Incorporating Reviews Into Your Social Media Strategy

It is critical that you understand the important role that reviews play in the success of your social strategy and in your business in general. More and more, nowadays, people are reading reviews before they make any purchasing decision of any kind.

Following the process

There are several things that have to occur between the first meeting to the point where one person is ready to buy what the other one is selling. The two people need to build their relationship together, which includes building trust, credibility, and trustworthiness. Once the relationship is on solid ground, the person who is in the position of possibly buying something will most likely still want to find out what other people have experienced with those products and/or services. It is often the case that several people are willing to share their opinions about what they have purchased. Those reviews are very helpful and they go a long way in building more credibility and success for the business owner. The truth is that the word of one consumer to another holds a lot more water than the word of the business owner does when it comes to his or her own products.

Ratings and reviews are very powerful tools when it comes to the business owner’s ability to eventually sell what he or she is offering. The most ineffective thing to do when it comes to selling success is to give anyone the hard sell. If you want to sell something successfully, the best way to do it is to get someone else to do it because they have already gone through the process.

How to go about using the tools to your advantage

It is one thing for a business owner to receive a positive rating or review on his or her products and/or services but it is another thing altogether to take those ratings and reviews and integrate them fully into the social marketing strategy. You, as a business owner, need to understand how much potential selling power you are actually holding in your hands. You just need to learn how to leverage it properly. Those ratings and reviews should be used on a broad scale (through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media channels that work for you and on which you are active) and you should share them as frequently as you feel is appropriate.

If you wish to multiply the value of the ratings and reviews that you receive for your offerings, you need to find a way to incorporate them into your social marketing strategy on a broad basis. The question that you may be asking now is how you go about accomplishing that.

• Make sure that everything is in order: It is critical that you manage your content properly and that you organize your reviews in a logical and simple manner.

• Engage with your people: You will find that most of the reviews that people write about your products and/or services are positive and it is important to attempt to continue the relationship. Timing is everything in that situation. You must reach out to the person who has been kind enough to make the effort to write a review. Waiting is not an option. You must try to re-engage those people and you will see that the relationship will become strong and enduring.

• Pay close attention to the analytics: Once you have started to gather reviews, your next move is to apply analytics to those reviews and ratings. You should be monitoring specific aspects of the feedback. You have the power to optimize the information that people send to you.

Conclusion

Reviews and ratings are a critical part of your business’s success because they have credibility that is independent of you. You don’t have control over what other people are saying about your offerings. If they say positive things, it is because they want to. They don’t need any other incentive to do so. You should also consider ways to show your gratitude for the positive review (after the fact), such as by offering a promotion, discount, Ebook or white paper, which will all be valuable.