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It’s safe to say that if you’re an organisation that sells, creates, or just plain exists, then there are people talking about your brand online, whether it’s a good or bad review. Everyone has his or her own individual experiences. One person may rave about an experience with a particular brand, one may have a complete opposite experience. The Internet and particularly social media enables word of mouth on steroids.

For example, take one of the most famous of these sites, Yelp. This site is completely dedicated to real reviews of real companies by the everyday customer. From restaurants and hotels to realtors and swimming pools, customers can log in, upload photos, and talk about their experiences. The biggest thing to remember is that people are talking.

One or two bad moments in a brand history won’t tarnish a reputation completely, but for brands out there who are paying attention to what’s happening on sites like Yelp, here is your opportunity to use social media for good and make your customers feel appreciated.

Duct Tape Marketing posted a blog back in February lying out five great ways organisations and brands can get involved on these review sites.  Here are some of their helpful tips:

“A great deal of the grumbling about these sites revolves around two things 1) businesses don’t like to read that they have bad service 2) people who want to game the system or cause some harm to a business have used these tools to do so. Again, no matter, because these tools are here to stay and making their way into the mainstream of search. Google aggregates reviews from many sites and puts them in search results on Google Maps and Yelp reviews show up on page one for many Google local related searches – so, all this to say, let’s see what we can do to use these sites for good!

1) List, claim, and build – The first step is to take the time to create accounts with all of the sites listed above, make sure you are listed (others can add your business so don’t be surprised to find a listing), go through the process to claim and take control of your listing and then look at this listing and profile as a brand asset and take the time to complete it fully – think of it like a brochure – add photos, links, brands, products and anything else that helps describe your business.

2) Use it to make you better – If you find a bad review or two, and you might as negative people tend to be more motivated, don’t freak out and start crying foul and spattering hate down on the reviewer. Look at the review and see if there’s something you can add to further explain what went wrong and if the review is clearly off base or possibly an attack from a competitor (it happens) review the policy for resolving these kinds of issues and take some action. However, some bad reviews are a legitimate reflection of the experience your customers are receiving. Step back and ask yourself if this bad review might be a gift in disguise and dig into the core of your business to see if there really is something that needs fixing. (How many dissatisfied customers just go away without a review?) Use reviews, good and bad to help you get better!

3) Monitor profiles – Tracking brand mentions and managing your online reputation go hand in hand with marketing in this social web world. You should set-up alerts that allow you to easily monitor when a new reviews hits one of these sites. You’ll want to know about any and all reviews so you can reach out and engage a customer that expresses a negative opinion and so that you can reach out and thank a customer that had a great experience. In fact, one part of monitoring is so that you can grab these great reviews and add them to your other marketing efforts. The easiest way to stay on top of the reviews is to grab the RSS feed for your profile and set it up as a Google Alert – then you will get notices when something changes. You can also bookmark all your profiles and scroll through the list each week.

4) Get proactive – What’s that saying, the best defense is a good offense – one way to combat any potential negative is to overwhelm it with positive reviews. In addition, sites like Google Maps seem to be giving higher rankings to local listings with more reviews. So, now’s the time start going after reviews from happy customers in a proactive way. Most of the review sites ban the practice of paying for reviews but there’s certainly nothing to stop you from showing customers that give you compliments, refer others, and keep coming back how to write a review on a review site. You can print up a little tutorial, place positive reviews in the window, mention reviews on your web site and in your newsletter and shower lots of appreciation on those that take the time to write a review. Get creative and I’ll be you can create dozens of positive ratings for your profiles.

5) Consider advertising – In most cases these review sites live on ad revenue and have created some special privileges for businesses that advertise. I have heard some great results from some businesses using premium services and some not so great from an ROI standpoint. What you need to analyze and test is whether the premium listing, for example Yelp! allows you to pick your best review and run it in the listing that can appear right next to your competitors, is worth it from an overall branding and lead generation stand point. “

All of the suggestions around Duct Tape Marketing’s blog post are exactly where brands can assist their customers in building as well as making sure the happy customers stay happy. This is also the perfect time to turn adversaries into advocates. Yes, it takes time and commitment, but at the end of the day, a brand is nothing without those who are buying. Utilising tools such as these and even location-based social networking services such as Foursquare all give brands who are paying attention a huge advantage over their counterparts. Take the time to thank your customers. They’ll return the favor. Afterall, when you’re loyal to them, they’ll be loyal to you. And 86 percent of us are talking, reading, and ready to voice our opinions.

Has your organisation had any good or bad experiences directly tied to customer reviews? How have you handled them? Were you able to turn a bad experience into a positive one?

posted by Venessa in the category ROI Social Media Social networking
Tags: Duct Tape Marketing, Foursquare, Yelp