Before we make any buying decisions, most of us go through the same process. One of the first things we do is look for reviews and opinions about the product or service we’re considering.
This is often referred to as social proof – basically the need for people to look to others for information on how to make a good decision. There’s a ton of different types of sources of social proof out there, but in this post we’re going to focus on the online sources of social proof, like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yelp and other review sites.
As a small business owner, reviews can be a huge driver of revenue, but they can also have a negative effect. It isn’t necessarily the TYPE of review you receive, but more of how you deal with the review in question.
Each review you receive is an opportunity to thank a customer for their business or try and remedy a bad situation. Actively engaging with reviews and customer questions and comments is a great way to build trust with your existing customers, and keep new ones coming through the door.
As a social media manager, I’ve dealt with a LOT of customer opinions and reviews, both good and bad. Some days (or weeks) it seems all you’re getting is flak for some mistake you made that you’ve already apologized for, and you really just want to hide under your desk.
Fear not! Remember to take a deep breath, step back and remember that there’s always a chance to turn the situation around.
Why You Should Care About Social Proof
We all know one of the most powerful types of marking is word of mouth and recommendations. So, it makes sense that it should be something that you pay attention to closely. For a small business, the more free marketing, the better!
For the data geeks out there, you can find a ton of surveys and studies about the power of social proof. One such survey found that 79% of online shoppers tend to trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.
Plus, 30% of respondents to the same survey said that they are likely to trust online reviews just as much as a personal recommendation, provided that the reviews are authentic.
And this trend is only going up. Check out what happened between 2011 and 2013:
So what does that mean for you? It means that your customers have so many places to find information about your business at their fingertips, and you need to make sure you monitor as much of the conversation as possible.
Jump in wherever you can. Make yourself visible. The more active you are, the more trust you’ll build with your customer base and the more new customers you’ll attract.
How to Monitor What People Are Saying
With so many places for people to be talking about you, it may seem overwhelming to know where to start listening. There’s a lot of tools that you can use to monitor mentions of your business in social media and on the web, many of which are free.
Google Alerts
To monitor mentions of your business name on the web, Google Alerts is a good way to go. You can set up a scheduled email alert to be sent to you based on the frequency you choose, and you can have as many alerts as possible. Here’s a snapshot of the alerts I have set up for Grasshopper:
You have the choice of getting only the most relevant results, but I like to set it to all results just in case (which results in getting a lot of emails about the grasshopper mouse that’s immune to a scorpion sting).
If you don’t use Gmail, you can just create a Google account and have the alerts forwarded to the email address of your choice.
There are a couple of options here to get alerted when someone leaves a comment on your Facebook page. One option is to set up your notifications to appear every time there’s any activity on your page. It’s under your Notifications Settings and looks like this (don’t judge the other pages I manage):
I get an email and a Facebook notification every time there’s any type of activity on the Grasshopper page. This way, I’m able to see comments real-time and am able to respond to anything that’s an emergency.
To me, Twitter is one of the more important places to listen, and I also feel it tends to get neglected. Its super simple for someone to pull out their phone and write a 140-character quip about a bad experience with your business, and it’s out there for all of the internet to see. There are a few different resources that you can use to listen t…