Ratings, Reviews and Recommendations!
“Word of Mouth”
Not so long ago, you would get recommendations from family and friends about certain things from products, places, shops, hairdressers, restaurants, hotels to even funeral directors! Now that people are so busy, they don’t have time to ask other people, they do a quick search online. For example… bet you go and look up review sites such as; Amazon and Tripadvisor to see what the latest reviews are on what you are searching for, don’t you…
Ratings
More and more people are looking up ratings and reviews on all sorts of businesses to see what their customer service is like and do they provide good quality products or services. We all like to see a four or five-star rating and if there isn’t, then most people avoid the business, service or product. It’s the trust factor! It’s really important to have your reviews on your website. This shows potential customers what your current and past customers think of your business, products and services alongside what you provide. Potential customers could have been on one of your social media platforms and clicked a link to your website, rather than searched for your on Google.
Reviews
You may not have a website but you can have reviews on Google if you sign up for a free Google product called “Google My Business“. It will help you to be seen on Google and customers can add reviews, which are then seen on Google. So when someone searches online you appear and so does your reviews. Some business people think “Ah sure I have a few Facebook reviews and that’s fine for my business”. As you probably know not everyone is on Facebook and more times than not, they will “Google” instead to see what people are saying and check out the reviews. So relying on Facebook reviews isn’t a good idea as you can see from what I have said earlier.
Recommendations
But remember there are other ways of being noticed online such as on Twitter. Tweets can get a lot of traction with retweets and before long a comment, recommendation or review can be seen by quite a few eyeballs. So if someone is recommending your business on Twitter it can make a big difference. For example, recently there was a lovely recommendation for FIT Social Media on Twitter by Gavin Duffy of Gavin Duffy & Associates and Dragons Den :
To conclude
Think of it this way, it’s important to have what people say about you available and easy to find. Time has moved on and we don’t the luxury of time or opportunity to get recommendations “face to face” from friends or family, as we are all so busy! So we all go online instead to see the latest ratings, reviews and recommendations. So when it comes to having your ratings, reviews or recommendations online, the answer is YES! You need them on your website, social media and on Google! If you found this helpful click “here” for more.
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