Reviews are, quite simply, essential for continued success and local business growth. They provide potential leads with written and external evidence about the quality of a business’ services.

It’s all well and good having an effective marketing strategy developed, informing consumers all about what you can offer and add to their lives. But, without reviews, your business will appear illegitimate to browsers – and your marketing efforts will be largely wasted.

When searching for a service/product online, we are all guilty of going straight to the reviews to see what other people say before deciding whether to part with our pennies.

For this reason, a business must build up its online reputation by devising and implementing a review acquisition and reputation management strategy. This essentially refers to how a company encourages reviews, their platforms to receive them, and how they respond to reviews.

To help you out, we look at how to identify people online from whom you would have a high chance of receiving a review and how to decide which review platforms to use.

Identifying valuable potential reviewers

Let’s start by identifying the right people you want to review your business’ product/service. If your local business deals with customers face-to-face, you likely have those loyal customers who return repeatedly and always leave happy with your level of customer service.

However, even today, not everyone is tech-savvy or has the time/patience to create an account online to leave a review. On top of this, review filters can filter out reviews left by one-off users of review platforms – annoying, we know. Google prefers to consider and showcase reviews left by people with regularly active Google+ or Yelp profiles.

Don’t let this stop you from encouraging your customers face-to-face to leave reviews, though, as the volume of reviews and review diversity are also essential in rankings!

Luckily, there are certain types of people out there who are more inclined to leave reviews. Understandably, though, they won’t always come to you, so it is up to you to find these people and get in touch!

How to find these reviews

How do you find these people amid the massive World Wide Web? There are a few simple methods. First, every central review platform will have elite accounts for your market in your more expansive area. For example, there will likely be a person near you who is the port of call for Google My Business (GMB) and Yelp – these people may be known as community managers or local representatives. To find these people near you, search for site:plus.google.com or title:” Google Local”.

You should consider which representative(s) are most relevant to your business in terms of their location and industry and identify their Twitter accounts. If the local representatives near you are irrelevant to your industry, this method may not work as effectively, so take the time to research.

Note:

The follower list of the Twitter accounts is a great place to start for discovering some active reviewers. If people are busy on a review site, they are likely to follow the closest representative to them for that given site. There is no harm in getting in touch with these people – you could offer them a deal for your product/service, hoping it will prompt some feedback!

Next, you should familiarise yourself with the precious online software Followerwonk, particularly its ‘compare users’ tool. You can compare the follower list of three Twitter handles, allowing you to identify any accounts that intersect and follow all three successfully. To get the absolute most out of this handy feature, we recommend comparing one or two of the previously identified review site representatives with your own handle or your competitors. This way, you can quickly pinpoint the people who would likely leave you a review!

“What now?” – you may be thinking. The next step is to connect with these people and try to build relationships. Before you can receive the reviews, you will need to provide the people with your service/product. If you do this effectively in a friendly yet professional manner, you will have reviews flooding in.

Identifying valuable review platforms

It is a common misconception that because businesses want to rank on Google search results, all their reviews should be left on Google itself (specifically Google My Business – GMB). However, this is not the case.

Google welcomes and actively encourages review diversity. As the saying goes, don’t put all your eggs in one basket – you are setting yourself up to fail. Having diverse reviews across several sites would be much more beneficial for your rankings than only having thoughts placed on one platform.

We recommend setting up profiles for your business on all the leading general review platforms, such as Google+, Yelp, CitySearch and Yahoo. Google likes strong brands, so your reviews will likely be considered legitimate if placed on these sites. Another benefit of accepting reviews on all major sites is that many allow the syndication of reviews across sites. For example, CitySearch syncs reviews with many other places – so you can ‘trick’ Google into thinking you have more reviews and improve your rankings! It’s a win-win.

As well as using all the major review platforms online, you should research and identify more relevant and specific sites. Google loves industry-focused review sites… and we are all striving to give Google what it wants. Choosing the right review platform(s) depends mainly on your business’ industry. Searching your ‘industry keyword_reviews’ is one way to identify some relevant sites. You can also look at the GMB listings of your competitors – their ‘more reviews’ section may signal which sites they use and which Google likes.

Top tip:

Whilst it is essential to spread your reviews across both general and industry-focused review sites, you should also share incoming positive thoughts on your site and social media accounts to give them a boost! This will benefit your rankings and showcase to people the excellent service you provide, hopefully increasing your conversion rates.

How can Bigfoot help?

Hopefully, you now feel more clued up on identifying the suitable types of people for leaving reviews and understand the importance of using multiple review platforms. To avoid bombarding you with information, stay tuned to receive more check-top tips – next time, the focus will be on acquiring reviews and responding to them effectively.

For further help and advice, please get in touch with Bigfoot today.

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