Social Media Archives - BrightLocal

[Poll] 49% of Local Marketers Use Twitter/X Less or Not At All Since Takeover

Sammy Paget — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 09:00:47 +0000

It may not be over yet, but I have a feeling that when we look back on the top marketing stories of 2023, X is going to be up there somewhere. Twitter user or not, you’d have done well to avoid headlines around brutal lay-offs, controversial changes, and, of course, that rebrand.

As dramatic as it may have been, we’ve been interested to know how things have really changed on the ground for local marketers. Personal feelings aside, does all this have any impact on how businesses and agencies reach their audience?

So, we polled 180 local marketers to find out how their usage of Twitter/X has changed since the takeover began in late 2022.

A brief timeline of Twitter’s takeover

Apr 2022

Elon Musk makes a bid to buy Twitter

Oct 2022

Musk formally takes over as CEO of Twitter

Nov 2022

More than half of Twitter’s employees are laid off in one day
Twitter verification is introduced for $7.99/month

Mar 2023

Twitter’s value is implied to have fallen drastically amid tumbling revenues and downturn in advertiser spend since start of takeover

Jul 2023

Meta releases Threads, a text-based challenger app to X, receiving 100 million sign-ups in one week
Twitter is publicly rebranded as X

Aug 2023

There is semi-serious talk of a cage fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg??

Source: The Street

How were local marketers using Twitter before the takeover in November 2022?

54% of local marketers were never using Twitter as a local marketing channel.
33% of local marketers used Twitter as a marketing channel at least monthly, prior to its takeover.

Quite astoundingly, more than half of local marketers said they never used Twitter for local marketing in the first place!

Or perhaps it’s not so surprising. Twitter was often seen as the go-to social platform for ‘microblogging’ and community building and, given the highly contextual nature of Twitter threads and discussions, it can be a tricky social media channel to ‘master’. Simply scheduling a few posts a week and spitting them into the ether won’t do. Business owners and marketers have to dedicate a lot of time into understanding how their audience engage.

So, that leaves us with 46% of local marketers using the platform as a marketing channel, and 33% that were using it pretty regularly—at least once a month.

How did Twitter usage change after the takeover?

26% of local marketers now do not use Twitter/X at all for marketing.
Twitter/X usage has not really changed for 30% of local marketers.

Of those local marketers that did use Twitter, 26% have said they now no longer use the platform at all since the 2022 takeover and subsequent rebrand. So that’s over a quarter that could have moved to an alternative platform, or ramped up their marketing activity on other social channels already used.

Shortly after the October 2022 takeover, a flurry of excitement grew around Mastodon. Although not new by any means, Mastodon offered former Twitter fans a familiar environment, while running as a decentralized, non-profit social channel. Over a million users flocked to join at the time and, despite numbers dipping again, as of July 2023 it appears to be on the rise once more.

And if they didn’t join Mastodon, there was also the boom in Threads users when that launched in July 2023. Meta’s challenger app, cleverly tied into Instagram, finally gave Instagrammers a place for text-based communication with an existing audience. Yet despite gaining 100 million users in less than a week, active users were said to have plummeted by August.

And so it follows that 30% of local marketers are using X just about the same amount as they used Twitter. Given the amount of us still calling it Twitter (I’m not sure I’ll ever comfortably say X without following up with “or Twitter or whatever”), and the challenger platforms maybe not quite giving the alternative people were hoping for, maybe not that much has really changed?

Bottom line: do local marketers see X as an effective marketing channel now?

Twitter/X averaged a 3.8/10 for effectiveness as a local marketing channel.
20% of local marketers said they do not think Twitter/X is effective as a marketing channel at all.
76% rated X’s effectiveness as a five or less out of ten.

Again, personal opinions aside, we wanted to measure what local marketers think of X now. So we asked them how they rated its effectiveness as a local marketing channel, from zero to ten. It averaged a not-so-great 3.8 out of ten.

A quarter of local marketers rated X’s effectiveness in the middle—not good, not bad—and a fifth said “nope, not at all”.

If we compare these results to the graph displaying how marketers use X now, you see a similar pattern. So it comes down to the the real question of: why are local marketers using X if they don’t think it’s particularly effective?

What social media channel do local marketers rate as most effective?

63% of local marketers rate Facebook as the most effective social channel for local marketing.
Just 2% of local marketers see X as the most effective social channel for local marketing.

Finally, we pitted X against other mainstream social platforms and asked local marketers simply which one they find to be the most effective. Facebook comes out on top by a mile, with 63% of local marketers rating it as most effective.

In our recent Local Business Discovery and Trust Report, consumers highlighted Facebook as the fourth most used and trusted platform for local business discovery, sitting next to Google, Google Maps and a business’s own website. When asked purely about social channels used for business discovery, 59% of consumers said they regularly used Facebook.

So, it makes sense that local marketers will find a social media platform effective if their audience are actively using it.

What can we learn from these results?

As noted within the section on X’s effectiveness as a marketing channel, we can see a fair chunk of local marketers are using X more or less the same as they did Twitter. With such a significant amount of them saying they don’t feel it’s effective, why are they there?

Mastering social media as a business owner is tough. Even for social media specialists, it can feel like you have to ‘keep up’ with all of the platforms. If this is you, consider some of these tips for social media in local marketing.

Where does your audience spend time online?

Bring it back to basics and reconsider who your target audience is. Sprout Social is a great resource for up-to-date social demographics and user stats, and even provides tips on the most engaging content types per channel.

And if you’re feeling stuck, find out where your competitors are! It’s easy enough to find which social channels your competitors are using—they may even list them in their website footer or on their Google Business Profile.

Want to take it a step further? Check out this guide on monitoring your local business competitors on social media. We also have a handy list of some of the top social media tools.

Remember the core purpose of social media

Yes, social media can be utilized to drive revenue, but it’s always worth reminding yourself that this should not be your key goal. It could be that you’re present in some of the right places but not really considering what’s important to your audience.

Visibility, engagement and trust are vital elements of the awareness and consideration stages of the marketing funnel. Consider:

Visibility: Is your business or brand present on the right channels? Does your brand identity and core business information (Name! Address! Phone Number!) match up consistently so that you can be found?
Engagement: Can users see evidence that you’re actively engaging with your audience? Are you responding to customer queries and issues, not just the positive feedback and good reviews?
Trust: ‘Real’ content, behind-the-scenes stuff and even sharing your team members can help to build trust with your audience. Combined with the above elements of visibility and engagement, it shows authenticity and helps users verify that you are who you say who are.

Share your thoughts with us

Did these results surprise you? We’d love to hear your thoughts! You can reach us over on X, via our Facebook community, The Local Pack, or by emailing the research team.

Local Business Discovery & Trust Report 2023

Sammy Paget — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:50:30 +0000

It’s fair to say that, in 2023, a managed digital presence is an absolute must for businesses. Without this, a business is severely missing out on opportunities to build trust, boost visibility, and stay relevant in its audience’s mind.

Within the local SEO space, there’s plenty of discussion about the importance of business citations for local rankings. And, while this is a core local marketing tactic, it’s vital to consider the people that business information matters to the most: its customers.

In 2021, we released the Business Listings Trust Report, highlighting how consumers interact with business listings to discover and use local businesses.

While the Local Business Discovery and Trust Report 2023 is very much a continuation of this research, we felt that the way consumers discover businesses or look for information about them today has come on leaps and bounds, with social channels doubling as business listings, and the continued power of visuals such as video content or customer photos.

So, how are consumers looking for local businesses online today and how are they discovering new businesses? We asked over 1,000 people what they thought. Let’s get to it.

What do we mean by business listings and business information sites?

Business listings—or business citations as they’re more commonly known by local SEOs—are listings of a business’s information online, typically their name, address, and phone number (NAP) at the very least. These can be ‘structured’, as seen on directories like Yell or BBB, or ‘unstructured’, which you may come across via a local news publication or blog.

When we refer to ‘business information sites’, this is a more general term including any website, app, or platform that holds information about businesses consumers are searching for. These might be search engines, like Google and Bing, industry-specific review sites such as TrustPilot, directories, or business profiles on social media.

Where are consumers finding business information online?

In the 2021 Business Listings Trust Report, we asked consumers which platforms they used to find information about local businesses. This time around, we asked which platforms consumers trust to find information about local businesses.

The top three most trusted websites or platforms consumers use for researching local businesses are Google (66%), Google Maps (45%), and a business’s own website (36%).

It likely won’t surprise anyone that Google comes out on top as the most trusted platform or website that consumers use to research local businesses. As of July 2023, Google’s worldwide market share as a search engine was 83.49%.

A Note on Google Products and Device Preferences

Google Maps has come out as the second most trusted platform, with 45% of consumers saying they use it to find information about local businesses.

Although it makes sense that consumers would trust another prominent Google product, it’s significant to note that 49% of consumers told us they prefer to search for business information using Apple devices (37% iPhone and 12% MacOS laptops or desktops).

Of these users, 59% named Google Maps as their preferred maps app for business research and discovery.

A business’s own website is the third most trusted method of finding business information (36%), which suggests that consumers are more likely to trust what Google is telling them—which is interesting, as business information on things like Google Business Profile could well be provided by the business itself, perhaps unknown to the consumer.

However, clicking straight through to a business’s website also suggests that consumers have a high level of intent, in that they may be looking for more detail about specific products or services and trust that a website is the best place for that information.

Facebook sits as the joint fourth most trusted platform for finding information about businesses online, alongside Yelp. Interestingly, the social media platform is so high up the list for business research, considering this year’s Local Consumer Review Survey found that Facebook usage for business research had fallen year-on-year and that a significant percentage were also wary of fake reviews on the platform. In addition, we highlighted dwindling usage stats for Facebook among US adults.

That being said, Facebook listings are prevalent among both search giants Google and Bing, with Bing often pulling the platform’s reviews through to local pack-style cards that highlight key business information.

In what circumstances are consumers looking for businesses online?

When considering why consumers are looking for local business information online, we provided a new option this year to consider proximity.

The percentage of consumers using business information sites to discover new local businesses has decreased from 66% in 2021 to 61% in 2023.
The percentage of consumers using business information sites to find businesses they are aware of, but have never used, dropped from 66% in 2021 to 56% in 2023.
The percentage of consumers using business information sites to find information about known businesses has decreased from 48% in 2021 to 41% in 2023.

Of the three options presented to consumers in both 2021 and 2023, we can see that percentages have decreased across the board.

It’s interesting as there doesn’t appear to be a clear reason. It could be the case that consumers are considering more varied sources when researching businesses online, as opposed to what they might consider ‘typical’ business information sites—later on, we’ll discuss the prevalence of social media for business discovery in more detail, including channels focusing on user-generated content like YouTube.

The Consequences of Incorrect Business Information

When looking up business information like its address, opening hours, and product inventory, the availability of this information is vital to help consumers make a decision. So, what happens when this goes wrong?

62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online in 2023, compared to 63% in 2021.

You’ll see in the chart above that the percentages remain fairly static in 2023, which highlights the continued importance of maintaining correct business information across different listings.

A huge 62% of consumers would be turned away from using a business if they found incorrect information online, which means that only just over a third of consumers would be willing to give your business the benefit of the doubt if inaccuracies are found!

For something that could be as small as a typo in a business address, email address, or phone number, it risks losing prospective customers to competitors and potentially even damaging your business reputation.

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What actions do consumers take upon encountering incorrect information?

Although we know that incorrect business information is enough to stop 62% of consumers from using a business, we asked them what their first reaction would be to finding an incorrect address online.

36% of consumers would call the business to confirm the correct address, as opposed to 41% in 2021.
28% of consumers would seek an alternative business to meet their needs, a decrease from 33% in 2021.
7% of consumers would abandon their search there and then, compared to 3% in 2021.

The percentage of consumers willing to call a business has decreased from 41% in 2021 to 36% in 2023, but we can see that this has been distributed across the new options of messaging the business via their socials or sending an email. It may be that, as more and more local businesses have an active social media presence, consumers see it as an easier option to reach out this way.

On the whole, it appears that if a customer has already decided to visit your business address, they won’t abandon hope at the first hurdle. 65% of consumers said they would take action, either by contacting the business directly or researching elsewhere to confirm the details.

It’s reassuring to know that the majority of consumers are willing to give businesses another chance, but this should still be seen as a warning sign to check your company details and contact information anywhere that it is listed!

Incorrect Business Information Can Cause Consumers to Lose Trust

63% of consumers said seeing mostly negative written reviews would make them lose trust in a business.
The percentage of consumers who would lose trust in a business after seeing an incorrect address decreased from 60% in 2021 to 46% in 2023.
The percentage of consumers who would lose trust in a business after encountering an incorrect phone number decreased from 66% in 2021 to 45% in 2023.

It’s important to consider that many business information sites also double as review platforms, or pull in reviews from other sites. When asking consumers about the issues that would make them lose trust in a business, we added considerations around negative reviews, both in terms of written content and review ratings. “Mostly negative written reviews” was the top issue that consumers said would make them mistrustful of a local business, with 66% of consumers highlighting this.

This is a particularly interesting finding and comes hot off the back of some research Near Media has recently completed around searcher behavior. At our recent Local SEO For Good conference, Near Media’s David Mihm, Greg Sterling, and Mike Blumenthal presented some fascinating findings that showed only about 33% of users were actually reading reviews.

They found that users are taking the time to seek out review content and scrolling SERPs to find better-reviewed businesses. Perhaps this suggests that, although they might not be reading them properly, consumers are skim-reading reviews to look for red flags and common themes.

Meanwhile, our findings show that 44% of consumers would lose trust in a business if they saw what they would consider a “low” average review rating. But what’s considered “low”? Well, our Local Consumer Review Survey this year found that 87% of consumers would not consider a business with an average rating below 3 stars, so that feels like a good indicator.

Our findings and the findings from Near Media show that, even if there are platforms where you do not focus on your business’s reputation, the information consumers find can be powerful enough to turn them away.

The Importance of Monitoring Your Business Review Profiles

We’d always recommend trying to diversify your reputation management to cover multiple platforms. Find out how you can monitor your review performance and manage review campaigns all in one place with BrightLocal.

It’s interesting to see that consumers appear to be more lenient towards the issues we first presented in 2021. The percentage of consumers saying that they would lose trust in a business after spotting inaccurate information such as physical address, contact number, opening hours, and email address, has all decreased since the 2021 report.

The most significant difference is in the results for encountering incorrect phone numbers. In 2021, 66% of consumers said this would make them lose trust in a business, compared to 45% in 2023. Although this still takes a stop in the top three issues that cause consumers to lose trust, it reflects a shift in consumer behavior as to how they prefer to interact with businesses (as a self-confessed phone-avoiding millennial, I can relate).

What business information is most important to consumers?

Does the importance of different types of business information vary by industry?

Although it appears consumers are now feeling a bit more forgiving of businesses when it comes to issues with business information, we did have to wonder how this would vary for businesses in different industries: would you be more forgiving of a retail outlet for a low average review rating, compared to a medical clinic, for example?

N.b. In this section, we’ve chosen to display the results in two separate charts, grouping industries based on the type of consumer need (first, entertainment and pleasure, then emergency and professional services).

Consumers view correct opening hours as most important for retail businesses (53%), food and drink businesses (51%), and entertainment businesses (47%).
Correct address information is the second most important factor for retail businesses (48%).
High average review ratings are seen as more important for hospitality-focused businesses: hotels (42%) and food and drink (41%).

For retail businesses, consumers need to know the most basic—yet most vital—business information: its opening hours (53%), where it is (48%), and how to get in touch (42%). It’s likely that, if a consumer is searching for a particular type of local retailer online, they already have a purchase in mind and are looking to get to that location soon.

Reputation elements appear to be less important to consumers here. This is likely because the quality of the product they’re looking to buy is often not connected to the quality of the service experience.

However, for businesses in which the service experience is the product, for example in hospitality and entertainment, review ratings and the number of positive written reviews are shown to be more important to consumers.

42% of consumers said that a high average review rating was important to them when considering hotels, followed by 41% for food and drink businesses. Similarly, 41% of consumers highlighted that a high number of positive written reviews was most important to them when looking for information about hotels.

While retailers should still view reputation management as important for building trust with potential customers, if a potential customer has a purchase in mind, then the likelihood of them visiting the store regardless of review ratings will remain fairly high.

49% of consumers said correct contact information is most important for tradespeople and service area businesses (SABs).
Knowing the correct physical address is more important to consumers when looking for automotive businesses (46%) and healthcare businesses (42%).

Arguably, the requirement for businesses in the industries listed above sits much more in the realm of necessity and, in some cases, even urgency, compared to those in hospitality, entertainment, and retail. Therefore, we can see that consumers are placing a high level of importance on fundamental business information, like accessing the correct contact information and the correct address.

Being able to find correct contact information is most important to consumers when looking for tradespeople (49%), financial and legal services (46%), and healthcare businesses (44%), suggesting that, when these types of businesses are required, that need is for now.

Out of these industries, consumers think it’s important that tradespeople and SABs are reputable, with two of the top most important factors being a high average review rating (44%) and a high number of positive reviews (43%).

Again, as these types of businesses are often required in a more immediate sense, it follows that consumers expect to see evidence of their reliability. Plus, if you’re inviting a professional into your home for something like a plumbing or electricity emergency, the customer wants to be assured that they are respectful, trustworthy individuals.

How often are consumers encountering issues with business information?

56% of consumers are encountering incorrect business information online at least once every few months.
23% of consumers are coming across fake business listings at least once a month.
28% of consumers are contacting businesses on social media and not receiving a response at least once a month.
8% of consumers are calling the incorrect number for a business at least once a week.

Just 13% of consumers say they have never encountered incorrect business information of some sort online, while 35% of consumers are encountering it on at least a monthly basis.

As we know from earlier, 35% of consumers would either find an alternative local business or abandon their search entirely as a result of incorrect information, so that’s a lot of business regularly lost.

And, for those businesses where customers have arrived to find them closed (or not even there!), this oversight in business information will likely be funneling their would-be customers directly to a nearby competitor.

26% of consumers are visiting businesses too early or late due to incorrect opening hours on at least a monthly basis, so you can imagine that if it was for something as convenient as coffee and groceries, or as urgent as car repair, they’re going to go elsewhere instead of waiting for you to open.

Worryingly, more than half of consumers are spotting fake business listings throughout the year—with 23% of consumers coming across them at least once a month! There are several reasons that fake business listings might exist online (such as spam or fraudulent intentions), but in some cases, legitimate businesses may be creating spammy listings in an attempt to outrank their competitors, causing confusion and turning customers off in the process.

The bottom line is that encountering spam or fake listings is incredibly frustrating for consumers in need of a particular product or service, and is also harmful to local businesses in that industry.

Combating Fake Business Listings

Google is particularly stringent when it comes to detecting and removing fake business listings, using a combination of machine learning and human verification teams to remove fake or spam listings, reviews photos, and videos.

You can report fake Google and Bing business profiles by clicking on ‘Suggest an edit’ on the listing itself. Other listing platforms tend to use similar processes, such as ‘Improve this listing’ on Tripadvisor and ‘File a complaint’ on Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Luckily, it seems consumers are also pretty switched on when it comes to suggesting edits to business information. We found that almost half of consumers have suggested edits to business profiles where information is incorrect.

How often are consumers searching for and using different types of local business information?

40% of consumers search for business opening hours several times a month.
36% of consumers are clicking through to websites from URLs found on business information sites several times a month.
39% of consumers are searching for business information, such as whether a business is child or dog-friendly, every month.

We also sought to understand the frequency of search behavior for particular business information. This can help to highlight where there may be gaps in your own business information.

For example, 39% of consumers said they are searching for business attributes such as being child or dog-friendly, or wheelchair accessible, on at least a monthly basis.

This means that if you aren’t calling out this information on your business listings, then you may well be losing out to competitors. Consider where you can make this information prominent across your listings: for example, Google Business Profile (GBP) allows you to add specific attributes to your listing that call out things like ‘dog-friendly’ and ‘LGBT-owned’, while you could also consider adding Q&As to your GBP to make it really clear.

Meanwhile, if you aren’t consistently updating changes to your opening hours across listings, or checking the correct URL is being used for your site, that’s a huge amount of people potentially being turned away.

The Role of Social Media in Online Business Discovery

Social media plays a huge role in the discovery of, and interaction with, local businesses. With so many platforms available to create an official business profile, and of course, many consumers taking to the platforms as the first port of call to rave—or rant—about experiences with brands, it makes sense that this is the case.

What social platforms do consumers trust for business discovery?

Facebook and TikTok are the least trusted social media platforms, with 43% of consumers saying they either do not trust the information at all, or believe it to be somewhat untrustworthy, respectively.
42% of consumers believe that the information they see on YouTube is either somewhat or strongly trustworthy.
Consumers are most ambivalent towards Threads, the newest competitor within the social media environment (at the time of publication)—41% of consumers have no strong opinions about the trustworthiness of the information on the app.

So, at the beginning of the survey, consumers highlighted Facebook as their fourth-most-trusted method of looking for business information online across all websites and platforms. And yet 43% do not believe the information they see on the social media website is entirely trustworthy.

It’s a little bit of a head-scratcher, but as we determined in the Local Consumer Review Survey earlier this year, consumers are generally more wary of misinformation and things like fake reviews today than they have been in previous years. With the sheer quantity of businesses managing Facebook pages, and some using them in place of a website entirely, it does make sense that it remains the most used.

Meanwhile, 42% of consumers believe that the information they see on YouTube is either somewhat or completely trustworthy. While that subject could probably fill many debates, it does show us that it’s a valuable channel for local businesses to consider—particularly considering how YouTube results are integrated into Google search—whether that’s in creating a YouTube channel yourself or considering options such as paid advertising, and influencer reviews.

TikTok is perceived to be untrustworthy by 43% of consumers, the same figure as for Facebook. Despite its reliance on video content, like YouTube, TikTok is known for controversial trends and users going viral, so it’s perhaps not so much in the minds of consumers when it comes to thinking about local businesses.

Our research did not survey US adults under the age of 18, but it is worth noting how Gen Z is using the social platform as a search engine more than Google, so it will be interesting to come back to this topic over time and see how consumer trust in business information on TikTok changes.

How often are consumers using social media for business discovery?

30% of consumers use Facebook to find local business information on at least a weekly basis.
This is closely followed by YouTube, which 27% of consumers say they use to find local business information more than once a week.

Consumers can’t expect every local business to be a TikTok sensation, and even just keeping up with regular social posting can be tricky when you’re a small business. However, understanding how frequently consumers are looking at social media to find businesses shows us that it’s vital to ensure your business’s information is at least discoverable, correct, and consistent across these platforms.

The most obvious platforms that spring to mind for business information are Facebook, which is also considered a business citation site, and Instagram, which has refined the way it shows users business information via its maps functionality. But even TikTok and Snapchat, social platforms used largely by younger demographics, have map functionalities and business information built in, so you never know when user-generated content could even pop up featuring your local business!

Plus, while the Local Consumer Review Survey found that 20% of consumers were using TikTok for local business discovery as of January 2023, we can see here that 31% of consumers are now using it on at least a monthly basis. That’s a significant jump in less than a year.

The Importance of Photos for Business Discovery and Building Trust

Of course, photos aren’t limited to social platforms. Consumers had long been posting photos to the likes of Tripadvisor before many of today’s platforms came into their own! But in today’s ‘always online’ world, the sheer diversity of visual content creates more choices than ever when it comes to researching and discovering businesses.

Not only do we see the glossy, marketing-quality photos that businesses want you to see across their websites and business listings, but we also get the everyday and behind-the-scenes content they share on social, not forgetting the spontaneous snaps from customers.

The industries where business-supplied photos are seen as more important than customer photos are entertainment (24%), retail (21%), healthcare (16%), and financial and legal (15%).
Consumers care most about customer photos in the hotel (32%), food and drink (29%), and beauty and wellbeing (26%) industries.
Photos of staff and team members within the healthcare industry are seen as important by 17% of consumers.

For service- and experience-centered businesses, consumers want to see accurate reflections of exactly that: the experience. 32% of consumers rated ‘photos taken by customers’ as one of the most important factors affecting their decisions around hotels, followed by 29% for food and drink businesses, and 26% for the beauty and wellbeing industry.

Considering each of these industries can be known for glossy, staged, and over-saturated imagery, it’s not surprising that consumers are looking to each other’s experiences as evidence of what’s ‘real’.

Choosing a hotel is a particular investment of your trust because, for however many nights, a consumer is using this as an alternative to their home. For beauty and wellbeing experiences, a consumer places trust in its professionals, often related to very physical treatments, and therefore wants to be reassured by real customer results beforehand.

The top two industries where consumers rate business-provided photos as more important than those taken by customers were entertainment and retail. As we highlighted when discussing the importance of reflecting fundamental business information for industries such as retail, consumers are likely looking for similar here, including imagery of the business itself to confirm location. For entertainment businesses such as movie theaters or bowling alleys, this could be much more facility-led—namely, does the venue offer what the consumer wants?

Although photos of business team members seem to be lower down on the scale of important decision-making factors, there is a notable percentage of consumers choosing healthcare (17%) and financial and legal businesses (15%) based on the availability of staff photos.

For healthcare, which can involve very personal and sometimes invasive treatments, consumers want an idea of exactly who they will be trusting with their physical or mental health. In financial or legal environments, it’s the same sentiment: consumers are placing trust around sensitive topics in an individual as opposed to a brand, so it’s important that they’re able to see who they will be dealing with.

Essentially, these findings show that being able to display a breadth of photos across your business listings will ultimately provide potential customers with more information up-front to help them make a decision. As well as the high-quality marketing imagery, it’s important to show customers what’s real, so keep this in mind when adding photos to your listings.

Summary

It’s clear that the consequences of inaccurate business information can be vast, ranging from causing confusion and frustration to potentially damaging a business’s reputation or losing out on customers completely.

At the very least, local marketers and business owners should use the insights gathered in this report to get on top of their business listings and check the accuracy of information across various platforms, including social media.

Of course, it can be a big job to source everywhere your business is listed, and setting reminders to review and update information may not always ensure the work gets done—but there are easier ways to manage it! Check out the available services through BrightLocal’s Listings Management tools, which cover everything from building your citations to ensuring your business updates are pushed out to all relevant listings.

Methodology

A representative sample of 1,138 US-based consumers was used to conduct the Local Business Discovery and Trust Survey in September 2023. The survey was distributed to an independent consumer panel via SurveyMonkey, in which age group breakdowns and gender are balanced.

However, SurveyMonkey’s consumer panels only consider participants who identify as male or female and therefore do not consider where participants may identify outside of binary genders. Additionally, no consumers under the age of 18 participated in this survey.

Using Our Data

You are welcome to use the survey findings, charts, and data, provided BrightLocal is credited and linked to via this page’s URL. If you have any questions about this research, please contact the research team.

on Navigating Big Brand Local SEO

Claire Carlile — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 14:13:22 +0000

In response to BrightLocal’s Brand Beacon Report 2024 findings, this episode sees us speak to enterprise expert Steve Wiideman about all things multi-location SEO.

In this wide-ranging and tactical nugget-filled conversation, Steve covers the challenges and opportunities available to multi-location SEOs today, and shares his proven processes for working with brands.

Listen to Learn

Steve’s expert take on the findings of the Brand Beacon Report 2024
Why social media isn’t the quick fix for multi-location brands that some think it is
How agencies can develop a one-pager that sets out everything the HQ of a brand needs to know about local SEO
Why some brands struggle to get on board with local SEO
Preventing roadblocks and getting buy-in when working with enterprise brands
The multitude of ways brands can use AI, and what to avoid when generating content with AI
The data-backed secrets of success for a brand location page
Advice for SEOs uncertain about the future of search in a world with AI

As you can see from the list above, it’s a long one, but absolutely worth getting stuck into if you’re working with big brands or looking to do so.

Watch the Video

Resources

BrightLocal’s Brand Beacon Report 2024: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/brand-beacon-report/
Wiideman Consulting Group: https://www.wiideman.com/
A Data-Driven Strategy for Optimizing Location Pages to Rank in Google: https://www.wiideman.com/location-pages-for-seo
Wiideman Search Engine Marketing Tutorials and Checklists: https://www.wiideman.com/learn
Steve on X: https://twitter.com/seosteve
Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seoexpert/
Steve on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@seosteve
Steve on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seosteve/

How to Add or Claim Your Facebook Business Page

Rada Daktina — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 13:51:00 +0000

A Facebook Business Page is an essential local SEO resource. Like your Google Business Profile, it acts as a structured citation that provides essential business information to prospective customers, while creating an official space for you to update and engage with your audience.

According to Meta, 1 billion users use Facebook’s platforms to message a business every week—so, while that also includes apps like Instagram and WhatsApp, there’s no denying the significance of a stat like that!

With all the developments that have taken place in recent years, including the switch from Facebook Business Manager to Meta Business Suite, new page designs, and changes to the ways you can manage your locations, you’d be forgiven if you’re not sure where to start!

We’ve broken down the steps for:

Creating a new Facebook Business Page as a single business.
Creating and managing multiple Facebook Business Pages.
Requesting access to claimed pages.

Creating a New Facebook Business Page (Single Business)

Step 1. Log on and create a page

Log in to your Facebook account and then go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/creation.
The center of the page will show you the preview of the page you are about to create—this preview updates in real time as you move through the steps and add the required information. You can switch between desktop and mobile view by clicking on the relevant icons in the top right corner.

Step 2. Begin adding your business information

On the left side of the page, you will see the fields with required and optional business information. To proceed further, you must add at least the required information. However, the more content you add, the better.
The first step is to add a page name (your official business/brand name), business category (you must select an option from the suggested drop-down menu), and business description (this is optional and can be added later).

Step 3. Add your business logo

After entering this information, click the “Create Page” button.
You will see a couple of new fields appear on the left menu, allowing you to add the logo and a profile picture (again, this is optional and can be added later), as well as toggles to switch notifications and promotional emails on or off. Once you’re done, click “Save.”

Step 4. Connecting to WhatsApp

You will be given the option to connect your page to WhatsApp by adding your mobile number. This is optional: if you do not want to do this, simply close the pop-up.

Step 5. Editing your page information

You will now be redirected to your newly created page, where you can add additional information about your business.
You can either go through the “Set your page up for success” section on the main page screen. It will show you the remaining sections you can update. Or, you can click on “Edit Page Info” on the menu on the left:

Selecting “Edit Page Info” will open a new page where you can add all your business information in one go. The information you add will be saved automatically—this will be indicated by the pop-up that will appear on the screen briefly to say that your changes have been saved.

Note: the system may not record your choice if you switch between options too quickly. Make your selection or add your information and wait until the data is saved.

Creating Multiple Business Pages (Brands and Multi-Location Businesses)

You must own at least one Facebook Business Page before you can manage multiple pages under one account/dashboard. This is important because you must have created a main page first so that other pages can be linked to it.

Step 1. Log in and locate your page

Log in to your Facebook account.
From the menu on the left, select “Pages” from the available options:

Open your page.
Copy the string of numbers at the end of your page URL—this is the page ID:

Step 2. Linking your page

Go to https://business.facebook.com/business_locations/.
Paste the number you copied into the search bar at the top right corner of the page and select your page when it appears as a suggestion:

If the page is relatively new, you will see this message (below). In this case, you will need to come back after two days to proceed further.

One thing worth noting is that the main page should not have an address. Therefore, you will need to remove it or select a check box if you will see this message when you will try to proceed next time:

Step 3. Ensuring your main page is set up correctly

After two days, if the page is ready, it will display the “Get Started” button on the main page screen:

Check the box to confirm that you wish to make the current page the main page of your business/brand.

This will create the required structure where all location pages will be hosted under the main page umbrella. Now, you will have access to the main dashboard where you can manage your stores. The first thing to do is to add your remaining locations.

Step 4. Adding location/store pages

Click on the “Add stores” button.

Select how you wish to add a new page. There are several options available:
- Add manually
- Add multiple stores
- Connect via API
- Connect a Page

If you only have a handful of pages to add, then the first option (Add manually) is the best. It will ask you to add basic information about the business:
- The business name will be pre-filled as Facebook assumes all locations share the same name as the main page.
- The default name will be the existing page name with a location descriptor. The location descriptor is “(City)” or “(Address, City)” if there are multiple locations in the same city. The name can be changed later in the page settings.

If you have more than ten locations, they can be added in bulk via a file upload.
The second option (Add multiple stores) is the best for that – it will also provide you with an example template that shows how it should be filled in and the blank template you can use for your stores:

How to Request Access to Claimed Pages

Log in to Facebook and go to https://business.facebook.com/settings/pages.
Click the “Add” button and, from the drop-down, select “Request Access to a Page”:

Enter the Facebook Page name or its URL.

Tip: It’s better to search for your page using its URL as, when you type the name only, you can be presented with several options. It may not be clear to understand which page you need to select—unless you want to claim them all—or which pages are yours.

Once you have selected the page, use the toggles to choose which permissions you need. If you want to keep the business information up to date, then it’s best to request full control.

Click Request access.
This request will then appear in your dashboard as “Pending”.

Managing your Facebook Business Page

We hope these steps have helped you with the first step of adding or claiming your Facebook Business Page. For tips on getting the most out of your Page, optimizing its layout, and even asking your audience for Facebook reviews, head to our guide on how to manage your Facebook Business Page as a local business.

The Local Marketing Holiday Guide 2023

Mike Hawkes — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 08:01:38 +0000

The holiday season is fast approaching. Sure, supermarkets probably started stocking cranberry sauce in August, but now’s really the time you’ve got to get focused to make sure your marketing is ready for the coming festivities. In fact, some people would probably think you’re leaving things a little late.

That’s where this article is here to help. Unfortunately, we’re not going to offer you tips on creating an amazing Christmas campaign from the ground up or help you come up with heartstring-tugging adverts for Hannukah or New Year. What we are going to do, however, is help you get the basics right for your digital marketing, so you don’t have anything to worry about.

Google performed a study with Ipsos in November 2022, which showed that 86% of consumers say online sources helped them make informed decisions for the holiday season. The same study highlighted that 32% of searchers used maps to find businesses.

With this in mind, we want to make sure you’re ready for whatever comes. Be prepared for potential influxes of reviews, or season-specific questions your customers may have. Get your emails scheduled for the right times, your sales pages optimized and ready, and know exactly what you’re posting on X (formally Twitter).

So, without further ado, here’s our holiday marketing checklist to help local businesses navigate Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, Hannukah, and the New Year.

Social Media Checklist for the Holidays

On social media, the key is to communicate what you are doing for the holiday season effectively. This could be as simple as a special menu or updating your opening hours or as complex as creating a whole campaign, like an advent calendar. Our top tips for social media in the holiday season are:

Communicate your offers

Let customers know if you’re offering gift cards, holiday offers, or discounts. Use social media channels to get the word out about what you’re offering, and how your audience and customers could benefit.

Share any updates to opening hours

Even if you’ve updated your GBP for the holidays, you should share when you’ll be open on all your channels. You can’t rely on someone googling your business. For many people, your social channels are their first port of call. If you’re going to be closed for a night for a Christmas party, for instance, or open for longer during the holiday period, make sure you let people know.

Share any updates to your menus

If you serve food, there’s a good chance you’ll have some special items on your menu. If you’re updating your whole menu for the next couple of months, make sure you share it on your social media platforms for people to see. This works in a couple of ways, it gives them access to something up-to-date but it can also get people excited about that deep-fried cranberry & blue mac n cheese you’ve spent all year planning.

Here’s Starbucks announcing its holiday menu on Instagram for some inspiration.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Starbucks Coffee (@starbucks)

Consider adding new photos of any holiday offering, like decorations

If your store is offering holiday products like decorations, gift ideas, holiday menus, Santa appearances, boiler maintenance Christmas deals, seasonal products like Christmas tree delivery or disposal services, let your customers know! Here’s a great example of how Zabar’s & Co. announced an exclusive product and discount for Hanukkah via social:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zabar’s & Co. Inc. (@zabars)

Share any special events

If you’re running one-off experiences or events, or even just know that you’ll get particularly busy on certain days, let people know in advance to help them plan.

Consider a holiday-specific campaign

This doesn’t have to be something complex that you’ve spent 6 months planning, either. Social can help you put something simple together, like an advent calendar, with 25 days of offers, or 25 days to share services, menu items, or gift ideas. Unveil a new product over 25 days, or something completely new.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Main Street Heating & Cooling | Utah HVAC Repair & Install (@mainstreetcomfort)

You could also invite local influencers to share your offering as part of a gift guide.

@connie.mp4 Toronto local small business gift guide part ii #toronto #wishlist #christmasgiftideas #holiday #shoplocal ♬ original sound – Connie ❀

It’s just as easy to create videos for Reels as it is TikTok too, doubling your efforts across social platforms with minimal stress. Plus, the holiday season means you can add timely and relevant sounds to your videos. Think Mariah, Brenda Lee, and Michael Buble—the perfect soundtrack to your holiday marketing.

Run a competition on social media

Want to get people excited about your new offering? Consider a “like and share to win” for a holiday meal, experience, or gift.

Consider adding holiday designs to any of your social graphics

This could be as simple as a dusting of snow on your cover photo, or you could go for something more advanced in any of your promotional images. It’s up to you (or your brand guidelines!).

Offer a gift list/gifting suggestions

This is particularly important if you’re a retail store. Getting on TikTok to show off your holiday products and services could be a great way to kickstart your holiday campaign in an authentic way that doesn’t require much huge investment in time and money. From the 2023 Local Consumer Review Survey, we know that 20% of consumers find out information about a business on TikTok, making it an obvious choice to spread the word about your holiday offering.
This example from a local gas station works well:

@maryledbetter9 Check out Reeder’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma! #tulsaoklahoma #shoptulsa #localbusiness #christmasshopping #familybusiness ♬ Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee

The creator shares each holiday-themed product that can be found in her business, makes use of a popular Christmas hit as the video sound, and uses local keywords throughout her video and through hashtags in the caption.

Partner with other local businesses to offer something unique, or share content with

If you’re offering locally sourced food, consider partnering with a local brewery to create a food and drink gift basket people can buy. If you’re a landscape gardener, consider partnering with Christmas tree wholesalers to deliver Christmas trees around the local area.

Remember to wish people a happy holiday season

If your audience is from a range of backgrounds, it’s a good idea to share the love this holiday season. Don’t just limit yourself to the holiday you’re celebrating yourself.

Get Your Website Ready for the Holidays

While many local businesses still forgo a website, they’re a key aspect of your digital presence. At this time of year, there are a number of things you can do to help you prep for potential heavy traffic moments, like end-of-season sales, or increase your online visibility.

Prepare for heavy traffic

Do you need to check your server, or consider a queue system? Basically, if you’re expecting an influx of additional traffic, can your current site hack it? This won’t affect everyone, but for those who know it could happen there are a few things you can do. Make sure your server can cope with the potential additional traffic, or even consider investing in queue software if you’re expecting particularly high demand.

Pin seasonal posts in your blog

If you create seasonal content that’s relevant every year, then make sure your customers can find it! A simple way to do this is by pinning holiday posts to the top of your blog page for the duration of the season. This means you may not have to write whole new posts every year just so people can find them again.

Showcase seasonal reviews

If you regularly offer different services or have seasonal products there’s a good chance you may have reviews for these. This is the time of year to put these front and center. Showcasing reviews is something you should do all year round, as it’s excellent social proof, but at this time of year, it could be worth reviewing the ones you’re using.

Update posts for freshness

That being said, if you are pinning old posts to the top of your blog, you need to make sure they’re up-to-date. This applies to any of your seasonal posts. There’s a chance that most of the information in your holiday posts could be absolutely fine, but it’s worth checking to make sure data, dates, or other information is still accurate and relevant. Avoid simply re-publishing with a new date, though. Google watches out for this kind of activity with its Helpful Content Updates. If you’re going to do that, make sure you’ve genuinely added new content.

Prepare your sales & promotional pages

You should already have pages created for these that you use every year. If you don’t, this is your cue to do that. You should have an evergreen page for your holiday promotions and sales. This page should remain live all year, just not linked prominently from your homepage. This way your main promotional pages for key events will gain authority from links and age over time, and you won’t be trying to rank a brand new page every time. Now that you’ve got your evergreen pages, make sure they are completely up-to-date with this year’s information.

Bed, Bath & Beyond has had its ‘Holiday’ category live with the same URL structure since 2015, with other subfolders coming off it. This has allowed it to gain links and rank for related keywords.

Check for consistency

Make sure your promotional messaging is consistent across your entire website. If you have a banner saying one thing and your landing page says another, you’re in trouble.

Check metadata is correct for this year

If you’re using your evergreen pages, there’s a good chance you optimized your meta titles and meta description for the previous year. Make sure each one is accurate for this year. Consider optimizing them to include what the deal actually includes, too. Are you offering cut prices, a special service, or free shipping? Your meta title or description could be your customer’s first impression of your deals or events.

Communicate key information where applicable

If you’re running special menus or deals, make sure you communicate these where you can. Similarly, if you have restricted opening hours or a final postal date, make sure you clearly communicate this.

How To Smash Your Email Marketing This Holiday Season

In an ideal world, your holiday email marketing communications would be all-singing, all-dancing campaigns with seasonally appropriate designs and GIFs galore, right? But in reality, when it comes to communications as a local business, the most crucial elements of your holiday emails will be the need-to-know items.

Opening hours reminders

Don’t give your customers a chance to tell you they didn’t see your holiday opening hours! As well as on your website, GBP, and social channels (plus any in-store signage you may have), come at your clients from all angles and reinforce any changes to opening hours or contact details in your email marketing. Much more active on IG stories or your Facebook Page? Direct email subscribers to the most relevant channels for regular updates.

Communicate service or product ordering and delivery deadlines

Likewise, for any significant holiday deadlines, ensure your customers have plenty of notice—whether it’s the last order and delivery dates for gift giving, seasonal food ordering ahead of any big days, or your availability for particular services.

Prepare the ‘signing off’ email

If your business is closed during any of the holiday periods, it’s always a good idea to send a ‘signing off’-style communication. This is a nice opportunity to wish your subscribers happy holidays, whilst communicating key reminders about how and when customers can expect to receive support throughout this time. You can also use this as an opportunity to recirculate helpful resources such as FAQs or any guides you might have created.

Sharing the joy of shopping local

The winter holidays in particular can be a great opportunity to reinforce how much the support of your community makes a difference to your business, as it catches consumers at a time when they’re feeling generous and bighearted. Create content to remind them of all the reasons to shop local, such as highlighting the uniqueness of independent gifts and personalized services, or sharing a personal story behind your business.

Automate key messages and prepare ahead of time

Even if you’re going to be out of the office for certain periods, the importance of timeliness never diminishes. For example, the period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is prime for discounts and sales promotions, so in the run-up to key holiday periods, ensure these key emails are planned, created, and scheduled.

Make Sure Your Promotions Are Optimized

Need-to-know information aside, these busy promotion periods do call for some creativity. As commercial dates like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas approach, the need to stand out from the hundreds of notifications pinging your customers’ inboxes or sponsored ads filling up Instagram feeds comes into play. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Be descriptive with your offers

Absolutely everyone is going to be bombarding users with ‘BLACK FRIDAY SALE’ messaging, and it’s more than enough to just turn people who aren’t actively looking for something off. In emails, use your subject line or pre-heading text to be descriptive about what you’re offering and therefore why it’s such good value.

Creating a sense of urgency

We can’t all be like Glossier, which so rarely holds sales that it causes the internet to go into meltdown, but we can learn a thing or two about how it creates urgency. If you aren’t the kind of business that usually discounts products or services, you can utilize messaging to create excitement or a sense of urgency (AKA incite a sense of FOMO). Some brands make good use of ‘flash’ offer messaging, which can be made all the more effective via app push notifications, while others utilize a live countdown in emails or on-site to drive urgency.
Can you handle demand?

This applies to both the what and the how of any promotions you’d like to run, so not just the product or service that your customers are buying, but the logistics of fulfilling them and your business being able to keep up with any issues. Consider the following:

Do you physically have enough products in stock?
Is there a limit on purchasing?
Do you have adequate customer support in place?
Is your site set up to receive discount codes?
Can it handle significant traffic and amounts of transactions?

Rewarding loyalty / high-value customers

Some consumers see pre or post-holiday promotional periods as a free-for-all and, while it can be a great opportunity for you to grow brand awareness and gain some new customers, it’s worth considering what value they will place against your brand as a one-time promotional purchaser. Why not consider how this could be an opportunity to reward your existing, loyal customers? You could create an exclusive customer discount, an early-access event, or a live interaction via social channels that seek to reward your most engaged users.

Be smarter around timeliness

UK health and beauty retailer, Boots, has already kicked off the 2023 winter holiday season with discounts and loyalty point boosts for its Advantage Card members with a clever twist: some personalized vouchers can be used twice, some combined with others, and some reward you for ‘getting ahead on gifts’ for purchases during a specific period. However, it’s especially smart as it’s teasing promotions well ahead of time, while also encouraging customers to spend over longer periods, rather than inciting a rush around Black Friday that dwindles ahead of Christmas.

Preparation Is Key for a Relaxed Holiday Season

So, are you feeling ready? Our checklist should help every local marketer get the business ready, whether you’re launching a festive menu, closing on different days to everyone else, or simply optimizing your promotional pages

We hope our tips for the holiday season will have you feeling prepared to tackle everything that comes your way over the next couple of months.

Before you get started with your holiday marketing strategy, why not run a Google Business Profile Audit or benchmark your visibility with Local Rank Tracker? Make sure you can measure the impact of everything you’re doing across Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and beyond.

Top Social Media Tools

Mike Hawkes — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 10:58:43 +0000

There’s more than first meets the eye to planning, managing, and executing successful social media campaigns. Whether you’re responsible for just one business or multiple, content creation, scheduling and measurement can be complex and time-consuming.

In the same way that local SEO tools can help to grow your local search visibility, the right social media tools can be incredibly beneficial. Having a few select tools at your disposal can streamline workflows, simplify technical tasks such as video editing, and do the heavy lifting of optimization and analytics.

Want more insight to inform your social media strategy and better integrate it with other areas of your marketing? Check out our local SEO resources for helpful guides and best-practice advice.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most widely used social media tools, allowing you to manage all your social media profiles from one platform. You can schedule and publish content, promote posts, and perform easy social listening.

Quuu is a little different from some of the other social media management tools you may be considering. While many alternatives are built around scheduling and post management, Quuu is dedicated to content curation.

If you’re too busy to create enough original content or don’t have the resources to search out third-party content regularly, Quuu curates posts for you.

Powered by AI, Quuu will seek out appropriate podcasts, blog posts, videos, etc., across 500 different categories. Then, Quuu can share the post for you, or you can review and schedule yourself via a tool such as Hootsuite.

Quuu: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?

$5 – 15.83/mo.

Does it have a free trial?

There is a free version.

What makes it unique?

Quuu allows you to find and share relevant curated content to your social profiles with no hands-on work required.

Website

https://quuu.co

Brandwatch is one of the social media big hitters. Its suite of tools covers almost everything you could possibly need for social media management.

For small businesses, an Essentials package includes a content calendar to keep content planning and scheduling organized and visible. Analytics offer useful data around post reach and audience engagement, which can feed into future content planning.

If you offer customer service via social media, a single inbox brings together all direct messages from each connected network, cutting down the time required to respond.

Brandwatch also has crisis and brand management tools, with real-time alerts and live data so you can spot trends. Are you planning an influencer marketing push? You can also use Brandwatch to identify influencers and manage the whole campaign right through to measuring results.

Brandwatch: Cost, Trial, and Features

How much does it cost?

Contact sales.

Does it have a free trial?

Yes. 14 days for SME users.

What makes it unique?

Industry-leading AI keeps close tabs on emerging trends so you’re always in the know with real-time data and alerts.

Website

https://www.brandwatch.com

Jenny Bernarde — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 13:20:31 +0000

Over the past few months, we’ve seen major changes in both the ways users consume social media and the opportunities presented to local businesses by new social media search functionalities.

In July, we reported on Instagram’s new immersive map, potentially changing the game for local business discovery. Since then, it’s also been reported that TikTok is the go-to search engine for Gen Z, with 40% of Gen Z users preferring the video sharing app, and Instagram, over Google Search.

Naturally, TikTok is jumping on product developments, improving its search functionality, and even testing a ‘nearby’ feed.

We’ve also seen Twitter introduce Location Spotlight for local businesses, which displays important business information and integrates with Google Maps to help customers find them.

We’re going global! Now, any professional around the world can add a Location Spotlight to their profile to help customers find their biz location and get in touch faster. Andit has a new Google Maps integration to help customers with directions. pic.twitter.com/Uw5oLdJWXU

— Twitter Business (@TwitterBusiness) August 4, 2022

Social platforms seem to be putting more and more focus on search and local business discoverability.

On Instagram, we’re seeing a push for users to find local businesses through creator and influencer content. Meanwhile, on TikTok, the everyday creator can go viral with their video content, which can include recommendations of local areas, businesses, or services. And now Twitter is now promoting local businesses through enhanced profile attributes.

But what about Facebook? Well, Facebook has always presented itself as a strong promoter of local businesses. Businesses can create pages, which can act as local citations. Your business page shows up in search queries across Facebook and provides an additional platform for user recommendations, engaging followers with news, updates, and offers.

Facebook’s online community groups also provide an avenue for local businesses to promote their services, or to get user reviews and recommendations. In future, we could see Facebook integrate with Instagram’s map search, and become an even more valuable platform for local businesses.

As shown below, a simple search for ‘Brighton dog groomer’ brings up related local pages with their business info, followed by conversations taking place on local community groups. This demonstrates the power that user recommendations on local community groups have, especially as they show on search results.

And then there’s YouTube: the ultimate creator platform, which we know consumers can use it search for almost anything.

While YouTube is indeed a global platform, local keywords can still have an impact on business discoverability. For example, the search term “san diego restaurants” brings up food and travel vloggers providing their recommendations.

It’s clear that, while some of the original tech players continue to boost local visibility through creator content, newer platforms are starting to embrace it even more.

With these changes in mind, it’s important to consider how consumers are really consuming content in 2022.

Video-first Platforms

Social media channels have moved in favor of short-form video content. This has led to a change in how users, particularly younger people, consume information, through quick, visual pieces of content.

If someone is looking for the best way to make a key lime pie, they might now watch a video, rather than read a written recipe.

If someone is traveling somewhere new, they might watch videos of their destination, rather than reading travel blogs.

For someone trying DIY, their go-to for information could now be in video format. In the below screenshot, you can see a search for ‘key lime pie’ on TikTok which brings up video tutorials and recipes to make a pie.

When you think about it, doesn’t video make more sense for these kinds of content anyway? You could argue that this reckoning has been in the works for a long time. In many cases, video provides the user with everything they need to know in as little time as possible, in the most engaging way.

Authentic and Trustworthy Content

Social media has always been a place of fake personas, edited and filtered images, and carefully curated, aesthetically-pleasing content. This is now changing, as “young people have decided to share it all, from messy break-ups to professional failures.” TikTok creators are often their most authentic selves, and this hunger for realness, trust, and authenticity has spread across social channels.

BeReal: A Case Study in the Appetite for Authenticity

BeReal is one of the newest social platforms taking the younger generation by storm, now with up to 10 million daily active users. BeReal, which describes itself as ‘Your Friends for Real’, is a photo-sharing app with no functionality to edit or filter images.

Every day, at a different time, users are notified that they now have two minutes to take a photo. The app takes a photo using both the back and front cameras on the smartphone, to give a realistic view of what the user is doing or seeing at that moment. No curated images, just an authentic peek into someone’s life, there and then.

The joy of this is that you’ll most likely find everyone else is going about their day-to-day life, watching TV, cooking, working, or studying. Users don’t experience ‘FOMO’, or feel bad about themselves for not living the ‘perfect’ life we often see on platforms like Instagram.

Users require authenticity as the number one trust signal: a TikTok user sharing their recommendations for museums to visit in Toronto or an Instagram travel influencer showcasing their most recent Miami Beach hotel stay might be viewed as more trustworthy than Google reviews—definitely something we’ll aim to explore in our next Local Consumer Review Survey.

In the screenshot above, we can see that a content creator has tagged the Miami Beach hotel in her photo, showing her experience at the location there and then. The hotel’s comment (highlighted) is an example of a great way to respond and engage with user-generated content such as this. Anyone viewing the post can see what the hotel may look like, what their experience might be when they get there, and potentially the promise of good customer service through the hotel’s online engagement.

When it comes to search, users want to see real reviews and real experiences, and this is what video on platforms like TikTok and Instagram can provide.

For anyone browsing nearby restaurants, for example, social search adds authenticity, from real and trusted content creators. With video, you can see the plated food, you can grasp an idea as to what the interiors and vibe of the restaurant would be, and you can hear about and see recent experiences directly from the creator themselves.

Source: TikTok

This example from TikTok shows food, drinks, interiors, and exteriors from Chicago restaurants, so that users can get a feel as to what the restaurants feel like, as well as what the food served will look like.

Traditionally, a search result would rely on the Google algorithm, which can present potentially fake reviews, out-of-date images, and poorly-optimized websites —none of which bode well for a good IRL experience.

Ultimately, social search showcases a more authentic, real-life world experience, rather than relying on content that’s been carefully, and likely artificially, crafted for algorithms.

Why are social platforms making substantial changes for local businesses?

This might be an effect of the pandemic, where more local businesses took to the world of digital in order to continue making money during lockdowns across the world. Social platforms are tapping into a market that is more digital than ever before, enabling local businesses to grow and increase visibility through their channels.

If more local businesses advertise on these platforms, grow their followings, and become more active through social search, this naturally results in more revenue opportunities for the platforms, and so the imperative for them to develop more functions for local businesses grows ever more.

Creating Viral Video Content for Social Search

This might sound good for Gen Z users, or local marketers in industries such as leisure, tourism, or hospitality. However, social media, and in particular video, can be highly valuable for local marketers across a variety of industries, for older audiences, even in the most niche of places.

Here are some great examples of local businesses causing a stir on TikTok, and reaping the rewards by doing so:

The Pool Guy, a swimming pool engineer based in the UK, has gone viral for his pool-cleaning videos. These have led to increased discoverability throughout his local service area and beyond, and even celebrity bookings.

This Manchester, UK-based hairdresser shares incredible hair transformations, and often finds that clients travel the breadth of the UK just to have treatments with her.

TikTok isn’t just kids performing dances or lip-syncing along to popular music. It’s full of people giving advice on health and fitness, financial advice, home improvements, advice on plant-care—you might even find your local dentist on TikTok!

While they might reach global audiences, you’d be surprised at how showing your trust and authenticity through TikTok can help boost your local brand awareness and drive customers from both your local area and from further away.

Taking Advantage of Social Search

Now we know the power of social media video, and the rising importance of social search, how do local businesses take advantage of these evolutions in social media?

First of all, increase your social media presence. Being active on channels like Instagram and TikTok could work well, especially for businesses with a visually pleasing interior, or a product or service they can easily show off through video. If you’ve got subject matter expertise in law, healthcare, or finance, answer frequently-asked questions through short-form video on these channels. You never know who your content might reach.

Secondly, engage your audience to drive user-generated content. Get users who visit your location to tag you and share content from their experience. Engage with anyone who does share their experience on social and thank them! Your potential customers want to see authentic content from existing customers, and user-generated content is the catalyst for this.

Reach out to local influencers and offer them a gifted meal or a visit to your location in exchange for creative content on social media. Make the most of content creators on social media, as these are the people shouting about your brand, and boosting discoverability through social search.

In Conclusion

Social search is growing. With this, in turn, platform product developments and user behavior are now intertwining to become a force to be reckoned with.

Users are engaging with, learning from, and searching for more video content, to help answer their questions, inspire something new, or be entertained. Now’s the time for businesses to start getting creative behind the camera to meet user needs.

Through video comes authenticity and social proof from a range of creators across social platforms. Creators are showcasing their content in the most real and trustworthy way, and users are hungry for realistic content. Local businesses should make good use of user-generated content throughout their local marketing campaigns.

While we might still be reliant on Google, the power of social media is always growing, and social search could have a huge impact on how you achieve your business goals.

Is Instagram the Next Big Local Business Discovery Engine?

Jenny Bernarde — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 09:01:26 +0000

Instagram has launched a new map search feature to help users discover local businesses more easily. The new feature allows users to scroll around a map, browse popular locations, and explore local businesses. The map promotes a more immersive experience, where users can upload and view stories tagged in each location.

New map, who this?

Now you can now find popular locations around you or filter by categories like cafes or beauty salons. pic.twitter.com/asQR4MfljC

— Instagram (@instagram) July 19, 2022

How the New Instagram Immersive Map Works

The map, provided by Apple, has been around for some time, with photos available to view at each location. However, with this new update, users can explore areas and businesses throughout the map, finding prominent locations through the scroll search. Users can filter locations by restaurants, cafes, sights, hotels, parks and gardens, bars, and more.

A search in San Francisco filtered to show only cafes.

The new feature is now more of a discovery engine, where users can explore geographical areas by tapping on tagged locations on posts, stories, and videos. Once tapped, you’ll be shown a map of the area with a list of businesses within it to discover.

The information you’ll see about each business location on this list includes:

business category
number of Instagram posts the business has
opening hours
an idea of how expensive the place is

Each location features three top images, which are collated from the second, third, and fourth most liked image tagged at the location. The most liked photo is used as the location’s profile photo, as well as the pin photo seen on the map. This suggests Instagram is adding authenticity to the experience, through real-time user-generated content, rather than relying on official logos or profile images used by each business.

A list of businesses displayed when searching in San Francisco.

For users with public profiles, stories and posts tagged at the location will show up for others to see on the interactive map. This looks like another way the platform is pushing for content creators to become discoverable through local area searches.

You’ll notice top posts consist of many selfies and portraits from influencers. An interesting take here is that Instagram is the ultimate influencer platform, and it’s now making the most of it with this new maps feature, showcasing influencers at popular locations for more users to see.

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram has recently said:

“We want to do our best by creators, especially small creators, and we see recommendations as one of the best ways to reach a new audience and grow their following.”

Clicking into each business location gives you the option to ‘see related guides’ which drives you to user-generated guides that feature the selected location. The benefit of this is that if users create a local guide that features you, your business is then more discoverable on the map.

Locations also show a CTA button to ‘Contact’ or ‘Call’ the business if the business has this set up on their profile. This could mean an increase in clicks to call directly from Instagram, made by users looking to book with you from this in-map experience.

The full view of a business seen when clicking into its location.

You can also see a ‘View information’ CTA which shows the full business listing. The listing includes the website and phone number, a dropdown for daily opening hours, address, category, and price.

It’s now even more essential to ensure your Instagram listing is kept up to date, based on the discoverability of your business through the new map update.

What makes a business feature higher on the location list?

According to Search Engine Journal, the only way to appear on the map is to have a professional account filled in with your contact information. Localogy has also found that the only trigger on the map is location relevance, alongside social signals like tags that inform relevance. We do not know if there are any other factors or algorithms to feature higher on the location list.

What does this mean for Instagram and local businesses?

Instagram’s new immersive map puts user-generated content, authenticity, and creators at the forefront of the map search experience.

This update coincides with a recent discussion point from Google’s Senior Vice President, Prabhakar Raghavan about how “40% of younger users were conducting local searches on TikTok and Instagram instead of Google”.

This data point suggests that users in this demographic are looking carefully at the authenticity of search results, with creators endorsing the location they tag in their content. It could also be that younger users trust user-generated content more than the Google algorithm.

Greg Sterling at Near Media has suggested that this new map is a competitive local search feature, and “stands a chance of gaining meaningful user adoption“ based on it being built on existing user behavior. Users are very used to spending time on Instagram, so this new update won’t be anything completely new to them.

What can local businesses do with this update?

With this update, it’s really important for businesses in a variety of industries, particularly hospitality and tourism, to keep their Instagram business profiles up to date.

If your business is ‘Instagrammable’ (i.e. your location, product, or service is curated to be visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing), then you could find many benefits with the map search. You could gravitate towards an influencer marketing and user-generated content strategy to encourage more people to share their experiences of your business on Instagram, and by doing so allow more people to discover it through map search.

By boosting brand awareness in this way, there’s an opportunity for the immersive Instagram map to become a benefit to your business visibility and growth.

How to Monitor Your Local Competitors on Social Media

Ann Smarty — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 09:00:23 +0000

Are you looking for more ways to get your business found by your local customers? Would you like to discover more marketing opportunities in your area? Competitive monitoring is something that will help you achieve both tasks.

While you may be thinking ‘but I monitor my local competitors already’, I’m here to tell you: there is always more that you can do.

Monitoring your local competitors on social media, for example, could uncover lots of opportunities for your business. Mainly, it could allow you to:

Identify your competitors’ social media and community building tactics
Be the first to know when your competitor is offering a special offer or preparing for an event
Learn from them by discovering hashtags that trigger local visibility, marketing channels that seem to work best, influencers they work with, local nonprofits or businesses they promote, efforts that drive new backlinks and brand visibility for them, etc.

Competitive monitoring is useful on so many levels, making it highly surprising that so few local businesses actually use it to its full potential.

Who to monitor?

When it comes to local marketing, this question is more challenging to answer than in any other sector, simply because very few local businesses are actually active on social media.

But, by limiting your monitoring to only your obvious local competitors, you could end up with a very low amount of data to work with.

To expand your search and make the most of your efforts, consider monitoring:

Obvious local competitors that you are aware of
Similar businesses elsewhere (you may not compete with them locally but there may be a lot to learn from them)
Other local businesses in your area. This way you will be better informed on local events and trends.

To find local brands, search Twitter and Instagram using terms that describe your area—whether it’s something as obvious as your town name or a more advanced keyword, like your county or a nearby attraction.

To discover more terms to use when searching social media, run your main city or town name through Text Optimizer. This tool will uncover which local entities Google associates your city name with. Here’s an example of results for [Albany]:

Next, search for all these locations on Twitter and Instagram to find updates from the local business:

The “People” search on Twitter is even more useful because you can simply scroll through the list to find more businesses:

Once you come across a relevant local business, find them across all the social media channels they promote on their websites.

What to monitor?

Based on your goals, you can prioritize certain data—but don’t limit yourself by only focusing on a single aspect of competitive monitoring. There is a lot you can uncover in the process:

Your competitors’ customers:
- Happy customers: How do your competitors invite and utilize social proof? Do they use social media to facilitate Yelp or Google reviews? Are they interacting with happy customers to turn them into brand ambassadors? What are their most effective community building tactics?
- Unhappy customers: How do your competitors react to negative reviews (if they react at all)? Are there glaring mistakes you need to avoid when dealing with unhappy clients? Or how can you avoid negative feedback itself?
Your competitors’ content marketing strategy: How are they utilizing social media in their on-site content promotion? Look at local content they are publishing to engage customers in your immediate area (or catch an eye of those who are traveling to your area) and the optimization tactics they are using (like Twitter cards or Facebook Open Graph) to generate social media traffic.
Your competitors’ promoters: Are there any (local) reporters, bloggers and/or social media influencers that engage with their brands and help promote them? Is there a chance you can win over to your side?
- Try reaching out to those people and invite them to come over and/or collaborate. Hunter’s email finder and email verifier tools will help you locate their contact information and reach out. It is also a good idea to follow those people and engage with their updates from time to time.
- Identify your competitors’ loyalty building tactics: Why did those people choose to promote your competitors? How can you find your own influencers?
- Explore how your local competitors are utilizing social media for local PR and outreach.
Local events your competitors are utilizing in their marketing (and how well it works for them)
Your competitors’ sales funnel: What are they focusing on? Are they trying to generate direct sales (for example, by promoting an exclusive coupon) or are they building up their email marketing list instead? What are their primary social media calls-to-action?
The social media updates and campaigns your competitors run that seem to generate active engagements, like shares and comments. What’s their social media strategy?

How to Monitor Your Local Competitors on Social Media

Set up Social Listening Platforms

Awario is a great platform that supports boolean search, which allows you to combine lots of business names or social media handles into one search. All you need is to use the OR operator to include as many names as you’d like into one search:

The platform also offers a few other great features, like prioritizing mentions based on sentiment and identifying influencers behind those mentions. You will also receive daily mention digests to quickly scroll through and identify if there’s anything that requires your attention. This makes monitoring both productive and effective.

Monitor Their Social Media Profiles and Bios

Take some time before taking this step. First, you need to identify who your most active and successful local competitors are so that you can focus on their social media accounts a bit more.

Visualping is a change-monitoring platform that can be used to track any page, including the social media profiles of your Twitter and Instagram competitors. It will email you an alert once a social media profile has changed.

Depending on how active your local competitors are, you can use the tool to:

Monitor their whole profile: This way you will be alerted once they add a new update. If your monitored brand is very active on social media, this process can get pretty cluttered very quickly.
Monitor their social media bios: This way you will only be alerted once they change their bio, link or profile picture. This is a great way to instantly know when your competitors are running a (seasonal) marketing campaign or are promoting a new landing page.

Visualping allows you to monitor the whole page or an area you select. In the example below, if you select this area, you will be notified when this business:

Changes a profile picture or header image
Updates their name or bio
Changes their link
Follows anyone or acquires a new follower

You can adjust the frequency of updates based on how many you will receive.

Analyze Your Competitors’ Facebook Updates

If you are looking for some content inspiration, you can simply scroll through your competitors’ profiles and see what they are posting.

A more productive way to address that is to use Buzzsumo, which has a cool Facebook analysis tool that allows you to:

Compare several pages
Filter updates by type (image, link, giveaway, video, question, and coupon)
Sort updates to see the most liked, commented, shared, etc.
Access reports visualizing their activity: Frequency of posting, average engagement per month, etc.

You can also save this search to easily access new data at your convenience.

Spy on Their Ads

When using Buzzsumo to analyze your competitors’ updates and their performance, refer to Facebook’s Ad Library to identify those seemingly effective updates that were actually ads.

For any selected brand you can search ads by a keyword, see the CTA they were using and the platforms that they ran ads on (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network).

Conclusion

Monitoring your competitors on social media will help you better understand your customers and uncover great marketing opportunities.

Keep playing with your monitoring settings until you set up an effective routine which will allow you to get useful insights without being distracted by too much clutter. Good luck!

How to Harness Reviews on Social Media for Local Businesses

Jenny Bernarde — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 10:11:53 +0000

Today’s consumers don’t just turn to Google and traditional review platforms to share their recommendations about local businesses. In fact, these often aren’t where they go first. Social media plays an intrinsic role, with platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter filled with reviews and feedback about local businesses and service providers.

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.