Three Simple Steps To Increasing Positive Online Reviews
December 2, 2009
Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media posted a great read today detailing some tips for small businesses to encourage customer reviews. I’m a big fan of Lisa’s; her posts consistently offer up sound online marketing advice with a side of sass and wit. In today’s post, she lists some very good reasons for actively pursuing customer reviews and what I aim to do is put a food-industry spin on her advice.
First and foremost: yes, you really do want to encourage your patrons to leave reviews on Yelp, CitySearch, TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, your own website and any other place online that potential customers will research dining options. In general, we in the industry have been conditioned to be fearful of reviews; oftentimes “duck and cover” is the posture adopted by restaurateurs when the subject of user review sites such as Yelp are mentioned. I hear the echoes of your disbelief: “What if I get a negative review?” “What if encouraging visits to <Yelp><CitySearch><TripAdvisor><your least favorite review site> does more harm than good?” “What if I have bad reviews out there that I don’t want others to see?”
Consider this: the only way that any of us can exert any semblance of control over what’s said about our brand is by actively managing our online reputation and what better way to do that than encouraging fans to tell others about us and ensure that those positive reviews are seen by potential customers? Negative reviews are going to happen to the best of businesses; encouraging happy customers to post is not going to change that fact, it’s only the best way to mitigate the effect that disparaging comments have on your establishment’s overall online reputation.
Here, in the order in which they were presented in Lisa’s original post, are three ideas to get satisfied customers to become your best cheerleaders this holiday season:
- Host a Holiday Event – What better way to get fans to show their love than hosting a holiday “thank-you” party for your most loyal clientele. The return your business receives from this investment is the virtually limitless possibilities for great marketing material, both real-time and ongoing. Pictures of people enjoying themselves at your restaurant can be posted on your website, blog, Facebook page, UrbanSpoon, Yelp and TripAdvisor. Video of customers having a great time enjoying the fabulous food and raving about their experience can be shared in many of those same places as well as YouTube and Vimeo. Revelers could use a workstation set up in a high-traffic area to leave comments on review sites during the celebration. The gathering of testimonials could be encouraged by holding a drawing where the entry form prompts a positive response, such as “What I love most about <restaurant name> is ……..” or “My favorite indulgence at <restaurant name> is …….” While you won’t be able to post these offline comments to review sites, it is possible to post the best responses on your own website and a summary of responses in a future blog post or Facebook page updates.
- Offer holiday incentives for customers who have left reviews – this is a delicate tightrope to walk; you don’t want to be seen as “paying” for good reviews. This could take the form of messaging on receipts or checks encouraging diners to offer feedback in a variety of ways: comment cards, review sites and/or your own blog or Facebook page. I like this example from Andy Beal which Lisa cited; a simple “thank you” and a reminder to tell others about their experience can be very effective.
- Ask! This is so simple yet so underutilized! The basic marketing concept of “call-to-action” is that the best way to achieve an outcome is to directly prompt the visitor to perform the desired action. Few restaurants currently use their own website to display links to positive reviews and actively encourage website visitors to communicate their own great experiences to others. TwoTables suggests dedicating a page on your website devoted to listing testimonials you gather offline, embedding great reviews from Yelp and the like and linking directly to each review site utilizing a call to action message.
What tactics has your restaurant utilized to encourage reviews? Were they successful? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment!
New Search Functionality on Facebook
August 12, 2009
Facebook announced on their blog yesterday that they have rolled out an upgraded version of their search feature, one that now includes search capabilities of wall posts and newsfeeds of friends and those who have selected to have their content available to everyone. Here’s an excerpt of the announcement:
You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications.
As I see it, the two primary benefits to this addition regard reputation management and conversational marketing. For example, let’s say that the owner of The Fort Restaurant in Denver wants to see what people have been saying about the restaurant in Facebook. Before yesterday, this was not possible. Today, however, once logged in to Facebook, one could enter the term “The Fort Restaurant” in the search box and see the posting below from the Denver Food & Wine Classic page:
Nice, right? Definitely; however there is a downside. Facebook search doesn’t support any type of phrase matching options so, in our example above, in addition to the post we also have a list that includes all mentions of the words Fort and Restaurant, in any order and placement. This means that the search results also include posts about restaurants in Fort Wayne, Fort Collins and Fort Worth. In this scenario, you’d want to further define your search, perhaps by entering “Fort Restaurant Denver,” in order to see more focused results. This drawback aside, the new search does allow restaurateurs to monitor their restaurant’s reputation and to respond to mentions of their establishment (both positive and negative) in an appropriate and timely fashion.
The second benefit to the new search is perhaps a bit more clunky, however it could prove useful to some dedicated marketers. It is possible to search public Facebook posts for mentions of the type of service your business offers. In our example above, if someone had posted to their wall asking for recommendations for restaurants in denver, a search for “restaurants in denver” would show the post and allow the marketer to respond to the potential client with a special offer, directions to the restaurant or links to their online menu.
TwoTables’ take on the changes? It’s definitely a step in the right direction but there is room for improvement from Facebook. We’d love to see features already available in Twitter, such as saving search queries and using RSS feeds within feed readers to monitor the results. Read the full announcement on the Facebook blog.