What is review management?
Managing online reviews involves creating a digital public image one online review at a time. That way anyone looking for your brand will discover recent feedback and examples of positive customer experiences that paint your business in the best possible light.
What is a review management system?
A review management system is a tool that helps you manage your online reputation.
You can use a review management system to request reviews from consumers, track new reviews, respond to reviews, and show the best reviews on your website and other proprietary media channels.
How do you manage reviews?
Managing online reviews covers four main areas:
- Generating reviews
- Reviews monitoring
- Respond to reviews
- On show the reviews
For effective audit management, you need to have a plan in place to address a variety of activities. Within that plan, you should have processes in place to:
- deploy tools and software for managing online reviews to easily solicit reviews from customers and distribute them to popular online review sites;
- insert review the schema markup to your website;
- be proactive in asking customers to leave reviews online for your business (68% of consumers will leave a review of the local company when asked to do so);
- respond to both positive and negative reviews to thank the customer for the great feedback or to address the concern they raised; And
- promote your positive reviews to draw attention to your customers’ feedback (such as sharing on social media, posting on websites, creating banners, including in electronic newsletters, paid ads, etc.).
How to generate reviews
When it comes to online reviews, the the relevance of the reviews it matters as much as quantity to consumers and search engine algorithms alike.
The best way to empower yours revision counting – and making sure you have a steady stream of new reviews – is simply asking.
An easy way to do this is to set up an automated email that goes to consumers right after their purchase or visit. Your request should thank the customer for their business and request that they leave a review to share their experience. Make sure you include a link to your platform (s) of your choice.
If your favorite review platform offers a widget, you can install this little piece of code on your site to display a button inviting visitors to review your business.
How to track reviews online
If you don’t have reputation management software, along with general review sites niche review platforms it will have to be monitored manually. This could mean that you need to set up a Google alert, conduct brand searches on Google, physically visit your key review platforms on a regular basis, or use a social listening tool, such as Hootsuite, to keep an eye on what people are saying about you. online.
To monitor performance and discover new reviews, it is often much easier, faster and more effective to use an online reputation management tool like BrightLocal’s. Reputation manager. This is especially true if your business is featured on many review sites or you run multiple locations.
When it comes to reputation management, frequency of online reviews is important, so you’ll also want to be as creative as possible to generate the maximum number of reviews.
Adding a link to the bottom of your email signature so all email recipients can easily review your business can be an effective way to improve your review profile. It’s also worth asking for reviews on social media posts on a regular basis.
If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you could hand out cards by asking for a review to be left at the checkout or have a tablet installed on exit with your favorite review platform loaded. This will encourage customers to leave a review at that time.
For restaurants, hotels, and bars, you can use printed flyers or tickets to invite guests to leave a review. Tripadvisor has a object library that you can order to help consumers review your business, including stickers, cards, and checks.
How to respond to online reviews
It’s no secret that today’s consumers use reviews to make a choice when selecting a local business. What may come as a surprise is that consumers increasingly worry about reading companies’ responses to reviews. 89% of consumers they are highly or fairly likely to use a company that responds to reviews, so this simple act can have a direct impact on your bottom line.
Left unanswered, negative reviews can be extremely damaging to your online reputation. Therefore, we recommend that you respond promptly to address the concerns raised and attempt to restore confidence in your business (you can find our tips for responding to negative reviews here).
Responding to reviews can be as simple as creating a few different templates to thank each customer for the feedback. Make sure each answer is personalized to reference the reviewer’s name and refer to specific points he raised in his review. As a starting point try:
- Thank you so much for your feedback [name of reviewer]. We are happy to hear that we were able to help!
- Hello [reviewer name] – we are happy to know that you enjoyed your visit and look forward to welcoming you again soon!
- Hello [reviewer name] good to know you liked it [service or product]. Thanks for sharing your feedback!
- Hello [reviewer name] Thanks for your kind review and detailed feedback. We are glad to hear that you enjoyed [insert points from review]. Your comments help us improve and we hope to see you again soon.
How to show reviews online
Since reviews are so important in aiding consumer decision making, we recommend that you do so show five-star reviews on your site. This will serve as a conversion optimization tool and provide social proof.
Many review platforms offer widgets that you can install on your site to show your most recent reviews. This is a piece of code that you will copy from the review platform and paste onto any page on your site (such as your home page or service pages). This will then show your reviews.
A tool like Reputation manager can be used to automate the process of sharing your best reviews with your site visitors.
One final option is to manually add your favorite reviews to your website. However, this process is the least efficient, as you will need to regularly take the time to update the reviews you show.
How do you manage online reviews?
Now that you can answer the question “What is online review management?”, You can begin the online review management process.
An effective strategy will allow you to work consistently on each of these four core elements of audit management. This means you’ll have a process in place to generate reviews, constantly monitor the content of those reviews so you can spot issues before they escalate, have a process for responding to reviews, and make great use of this social proof by showcasing your strongest, most recent reviews on your site.
