Perception of your business will have a strong influence over whether a potential customer makes a purchase or not. It also plays a part in turning a first-time customer into a loyal fan of your brand.

One of the best ways to build and boost your reputation online is through Google business reviews.

Although Google isn’t the only place you can receive this kind of feedback, it’s undeniably the most commonly-used tool for finding information online. This means it should always be your first port of call when building your reputation or managing your online reviews!

Google Reviews For Business

Google reviews are left by customers on your Google Business Profile.

You, as the business owner, then have the option to respond to this feedback. Doing so is a fantastic way to demonstrate that you’re engaged with your audience and that their feedback is valuable to you.

These reviews are important for a number of reasons, which we’ll explore further later!

Giving a Google Business Review

To leave a Google business review, a customer must give a star rating out of five—with five being the highest mark and one being the lowest.

Based on this, Google allocates an overall star rating to your business, which is then visible alongside your Google Business Profile (GBP) listing. The more stars you have, the more confidence potential customers will have in your business.

While giving a review, users also have the option to write in detail about their experience and to add photos:

Photos added during a review of your business will automatically feature in your GBP listing. You won’t have any control over which photos get shown, or in which order they appear, but you can flag a photo for removal if you feel it violates the Google Photo Guidelines.

Once a review is submitted by a customer, it’ll become visible on your business listing. Each review will feature the name and profile photo of the person who wrote it, which helps potential customers assess the legitimacy of each recommendation.

Anyone can click through to a user’s profile and read all of the reviews they’ve left on GBP listings. Being able to check previous reviews can help a user trust in the validity of a person’s experience. 

Google Local Guides

As well as getting reviews from regular users, you may also get them from Google Local Guides. Involvement in the Google Local Guides program requires contributors to submit reviews and photos of local businesses, as well as to make edits to business information, answer questions, and check facts on Google Maps.

Guides are rewarded for their contributions with special perks and badges—read more about Google Local Guides here.

If you’re a Local Guide, Google may ask you to expand on your business review with what is sometimes referred to as ‘sub-review’ content. Additional prompts (seen below) might focus on specific products purchased or ask you about local business facilities.

These are then displayed on the published business review to provide helpful snapshots for other users.

Where do Google reviews for businesses appear online?

The Local Pack

When a user searches for a local business in Google, they’ll usually be presented with the best three results at the top of the page. These three results are separate from the additional organic listings, and this section is known as the Local Pack.

Within the Local Pack, the average star rating from reviews will be shown within the listing:

Google Maps

When a user is searching for local businesses in Google Maps, the reviews will appear within each result as a star rating:

When a user makes a specific search for a particular business within Google Maps, they’ll be presented with comprehensive information from the GBP listing to the left of the map.

Users can scroll down through this area to find the review summary with an overall star rating, followed by photos and snippets from reviews. These reviews can be filtered by keywords, or sorted according to relevance, recency, and rating: 

Review Justifications

When a searcher provides specific intent for a local search, such as ‘vegetarian cafe’, then Google will take information from reviews to provide the most relevant results.

As you can see in the image below,  part of the search term appears in bold where mentioned—these results are known as review justifications:

Encouraging your customers to use specific keywords when leaving reviews can help you to improve your search visibility for relevant terms.

Your Website

As well as appearing in various places in Google Search and Maps, Google reviews can also feature directly on your business website. You’ll definitely want to show yours off so that prospective customers can better understand the benefits and value of your business.

Our Showcase Reviews widget is an easy-to-use tool that enables you to display your Google reviews on your website. This tool also allows you to showcase your customer feedback from more than 80 other review sites!

Why are Google reviews for businesses important?

As many as 96% of consumers will read responses to their reviews, with many expecting a prompt reply as standard. This expectation means that responding to reviews has become a normal aspect of good customer service. 

Earning a consistent stream of positive reviews from past and present customers will encourage others to have trust in your business. Amplifying your online reputation through reviews is a free way to increase sales and grow your future profits. 

What’s more, research has determined review responses to be a Google ranking signal, meaning you can easily give your brand a boost by simply taking the time to reply.

How to Set Up Google Reviews For Your Business

If you don’t have a Google Business Profile for your business, then you’ll need to set one up before you can start collecting reviews. Read our step-by-step guide on setting up a GBP listing to get started.

Once your listing is set up, you should spend some time optimizing it before you move on to thinking about reviews. For full details on how to optimize GBP, check out our Google Business Profile Learning Hub.

In Google Business Profile, managers of single listings now manage their profiles—and their reviews—directly within Google Search and Google Maps. 

Simply type the name of your business into the search bar, and you’ll bring up the GBP control panel. From here, you can navigate to the ‘Customers’ section, where you’ll find the ‘Reviews’ area. Here you can view and reply to customer feedback:

How to Get More Google Reviews For Your Business

Requesting feedback from your customers might not always be as easy as it sounds.

Check out Brian Barwig’s guide to asking for reviews for some simple tips on getting started, as well as an expansion on the many benefits of getting more reviews.

For more in-depth guidance on getting reviews specifically on Google, check out this dedicated guide.

How to Respond to Google Business Reviews

Responding to your customer feedback is essential for building and maintaining an amazing reputation.

You’ll be notified by Google whenever a customer leaves you a new review—making the monitoring process practically effortless. However, once you receive a notification email, you shouldn’t put off providing a response.

Types of reviews can be broken down into three categories:

• Positive
• Negative
• Fake

Regardless of the sentiment or legitimacy of a review, it’s still important that you respond!

Always responding in a timely and professional way can be tricky. Fortunately, we’ve taken the hard work out of it for you with these review response templates.

How to Respond to Positive Google Reviews For Your Business

You’ve received a positive review—great! You now have an opportunity to build upon your relationship with the reviewer and hopefully turn them into a repeat customer.

Begin by thanking the customer (by name) for taking the time to leave their comments. You should then address the feedback in a personable way. Make sure to reference any specific points that they have raised to avoid a ‘cookie cutter’-sounding response.

It’s a good idea to always end your reply by inviting the customer to visit your business again soon.

How to Respond to Negative Google Reviews For Your Business

Negative reviews are not only disheartening, but can also be damaging to your reputation.

Whenever you receive negative feedback, avoid the urge to immediately reply. Instead, take some time to absorb this feedback and to craft an appropriate response. You may have an opportunity to turn this situation around, and to repair the relationship with the unhappy customer.

A negative review response should still begin by thanking the customer for sharing their thoughts. Continue by apologizing for the negative experience, and invite the customer to share further feedback on what went wrong.

Make sure you supply contact details should they wish to discuss the matter further. You should also always make it clear that you’d like the opportunity to put things right.

How to Respond to Fake Google Business Reviews

Fake reviews can be just as harmful to your reputation as negative ones…and even more frustrating to deal with. 

If you receive a review and you believe it to be fake, then stay calm and refrain from responding immediately. Take some time to figure out if the feedback has come from a genuine customer or not. If you think it’s fake, then politely respond by asking the customer to get in touch directly. You can then decide if you want to report the incident to Google or not.

Google has created a tool specifically for requesting the removal of fake reviews which also helps business owners to track and manage the escalation process. Getting to grips with this tool will help you to understand how to delete Google business reviews. 

A BrightLocal study revealed that a shocking 82% of consumers will have read a fake review in the last year, demonstrating just how prevalent this problem is.

Trust in Online Reviews

Word-of-mouth advertising has long been recognized as one of the most powerful methods of marketing, and this is still true today.

For example, we know that 92% of consumers would trust a product or service recommendation from someone they know over any other type of advertising. 

In the digital age, online reviews are effectively word-of-mouth recommendations between strangers. Although these reviews don’t have the same personal touch as those from friends or family, they are generally perceived as a trusted source of information by consumers. 

Research has shown that 84% of people trust online recommendations just as much as they trust those from their peers. This highlights the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive reputation online.

This can be achieved through:

• impeccable customer service;
• high quality products/services; and
• responding to every review you earn.

Conquered Google Business Reviews?

When you’ve conquered the process of getting Google business reviews, responding to them, and using them to your business advantage, you’ll be asking yourself “what’s next?”

Depending on the size of your to-do list, you’ll be pleased to know there are many other places online that you can source customer feedback and enhance your reputation.

Ready to discover the next steps in your customer satisfaction journey? Let’s go!

Yelp is a treasure trove of user-generated content—the holy grail of content marketing. With Yelp, your customers can post reviews of your business that potential customers can see when looking for services like yours, and this is just one of many reasons to use Yelp.

Who is Yelp for?

There’s a lot of money to be made in the service industry, with Americans typically spending upwards of $300 a month on eating out. To that end, Yelp can be especially helpful for restaurants, clubs, entertainment venues, bars, and shopping centers, and also for contractors, such as plumbers and electricians.

If you’re opening your own service-based company, you’ll want to look into Yelp right after you start an LLC. But you’re not just going to toss your business listing up on the site and start reaping the rewards. There’s a lot more to it than that.

You’ll first need to add or claim your business on Yelp and begin earning reviews. It also helps to utilize paid advertising and other notable features that Yelp has added within the last few years. In this article, we’re going to teach you how to do all of that and more.

Read on to learn how you can propel yourself into the world of user-generated content to get the most out of Yelp for your business. 

Claiming Your Business on Yelp

The first step to succeeding at Yelp is to get your business listed on the website. Before you go ahead and add your business, you should check if it’s already there. There’s a number of reasons why your business might already be listed on Yelp, so don’t neglect this step. 

You can easily check this by searching for your business on the ‘Manage my free listing’ page.

Once you’ve determined if your business listing already exists, then you’re ready to get rolling on Yelp. We recently published a full guide on how to add or claim a Yelp listing, so we’re not going to go into a lot of detail here.

But the gist of it is:

• Create a Yelp business account;
• Add your information, like business phone number, address, website, and category;
• Verify your business, either by phone or email;
• Add images and descriptions; and
• Add additional locations.

For a full step-by-step breakdown with visual aids, check out our in-depth guide. To ensure you don’t miss anything, jot down each step in the process and create a workflow that you can follow.

How to Optimize Your Yelp Business Page

Much like your website, your Yelp business page is going to need some serious optimization if you want to maximize results.

The first step of Yelp optimization is to make sure that you have all your information filled out. This includes your business name, address, phone number, email address, etc. If you leave any information out, you’re presenting an incomplete profile to the masses, and no one wants that.

Believe it or not, Yelp is actually a search engine, and it works a lot like Google when it comes to optimization. To appease the Yelp algorithm, you have to give it as much information as possible.

Use Relevant Keywords

For best results, you’ll want to enhance your Yelp content with relevant keywords. These keywords will be the terms and phrases that you’d like to rank for.

For example, if you’re a Chinese restaurant, you’ll obviously want to rank for the search term ‘Chinese food’ in your area. Or, if you’re a plumber who operates 24-hours a day, you can shoot for ’24-hour plumber’.

Generate Backlinks

In keeping with the SEO-side of things, you’re also going to want to generate backlinks to your Yelp page.

Yelp has a ‘check-in’ feature that allows people to mark that they visited a business—and you should encourage customers to use it. That’s a backlink every time someone clicks.

Add Photos

It’s important to add photos of your business to Yelp because people enjoy visual aids. This also helps to showcase your products or services, which can encourage people to visit your business.

Source: Business 2 Community

Video content also works wonders. Just make sure that you have stellar editing software so that you can create professional-looking clips.

Assess Your Strategy

Finally, the best way to truly optimize your Yelp page is to constantly revisit this task. That means regularly examining your results and changing your strategy accordingly. Assess what’s working for you and what’s not going so well.

If you think you’re not getting enough traffic, then it’s a good idea to update your categories periodically. You can experiment with this to see which category brings the most customers to your listing.

By giving your attention to all of these actions, you can turn your Yelp business page into a hotspot of online activity, and one that’ll continue to produce valuable user-generated content.

Ask Customers to Review Your Business (Without Asking Them)

The best way to get customers to review your business on Yelp would logically be to ask them to do so. There’s only one problem with that. Yelp doesn’t want you to specifically solicit reviews from your customers, and it actually goes against the Yelp guidelines.

Yelp extensively covers this policy in a 2017 blog post:

“Asking for reviews at all, even if the business breaks norms and attempts to ask more than just their happy customers, can create a bias away from organically motivated reviews.

“When some businesses ask for reviews and others don’t, it becomes difficult for users to compare reviews across businesses. Not only does solicitation lead to bias, it’s a bad experience for customers, too.”

So, how can you encourage Yelp reviews without actually asking people?

Your Business Website and Marketing Channels

You can mention that you’re on Yelp without directly asking anyone to leave a review. Include links on your website that simply say, ‘Check us out on Yelp.’ Experiment with different call-to-actions (CTA) on these links, and see what yields the best results.

You can also include these CTA links in social media posts, such as on Facebook and Twitter.

Instagram is a fantastic place to promote your business, but it doesn’t allow clickable links in posts. You can get around this by making a post with a graphic that reads, ‘Check us out on Yelp. Link in bio’. Then include a link to Yelp in your Instagram bio—there are many bio link tools to help you with that. Also, all Instagram users now have the option to add links to Stories, so this is definitely a great tactic to employ. 

Additionally, if you’re running any lead generation campaigns, such as through email marketing, then you can add the Yelp page links in the emails.

Responding to Reviews

You should always be responding to the reviews you receive, both positive and negative.

When you get a negative review, your response says a lot about your business. If you’re defensive or quick to anger, it’s going to make you and your business look bad. But apologizing for whatever caused the bad experience—and publicly attempting to make it right—can go a long way in the eyes of your reviewers.

If people see that you’re happy to respond to reviews, they’re more likely to leave them.

Advertise on Yelp

Another way to promote your Yelp listing is to use paid advertising on the platform.

By paying Yelp directly, you’re able to push your business page out in front of your target audience. This is all done through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, similar to Google Ads.

Basically, you’re targeting specific people and paying every time they click on your ad. You can set your own budget when advertising on Yelp, with a minimum spend of $5 per day. Businesses will typically spend anywhere from $300 to $1,000 per month on Yelp ads.

If you don’t know much about advertising, then you can hire a freelance marketer on a contract basis to do the work for you. When you work with freelancers, it’s a good idea to specify your requirements in a contract using built-in contract templates. This helps everyone to stay on the same page regarding expectations, targets, and deadlines.

Latest Notable Yelp Features

If you want to keep Yelp as a viable profit generator for years to come, you’re going to have to stay on top of updates to the system. Technology is rapidly changing, and if you don’t keep your ear to the ground, you’re not going to be able to keep up with your competitors.

The following are notable features Yelp has added within the last few years. Get familiar with these features and use them to your advantage in 2022.

Request a Quote

While this feature has been around since 2016, it’s something that really helps small quote-based businesses and, therefore, still deserves some recognition.

Yelp’s ‘Request a Quote’ function was launched as an update to its already successful messaging feature. Listings under event planning, automotive, home services, financial services, professional services, and local services categories, will have a ‘Request a Quote’ button attached to them.

You can see these boxes highlighted in the image below, along with information on how long the business usually takes to respond:

In the example above, customers can see that the first plumber listed typically replies in ten minutes, while the second usually takes 20 minutes.

‘Request a Quote’ has been a huge success, prompting a 250% increase in message response rates from business owners. Thanks to this service, you’re likely to get more quote requests and more opportunities to interact directly with potential customers.

Custom Search Filters

Yelp launched custom search filters in 2021, and this feature has already changed the way that consumers search for businesses.

Search queries now have new filters that can be applied, such as businesses that give virtual consultations, or even the fastest-responding businesses. This is ideal for service industry businesses, as it can showcase your exceptional response times and the additional benefits of choosing you.

Covid-19 Updates

The coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted countless businesses across the planet. With pandemic-related issues shifting on a near constant basis, it can be difficult to communicate recent changes to your customers.

Yelp is a huge help with this thanks to its ‘Covid-19 Updates’ feature. Businesses are able to instantly list any changes to their hours. What’s more, they can ease worried customers’ minds by sharing Covid-19 policies through customizable banner alerts.

Source: Yelp

Custom Location Targeting

This advertising feature allows businesses to choose the specific geographic area where they want their ads to run.

Before the rollout of custom location targeting, businesses were only able to choose a target radius that surrounded the business location. However, you’re now able to choose the specific geographic location where you want your ads to run, regardless of your physical location.

Customizable Calls-to-Action

In 2021, Yelp started allowing businesses to customize the CTAs that appear on their posts with whatever text they wanted to use. According to Yelp, this feature prompted a 40% increase in post engagement after only one month.

Ad Text Guidance

Businesses have always been able to customize the text that appears on their Yelp ads. However, business owners who don’t have copywriting expertise are now getting a helping hand in the form of ad text guidance.

Yelp provides example text that will help business owners create the best ad copy possible and level the playing field for all.

Source: Yelp

Minority-Owned Business Finder

If you’re a business owner who belongs to a minority group, Yelp allows you to list this information directly on your listing. This helps those who are looking to support minority-owned businesses to find you more easily.

In the wake of this change, review mentions for Black-owned businesses were up 165% in 2021.

Yelp took this a step further during February 2022, when it highlighted standout Black-owned businesses as part of Black History Month.

An Incredible Marketing Tool

The bottom line is that Yelp can be an incredible marketing tool for your business or a colossal waste of your time. It all depends on how you use it.

Much like a hammer can either be used to hang a painting or put a hole in a wall, Yelp can be a huge asset if you know what you’re doing and you put the time in.

Yelp provides excellent exposure, offers a platform for user-generated content, and it’s totally free to join. However, when you do use Yelp, you’re also naturally inviting the possibility of negative reviews, and the cost of Yelp advertising can add up to a big expense.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide if you’ll use Yelp to support your marketing efforts and boost your business!

Data confirms that consumers overwhelmingly turn to Facebook to research products and services more than any other platform. In fact, 51% of consumers say they use Facebook most for that purpose, with just 30% preferring YouTube instead. 

Source: Lucid Software

Why do Facebook Recommendations matter?

Facebook Recommendations provide a simple way for potential customers to judge whether a local business could be a good fit for them. As with other review platforms, Recommendations on Facebook allow consumers to share their experiences of local businesses with their peers. This is something that many local consumers value as a key part of their decision-making process when choosing a local business. 

The latest Consumer Review Survey confirms that more consumers are reading online reviews than ever before, with 77% ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ reading reviews when researching a local business. 

While this is a powerful statistic in its own right, it becomes even more compelling when combined with the fact that local consumers turn to Facebook more than any other social network for business and product information. These two behaviors clearly illustrate the potential power of a positive review profile on Facebook.

Over the last four years, Facebook has made Recommendations more important for Pages and made them a more prominent feature. It’s made it even more essential to claim your Facebook Page.

One of the interesting things about this new emphasis on Recommendations, is that social media is primarily a peer-to-peer space. This lends itself perfectly to reviews and the influence of reviews on Facebook, especially given how many people put as much trust in online reviews as they do personal recommendations. As a local business, knowing how to get Recommendations on Facebook can allow you to tap into the benefits on both sides of that coin. 

How do Facebook Recommendations work?

Previously known as reviews, there are two types of Recommendations on Facebook. The first is where users can take to their feed and ask for someone to recommend a product or service (such as a local handyman, date venue, or removal service). Other Facebook users can then respond with suggestions of local solutions that fit the bill. 

The second type is where Facebook asks if a consumer recommends a business that they’ve used, with the local consumer able to select simply yes or no. 

After making their choice, there’s the option to provide a more detailed text-based review, giving more context to the feedback. 

The Page visitor will see a points-based score out of five. 

Reviews gathered prior to the switch to Recommendations will still be displayed on the reviews tab, but it doesn’t appear that the additional information offered by reviewers choosing from the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ options is currently published. Facebook is in the process of making changes to how its review system works, so this may change and we’ll update this information to reflect any new developments as they happen. 

How do I find Recommendations on Facebook?

Locating your Recommendations on Facebook is easy. Simply log into your Facebook account, pull up your Facebook Page, and look for the ‘reviews’ tab along the top of your screen (just below your cover image). 

How to Get Recommendations on Facebook 

Growing your positive Recommendations on Facebook isn’t as daunting as you might think. 

Check That Your Reviews Tab Is Enabled

The very first thing to do before devising a strategy for requesting Recommendations on Facebook, is to ensure that you’ve enabled the reviews tab. If you’ve previously received reviews, Recommendations will also be enabled unless you’ve turned them off. 

To check, you’ll need to log into Facebook and have your Page open. You’ll see a ‘Manage Page’ menu on the left side of your screen. Scroll down to the ‘Settings’ option. 

Next, click ‘Template and Tabs.’ 

Now you can turn reviews on or off with the toggle. 

Devise Your Review Request Strategy 

If you’re already in the habit of requesting reviews for other platforms, such as Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business), you can use many of those same techniques to get more reviews on Facebook. 

• Email: You may already be sending out emails to customers after you’ve successfully delivered the purchased product or service. Your email review request template can easily be adapted to include Facebook as an option for those who are happy to leave a review of your business. Include a link to your Facebook Page and a brief outline of how to locate the reviews tab. 
  
• SMS: SMS is a tried-and-tested method of growing your review profile and can work just as well for Facebook as other mediums. Just be sure to include your Facebook Page link in your SMS review request to get the full benefit of the incredibly high SMS open rates.

• Share a post on your Page: If you already have a respectable follower count on Facebook (or other social networks) share posts on a regular basis inviting your followers to leave a review. The standard rules of requesting a review apply here — be polite, thank your followers for their time, keep your message brief, and provide clear instructions for how to do so. Given the creative freedom you have on social media, you could even include a video or graphic with your post to demonstrate how to leave a review.

Requesting reviews on social media, finding reviews and feedback, and sharing those reviews with your social audiences isn’t quite as straightforward as you may expect. The reason? Many social reviews take the form of user-generated content rather than formal star ratings or recommendations.

Mastering this aspect of your reputation management can yield rich rewards, thanks to social media’s increasingly important role in the decision-making process.

Handling user reviews on social platforms works a little differently than your standard review management. So we’re going to give you tips to get back to basics.

What are Social Media Reviews?

In its simplest form, a social media review is feedback given about a particular business, product, or service posted on a social media platform.

However, that isn’t quite the full picture. One of the challenging characteristics of social media reviews for local business owners is the wide range of formats this feedback can take.

Some sites have a specific review option where users can rate or recommend a business or local service provider. One familiar example of this is the Facebook Reviews and Recommendations tab on Business Pages. Other popular sites, such as Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn don’t offer this clear review functionality.

That doesn’t mean that users don’t share reviews via their favorite social channels. Instead, it means reviews are shared in the formats they do have available to them. This could include detailing their experiences in a comment, sharing multimedia such as images or tagging local business profiles. 

How do reviews on social media differ from reviews on traditional review sites?

If you’ve been handling review management for any period of time, you’ll be familiar with how traditional review sites work and how to ask for reviews in a traditional manner. There’s a set structure and format which often takes the form of a star rating plus comment system. That’s not the case when dealing with many reviews on social media.

Only a very small number of the major social media networks have formal review structures in place (Facebook and YouTube which has a thumbs up/thumbs down system are the two notable exceptions). 

Due to this lack of infrastructure, most consumers share reviews in the same way they share their regular content on social media. That means reviews may take the form of comments, status updates, or tags.

The result is consumer feedback on local businesses that’s not always clearly marked as a review. This makes life difficult for local businesses asking for reviews on social media or seeking out consumer feedback which their clients are organically leaving independently across their preferred social networks.

You may find reviews for local businesses shared as:

• A status update posted on an individual consumer’s own profile or feed
• A comment left on a third-party post (such as a post by a friend asking a question or requesting recommendations from their network)
• A comment or reply left in response to an update from the business itself on their official page
• A picture or gallery of pictures, in a feed or as a temporary story
• A video
• A tag
• A retweet or reshare
• A thumbs up or down or star rating on a network which enables more traditional reviews
•  In the form of a direct message to the business via one of their official social profiles

That’s a lot, and often people won’t even tag you, so you could miss valuable information or feedback.

How do you find social media reviews?

Social media reviews can be particularly powerful. That’s because globally, online consumers spend 2.28 hours per day on social media.

Finding inspiration for things like products and services is among the top 10 reasons consumers spend so much time each day scrolling their social feeds. Pinterest, for example, is used by people to find ideas they particularly like the look of, including travel itineraries, local restaurants, or ways to improve their homes. Likewise, finding similar information is the second most common reason Instagram users log on. It’s a similar story on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Twitter.

Local business owners simply can’t afford not to know what their customers are saying about them socially.

The bad news is finding social media reviews isn’t as straightforward as monitoring traditional review platforms. Predominantly taking the form of user-generated content (UGC), sniffing out reviews across the social media ecosystem requires some manual research and a platform-specific approach in certain cases.

So let’s have a look at how to do it across different social platforms.

Finding reviews on Facebook

Finding reviews on Facebook is more straightforward than on many other social networks thanks to the star rating and recommendations system. If you’re already in the habit of asking for reviews on social media, you may already have a series of ratings and recommendations stored up. Finding them is easy. Just go to the Reviews tab at the top of your Page. You’ll see an overall star rating and then comments left by consumers who have opted to add a comment alongside their recommendation.

It’s important to keep in mind that not all consumers will leave a comment when recommending your business. Some may offer feedback and reviews on your main page rather than via the Reviews tab. There are a couple of ways this can be done.

A local consumer could comment on a recent post you shared and provide feedback about their experience, for example. You should already be regularly reading and responding to comments left by followers on your Page. If not, you’ll need to get into the habit of reviewing comments so you can pull out any review content.

A second way that a Facebook user may review your business would be to write a post on their own profile and tag your business Page. When your Page is tagged in a post, you’ll see an alert appear on the Notifications bell. Review these regularly so you don’t miss any reviews.

Many people may share a photo on their own feed and write something without tagging your business. Unfortunately, these can be nearly impossible to find. You may be able to come across them with some searches, but it may not be worth the time and effort.

Finding reviews on Instagram

Unlike Facebook, Instagram doesn’t have a formal review or ratings system for local businesses. That means you’re most likely to find customer feedback in the form of comments on your posts, tags in Stories or Reels, via direct message, or as comments made during live streams.

Instagram users also have the option of posting images, videos or captions to their own page and then tagging your business. When your profile is tagged, you’ll receive a notification via the alert icon.

Instagram content discovery is heavily dependent on hashtags. Some users may not @tag your profile when sharing their experiences of your local business but will use your brand name as a hashtag. You can manually search for brand-related hashtags using the search bar within the Instagram app. 

In some instances, if users have uploaded a Story or post about your business, they may tag the location instead of the Instagram account. These physical locations won’t be connected to your account and you won’t receive a notification.

You can, however, still view all the posts from a location tag by searching your business name in the search bar and clicking on the pin. You’ll then be able to select a particular location from the list and view all the media uploaded that tagged that location.

Finding reviews on TikTok

Similar to Instagram, the process of finding reviews made on TikTok requires some research.

With no formalized review or ratings system (though the testing of one has been rumored), you’re left to find customer feedback in the form of comments on your posts (including any livestreams you may do), videos tagged with your location, and mentions/tags of your business account in video captions. You should be notified of any tags of your business, so keep an eye on your notifications. 

Like Instagram, TikTok has a certain reliance on hashtags. It’s worthwhile to take the time to check the hashtags related to your brand. You will have to search this manually in the app as there’s no way to follow hashtags. 

However, you can add a hashtag to your favorites, which can then be accessed by going to the saved icon on your profile and scrolling to the far right to hashtags, creating a shortcut to all the hashtags you may want to keep an eye on. 

Finding reviews on Twitter

Posting reviews on social media isn’t always straightforward for consumers, who’ll often find there is no formal mechanism for sharing their feedback with local businesses. Twitter is one of those platforms.

With no structured public rating and review system in place, you’ll instead need to monitor the platform for Tweets that mention or tag your business. Typing your business name into the search box enables you to see posts, photos, or images which talk about your business, even when the original poster hasn’t tagged your profile. 

Finding reviews on Pinterest

Pinterest is a top destination for local consumers in search of products and services. That means it’s an important one to consider when searching for reviews on social media.

You’ll need to manually search for comments and imagery about your business on Pinterest as there’s no means of tagging other profiles or pages. Once you’ve entered your business name as the search term, you’ll need to click on each image to view any associated comments. From here, you can also click through to any linked third-party content such as blog posts or magazine articles for additional context.

General tips for finding reviews on social media

Don’t forget that users can send direct messages via social media. These can be a treasure trove of review content, especially if your clients prefer social channels for customer service.

Get into the habit of checking your notifications and alerts regularly for each of your social profiles. This will ensure you don’t miss new comments, DMs, posts to your pages, or tags.

If you find monitoring your social media profiles manually is too overwhelming or time-consuming, a social media marketing tool such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social can be used to automate the task. Our top social media tools resource is a great starting point. 

Tips for Responding to Reviews on Social Media

Because social media is a popular source of product discovery and business information, reviews on social media can be particularly helpful for local consumers. Research suggests that recommendations and product reviews are incredibly impactful and can turn browsers into buyers.

Your own responses to those reviews can add additional value and help to turn a negative review into a more positive customer experience.

With 98% of consumers in total reading online reviews for local businesses, feedback shared via social networks is something you can’t afford to ignore.

Knowing how to respond to online reviews is a core skill for any local business owner. Luckily, many of the tips you’re already familiar with as a result of your existing review management strategy are transferable to social media.

1. Respond as promptly as you can

Speed matters when responding to reviews. A fast response clearly demonstrates that consumer feedback is important to your business and something that you value.

Responses that take days or weeks to materialize signal to the original reviewer (and anyone reading the review later) that the customer experience isn’t a priority for your business. To speed up your response timeframe, try one of our handy review response templates.

2. Personalize your response

A personalized response shows that you have taken the feedback on board and appreciate the effort made by that local consumer.

Use the poster’s name or social media handle where possible and try to reference some aspect of their review in your reply. This shows both the original reviewer and other readers that you’ve taken time to digest the feedback and value your clients. 

3. Be authentic

Your review responses should read as if they came from a person, are genuine, and are authentic. If necessary, edit your review response template so the content is more in line with your own brand identity and tone of voice.

4. Recognize that engagement is key to social media success

Engagement and interaction matter to social media users. More and more, today’s consumers expect to receive a response when reaching out to brands via their social channels. 18% of US consumers say they expect a brand to respond to a comment within an hour while 76% expect engagement from that business within 24 hours. Taking the time to like, share and respond to comments, both good and bad, can help your business to meet consumer expectations and forge stronger connections with prospects.  

5. Have a plan to deal with negative reviews

There’s no getting away from the fact that sooner or later, you’ll have to respond to negative reviews.

Having a plan in place to deal with those reviews can make the experience less stressful and anxiety-inducing while also ensuring that you remain professional, polite, and offer a productive response.

When dealing with negative reviews, it’s even more important that you acknowledge the review quickly. Begin by thanking the customer for their feedback, apologize for their experience, and where possible, outline a suggested course of action to resolve the issue.

Those leaving a negative review may be tempted to continue the conversation in the public domain. Don’t be afraid to take the conversation offline after your initial response by inviting the reviewer to get in touch via phone, email, or direct message. Be sure to share the appropriate customer service telephone number or contact information to demonstrate your willingness to speak further in a more private setting.

Generating Reviews on Social Media

If you know how to ask for reviews on social media, you can gather valuable comments and opinions about your business from a range of new sources. What’s more, generating reviews socially means your Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms can begin to play a direct role in conversions.

Develop platform-specific posts

An easy way to begin requesting reviews on social media is to develop a few platform-specific posts inviting your customers to share their experiences in the comments.

Image requirements, caption lengths, and the use of hashtags can vary considerably from platform to platform. It’s always advisable to tailor your review request post to suit each network’s recommended dimensions and format to get the best possible response.  

With your chosen platform’s guidelines in hand, you’ll need to select an eye-catching image and create a clear caption inviting previous customers to share their feedback. Don’t forget to add relevant hashtags where appropriate. To make life easier, you could also request that your audience uses a specific hashtag in their review – this will help you find those comments later if your page isn’t tagged.

On Facebook, provide instructions for locating the Reviews tab at the top of the page. For other social media networks, you’ll need to ask for replies to be left in the comments or for users to tag you in their feedback posts.

If you’re a Twitter for Business user, you can request feedback from consumers directly after they interact with you via a Customer Feedback prompt. 

Experiment with formats 

The nice thing about asking for reviews on social media is that you have plenty of scope to be creative. In addition to standard in-feed posts, consider what other post formats your chosen network offers. 

On Instagram, try sharing your review requests as a Story or creating a Reel. On Facebook, you could create an image carousel of previous reviews and invite your Page fans to share their own experiences. For LinkedIn, you may want to keep things more professional and share a link to a feedback form or invite your followers to share their thoughts in the comments below.

Send an email or SMS

Most consumers are happy to leave a review when asked to do so. The issue is that not all businesses know how to ask for reviews. This prevents them from following up with their clients after a store visit or purchase to request feedback.

53% of local consumers say that they would be ‘highly’ or ‘very likely’ to leave a review for a local business if they received an email or SMS request.  Try these tips for using email to request reviews and this advice for sending review requests via SMS.  

Don’t offer incentives for reviews

Don’t be tempted to offer incentives for reviews, such as discount codes, free samples, or competition entries. Incentivized reviews can be looked on unfavorably by local consumers, who may suspect whether a review is genuine or has been created for financial benefit.

Read more: Review Gating and Risky Review Schemes to Avoid

How to Showcase Your Reviews on Social Media

79% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations, recommendations made by influencers, and articles written by topic experts. It makes sense then, to showcase your best reviews as much as possible across your social media channels. You can showcase all your reviews on social media, not just those originating on Facebook, Instagram, and similar.

Share to your Stories

You can share a stream of your best new reviews in real-time via Stories (available on both Instagram and Facebook). You can either take screenshots of the review, clip the review box, or use a tool such as Canva to create a custom graphic. Sharing via Stories means that your post will only be visible for a temporary period, so you’ll need to combine this method with other options. The benefit of sharing to Stories is that this content format has higher levels of engagement and interaction.

Create a Highlight

Create a Highlight spot on your Instagram feed dedicated to reviews. Each time you’ve shared a new review to Stories, just click to add it to your Highlight. Over time, you’ll build up a store of reviews, easily accessible in one location directly from your profile.

Upload a carousel post

Many social media platforms allow you to upload multiple images and videos as a single post. Viewers can then cycle through your slides, without having to scroll through multiple different posts. With research showing that these carousel-style posts tend to generate more engagement and reach than a single image, this can be an effective way to draw attention to your most glowing reviews.

Repost and reshare

Research has found that 85% of people consider user-generated content to be more influential than content created by brands directly. That makes positive images, posts, and experiences shared by consumers inherently valuable on social media.

When you come across images, videos, comments, and posts from consumers, you can repost and reshare that UGC to your own feed. This is easy to do on most platforms and allows you to fill up your content calendar without having to create new posts yourself. 

Pin to the top of your feed

When posting customer reviews on social media, you may find they quickly slip down the feed as new content is shared. You can ensure that your most valuable reviews remain at the top and highly visible by pinning them. Several platforms offer this feature, including Instagram and Twitter. Once pinned, that post will stay at the very top of the feed until unpinned.

Apple Reviews

Having been overhauled with the launch of iOS 15, Apple Maps provides a wealth of useful features for those seeking navigation, including 3D city views in select cities, immersive walking directions, and route planning. 

For local consumers, there’s also handy place cards which make it easy to find local businesses and source helpful information, such as opening times and contact details. Apple Maps also has a search filter, so a user can search for a nearby local business type and pull up information, such as review rating and images, all within Apple Maps.

Apple reviews are primarily pulled from a range of other places, such as Yelp. The Apple Maps user is presented with an average star rating and can see selected detailed reviews directly within the Maps app. 

It’s also possible for the user to upload their own images, give a thumbs up or down rating, add to favorites, and report an issue. 

While Apple Maps isn’t as popular as Google Maps, it’s the default navigation app on all Apple-powered devices, including iPhones and iPads, and therefore has a large potential audience. With such an extensive reach and the continual addition of new features, it’s well worth adding Apple Maps to your review management activity.

Bing Places for Business

Microsoft’s alternative to GBP — Bing Places for Business — is another source of reviews and business information for local businesses and consumers alike. 

Local business owners can claim their Bing Places profile and provide useful information, such as contact information, opening hours, photos, and services offered. This information populates local search results on Bing and is also used to return local business information by Alexa (Amazon’s voice assistant). 

Bing Places pulls consumer reviews from a range of third-party review platforms, including Tripadvisor, Booking.com, FourSquare, Yelp, TopRatedLocal, and Angi. 

Depending on the source of the reviews, Bing Search users may see either an average star rating or a review counter at the top of the knowledge card.

To see review details, local consumers must scroll past the business information details to see a selection of reviews from relevant sites.

Although users need to scroll, Bing Places does provide local search users — along with Alexa voice assistant users — a notable amount of review content from a wide range of sources. This means that you’ll need to adopt a similar strategy to strengthen your Bing Places listing and also focus on building a strong review profile on a number of relevant platforms.

Yelp

More than 90 million people visit Yelp each month in search of local businesses and services. Yelp says that, “97% of users spend money with a business they found on Yelp within a week”, and as we’ve seen, a number of other platforms pull review information from Yelp to show on their own listings. 

As with GBP and Bing Places, you can claim your free business listing on Yelp to control how Yelp users view your business. 

An average star rating is displayed at the top of the business listing followed by review highlights. Additionally, those viewing your business listing are shown recommended reviews, which are often reviews left by prolific review writers and will include images.

Business owners can respond to reviews publicly with a comment, as well as via direct message to the reviewer. There’s also a ‘Thank’ button within the listing dashboard that enables business owners to quickly send a message of thanks for a positive four or five-star rating. 

One thing to know about Yelp, is that it discourages businesses from asking for reviews. It says proactively requesting reviews can hurt your Yelp rating. 

Facebook

Facebook uses the term ‘Recommendations’ to describe the reviews that users can leave on business Pages. You must opt-in to Recommendations for them to be displayed on your Page and you’ll also need to meet a minimum quantity threshold before a rating is assigned. 

Facebook users have additional controls over the Recommendations they provide for local businesses, as they can choose to have their Recommendations show only to their Facebook friends or to be displayed publicly. Only public Recommendations count towards your Page’s rating. 

Those leaving a review will see an option to recommend (positive) or not recommend (negative). They can then share additional comments and upload relevant imagery. 

While it’s no secret that responding to consumer reviews is important for local SEO, Facebook takes it a step further and says responding can increase engagement and improve EdgeRank performance (the algorithm that decides what content shows up on a user’s News Feed).  

Unlike Yelp, Facebook doesn’t have any rules against asking for Recommendations from local consumers. 

Nextdoor 

Almost one in three US households use Nextdoor to connect with local neighborhoods, businesses, and organizations. The platform currently hosts more than 55 million business recommendations, making it a useful source of local information for consumers in your local area. 

Similar to GBP, local businesses can claim their free business listing to share business information. They can also share Posts to announce updates and publicize offers and events. 

Neighbors can like a local business or leave a recommendation to help others searching for a similar business. Because the Nextdoor platform is built around physical neighborhoods, recommendations are hyper-local, making it useful for those wishing to drive more footfall to their brick-and-mortar location or grow their service-area business.

Better Business Bureau

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) website attracts over 140 million visitors every year. It sets standards for lawful business practices, with businesses able to apply for accreditation to further enhance their reputation and standing.

It’s free to create a BBB Business Profile, with customers then able to leave a star rating and text review, and publicly register complaints. 

The Better Business Bureau promises to help consumers find businesses they can trust, making it a useful platform for small businesses keen to develop a strong local reputation. As users can leave reviews and publicly lodge complaints, it’s important that the business profile is regularly monitored and any issues swiftly resolved. 

Yellow Pages

As one of the original sources of local business information, Yellow Pages predates the Internet era and is therefore a known and trusted brand for many consumers.

Business profiles contain a wealth of useful information, including a general business introduction, contact information, images, reviews, services, accepted payment methods, and opening times.

Local consumers can leave a star rating and then back up their rating with additional text describing their experience. In addition to Yellow Pages’ own reviews, some reviews are displayed from other sources, such as City Search.

Industry-Specific Review Platforms 

While the likes of Nextdoor reviews and Apple reviews are important for building an overall business profile, businesses in certain industries can also leverage industry-specific sites to grow their reputation within their area of operation. 

Tripadvisor

For those in the hospitality sector, such as hotel businesses, tour operators, bars, and restaurants, Tripadvisor is an important review platform capable of building traveler trust, directing traffic, and increasing conversions. 

As with the other review platforms, listings are tied to the business profile. Keep in mind that travelers can create a listing for your business and begin leaving reviews, even if you haven’t taken the step of claiming your profile. If that’s the case, you’ll need to claim your profile before you can manage your listing and respond to reviews. 

Reviews on Tripadvisor can be extremely detailed and refer to many aspects of your business. In addition to sharing the reason for their visit, the date of their visit, a star rating, and a comment, consumers are invited to rate key features, such as cleanliness, service, and location. They can also include images with their review along with a personalized tip.

Business owners can reply to all reviews and report reviews that violate the guidelines in order to request their removal. 

Tripadvisor provides a range of tools to help grow your review profile on the platform, including widgets to display on your site and professionally printed inserts for checks, review cards, and QR codes. 

Angi

Founded in 2017, Angi is the new name for Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor. It connects homeowners and landlords with property professionals, such as pest control services, pool cleaners, and roofers. 

Reviews are extensive, with reviewers invited to provide a wealth of information. This includes star ratings for details such as responsiveness, professionalism, and punctuality, along with a description of work done, project cost, and images. Reviewers can also tag categories to describe the project and are asked whether they would or wouldn’t hire the business again.

The level of detail on offer makes Angi reviews useful for both the business and local consumers in search of property professionals. From a consumer perspective, this level of clear insight makes it much easier to assess whether a service provider fits the budget and can be trusted to do a good job. For the business owner, having such clearly defined ratings for key service aspects makes it a very useful tool for identifying where opportunities for improvement exist, as well as showcasing higher standards of service.