6 Ways Social Media Helps You Get Organic Reviews From Your Audience
You’ll find a lot of instructions online on how you can use the internet to boost your business. Many resources online teach you how to increase your social media presence and visibility using a blog.
It’s common knowledge that customers are the heart of every business.
You’re only as good as your customer’s opinion about you.
Reviews are also a vital factor in gauging what strengths you need to play up and what weaknesses to improve on.
What better avenue to get good reviews than social media?
Here are six ways social media helps you get reviews from real people online.
1. Establishing your credibility
Photo by glennseiden56 on Flickr
Being visible on many social networks plays up your credibility. The more that people hear about you, the bigger the chances of piquing their interest.
What you need to do:
- Create and maintain accounts on as many popular social media sites as possible
- Make sure your social channels adequately express your business’ face and personality
- Offer your customers a one-of-a-kind experience they won’t get anywhere else
How this helps your gain reviews from social media:
Brightlocal’s studies show that positive reviews make 74% of consumers trust a business more.
Ensure your company is credible and reliable 100% of the time. This is the best way to ensure you get positive reviews. Especially on your social medial accounts.
2. Strengthening your reputation
Photo by CraigTaylor74 on Flickr
People will be more inclined to check your business out if you have a good online reputation.
Always remember that it takes years to build a solid reputation but one misstep can topple it all down.
What you need to do:
- Build trust and transparency between you and your audience.
- Increase your online visibility. Post updates and interact with your customers on a regular basis
- Whenever you promise something to your customers, make sure to deliver
- Acknowledge and thank good reviews. Do the same for bad reviews, but more importantly, ask what you can do to improve their experience.
How this helps you gain reviews from social media:
Most people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Cultivating good reviews and deescalating bad ones raises your reputation. Excellent reputation equals good business.
You’ll find that people will actually be happy to leave positive reviews based on a company’s good reputation.
3. Engaging with your customers
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Talking to your customers is still the best way to better understand and serve them.
Their demographic info, product and service preferences, pain points, and even personal quirks. These are things that you can use to determine your audience.
Aside from that, most people decide whether or not they want to buy your goods or services based on what other people say about them.
What you need to do:
- Reply to comments and messages as soon as possible
- Recognize and thank your customers and followers for giving you a review
- Act on their feedback and suggestions immediately
How this helps you gain reviews from social media:
According to Gartner, the dissatisfaction stemming from failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15 percent increase in churn rate for existing customers.
On the other hand, when you’re more responsive and engaged towards your followers and customers, it illicits the opposite response.
You can then expect people to leave good reviews for you. The key is to make them feel that warm human connection.
By a long shot, this beats feeling like you’re talking to a faceless automaton hell-bent on just making money.
4. Recognizing good customer feedback
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Everyone loves recognition. For hard work. For a job well done. For practically anything.
People appreciate it as well when you make them feel that their opinions matter.
What you need to do:
- As soon as you can, thank people who give you awesome feedback
- Creating chances for your fans to voice out ignites customer loyalty. Examples are polls, surveys, and public opinion questions.
- More than just copy-pasting into your status box, spice up their comments. Turning them into shareable visuals, for example, is a good way to catch peoples’ eyes.
How this helps you gain reviews from social media:
People who leave reviews on social media tend to come back to see how the business or other people reacted to their comment.
Especially if they’ve had a good experience with you, seeing that you recognize them magnifies that feeling of satisfaction.
This is how loyal customers are created.
With a bit of luck, they might even turn out to be the kind that rush to your defense in case of negative reviews.
Recognize satisfied customers. It might just be the push you need to turn those negative reviews around.
5. Sourcing blog content
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
More often than not, people who have not yet experienced doing business with you will judge you based on your blog content.
Their opinions about you will be likely based on how engaging or informative your blog is. Your blog, after all, is a huge extension of your website and, more importantly, your business.
But what about if you’re not getting enough traffic to generate an opinion from your readers?
That’s where social media comes in.
What you need to do:
- Always read through comments on your social media posts. Find the usual or common pain points. Use those as discussion points on your next blog post. Offer ways to deal with the problems.
- Hot topics on social media are also an excellent way to grab the attention of readers. Scour social networks for current trending topics. Find a way to connect those with your blog content.
How this helps you gain reviews from social media:
The number of bloggers online grow exponentially on a daily basis. That includes business bloggers.
That means, every day you’re fighting with hundreds of thousands of bloggers for netizen attention.
Also, a Hootsuite survey conducted in 2016 determined that more than 4 out of 5 Americans own at least one social media account.
That’s millions of people that you can lead to your blog using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
Give them content that resonates with them. Content that they can use. Topics that they can relate to. Do that and you can expect good reviews for your business within the day.
6. Connecting with industry influencers
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SocialMediaToday.com touts the benefits of working with influencers with excellent online reputation. It gives you credibility, expands your reach and allows for cross-promotion.
- Find the right kind of influencers. Choose those who already have a strong reputation online.
- Connect with influencers whose interests reflect your own goals and business model.
- Establish lasting relationships. Getting endorsements from them will go a long way in boosting your reputation online.
How this helps you gain reviews from social media:
Influencers ideally have more social media followers and a bigger online presence than you.
Aligning yourself together with an influencer brings with it a connection to not merely their followers. It also introduces you to their followers’ followers.
A huge part of those netizens may be sufficiently intrigued to check you out based on the recommendation of influencers.
Good reviews can lead to more good reviews.
Conclusion
Reviews have the potential to make or break your business. In essence, that’s the very reason never to neglect customer feedback and opinions.
If played right, reviews can do more than just increase your traffic and sales. They increase your rankings and help ensure that you remain relevant in your field.
Reviews are tantamount to allowing your customers to market your products and services for you.
In that case, always do everything you can to make sure that you get good ones.
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