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Positive Reviews and How They Can Give an Edge You Need in Business or Career

© by Image courtesy of www.gillsolutions.com

Today most people buy their service or products of choice online. This has become a trend that keeps getting better over time. With stiff online competition, especially among those businesses that deal in similar items, there is a need to keep looking for ways to maintain an edge over others and one of the best ways is to have positive reviews and ratings on your business page.

Why positive reviews are important

Most people today have learned to check reviews of a site before making a decision, so the higher the reviews the more you are likely to look more attractive or win yourself more trust as a business. Poor reviews or bad reviews on the other hand will give a signal that something is wrong with your business and people may not be interested to take the risk of getting what you are offering despite the negative reviews.

How to get positive reviews

Now that you understand the importance of having positive reviews, you have to take the necessary steps to try and get them. There are several ways to attract positive reviews:

Ask for Reviews on Site

A customer’s review is most likely to be given while the purchase activity is still fresh in their mind. Don’t wait until a few days of them engaging in more activities at work or at home. Every minute that passes, the good experience memory may fade away.

It is best if you have a Smartphone or computer with several review sites loaded up for, Yelp, Trip Advisor, and your blog. If that’s not possible, ask customers to write a quick review on a specific website using their smartphones. Verbalizing your request for a review is enough to stoke an appreciation.

Follow up with an email

You should send your customers an email every week or after each activity. Ensure they understand your goal is to create the best possible experience, as well as your value for their feedback. You may want to thank them again and provide links so they can write a review. Online booking software automates these emails so that the information goes out on time to all recipients.

Provide an incentive

A customer might not consider it appropriate to bribe them for a positive review. However, it is different when you provide a small incentive for them to write a review, (no matter if the review will be negative or positive) the objective here is to get feedback, not to influence them.  You can provide discounts and giveaways for people who write reviews or run a contest every month where people need to write reviews to win.

Respond most reviews

Respond to reviews personally to show customers you’re available for questions and replying to them. Creating accounts on review sites would be a good idea so that you can interact with others. Respond as soon as possible to messages sent to you on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms. You can find some ideas and a template for how to respond to bad reviews here.

Providing hours of operation on your page is okay, so you don’t have to be there all the time. If you are able, try to respond as soon as possible. It’s more likely that future customers will write their own reviews if they see you read and consider reviews.

Promoting Positive reviews and reviewers

It is important to recognize the positive reviewers as much as possible. Your customers deserve your respect, so show them. Highlight great reviews on your social media accounts and web page, and let the reviewer know how much you appreciate their feedback. They won’t hesitate to tell you if they had a negative experience. To resolve negative reviews and cultivate an environment of positive feedback, it’s important to encourage a dialog with customers.

Buy positive reviews

If the above methods don’t work for you, you may consider buying a few thousand positive reviews to start with. The good thing about buying reviews is it will give you the foundation of encouraging other customers to look at your service, make purchases and reviews as well.  To buy positive reviews you need to identify a trusted site that is known to provide real reviews that will give you real results.