How to give Social Media reviews

Testimonials and referrals are mighty powerful ways to give a business Social Proof about how good they are in products and customer service. It can help life them up search results, and give an indication, quickly and visually, to anyone else searching for them or their service, if they should be trusted or not.

But where, and how, can you do this? From either side of the fence? How, as a business, can you be attached to a site which gives reviews, and how, as a consumer, can you give your feedback to products, services, and businesses, with which you’ve had a great experience?

Think of when you are looking for a restaurant. If you google them, more often than not, the urbanspoon review will appear in your search results before the restaurant’s actual website. Especially in mobile search results. And from this review, you can get a feel for what people think of the restaurant, and at the touch of a button you can ring and make a booking.

Now this review site is tailored specifically for the food industry, so I won’t be touching upon it here, I am more looking at businesses in general, who can benefit from social reviews.

So, let us look at Facebook.

When you visit a page, now with the new layout, you will see a big, bold blue star rating system on the left hand side of the page. Click on that to both see what other people have said about this place, AND, you can give a quick and easy out-of-5 star rating, and then leave your comments. It is that simple. 

No, you do not have to have a business page on Facebook to be reviewed. If someone has checked themselves into your location on Facebook, then anyone can review that location. It has often been the case that a company who is not on Facebook with a page, is already on Facebook with a review. Check it out, see if you’re already on Facebook without knowing it.

How about Google?

Firstly, you MUST have a Google Account, and hence a Google+ account, to leave a Google Places review. While some may think this is a little restrictive, by the same token you do need a Facebook Account to leave a Facebook review.

So, once you are logged in to your Google account, head to Plus Local – https://plus.google.com/local. You find the business you wish to review through the search, click on the review button, and leave the review, as you can see in the pictures.

On the other side of this review, yes you do need a Google+ presence, as a company to receive reviews. Google+ Company Pages are free to build, and the integrating with Google Maps and YouTube and more, really do make them worth having. Google+ Reviews for your business give you points when Google searches are made for your industry, your type of business.

Now let’s look at LinkedIn.

Firstly, yes you need to have a LinkedIn profile to make recommendations and endorsements. And, if you want someone to review both you and your company, you will need a LinkedIn company page.

When you log in to LinkedIn, and search for someone, you are given a box with skills in them. These are based on what that person has tagged in their profile. A bright yellow button asks you to endorse them on these skills. The X button means you can delete them from the endorsement, or, the X button on the entire box means you can skip this altogether.

What an endorsement does for you is, at the bottom of your profile you will see a list of most endorsed to least endorsed, of your skills. When someone is doing a search for someone with certain types of skills, if you have more endorsements than the next candidate, your name appears first in that search.

The LinkedIn Recommendation is like a testimonial, however, only people with LinkedIn accounts can make them, so their Social Proof is quite strong. Considering the nature of LinkedIn, and how it is could be perceived as more ‘formal’ than either Facebook or Google+, recommendations seem to carry a lot more perceived value on this social network.

And then there is the Word Of Mouth Online (WOMO) website. They claim to be the number 1 business review site in Australia. And they are pretty much what they say on the tin. You log in, and you can review a business, simple as that. It is free to use, and seems to be growing in popularity.

Business owners, you too can join, as a business. It is free. If someone has already reviewed you before you’ve joined, you can search your business name, and CLAIM that review for yourself and your business. Then you set up a profile, spread the word, and let your customers tell the world how AWESOME you are.