3 Ways Social Media Can Bring You More Google Reviews
For the last ten years, Google has been in an interesting spot in the business world. As we become more and more search engine and online marketing oriented, the primary search engine naturally takes prominence. But, of course, Google is a lot more than just a way to search for things. It's a navigation system, a mobile operating system, and a business rating platform just to name a few of its many features. Perhaps most importantly to modern businesses, what you're rated on Google and your Google+ activity has a hand in your ultimate page position and SEO success.
Naturally, you want to collect as many positive customer reviews as possible and most companies are constantly looking for new creative ways to encourage people to review them. One of the most recent trends, for instance, is little friendly business cards left in delivered items to build the reputation of the vendors and manufacturers. However, one surprisingly untapped well of reviews is your social media community, something most companies are already building.
1) Start Featuring Reviews
The key to gaining more google reviews through your social media is simply to make reviewing rewarding to your community and make the community appealing to those who review. It's really as easy as sharing a little good news. When you get a really good review that you're proud of and want to pin on your fridge, instead, pin it on your social media pages, walls, and profiles. Start hosting a regular featured review by choosing your favorite recent review and sharing it with the community with a positive, thankful comment. This not only shows that you appreciate the reviews left for you, it encourages your community members to leave glowing reviews in hopes of getting featured.
2) Publicly Respond to Reviews
Once you've started the trend of featuring reviews, don't forget to personally respond to the reviewer. The best place to do this is as a comment on their initial review but you can also share a more complete response with your community as a whole. Write an outpouring of gratitude or respond with matching humor if the review was funny. You can even write a poem to your reviewing audience. This is not just great entertainment for your social media community, it's also a wonderful public reward for reviewers and a temptation to write interesting reviews you might respond to interestingly in return.
3) Host a Review Word of the Week
Finally, you may not have realized it but the words used in the reviews themselves actually contributes to your SEO results. This makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it, but you can't exactly go in and edit reviews to contain convenient words. What you can do is encourage your audience to include your favorite keywords through social media. One of the best ways to do this is to have a review word of the week or month. Make it publically known that reviews featuring one particular keyword are more likely to be featured and watch the SEO magic happen. If you already have an energetic review-motivated crowd, they'll be more than happy to play your game and help your page ranking.
Reviews are often considered tough to get but all you need is a positive connection to your audience to see the results you're looking for. Social media is the perfect place to meet and appeal to your customers on their grounds and you can gain their respect and cooperation with simple honesty. Be genuine, fun, and make their experience brighter and your social media community will happily return the favor with positive Google reviews, as requested.
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