Getting Online Reviews: How It’s Done

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Online reviews – we all check them out, whether it’s for a restaurant, a new car purchase, or a medical professional. We know how valuable they are when we read them. But are you taking the time to cultivate that type of experience for your customers? Creating that advantage for your business? 

More reviews mean better SEO, more social credibility, and more usable data for your company to source. But how do companies get reviews? Making a one-time push for reviews is common. Brick and mortar retail stores and restaurants will solicit reviews after a grand opening or event. Online companies will get reviews after rolling out a new product or service.  

Having current customer reviews makes a huge difference as most people consider reviews that are a few months old irrelevant. So what are ways your company can keep the reviews rolling in consistently?  

Just ask 

A great way to get customers to leave reviews is by directly asking them. The challenge here is doing so in the right way, at the right time. Here are some ideas.  

  • Set up an automated email asking for a customer review. Schedule it to go out a week or so after a customer has made a purchase. Make sure you give them enough time to receive and use the product before scheduling the email to send. 
  • A social media campaign is a great way to get people to engage with and review your company. You can roll out a marketing initiative that asks people to follow your account and leave a review in return for a coupon code, gift card, or other opportunity. 
  • Send out a social media post asking for loyal customers to give back. This can be done in a friendly, personal tone that encourages people who care about your company to come forward and show their support. Be sure to express your gratitude and make it cheerful—you don’t want to appear desperate! 
  • Asking one–to–one is also a great way to get reviews. Consider setting up a wrap-up meeting after completing a project for a client. Use this time to ask them about their experience, make sure they have everything they need, and request a review from them. This is a great practice when your business offers services that require in-person or video meetings. People respond well to being asked personally—happy customers want to give back! 

Make it easy 

Optimize the pathways your customers can take to leave reviews by creating multiple avenues for them to do so. The easier it is to leave a review, the more likely people are to take the time to leave you one. You can do this by: 

  • Creating easy, direct routes from your website to pages like Facebook, Yelp, and Google Review by adding badges to your menu bar and footer 
  • Making sure you add a link asking for a review to your email signature 
  • Adding a link for reviews to your product pages and conformation emails 

What NOT to do  

An important rule to getting reviews: Never pay anyone for a positive review. It is not only illegal but can be very obvious to anyone reading them. When customers come across fake reviews they immediately lose trust in the company. If your company is getting fake positive reviews, it will backfire and undermine the social credibility and legitimacy of your company. 

Ready for takeoff! 

Make sure you keep your eyes out for new ways of engaging customers and bringing in reviews. The internet is constantly changing and staying on top of current trends is critical to maintaining relevance. Any way you look at it, reviews are going to help your company get visibility, credibility, and informative, usable data.  

Talk with your team, create a plan for asking for reviews, and then stick with it! Consistent reviews can give your business the social proof you need for a boost in both SEO and credibility. And unlike so many other activities, it doesn’t require a line in your budget! 

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by: melpomen

3 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Online Reviews

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In the age of social media and free access to information, consumers have more power over their buying decisions than ever before. Not only do they have a vast number of similar products to choose from, but they have the ability to gauge the experiences of past customers, research specific products, and compare everything they find with competitors. Often reviews are the first interaction someone has with a company—even before they check the website.  

People tend to trust each other more than they trust the business they are researching. Imagine you went to research a company before purchasing from it and you found that Google Reviews awarded the company a two-star average. Would you still decide to buy from that company? Probably not.   

1. The legitimacy factor 

Most people trust online reviews the as much as they would personal recommendations. Taking this, and the fact that the majority of people check online reviews, into account, you’d be crazy not to see the value in getting online reviews for your own company.   

People want reassurance that the product they are about to buy is, in fact, worth their money. If your company doesn’t have any online reviews, you lose legitimacy in the face of competitors who do. The lack of reviews makes your company seem small and unreliable because no one has backed you up or taken the time to say anything about you. By garnering reviews, you gain social credibility and perceived legitimacy and increase the likelihood by 68% that customers will buy from you. 

2. Boost your SEO: More mentions, more traffic, better visibility  

Google favors sites with more mentions and links. When a customer reviews a company, Google picks that up as a legitimate transaction, recognizes that your business is, in fact real, and boosts your visibility.  

Reviews also widen the amount of material Google has to read and associate with your business. This means that the more you get reviewed, the more Google will be able to associate new keywords and content with your business, which increases the likeliness that your company will appear in related searches.  

The bottom line here is that the more you get mentioned on the internet and the more your company interacts, the more likely you are to show up in a search and the more visibility you have.  

3. Opportunities for growth 

Tracking the way people are talking about your company online is a great tool for other things as well. By keeping up to date on your company’s reviews, you can:  

  • Gain a better understanding of your company’s online reputation and use this information to inform your marketing campaigns. 
  • Discover trends in customer experiences and identify areas of improvement. Do your customers regularly complain of bad packaging or delayed email responses? This is a great resource for discovering where you can improve on your customer experience. 
  • Collect clear data on your customer experience and incorporate it in a scalable way to review how your business has improved over time. 
  • See areas where you already shine and use this as a way to encourage and recognize your team’s accomplishments.  
  • Reviews can also give job seeking employees a glimpse before they join your team. 

Reviews can be just as helpful to your company as they are to customers. It’s up to you to capitalize on this free access to important and informative data.  

Replying to reviews is also an important part garnering customer trust, whether they’re positive or negative. Leaving responses to negative reviews can help temper a customer’s bad experience. It is also an opportunity to show readers how your business handles these situations. You can use this to show that you are respectful and care about your customers—even if they had a bad experience with you.  

It’s a big job, but you’re not alone! 

Reviews can come from many different sources such as Yelp, Google Reviews, Facebook and Amazon, to name just a few. Tracking and maintaining online reviews can be a big, time intensive task. Luckily there are great reputation management systems where you can keep track of all your reviews in one place. You don’t have to do it by yourself! 

Whether you are just starting or are already established, reviews can make all the difference when it comes to meeting this year’s revenue goal. Remember, reviews aren’t just for your customers, they are there for you too!  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by Ivan Kruk

Recruiting Tip: Trust Your Candidates

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Hiring the right candidate can be a headache for any HR team. It’s a difficult process that has ramifications on employee retention, engagement, and productivity. Hiring one bad egg can negatively affect an entire team, not to mention the cost of having to train or re-hire for the position. Getting it right the first time is what every hiring manager wishes for. But how?

Here’s a tip that might just blow your mind: Let the candidate choose you.  

Stay with us here, this isn’t as crazy as it may sound! 

By setting up the hiring process so that potential candidates can make an informed choice about whether or not they’d be a good fit, you eliminate a lot of work on your end.  People know what they’re looking for and what they’re good at. Give them a chance to assess what it is you’re offering and decide for themselves if the job will be a good fit. If they opt out of applying, you’re saved from having to spend the time and money on interviewing and vetting the wrong people.  

So how do you do this? Here are four things to keep in mind during your next hiring process.  

1. Transparency

This is a simple one. By including compensation in the job description, you are giving potential candidates the opportunity to find out if the job you’re offering is going to meet their requirements. The financial needs of any candidate will drive their decision on whether or not to apply for a position. If you aren’t offering them what they need, they won’t have to spend time going through the steps of the application process just to find out it’s a bad fit. They can opt out altogether and save you both time and money.  

Wage transparency also says something about your company. It shows that you aren’t hiding any major pay gaps and helps to build trust that you value your employees with fairness and honesty.  

2. Job description: Does it actually fit? 

When was the last time you reviewed your job description? Has it just been copied and pasted over and over? If so, it’s time for a refresher. Your job description should match the expectations of the role as closely as possible. This is not only important for attracting the right people with the right skills to apply, but having a description that doesn’t fit the actual position can cause frustration, confusion, and resentment on behalf of the new hire.  

If the description that drew someone in to apply doesn’t match up with the actual position, you lose the trust of your new employee—and you come off as disorganized (at the very least). If your hiring manager can’t write an accurate description, it means they: 

  • Haven’t taken the time to understand the position they are hiring for  
  • Don’t value the time and energy of the applicants  
  • Don’t value the hiring process  

Seeing the job description is often the first time your candidate has interacted with your company. It is your organization’s chance at a good first impression and the importance of this should be reflected in the quality of the description.  

3. Does the culture match?

People are often drawn to companies based on their perception of the companies’ culture and values. Use your description to highlight what it’s like to work for you and what your organization cares about. If you are able to convey your values and culture through the description, application, and interview process, candidates will be able to feel out if your company is the right community for them. 

4. Test it out 

Finally, find out for yourself what it’s like to apply for the position you’re posting. If the hiring process is easy, more people will apply, and you’ll have a wider pool of candidates to choose from. Have someone from your team go through the process as if they were applying for the position themselves. Find out from first-hand experience what processes you can optimize and areas that you can improve.   

Trust goes both ways  

By providing job seekers with accurate information about the position you’re looking to fill and the type of community and values your company fosters in its workplace, you are giving people the chance to decide for themselves if it’s a good fit. Trust in your candidates to make the best choices for themselves. Not only will it increase your chances of hiring the right candidate, but it will show your candidates they can trust you. 

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by Tatiana Gladskikh

Finding the Remote: Keeping Your Mobile Employees from Getting Lost

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If you are looking for ways to expand your new talent pool and make your current and future employees happy, offering remote work options could be just the solution you need. 

Obviously, teleworking isn’t right for everyone. Certain businesses require their staff to be onsite for a variety of reasons, and that’s okay. That said, if your organization doesn’t fall into that category, you might want to start thinking outside the couch cushions. And outside the office.   

Research has shown that employees value flexibility and will take benefits such as remote work options into consideration when making their career choices. Studies have also shown that remote employees are happier, more productive, and more likely to see themselves in their positions for longer.  

If increasing employee engagement, productivity, and/or retention sounds good to you, it may be time to go remote. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.  

Remote work doesn’t come without challenges, and your strategy should be developed with thought and care. Here are three ways to make sure your remote work policy works for both your employees and your company.  


Do your research

If you’re a company committed to offering remote work options, start by creating a policy that makes sense for how your business and employees operate.  

What to keep in mind: 

  • Which positions could successfully work remotely?  
  • Will these employees be 100% remote or will there be in-office requirements also? 
  • How will you structure your teams? Your communications? Your performance management? 
  • How will you hold people accountable for their time, work, and results? 

It may be tempting to jump right in without a thoughtful plan, but don’t do it. Pouring your energy into creating a solid remote work policy will save you lots of frustration when the time comes to implement and manage it.  


Find the right people

Just as some businesses aren’t well suited to remote work, neither are some employees. Not everyone likes working remotely or functions well in that environment. It’s important to keep this in mind during your hiring processes.  

If you want to hire people who will be more likely to thrive as remote employees, here are some ways to find them.  

  • Look for people who have worked remotely in the past. If they’re applying for another remote position, chances are it’s something they like to do.  
  • Talk to applicants with demonstrated success in positions where they took initiative, worked independently, and managed their own time.  
  • Consider candidates who describe themselves as being disciplined, self-motivated, and tech savvy. Excellent communication will be another important skill to look for. Responsiveness is also a plus. 

Ask your applicants why remote work seems appealing. If they say it’s because they can’t bear to be away from their dog/cat/hamster for 8 hours a day, that’s not a compelling reason. If they talk about how having control of their time and environment allows them to think creatively and get more done, you’re on the right track. 

Be flexible

Research has shown that remote workers have higher levels of productivity, loyalty, and satisfaction when they choose to work remotely. But these results were significantly lower when employees were forced to work at home.  

Having both remote and onsite work options is really the best of both worlds.  

  • If you have a great employee who is moving but wants to keep working for you, that’s now an option.  
  • If you have a remote employee who decides they are happier working in an office environment, you can welcome them back into the fold.  
  • If an onsite employee needs to go remote for a specific period of time, they can be accommodated.  

These are the kinds of flexible situations that benefit both employers and employees. 

Ready to run with it? 

Watching your employees walk out the door isn’t always a bad thing… especially when you know they are working harder (and happier!) than ever in their remote locations.  

If you’re thinking about offering your employees the option to do their jobs offsite, do your research and put together a plan that works for everyone. You may be surprised at just how quickly you’ll find that magic remote you’ve been looking for.  

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by mihtiander