Boost Your Visibility with Customer Review Sites
Have you been avoiding using review sites? At first blush, it is understandable. If you give people ideas about leaving you a review, it’s just as easy for a disgruntled customer to leave a one-star complaint as it is for a happy customer to rave about you. However, it’s time to stop hiding from the review site scene. Avoiding review sites is like avoiding driving a car in favor of a horse and buggy, believing that you can be more seriously injured in an accident with a car. Yes, you can get hurt, but you’ll also get to where you’re going ten times faster. Similar to driving a horse and buggy on a highway, you can also get hurt by the fast moving traffic while you hold on to an old style of transportation. A business trying to avoid review sites will get passed by other businesses who have learned to navigate those sites. Review sites are here to stay. Learn to pay attention to them and leverage their use.
Places to leave reviews on the internet abound, so to boost your visibility with reviews, start out considering several that are most relevant to your brand. If you are an attorney, it is a good idea to claim and optimize a listing on the Avvo directory. If you’re a musician, reviews on iTunes will be excellent. Don’t miss out on other major sites where it would be of benefit to be seen, such as Yelp, Angie’s List, Epinions, and Amazon. Claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing is indispensable in terms of SEO value. Some sites that deal in reviews and ratings encourage you to upgrade to a paid ad or listing. That decision is up to you, but consider that often maintaining a simple presence there and encouraging reviews goes a long way.
The next step is to get the word out. Don’t beg or browbeat for reviews, and don’t give clients suggested text to use. The key is to make all the ways someone can leave a review abundantly clear, provide a great product or service, and then encourage feedback, in their own words, from the people who care about what you do. Getting creative could be a boon for positive reviews. One great example is the eWebResults Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast, which does a terrific job in each episode of letting listeners know how to find them, where to chat about them on social media, and they even create a contest involving the information on how leave a review. However you do it, keep the links to your review sites visible and readily available. Parlay reviews into fresh content on your website for added value.
So fear not! Yes, it is possible that someone may leave a fake or negative review, but many more are likely to leave real reviews that lend credibility to your business. Give them that opportunity. In a 2015 Nielsen poll, 66% of respondents said they trust consumer opinions posted online. This statistic alone is reason enough. Get in the fast lane and get visible with review sites!
