Are you wondering how to get your customers to leave positive reviews? Not to worry! In this guide, we’ll go over how to encourage customers to write reviews.

Want to learn more? Keep reading to find out.

Ask Your Customers to Leave Reviews

This might seem like a standard tip, but a lot of businesses don’t ask their customers or clients to do this. You might buy a few things every day. Does every business ask you to leave a comment?

If you notice your customer is happy with your service or product, ask them to write a review. To help encourage this, you can ask them how their experience was during the service.

Once they have replied in a positive manner, you could ask them to post it on your Facebook page or review site. Most customers are happy to do so.

If you feel your customer is in a hurry, you can send them a thank you note or follow up email. Add the link to the review site below your note.

When you ask a client to do so right away, the experience is present in their mind. Most people will leave reviews once prompted.

If you are an online shop, make sure you send a follow-up email a week after. This way, your customers will get reminded to leave a note about the item they bought.

Only ask for reviews after you’ve heard from your customers that they had a positive experience.

Talk About the Importance of Reviews 

Explain to your customer why you’re asking them for a review. Their feedback can help encourage other customers to check out your business. Without positive reviews, people will assume your service or product is average.

Highlight Where Customers Can Leave Reviews 

If people head to your website or social media sites, make sure it’s clear where they can drop a review. This way, customers won’t get frustrated and decide not to comment.

You can add website badges for your Facebook, Yelp, or Amazon page. This way, customers can head over to read and write reviews.

Make sure your website’s optimized for mobile devices. This way, people who browse your website on their phone can read more about your business or service.

When customers come in who have left a review, ask them about their experience. Find out if it’s a straightforward process or if they had any suggestions.

Claim Online Listings

Don’t limit yourself to Facebook and Google but aim to use plenty of online listings. Your business will get a more significant online presence. Consumers will have an easier time finding out about your service and product.

There is the added benefit that customers will leave more reviews. A lot of people will look to Google for reviews. Yet, a large percent turn to TripAdvisor and Yelp for information. Google yelp reviews to find out more.

Provide Tokens of Appreciation

Depending on your business, you could offer a small discount when a customer leaves a review. When inviting the customer to leave a review, tell them that you will provide them with a reward.

Reward Your Employees

Teach your team about the importance of providing your customers with excellent service. Also, help them figure out a way to request reviews from customers. Teach them how important it is to ask for reviews.

You can create an incentive program. Employees could receive a cash bonus for the number of reviews they get each month. Decide on what bonus will make sense for your employees.

Reviews can have a major impact. Customers seek out information about your service before buying. Spend your marketing dollars in this area.

Highlight Positive Reviews

Whenever you receive a stellar review, post it on your website. Highlight the comment in an email message. Take a screenshot of the review as well. You can include the picture in videos, newsletters, and brochures.

Respond to Negative and Positive Reviews

A negative review can impact a potential customer’s perception of your business. Make sure you follow up with every negative review left on your social media or website.

If someone had a poor experience with an employee or product, thank them for their feedback. Apologize and work on a solution.

Aim to switch the negative experience to a positive one. If you’re able to do so, ask if you have permission to post about the resolution. You want to try and convert any negative reviews to a positive one right away.

Thank your positive reviewers for taking the time to share about their experience. The reviewer will note that you responded to their comments. This will encourage them to comment again in the future.

Stay Active on Social Media Platforms

Make sure your social media platforms are active and updated. Future customers and clients may come across your business and make a judgment. Aim to focus on popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

On your social media platforms, you can highlight your reviews between informational posts.

Something that a client said could encourage a new customer to seek out your services. By keeping your audience engaged online, you can increase your business’s presence.

Now You Know How to Get Positive Reviews

We hope you found this guide on positive reviews helpful. Train your employees to provide excellent service and invite customers to leave reviews.

Don’t forget to save our site. This way, you won’t miss any of our resources.

Customers are Buying Things Online

People are now buying online – a lot. In fact, research shows that 81 percent of consumers search for a product they’re interested in online before actually buying it. And 55 percent of purchases occur within an hour of a customer’s initial search. What does this mean? Well if you don’t have a website, you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers and a chance to increase your sales.

Purchasing is just one area of the internet that you should focus on. Keeping your customers happy with your product or service and gaining positive reviews is another important task. A survey has shown that 88 percent of consumers put their trust in the reviews of other people. So if you don’t have any reviews online about your product or service you could be losing potential buyers.

Social Media Marketing

90 percent of all marketers say that their business exposure has increased thanks to social media. At this point, it’s imperative for all businesses to have a strong social media presence. The reason – social media platforms are where customers are most active. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are all platforms where you can find your ideal customers and reach out to them with your offers.

One of the main benefits of using social media for marketing is that it can drive targeted traffic. With Facebook Ads, you can target specific customers based on age, demographics, and interests, etc. Another great benefit of social media marketing is that it can provide social proof to your audience which may increase your conversion rates. In simple terms, social proof means that people do what others do or they believe what others like to believe. You can use different activities on social media as social proof. For example, if someone comments on your Facebook posts praising the product of your company, you can use it. If someone tweets about your company, you can post it on your other social media platforms as social proof.

Final Thoughts

We can go on and on about the potential of the internet and social media and how important it is for your business. But, we’re sure you get the idea from what we’ve discussed already. In a nutshell, if you want to excel in the business landscape, it’s imperative that you get online, find the right internet plan for your business needs.

Use Hashtags

Using hashtags enable people to find you easily. To find out what hashtag to use, do research on the hashtags that other influencers are using. Besides, check out what hashtags are trending on the social media by going to the Trending category. On the social media, do a search on conversations that are concerning the niche. You can draw attention to your product by using the hashtag to create your own contest.

Schedule Your Social Media Posts

If you have no time to post every day, you can write the posts first and then use a scheduler to schedule the posts in advanced. Posting regularly on your social media is necessary if you want to have an account with a large following. If people see you stop posting for a while, they will quickly un-follow you. Scheduling ensures that you maintain consistency in your social media marketing effort.

Use Image in Your Social Media Posts

Image is the best tool for capturing attention from audience. You can check your analytics to track which image gets conversion from the audience. If you found an image with especially high clicks, you should post more of that type of images to get more engagement for your products. The images you include in your social media post should be high quality. Usually, there is a limit on the image size so make sure you resize it to the correct size. If you auto share your blog posts, it will be a good idea to include at least one image. In this way, all the post shared on the social media will feature the blog post image.

Use Videos to Capture Audience Attention

Video can help you to grab the attention of the audience faster. It is easier to consume the information in the video compared to reading a paragraph on the social media. The success of social media lies in the ability to capture audience attention and get the message across in a short span of time. Video fits in perfectly for this task. At the beginning of the video, make sure you include callouts so that the viewer know the message before turning their attention away.

Videos posted on the social media need to load fast – in this case, you will have to convert it into MP4. MP4 video is small compared to the standard AVCHD format which your video is stored in camcorder. You can open the video file in an avchd converter online program and convert it to MP4. When the Online Video Converter load, you simply drag the AVCHD file into the file drop zone and it will be loaded. Next, you navigate to the Video tab and search for MP4. After you found the MP4 format, select it and click the Convert button to convert it to the destination folder.

Regularly Update Your Social Media Account

You should try to be as regular as possible when coming to updating your social media account. It is recommended that you make at least 3 posts on different times throughout the day. You can vary your posting frequency, for example, today, you post 3 times and tomorrow, you post 5 times.

Be Active on Multiple Social Media Networks

Survey shows that more than 80% of marketers actively post on at least 4 networks. You can choose to be active on at least 2 social media. There are a few major social media networks and each one is designed for different business niches. If you are an educated professional, you can use LinkedIn as a place to promote your business. In LinkedIn, you get to list your academic backgrounds. You can use an image based social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram if you are into a business where you have a lot of nice pictures to show off.

Research shows that 96% of lawyers who participated in a study reported using social media. The most used LinkedIn and Facebook at 84% and 80%, respectively, while 59% used Twitter.

Simply put, if you’re not active on social media, you may soon fall behind your competition. Of course, it’s not enough to simply be on social media — you also need to stay up to date on it.

In light of the above, here’s a rundown on what’s new in social media for lawyers this year.

Let’s get started!

Facebook

Facebook’s algorithms are increasingly making it hard for companies, including law firms, to market themselves without paying a lot for this.

In other words, it’s difficult to generate posts in a manner that will give you the visibility necessary to draw prospects.

Still, some of the platform’s services related to paid advertising are extremely powerful and effective for attorneys in 2019.

In addition, you can still use Facebook this year to keep yourself in front of your colleagues and clients. By sharing posts about a continuing education course you’re teaching or a conference you’re attending, you paint yourself as an active and interesting person with whom people wouldn’t mind working.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another essential social media platform for attorneys, especially for business lawyers.

Considering that LinkedIn is so powerfully optimized in 2019, you can expect your law firm to be ranked high when someone searches for you online. So, it’s important that your LinkedIn page is carefully crafted.

LinkedIn is particularly valuable for lawyers who have business-to-business practices, or even for anyone who works as an appearance attorney on call. If you’re trying to network with other lawyers, LinkedIn is the marketing platform for you this year.

Twitter

Twitter has doubled its character limit for an individual post to 280 characters. This is now allowing for more detail in your posts, which you can use to your advantage.

In addition, in 2019, Twitter is allowing you to embed more videos — which includes live streams — images and articles than before.

What does all of this mean for you now? It means that Twitter messages no longer have to feel limiting. Your posts can be extremely effective if you have a strong following coupled with great hashtags.

How We Can Help with Social Media for Lawyers

In addition to providing the latest advice regarding social media for lawyers, we offer a wide range of search engine optimization, or SEO, tips for business owners in general.

For example, we explain what SEO means for local companies and the importance in 2019. We also offer advice for hiring SEO professionals.

In addition, you can find out through our site if your clients’ online reviews impact your SEO efforts.

Take a peek here to find out more about how you can use SEO and social media to draw more clients and thus strengthen your bottom line in 2019.

As an entrepreneur, these stats tell you one thing: online reviews can make or break your business. While positive reviews will improve your search engine ranking and keep sending customers to your business, negative reviews will do the exact opposite.

If your business has already racked up bad reviews, you need to act before it’s too late. Keep reading to learn how to deal with bad reviews and protect your business’ reputation.

Engage Review Monitoring Tools

There are many business rating and review platforms: Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, Glassdoor, Google Reviews, Facebook, just to name a few.

Your customers, employees (Smart Circle reviews on Indeed is a good example of workers airing their experiences), and literally anyone who knows your business can leave a review on any of these platforms. If you’re not paying attention, bad reviews can pile up unnoticed and gradually harm your business.

This is why you need to deploy a review monitoring tool. It’ll track mentions of your business on the web and let you know when someone has left a review. You can then take the necessary remediation step.

Issue a Quick Response

Online, especially on social networks, a small comment can quickly go viral. If the comment has a negative message about your product or business, your brand can suffer irreparable damage.

It’s for this reason you need to issue quick responses to bad reviews. Although about 52 percent of customers expect a business to respond to a negative review within a week, don’t take that long. Ideally, you should respond on the same day somebody posts a bad review.

If the platform allows you to post a response, take the opportunity to reach out to the reviewer and offer an appropriate explanation. This shows that you care about your customers and are willing to make things right.

That said, not all reviews warrant a quick reply. Some reviews might need you to investigate and gather facts before issuing a response.

Hire an Online Reputation Management Agency

As a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate. You probably no time to monitor your business’ online reviews and deal with the negative ones. And if time isn’t a problem, you might not have the expertise to put out the fires without creating new ones.

Here is where an online reputation management agency comes in handy.

Sure, it’ll cost you money to outsource the task, but you’ll rest assured knowing your business’ reputation is in the hands of the experts.

Plus, the return on investment is worth it. An agency will work to ensure your business attains a positive reputation, which is crucial for customer attraction and retention. Ultimately, you’ll make more sales and increase your profits.

Don’t Let Bad Reviews Get in the Way

Earning reviews is a necessary part of doing business in the digital age. However, bad reviews can hurt your brand and get in the way of customers who want to do business with you.

The good news is you can deal with them and mitigate their consequences, and we’ve just taught you how to pull it off.

Stay high on alert and don’t forget to explore our site for more SEO and social media insights.

When devising a social media marketing campaign, many marketers forget about social media search engine results. Here’s why social SEO is important.

You’ve been rocking your SEO campaign. Except, you’ve been neglecting your social media search engine connection in your campaign. Which means your campaign could be performing better.

Let’s put it in context: 72% of adult internet users are on Facebook. And if you’re not there too, you’re missing out on their business.

Here’s what social media SEO is, how it works, and how to incorporate it into your existing SEO strategy (plus a few potholes you should dodge along the way).

What is Social Media SEO?

First things first: what is social media SEO? It’s the thing that makes the social media search engine connection make sense.

It’s also what makes your social media sing.

You could be forgiven for being confused – Google used to give contradictory statements about how social media factored into their algorithm. These days, it’s a boon. It has something to do with how social media has evolved in the past several years.

Let’s break it down.

How It Works

Let’s be clear. Social media isn’t currently a direct ranking factor.

However, that doesn’t mean it has zero effect on your ranking. Actually, neglecting social media’s role in SEO is one of the biggest mistakes social media marketers make.

Content that performs well on social media – strong engagement, likes, and shares – correlates with content that performs well on websites and blogs. That is, content that performs well on one platform is likely to see similar engagement metrics on the other because it’s good quality content.

A good social media presence, combined with a good content marketing strategy, create strong brand awareness and engagement, which boosts your rankings.

Social Media and Search Engines

Nothing is ever simple, is it? Certainly not when we’re dealing with the social media search engine relationship.

So it pays to know what the benefits of social media are for your next SEO campaign. As we said, social media isn’t a ranking factor officially, but it can help boost your SEO rankings indirectly.

That’s because of how social media works. Many of the benefits of social media translate over into your SEO.

Links, Links, Links

Also known as the boon of any SEO campaign.

Let’s be real. You need links. Earning links is what you want – it allows you to gain multiple links from a single posting (SEO folks call that angels singing).

But unless you’re a big site with tons of traffic, it’s hard to earn links.

Unless, of course, you’ve got social media.

Think of it this way. You have x friends on Facebook, y followers on Instagram, etc. They all have their own list of people who friend and follow them.

If your content sees traffic on social media, it has a higher probability of reaching more eyes – and being cited by other websites.

Et voila. Link earning.

Front of Mind

How often do you check Pinterest? Or YouTube? Or Instagram?

Probably more than you’re willing to admit. But you’ll notice something.

The successful social accounts post often, which means you’ll usually see them when you log on. Depending on the platform, many will post several times a day.

Guess what you get as a result?

Every time you log on, you remember them.

So not only does your business get frequent user traffic from social media, it keeps you front of mind with your customers.

Brand Authority

It’s not just brand awareness.

Frequent production of high-quality social media content establishes your brand as an authority in your area while it familiarizes your followers with your brand, style, and products.

Of course, people are more wary of false information on the internet in general and social media in particular. That shouldn’t be a deterrent – if anything, it should be your cue to make sure you’re producing quality content every time you post.

And if you’re playing your cards right, there’s a fair chance that the next time your followers do a search that’s relevant to your product, they may even search you.

Things to Know About Social Media SEO

Ready to jump down the social media search engine rabbit hole?

Hold your horses. You need to know a few ground rules first. It’s not as easy jumping into a pool.

You also probably have a few assumptions about social media SEO that are frankly inaccurate. Those will hurt you in the long run if you’re not careful – or just hold you back from making your social media campaign that much better.

Here are three things you need to know about social media before you start to incorporate it into your SEO campaign.

Social Links Aren’t Guaranteed

We said earlier that link earning is one of the big pluses of taking a leap of faith into the social media search engine rabbit hole.

Thing is, those links aren’t guaranteed. Not even a little bit (if they are, or someone is

guaranteeing them, there’s a fair chance of something shady going on up in here. Don’t do it.)

There’s also a chance that the links won’t boost your rank. Wait, what?

That’s because the quality of those links matters more than the quantity of them – you’re always better off with five backlinks from reputable sites than ten backlinks from questionable sites.

Take your time, make good content, and use content marketing best practices to earn those links you have. Patience, as they say, is a virtue.

The Social Media Search Engine – Social is a Search Engine Too

Fun fact: you should actually be considering a social media search engine as, well, an actual search engine. Because there are more search engines out there than Google.

In fact, YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the web.

Profiles Rank Too

Social media might not directly impact your spot in the rankings, but it can directly change the content that shows up in that ranking.

In fact, social media profiles rank just as much as your business website or blog.

Why does this matter to you, way down there in the social media search engine hidey-hole?

Because social media channels aren’t just another office cubicle. They’re often the place where your company can show personality before a viewer takes one look at your website.

And if potential customers have fun getting to know you, there’s a much better chance they’re going to buy from you.

Making Social Media Work for You

It’s not just a matter of handing over the keys to your Adwords management. Although that does tend to make your life easier.

You need to make sure what you’re doing on this social media search engine deep dive. Here are three things to get you started.

Optimize Your Posts

It’s a strategy that relies on available pre-existing content, but it has the benefit of opening you up to another avenue of search. Fun fact: Google will sometimes feature popular social media posts in the first few SERP slots.

More avenues of search are always a good idea in the social media search engine rabbit hole.

The easiest way to do this is by using your standard SEO best practices on your posts. We’re talking strategic (not obnoxious) keywords, links to great content, and, of course, great post content.

Influencing Social Sharing

Need brand authority? Enter stage right: social sharing.

It’s just another way to give Google a clue that your site is an authority on your subject area, whatever that may be.

The best way to go about this is to target it directly. Give your followers an incentive to like, share, retweet and comment on your posts – like, say, a promotion.

It rapidly becomes a self-perpetuating cycle – the more people share your posts, the more people can see, like, and reshare your posts. You get new followers, more traffic and, if you’ve done it right, more business.

It all comes back to quality content.

Encourage External Inbound Links

And, finally, our old friend in this social media search engine journey: links.

If you’re doing your social media right (with great content, frequent posts, and good SEO practices) it encourages more external sites to share and link to your content.

Know what happens when they link to your content? Authority in the eyes of the almighty Google.

Like we said earlier, there are no link guarantees. You’re going to have to do your time and pay your dues – in the form of consistently creating useful, engaging content that’s worth sharing and linking.

Rock Your SEO (and Your Social Media)

Think you’ve made sense of this whole social media search engine thing?

Great. Let’s make it even better.

Check out our blog for all kinds of useful information to bring your social media SEO to the next level, like this post on the four errors that can damage your company Facebook page or this post on planning for your first Facebook ad.

If you have a question we haven’t answered, head on over to our contact page to let us know. Or, if you’re a writer, come write that answer for us.

With the tight overhead that your franchise probably has, it might be hard to spend 35% of your marketing budget on digital like other small businesses. Franchise companies sometimes also have to abide by guidelines that restrict the kinds of marketing campaigns that other companies are able to implement. That’s one of the reasons that SEO is so vital for franchises.

Franchise companies need to take a different approach to SEO than other local businesses. It’s not enough to turn customers onto your brand. You need to make sure you get people working on your specific franchise.

Tackling SEO for your company requires flexibility different than local or national SEO. Here are 10 tips for implementing strong SEO for franchise companies.

1. Know The Right Local Keywords

Have you ever noticed that if you type “pizza” into Google, you’ll get results that are relevant to your area? It’s not magic. Search engines use your user account, past searches, and stored browser data to match where you’re searching from with local results.

Depending on the kind of franchise you have, you could be competing with other franchises in your city. In order to make sure you have a strong foundation for your business, use local keywords that mention neighborhoods and geographic markers.

You might also have different terminology for your area. If you’re running an ice cream shop, you need to know if people in your area will be searching online for “jimmies” or “sprinkles”. Make sure you’re thinking like a customer of franchise companies like yours and you’ll build a strong local following for your brand.

2. Have Two Keyword Lists

Franchise companies need to have multiple keyword lists.

You have a strong brand with products and services that customers will be searching for. You need to ensure that when customers are searching for services like yours, they find your brand easily.

You’ll also need a keyword list to catch all of the people searching from your region. While your brand might come up high on the list, you need to make sure your franchise is the number one hit in your location.

If your brand comes up first for “carpet cleaning services”, you need to make sure your franchise comes up first for “carpet cleaning services in beverly hills”.

3. Unique Listings

Owners of multiple locations in franchise companies need to have unique, verified listings. When it comes to using Google My Business, Yahoo! Local, or Yelp, just typing in your brand name could result in unhelpful information.

You need to make sure every location and every branch of your franchise has its own page. This way, clients and customers have options to and can build a relationship with the location that’s closest to them.

4. Manage Your Reviews

Find a clever way to capture email addresses from your clients. Reach out to your most dedicated customers and ask them for reviews on your site of choice.

Offer an incentive for visiting your location and showing off their review on Yelp, Angie’s List, or Google. You should be building up your reviews even if you’ve just opened your location.

The more positive reviews you can gather at the opening of your franchise, the easier it will be to balance out negative reviews later. A one-star review against a single five-star review will put you below 3 and could ruin your reputation.

Check out HealthyYou vending reviews for more tips on how to manage your reviews.

5. Separate Franchise Pages, One URL

When franchise companies create separate websites for every single franchise location, it can be confusing to a customer. Products or services offered at BrandXMiami.com could be different than what’s offered at BrandXNorthMiami.com.

This will lead to customer confusion and a loss of trust from your customers. If you can’t hold a consistent site with a clear definition of what each branch offers, how can I trust your products or services.

Create one central site with separate pages for each franchise location.

6. Unique Social Media Accounts

Your franchises should have unique social media accounts for every location. If one of your locations isn’t doing as well as the others, you can offer a special promotion to drive traffic to that location.

If one of your locations has an electrical problem and needs to close, you can direct customers to the other locations. And if a staff member at one location upsets a customer, driving them to post on Facebook, you won’t see an impact at every location.

Show off the personality of each one of your franchises with separate social media accounts.

7. Run Different Cross Promotions

Having separate accounts and identities for different locations allows you to cross promote with nearby businesses. Every social media account should be following the businesses closest in proximity to your location. You can comment on one another’s posts and find ways to complement each other’s services.

Get your heads together and see if you can run some promotions to create a rising tide to lift all boats.

8. Create A Blog for Each Location

Put the power back into the hands of the people working at each franchise location. Find out who some of the more talented writers are working at each franchise and allow them to shine.

Give them some direction and let them produce great content that will also help to drive traffic. Ensure that they use your most important keywords, promote their posts on social media, and attack SEO from every angle.

9. Be Mobile First

As mobile usage surpasses desktop browsing, you need to find ways to integrate into the apps and tools that your customers use the most. Your site needs to be optimized for mobile viewing or your services will look outdated.

If you have an app, find ways to connect to your customers’ social media apps for an integrated experience.

10. Consolidate Efforts

Make sure every one of your franchises is in contact with the others. Avoid running duplicate campaigns or promotions. And if one branch is focusing on a particular service or product, have the other branches focus on another.

Franchise Companies Can See Big Returns on SEO

If you manage your online presence carefully, you can get more returns from SEO than you would from a TV or radio campaign. Find ways to do things differently than your competition and you’ll be able to stand out in ways that customers will appreciate.

If you’re ready to make your next move in digital marketing, contact us for how to start implementing this strategy.

This was the worst experience I’ve had in Casper.  The Bourbon Chicken gave me travelers dysentery, and I willingly eat street vendor food in Peru, Mexico and Nicaragua and have never gotten this sick.  The point is, I know world class bad food and this is in the top 2 or 3 in el mundo!  The steaks looked OK, but I never got there.
The Chinese was aged, the Italian looked Chef Boy Ardee like, and getting ill on first dish was my only saving grace.  The chocolate fondue had berries and marshmallows dropped in it.  I can’t imagine the crew training they get there….maybe it was everyones first night.
So say grace and ask forgiveness before you go..

 

-Review From David M.