How to Promote Your Online Reviews on Social Media

Comments, likes, shares… These are all staples in the social media world and they’re all things that brands, companies, and influencers hope to get from their followers. As a business existing on social media, almost every platform except for Twitter and Instagram will allow users to leave a review on your profile just as easily as they can comment, like, or share your content.

So why don’t we see our feedback being showcased more often?

Online reviews on these profiles our focus at Repcheckup. Every review or comment left on your social media profiles can be used to promote your business and, the best part is, this can all be done without your staff needing to spend hours building the creative for a campaign such as this.

In today’s blog, we’re going to show you how you can use the online reviews left for your business as social media promotions that can show your audience what people really think about your company and that you actually care about what they’re saying. In fact, most of your social media reviews can be used as promotional collateral in one way or another.

Why Social Media is the Perfect Place to Promote Online Reviews

Unlike review-focused websites, like Yelp, social media sites are frequented for a totally different reason: leisure.

Think about it:

When you’re sitting in bed and scrolling through your Facebook or Instagram feeds, you’re probably not thinking about what kind of feedback other people have left about the nice Italian restaurant down the road from you that you’ve followed on Facebook too. Social media reviews do exist, and people do actively post them, but the fact that people browse their timelines for leisure works in your favor.

Because so many people don’t expect to see much of anything from businesses they’ve liked or followed on social media, it’s a great place to promote! Getting online reviews on the social media profiles for your business and then promoting them  is an area many of your competitors haven’t hit yet. If you’ve selected the right reviews to spotlight, you can also make an extremely impactful statement to people browsing your profiles prior to liking or following.

What You Need to Know about the Facebook Partition

Toward the end of 2017, word began to spread about a huge change coming to Facebook and, in the beginning of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg officially released a statement that he was reorganizing Facebook to focus more on family and friends rather than outside media.

In a nutshell, this effectively partitioned businesses, bands, and brands from our regular Facebook feeds to allow us to see content specifically from family and friends. With the exception of promoted content, which would appear on feeds, businesses are having a more difficult time being seen even by the people who have liked or followed their pages

As inane of a change as this may seem, businesses should not suddenly abandon their Facebook profiles or spend thousands of dollars on Facebook advertisements, although we still recommend that businesses make use of Facebook promotions to reach a wider audience.

Business owners should understand that this change to Facebook’s algorithm will mean that they  may see a drop in interaction on their posts, but that there is still inherent value in continuing their regular Facebook posts. After all, users are more likely to follow and like a page  that seems active than one that hasn’t been updated in a month. Even a once-a-week posting schedule can be beneficial.

How You Can Promote Your Online Reviews on Social Media

Now that we’ve covered the why social media is actually a great place to promote your online reviews, lets break down a few methods you can use to successfully promote and solicit online reviews.

Spotlight an Online Reviewer

Remember when we mentioned that people hardly see their comments, reviews, or feedback acknowledged? This is especially true on social media, despite the fact that a huge part of reputation management is responding to all feedback left on your profiles, whether it’s positive or negative.

Using your social media to spotlight an online reviewer could be a great way to make a huge lasting impression on that specific reviewer in addition to anyone who sees your spotlight. A simple “Thank you so much for your kind words @REVIEWER, we’d love to have you back in store soon!” or “Check out what @REVIEWER has to say about our new renovation. We love reading what everyone says about our business!” can go a long way.

To go along with your caption, which will tag the reviewer, you can use a screenshot of the online review to re-share what that reviewer said. Alternatively, many businesses choose to embed that screenshot, or the words from the review, into a social media graphic to make it pop a bit more.

Create Social Media Collateral with Your Online Reviews

A huge part of using social media to promote your online reviews is actually creating shareable collateral. Mind you, these are graphics that you’ll share, but you shouldn’t go in with the expectation that dozens of users will share that graphic as they would  the cute cat meme you’ve incorporated into your social media campaign. With the exception of the user you’re spotlighting sharing your post on their timeline, these piece of review-centered social media collateral don’t exist to be distributed widely by your audience.

Using your online reviews as social media collateral is a way to showcase the positive experience someone had with your company as well as showing that your business is focused on listening to feedback left online.  

Through the use of public graphic design sites, like Canva, creating these images doesn’t require a team of designers. By finding .pngs that are part of the public domain, or creative commons, you can amp up any design and create a unique social media graphic to showcase a review within.

Encourage Online Reviews with Social Media Posts

Aside from highlighting existing reviews with your social media posts, you can also solicit and encourage online reviews through specific posts.

This method can be extremely useful when combined with an already flowing online reputation management campaign, when getting more online reviews is a priority.

These posts should be simple in nature, yet remain on-brand and deliver a straightforward message. After all, you’re looking to provide your followers with a quick reminder that you’d appreciate their feedback.

If you’re posting a review-soliciting graphic on a profile that doesn’t allow reviews to be left, like on Instagram or Twitter, you should be directing users to a specific profile. By directing your efforts to your Google My Business or Facebook profile, you can ensure that users don’t have to do any guesswork or become discouraged while finding a profile to write about their experience on.

Protip: Twitter does allow links to be embedded within a post, but Instagram does not. If you are posting on Instagram, adding a simple “Link in Bio!” to your caption can help direct users to the right review profile. All you’ll need to do is edit your profile and update the link showcased there to update where users will be routed to once they click that link.

If you want to know more about how social media can help you increase your online reviews, like on Facebook, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with your questions or concerns.