6 tips for using social media to promote customer reviews

Learn about PR tools that can help you take control of your online reputation

Your business has gotten great reviews from many of your customers. Do all your customers, prospects and other key stakeholders know that? Getting great reviews is wonderful, but if no one sees them, it’s like throwing them in the trash.

You don’t want consumers to stumble upon your positive customer reviews by accident or, worse, make them search all around the Internet for them. It is vital to promote your customer reviews, especially on social media, to make them easily accessible to consumers.

Why it’s important

Research has shown that consumers travel through more than 60 percent of the sales cycle before they ever talk to a sales representative. Much of this journey happens online, with tools like customer and product reviews found on social media sites.

Perhaps even more astounding is the fact that approximately 80 percent of customers and prospects rate reviews as being more influential than word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family. Also, most customers read at least two reviews before making a decision on a purchase.

Additionally, a majority of consumers will change their minds about a purchase after reading negative reviews. When customers see positive ratings, this can help to drown out negative information and improve your online reputation.

Tips for promoting customer reviews on social media

Social media users show very little patience for companies that engage in shameless self-promotion. So how are you supposed to let them know about your positive customer reviews without turning them off?

1. Pair your reviews with worthy content. Remember that just because you are publicizing your customer reviews does not mean you can forget about engagement and adding value. When you are promoting reviews, you should still be helpful and informative.

2. Don’t overdo it. Promoting every positive review will get redundant and boring. Choose your best few to highlight.

3. Let your customers and employees help. Encourage them to share their reviews with friends and followers to further expand your reach.

4. Choose relevant sites. Promoting your reviews on sites not used by your buyer personas is a waste of time.

5. Get creative. Think outside the box to discover ways to get more eyes on your customer reviews. For example, you could develop a challenge to find the best review of the month or create a contest to collect 100 video reviews in 100 days and promote these contests.

6. Use Axia PR’s ReviewMaxer software program. With this system, you can track online reviews from more than 500 sites, which allows you to see all the places that mention your company and make it easier to promote your positive customer reviews.

ReviewMaxer even has a feature to automatically post four- and five-star reviews to Facebook and to your website or other platform using a RSS feed to increase visibility. The software program also lets you collect reviews before they appear online, so you can control which ones you want to promote on the sites that matter most to your business. Contact us today to learn more or request a demonstration of the ReviewMaxer software.

Lisa-G-Color-SM Lisa Goldsberry is a writer for Axia Public Relations with more than 15 years of public relations experience. She specializes in business and technology PR. Lisa has been with Axia since December 2013. Connect with Axia Public Relations on Twitter at @axiapr.