As mentioned in the previous blog called Online Reviews - its time to include them in your social media management, online reviews are becoming a major part of the pre-purchase decision-making process.  In a few simple steps you can manage and improve online reviews.  This can directly affect conversion and sales both online and offline.

To start you need to find the websites and reviews relating to your business.  If you have a Google Business Listing then it is easy to copy the link to it and send this to happy customers.  This quick video shows you how to get your Google Business Listing link.

You also need to search on Google for reviews relating to your business.  Type in your industry or product name, and the words ‘reviews’, for example ‘hotel reviews’, ‘drill reviews’ or ‘dentist reviews’.  This will bring up websites with relevant reviews.  You may see that people have mentioned your company without you knowing it.  Bookmark these websites and also note if any require you or a reviewer to create a login.

Next send links to these review sites to happy customers and ask for a quick review.  Try to make the review link appropriate to the customer: if they are on LinkedIn then send them a LinkedIn request.  If they have a Gmail or Analytics account send them your Google Business Listing link.  Make the instructions very simple and quick so that it takes minimum time and effort to give you a review – this will help your success rate.

You can never keep all people happy all the time, and the odd negative review will pop up.  If you are unlucky it may even be a false one from a competitor.  Sites such as TripAdvisor and Google Places will notify you and give you the ability to respond to a review.  It also pays to setup Google Alerts to receive a weekly email noting mentions of your brand or products online.  This is a good way to catch any negative comments.  This quick video shows you how to setup Google Alerts.

When responding to negative reviews, keep it neutral and simple.  If you are in the wrong acknowledge it and offer explanation and action.  If the reviewer is being unreasonable make sure you stay reasonable and stop further conflict.  Never publish anything said in anger that you will later regret.Monitoring Google Alerts and the main review websites once a week may only take 5-10 minutes.  Sending out a pre-written review request email to new customers takes minutes as well.  Yet these simple tasks if done regularly will help you grow your good reviews and manage any bad ones.  You’ll soon see the benefit to your bottom-line.