The Good, the Bad and the Downright Ugly Truths About Online Reviews

This past week, New York’s Attorney General announced that it would be fining 19 businesses over $350,000 each for posting fake positive reviews to the popular online review site, Yelp. The businesses, which ranged anywhere from strip clubs to a laser hair removal service, would pay freelance writers up to $10 per positive review, even though none of them had ever used their products or service. This problem isn’t just exclusive to New York either. Today, Yelp estimates that up to 25% of all reviews are fraudulent compared to just 5% in 2006.

As the use of online reviews has grown over the years, so has its importance to businesses. In a recent survey, researchers found that 87% of consumers say positive reviews online have reinforced their decision to purchase a product or service. On the flipside, 80% of consumers have also changed their mind about purchases based on negative information they found online. With online reviews having such a major impact, it’s no wonder businesses are concerned with what’s being said about them online. Warren Buffett described the situation perfectly when he said, “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.”

With that being said, through the rest of this post we’ll walk you through some of the most popular online review websites, the impact those sites have on businesses, and what business owners can do to protect and build their reputation.

Yelp

Founded in 2004 to connect consumers in San Francisco with local businesses, Yelp has since grown to become the home of over 42 million user reviews and over 100 million visitors per month. The site has even expanded internationally to more than 11 different countries, including the UK, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Germany to name a few. On Yelp, reviews range across all industries from restaurants, to doctors offices, and even to tire shops. To post a review, users simply login to their Yelp account, search for a business, and write a short review, complete with a 5-star rating scale. Reviews can be written by anyone with a Yelp account (a.k.a. “yelpers”), and the more reviews a user makes, the more credibility they earn. To monitor fake reviews, the site has its very own review filter that hides posts it deems fraudulent. However, this tool has been known to be imperfect and sometimes hides legitimate reviews while keeping fake ones visible.

Google+ Local

Google+ Local is a review system used with businesses listed on Google Maps through Google’s Places for Businesses. Confused? In a nutshell, when searching for a business using Google Maps, users are able to click on a business’ map icon and read/write user reviews, read Zagat summaries, and connect to the business’ Google+ page. To post a review, users login to their Google+ account, click on the map icon, and go to the business’ reviews to leave their own. Like Yelp, Google+ Local reviews also have a spam/fraudulent review filter system, but like Yelp again, it isn’t very foolproof.

Angie’s List

Compared to the other 2 sites on this list, Angie’s List is much different. As opposed to reviewing restaurants and retailers, Angie’s List focuses solely on consumer reviews of service companies. However, to access reviews users have to pay a small subscription fee. In return, Angie’s List offers the guarantee that all reviews are personally checked for fraudulency before being posted (hence the slogan, “reviews you can trust”). In the U.S. and Canada, Angie’s List has over 1.5 million subscribers who contribute about 40,000 reviews each month.

As I mentioned earlier, consumers are heavily influenced by the reviews they read online. In fact, 85% of U.S. consumers read online reviews for local businesses, and 50% of those consumers are more likely to use those same businesses after reading positive reviews. For businesses with a healthy online reputation, this means that online reviews can help generate more foot traffic and revenue. On the flipside, however, businesses with a poor online reputation will surely see their sales suffer. According to one Harvard Business School study, a one-star rating increase on Yelp lead to a 5-9% increase in revenue. That’s thousands of dollars potentially lost or gained due to free consumer reviews!

So, now comes the big question: What can you do to help grow, maintain, or fix your business’ online reputation? (other than being the best damn business out there, of course)

For starters, business owners need to know where their customers are writing reviews. While only a small percentage of your customer base will write a review, a much larger percentage will be impacted by it. Find out which online review sites your consumers are using and monitor what they’re saying. From here, you can personally respond and demonstrate your appreciation of any feedback. Remember, your response is a direct reflection of your business’ customer service so it’s important that ALL responses are handled in a professional manner.

Now that you’ve found out where your consumers are leaving reviews, it’s important that you take charge and start managing your reputation there. The best, most effective way to start getting positive reviews for your business is to simply ask satisfied customers for them. If you notice a customer really enjoyed their experience, take a couple seconds and ask them if they wouldn’t mind sharing it online. It doesn’t take much effort, and most will be happy to do so.

Since you can’t monitor every customer interaction and ask for reviews, it’s important that your customers know where they can leave reviews online. Once a customer completes a purchase, send a follow-up email asking them to share their opinions. Do you have links to other social networks in your email signature? Include one for your business’ review page. If most of your selling is done face-to-face, not online, then set up a small display at the point of purchase letting customers know where they can leave feedback online. You can also include a note on your receipts and invoices.

Apart from monitoring engagement, responding to reviews, and encouraging customers to leave feedback, the best way to earn positive reviews (and avoid negative ones) is to simply show your customers that you care about them. If it’s in your brand’s culture to go the extra mile for your customers, you’ll be surprised at the extra miles they’ll go for you. For example, did you know 95% of unhappy customers say they’ll return to a business if their issue is solved quickly and efficiently? However, if the unresolved issue leads to the customer leaving a negative review, there’s a 90% chance they will NEVER do business with you again (let alone the new customers lost due to reading that negative review).

That being said, with online review sites like Yelp, Google+, and Angie’s List now established as “go-to” sources for information about businesses and their products/services, protecting your reputation online can be crucial to the success of your business. Keep these tips in mind as you work towards that 5-star rating and both your customers and bottom line will thank you for it.

Why Most Social Strategies Fail

When I ask people what their social business strategy looks like, I usually get the following response, ”Oh yeah, we’re on Facebook.” The conversation continues apace:


- Twitter account…check.

- YouTube videos….yup.

- People who seem to know what they doing with those accounts…kinda.

- Metrics….Likes.


But that isn’t a strategy – it’s a series of tactics. Having a Facebook page is like having a telephone — it’s a tool that needs a purpose. What you DO with Facebook to meet customer expectations and attain business goals lies at the center of a coherent social business strategy.


My colleague Brian Solis and I are in the midst of conducting research on what makes a good social business strategy and a key finding is that as companies evolve their social initiatives, the efforts get disconnected from business goals. So while the company grows in its social media efforts, strategic focus, with a clear goal in mind, falls to the wayside.


This isn’t about waiting until companies have reached a stage of “maturity” before they are deemed to be successful. Rather, we found companies thriving at every stage of social strategy evolution. The key is coherence, where the business goals, executive support, social business capabilities, and the value created by both internal and external social initiatives all work together in harmony.


Here’s an example: one company we spoke with focuses most of their social efforts on developing their Facebook presence. The company rarely replies or engages with people who post on their page. On the surface, you might dismiss this company as not “getting” social media because they don’t actively engage in a two-way dialog.


But in so many ways, their strategy is far more coherent than companies that blindly engage for the sake of engagement. That’s because they are very clear about the purpose of their Facebook presence, which is to showcase the personality of the company. While they enjoy having millions of fans, the key business metric they track is reputation, which is used across all aspects of the business. On a daily basis, they ask their Facebook fans, as well as people in other channels, how they are doing on delivering their products, and if they are doing so in an environmentally sustainable way. They can then compare which channels are effective at driving their goal of improving reputation.


So how can you tell if your social business strategy is successful or failing? One way is to look across the elements of your social strategy and see if they align with each other in such a way that supports clear business goals. Are your capabilities in line with what you are trying to achieve, or have you bitten off too much and are not realizing the full potential of your efforts? Do you have the organizational governance in place to allow disparate business units to align their social efforts against a common enterprise goals, or is each line of business pulling in separate directions?


Another way to gauge where you are with your social business strategy is to take Altimeter’s Social Business Strategy Survey at http://svy.mk/QkcYRH. The aggregated results will appear in an upcoming report, and as a thank you for sharing, you’ll receive a data cut that you can use to benchmark your company against other organizations of the same size. You will receive this benchmark data after the research report is published.


The survey looks at the following topics:
Strategy: What are common goals and objectives? How do you measure the value of your social business efforts?
Organization: How are your social business efforts organized? How many people are dedicated to social business?
Budget: How much are you spending on external and internal social business efforts? What are you planning to spend on technologies and services in 2013?
Social Media Policies: What policies do you have in place? How well do employees understand those policies?


Please note that we plan to end the survey in the next week or so, so please take it as soon as possible! Also, please forward to others who may be interested or share with your social networks.


Lastly, please share why you think your social business strategy is successful — or on the flip side, what is dysfunctional about it. We’d all love to learn from your experiences!

The Ultimate Guide for Blog Post Promotion

If you have been blogging for a little while or have been involved in any type of content marketing, you know Content is not king if nobody can see it.

If you surf around the blogosphere a little, you’ve probably noticed 2 types of bloggers, one that believes in publishing content everyday and one that believes in spending less time producing and more time promoting.

Well, I know very successful bloggers on both sides of the spectrum (so I’m not going to start a debate on that), but you can always count on one thing: they promote the hell out of each piece of content.

But what exactly does that mean?

Bloggers usually ask these questions:

• How do I get attention?
• How do I get more traffic?
• How do I get my posts shared?

We often talk about content promotion but, what does that mean exactly? I mean, what do you do? where? when?

Say hello to Kristi Hines…

I don’t exaggerate when I say that I stumble into Kristi’s content every week, not always from her own blog, but I always do.

Before I continue I’ll say this because 1) I believe in being transparent with you, and 2) I do NOT review products in this blog. EVER. The reason I want to tell you about this is because I truly believe you will benefit.

I’m about to tell you about Kristi’s new course “Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide“, and why you need to enroll today.

Hear me out!

Why Kristi

I never met Kristi in person but I’ve been following her for a few years. Not in a creepy way, I mean her content… and this is what I’ve observed during this time:

• She gets published in several major blogs in her industry
• No matter where, the content always gets massively shared
• Her content always feels more like a guide than a blog post
• I always feel the information is super organized in the way is being delivered to you
• I see how the content has been optimized for SEO but it still makes sense for the human being reading
• She always gets tons of comments

But this is the most important thing I’ve noticed: There is a formula behind Kristi’s content production and promotion. I can see that.

Why you need this course

I spent this week digging through the course and, between discovering things I didn’t know and going back to basics on others, I realized the amount of value delivered in this course. This is not a course that was put together in the last 3 months, this has been developing for much longer.

I know this because I remember when it all started as an Ebook 3 years ago. Now it has been launched as an online course with the latest techniques and everything you need to know to successfully promote your content on the Internet of today, which is not the same as 3 years ago.

The reason you need to get Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide (affiliate link) is because Kristi has put all her knowledge and experience about how to produce and promote content to get traffic, engagement and social media love in this course.

I’m not going to talk about the modules, the resources, or the private community for members on Facebook. I’ll keep it simple: If you want to learn how Kristi Hines from Kikolani produces and promotes content, consider investing in this course.

Here is that link again: Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide (affiliate link)