time and effort to do it properly or to hire someone that can do it properly.
Now you might ask why cant your Social Media be an online representation of your business. Of course your Social Media pages will represent you, but think about how you use Social Media personally when you happen to be on it. How often do you find yourself looking deeply into one businesses page on Facebook unless that is your only option? Do you surf every post by one business to see what they are doing or check Facebook to find out store hours, pricing, or other pertinent information?
You may do these things on occasion, but for the majority of people we simply “Google” the name of the business or our question in general. This is especially true when we see an ad for something. About half of the time we do a Google search for the business to check its legitimacy.
Sometimes depending on where you are searching from if a Facebook page is the first thing to pop up I bet you’ll scroll a bit on the first search results page to see if you can find a website. Why do you think that is? Personally I believe it’s because you know that if there is a website then it most likely will have the answer to the question you have and if the website is good then it will be more easier for you than checking the Social Media page.
I like to think of my Website as a hub for all that is my business. I can write these blogs that people may refer to or read through, post new projects I’m working on, update my contact information, change my store hours, or update photos and imagery all in one convenient place where everyone knows they can find that information. Another key thing you may want your website to do, depending upon your business model, is convert potential clients into real clients.
There are various ways to achieve conversion goals with Calls To Action (CTA) like a 50% deal with a button leading consumers to where they can move forward with the deal. You can also just share information, which is what I mainly focus on. By sharing my knowledge I am giving away FREE information, but willing to bet that in the end most people want to focus on their business and specifically the parts they love.
I am a web developer and marketer…I could buy special paper for my printer and print my own business stickers, but they won’t be anywhere close in quality to what my friends at Sticker Shark can do. It will also cut into my precious time to learn how to do all that. Time that would be better used writing these blogs, taking a programming course, looking at analytics, designing websites, managing Google Ads accounts, or tweaking SEO for a client.
All in all I answer people that question the need for a website by asking them what they currently use as representation for their business online. That will determine where I go with the conversation next. Sometimes a person has no online presence, sometimes they just have a Google My Business page, or sometimes they rely on Social Media. For those with no online presence I first ask why they do not have one and if they know that they can expand their business by having a digital presence.
Often times people just don’t want to learn something new or deal with the hassle of it all, but if they knew how simple it could be and how much profit could be made then they may change their tune a bit. If someone tells me they have a Google My Business page I ask how often they receive questions about their business via phone, email, or in person.
You would be surprised at how much time answering questions takes and people will always ask you questions even if you have a fantastic web presence, but the more information you have out there about your business the less “dumb” questions you will get like “when do you close?” or “do you have that in blue?”.
For those relying just on Social Media I point out that most people, when searching for new businesses to go to, will simply Google a simple question like “food near me” or “massage therapists in McDonough, GA”. Your Facebook page may pop up, but I’m willing to bet the person searching will choose websites to look at first as it will provide more targeted information. I’ll also point out that Social Media should have a very different goal that works with your website to complete the digital marketing plan.
I don’t want to get too long winded with this so I’ll stop here and I’m sure you may even have more questions like “well what is my Social Media for then?” but that’s a different subject for another blog! Stay tuned and I hope you’re enjoying my thoughts and information.
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