One day a customer wrote this on our Facebook Page:
‘This is such a fantastic time saving piece of tech. Saves so much time in developing sites’
17 words of pure customer satisfaction.
17 words perfectly describing our product.
17 words of an actual benefit.
You can’t buy this. You can’t force your customer love. It is a result of a transparent, two way appreciation between a product and a customer.
And in order to reach, nurture and amplify the positive customer relationship you have to pay attention to Facebook and their reviews section.
Reviews and testimonials are part of any web presence and web designers need to particularly look at the trends in order to provide the best solutions for their clients.
Having in mind that most of the testimonial pages on the websites are strongly curated and poorly maintained, adding user generated content from social media platforms that actually updates regularly, can improve website’s’ relevance and increase trust from the web visitors.
Therefore, paying attention what Facebook develops in this segment can be strongly utilised by web designers and their approach in building user-centric websites.
Before starting to see how to manage the Facebook reviews and sync them with websites, let’s start by narrowing down the features provided by the Facebook reviews.
- The anatomy of a Facebook Review
By my definition a Facebook review is a sentence, a word, or simply a star given by a person who had some kind of interaction with your company.
You might say that a Facebook review is like any other online review posted on any similar platform.
But there is a difference. Actually there are few differences that the Facebook platform can contribute to make their reviews stand out in the crowd of social review platforms.
Here are the most important ones:
- Huge access to a diverse audience: Facebook has the largest, the fastest growing network of more than 2 billion (yes that is a B) monthly active users, who all have access to your page and your Facebook reviews.
- The Facebook reviews have the highest online authenticity. Most of the Facebook users invest in their Facebook profiles and you or your customers can more closely relate and trust to the written reviews by a Facebook user than any other user on any other review platform. To be more specific, Facebook reviews are the closest to the word of mouth concept and the trustworthiness that the recommendations have originating from your closests friends.
- The Facebook reviews have a power to reach. Like no other reviews on the web, Facebook Reviews are not just accessible on the review section on your Facebook Page. They actually are spread across your Facebook audience, and can appear in a notification to some of your fans, in the News Feed and help your Page to gain free, organic reach.
- The Facebook platform has the biggest potential to grow. Few months back the Facebook reviews were only available to local businesses. Now, they are available to every Facebook Page no matter the category. This is a sign that Facebook is investing in their reviews platform. I suggest you start working on getting some before they decide to make them more and more important in search or the News Feed.
To summarize, the anatomy of a Facebook review consists of:
- Profile photo and a name linked to an actual Facebook user
- Review Stars
- Review Text
- Notification is sent to some of the friends of the reviewer
- The review appears on the top of the Facebook Page
- The review is served in the Facebook News Feed
- The review impacts the SEO of your Facebook Page
- The review impacts the ranking in the Facebook search results
- Option to edit the text and the stars
- Options to embed the Facebook Review on a website
- Option to view or link to the actual review
- Why Facebook Reviews
If you haven’t activated your Facebook Reviews yet, then here are some facts that might convince you to do it.
- According to a study, 88% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- In a survey from Social recommendation Index, 71% of the people say trust Facebook reviews more than any other review platforms, such as the business websites which have 68% of the users’ trust and online communities that have 66% of the web users’ trust.
- The same survey suggests that almost two-thirds of survey respondents are most likely to share via Facebook about their purchases.
And again, if you do not rely on any study just think how you buy stuff. Are you reading any review, how do you choose a restaurant, a holiday destination? Have you ever read a review that convinced you to buy or maybe changed your opinion?!
If there is a one YES here, than you would probably start paying attention and consider investing resources in making the most out of your customers’ reviews.
- Let’s get started with Facebook Reviews
To get started with Facebook Reviews, first you will need to activate the Reviews tab on your Facebook page. Here is the simple step by step of the process:
- Navigate to your Facebook Page, click on Settings and then click on ‘Edit page’
- Scroll down and click ‘Add Tab’
- In the pop-up find the Reviews tab and click “Add Tab”
That’s it.
Now your Reviews tab is activated and you can start accepting Facebook reviews from your customers.
Once you are convinced that the Facebook reviews can make or break your business, you will need to understand how to make the most out of them.
Below are outlined actionable tips to get your Facebook Reviews strategy rolling.
- How to get more Facebook Reviews?
The best advice I can give you is this: Just ask your customers for a review.
Simple, right? So here are few approaches how you can do this.
Make a list of your recent customers, take out their contacts from your CRM and send them an email, SMS or a Facebook message. Or you can use Skype, WhatsApp or any other service that you use to communicate with them.
Here is a short email that you can use to send to your customers and ask for a Facebook review:
Dear [customer Name]
I want to personally thank you for boarding our list of respected customers.
We are extremely honored to serve you and appreciate your trust in us.
We want to encourage you to help us share your experience with our future prospects and write few words about your experience.
We hope it is a 5 star and we would love to learn how our product helps you.
Here is a link to our Facebook Page reviews section, so feel free to give us your honest review:
https://www.facebook.com/yourfacebookpage/reviews
Please note that I am available for any questions you might have
Thank you again
Sincerely,
Your name and signature goes here.
There are few more techniques you can do here, but the basic concept is that you are actually ASKING your customers to help you. Just be innovative in the approach and make sure your intention is and will always be to serve your customers.
- Get more out of your Facebook Reviews
One you have received those golden words from your customer, it is a time to include them in every single method of your communication.
- Print posters, add them on flyers, menus – Integrate your online with your offline presence. If you have brick and mortar premises use the materials that you give to your customers and make sure the selected reviews are standing out and communicating the message of your perfection.
- Use the Words of your customers in your marketing copy. Do not try to think of a copy that is not authentic to your audience. Simply extract the sentences from your reviews and start analysing them. In just few minutes you will get the most perfect copy for your marketing materials that is derived from the words of your customers. So, just start speaking like your customers and you have the potential to win more.
- Display the reviews on your website. This is a perfect method to help you increase the website conversions. Use the current satisfied customers to help you convert new ones. You can embed the reviews one by one or use a Facebook reviews tool to embed them on your website automatically.
- Conclusion
Facebook Reviews are here to stay and no matter if you are a local business you will need to consider a strategy to handle them. There is no worse scenario than that of a negative review due to a misunderstanding. That is why you need to understand the tools available to help you make the most out of them.
The reality is that companies need to enhance their web presence with more and more content from their social media activity. And Facebook reviews are a tool that can help them empower their websites with fresh and live customer feedback, gaining more trust and possible conversions from potential visitors.
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