Social Media : Leveraging ‘Likes’

A quick primer for using Facebook to encourage customer reviews

The Internet is often the first place people go to leave reviews about their customer experiences. If you know your business could benefit from public reviews, you should strategize how to incorporate social media. Why? Because social networking is becoming integrated into almost every aspect of email, websites and more.

If people are talking about products and services, Facebook is one of the best places to start facilitating and encouraging those discussions. With 600 million active users, Facebook has become the heart of social media marketing for a number of businesses. The social networking site has taken steps to encourage conversations between businesses and customers by adding a number of interactive features to Facebook Pages, the public profile for businesses.

Questions, Reviews, Places, Oh My!
Facebook has made a number of features that marketers use to leverage their customers' reviews:

• Facebook Questions. This is one of the most recent updates, designed to help users find answers to questions they may have. The reason using Facebook Questions is so beneficial to marketers is when more people answer the question, it will appear in more news feeds. For example, when you ask a question and your Facebook fans answer it, their friends can see and answer the question, too.

Facebook Questions allows marketers to create an open-ended question or a poll for their Facebook networks to answer directly from their news feeds. This gives marketers the ability to gain instant feedback on particular concerns they may have.

One example of using an open-ended question to leverage reviews on Facebook would be asking your audience what services they like most and why. This sets up your audience to think about the positive experiences they've had with your business and what they've enjoyed most about it. It also gives them an accessible outlet to quickly share a compliment about your business.

You can also survey your network by asking a simple yes/no question, such as, "Did you have a positive customer experience with our customer service reps the last time you called us?" If the feedback is positive, then the benefits are tremendous. Everyone who participates in the Questions feature and everyone in the voter's network will see the positive responses and reviews of your questions. This is why the social space can be effective for marketers. The more people participate and share online, the more public your reviews become.

• Facebook Reviews. The Reviews feature is a basic plug-in that marketers can keep listed next to their walls, photos and other Facebook features. It's a convenient place for people to find in-depth information of past experiences. The Reviews tab also offers a star-rating system and the ability for people to comment or "like" your customers' reviews.

• Facebook Places. With this tool, customers use their smartphones to log in to Facebook Places and "check-in" to your business if you have a brick-and-mortar location. Once people check-in, they have the option of leaving a comment. This is when a lot of positive feedback starts to come into play. Check-in comments are usually positive, because people who check-in are excited to share where they are and what they are doing. For example, if a customer checks in to a lawn care service, comments like "Ready for another spring season with a great team of landscapers. They take the best care of my lawn!" would probably appear. Entertainment businesses, like restaurants, usually get check-in comments like, "Looking forward to having my favorite Mexican dish tonight; can't get it anywhere else!"

Facebook Places is not only a great option for people to give reviews, but also to provide free marketing and advertising for your business. Once customers check-in, your business is mentioned in their status updates, which is then shared with their entire Facebook network. People who are viewing the actual business' Places Page can see these reviews as well. If reviews are mainly positive, people who haven't used your business may feel confident in expecting a pleasant and satisfactory experience.

To promote your Facebook Check-Ins, add a promotional window decal to the entrance of your business. People arriving will see right away that you are on Facebook Places and will be more likely to check in. Make it even easier for them by adding a QR Code that will send their smartphones directly to your business's Facebook Places page so they can check-in and comment with ease.

Call Reviewers to Action
Now that you have the tools to collect business reviews on Facebook, how will you encourage people to take that action? You can do this in multiple ways. First, add the feature links to your website along with a call to action, such as, "Share your experience with others! Review us on Facebook!" This gives a voice to your audience and adds valuable content to your website for future prospects.

Two great places for these calls to action are the Contact Us page and the Products and Services page. The Contact Us page would be the prime place for customer service or follow-up management to take place. So the possibility of finding people who would want to share a review could be great. The Products and Services page should be another place to add a review promotion. Returning customers may want to express the experience of their past purchases while looking for other products they may be interested in.

Another effective way to promote reviews on Facebook is to include information on the ability to leave customer reviews on all follow-up emails sent to existing and past customers. If you have automated email marketing messages for individuals who recently made a purchase or had a service executed, ask them to share their experiences by writing a review on Facebook. It gives customers a sense of empowerment. By sharing their opinions, it shows that you care about what they have to say, promotes your Facebook presence, and the chances of receiving feedback become greater.

Facebook is not just a social networking tool, it's becoming a vital piece of marketing strategy for businesses worldwide. Take advantage of all of the opportunities it has to offer. Use it to give your audience a voice, and have it build and strengthen the relationships you have with your audience. And most importantly, be sure to incorporate Facebook into your overall social media marketing plan. It can capture prospects, help make them new customers and continue to strengthen their loyalty to your business in the future.

John P. Foley, Jr. is CEO/CMO of Wilmington, Mass.-based Grow Socially. He can be reached at johnf@growsocially.com.

• MORE ON
• SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA