Customers are reviewing you right now. Are you in on the conversation?

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online reviews for local businessOnline reviews are critical for brand awareness.

While you might not be engaging in online advertising or even have a website, that doesn’t necessarily that people aren’t already reviewing your brand online.

Online review websites like Yelp and gri.pe do a fantastic job of taking rating power away from the domain of media or industry professionals and putting it in squarely in the hands of the customer.

Use online reviews – whether good or bad – as the starting point of a conversation between you and your customers. Be savvy enough to lead the conversation rather than having the conversation lead you.

Anatomy of an Online Review You Never Even Knew You Had

Google Places unclaimed listing

A Google search for ‘Pizza Chicago’ resulted in the following Google Places local listing.

1. Google Places has already found 142 reviews for this specific pizza business.

2. There are GOOD reviews…

3. And there are BAD reviews…

4. The listing has not yet been claimed by the owner.

The most interesting thing about this Google Places listing is that it has not even been claimed by the owner yet. In other words, the owner probably has no idea about what’s being said about this business online.

What they MUST do:

(A) Claim their listing
(B) Join in on the conversation that’s already taking place about their brand
(C) Reach out to the reviewers. Acknowledge them and thank them for their reviews – both good and bad.

The business should do everything in its power to highlight to its online customers and potential customers everything it’s doing right – in accordance with the positive reviews. But it should also acknowledge the bad reviews and reviewers and view these candid conversations as clear examples of how the business could be made better.

Foster the Conversation

Nobody likes it when an individual commandeers a conversation and turns a dialog into a monologue.

So instead of trying to ‘control’ the online conversation about your brand, just try to make that conversation easier for your customers to take part in. Provide your customers with the correct information about your business to ensure they can post the most intelligent, objective reviews possible.

For example, if you have a computer handy at your location, ask your customers for an online review right on the spot. Offer them a discount on their purchase in return.

Even if this costs you $5 each time, that’s ok. For $500 you could have the most reviewed, most trusted and subsequently most-frequented business in your local area. Money well spent!

People generally like to give positive feedback – if you do a great job AND you provide people with an easy and obvious means to do so.

Have you ever been surprised by a review about your business that you came across online? Do you have a strategy to make it easy for customers to provide you with a review? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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We're currently taking our new film around to festivals, and have been fortunate enough to receive great "customer feedback" from the audience as they leave the theater. Using flip cams and final cut pro, we weaved these "customer testimonials" into a new promo video. Our feeling is that any business could be standing by with a flip cam or iPhone to snag comments from happy customers. Here's how our first video turned out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ASvW40rE8

Maybe a helpful addition to the great ideas above.

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We're currently taking our new film around to festivals, and have been fortunate enough to receive great "customer feedback" from the audience as they leave the theater. Using flip cams and final cut pro, we weaved these "customer testimonials" into a new promo video. Our feeling is that any business could be standing by with a flip cam or iPhone to snag comments from happy customers. Here's how our first video turned out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ASvW40rE8

Maybe a helpful addition to the great ideas above.

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As someone who helps our clients manage their brands online, how seriously should I take gri.pe or should I wait and see what the acceptance is. Are you seeing a lot of traction on this service? Thanks!

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That one is tricky. On one hand there's a very negative ora around sites like Gripe. Users are only there to complain, and it will be difficult (and depressing) for companies to focus on that as a customer service/engagement channel.

That said, if adoption does pick up and you start seeing your company there - it is a chance to make an unhappy customer a happy one, which I always suggest.

It takes a special type to seek out a place online to complain about a business. That type is going to take much more effort to deal with.

I think users will gravitate more unbiased public opinion forums like Yelp, but who knows - some people love to gripe.

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Honestly Paul i think you're better off trying to get people to review on the spot. The trick with that is how you utilize "Real-World" social media branding. Putting Yelp or Foursquare stickers near your POS or on the door. Rather than giving someone something they can lose on the way home, suggest to your client that they offer an incentive for reviews ont he spot. Esp. with Video Stores where it's likely that people at the store are in a "buying mood" you're likely to get a good reaction on review websites for using tactics like this. Just a thought...

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We will try to do this for a video store client of ours. We're going to give out little tear sheets with FB on them and a simple request to come to our review tab and review the store.

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Reviews are an awesome way to improve your rank on Google Places. This seems to be even more important now that Google places is such a dominant presence on the search results page. I had 27 reviews, but Google lost 24 of them about a month ago. Hopefully it will find them again. Google had also lost them for a week last summer and they eventually came back.

We had considered setting up a laptop at work for people to leave reviews. One concern we had was that Google might notice that all the reviews were coming from the same IP address and asume they were faked. The other was the logistics of getting people to form accounts to leave the reviews. Our staff can be busy and it takes time. Starting in the new year we will be sending out a monthly electronic newsletter. It would be very easy to include a link for readers to leave a review on review sights. Have any readers tried this?

Thanks for the great blog post!
Dr.J
http://www.purechiro.ca

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  1. Tweets that mention Customers are reviewing you right now. Are you in on the conversation? | Sprout Social: Insights, Sprout Social Insights Sample -- Topsy.com says:
    December 1, 2010 at 3:21 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sean Smith, SproutSocial Blog. SproutSocial Blog said: Customers are reviewing you right now. Are you in on the conversation? ► http://bit.ly/YoureBeingREVIEWED [...]

  2. Tweets that mention Customers are reviewing you right now. Are you in on the conversation? | Sprout Social: Insights, Sprout Social Insights Sample -- Topsy.com says:
    December 10, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Conner Galway, Michelle Sargent. Michelle Sargent said: Customers are reviewing you right now. Are you in on the conversation? http://bit.ly/fpynzs /via @Sprout_Insights @Kineser [...]

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