Bluestone Trading – Trading Tip of the Week
The Importance of Going Digital Through Reviews
Facebook and other social media play an important role in today’s local business. Increasing your social media presence is an effective tactic in building awareness and a virtual community around your brand.
To do this, it is important that potential customers can find online reviews of your company. While you may think that you shouldn’t believe everything you read online, 84% of people believe an online review as much as a personal recommendation.
Last week, our Trading Tip was how to build a Facebook page and adding posts to your timeline. This week, we want to walk you through how to make your Facebook page reviewable by customers, and how to encourage others to leave reviews on your page.
Ways to Connect Online and Build Reviews
Your accessibility online is important when building brand awareness. A Google business page is one of the most important steps in this process. You can read about how to build your Google page and get reviews by reading our previous Trading Tips of the Week. Potential customers will visit your Google business page when looking for a local store to purchase from but will look for your social media pages when they are ready to interact with your brand. It is imperative that you are there when they are ready.
For example, a Facebook user interested in collecting antique jewelry might follow your page if you post unique antique items. They will like, comment, and share posts that they enjoy. Their friends will see that they interacted with the post. This means when users engage with your content, it becomes active on their timeline and gains your post exposure through their connections.
Allowing Reviews on Your Facebook Page
As users interact with your page, and debate purchasing items from your store, they will look to the reviews section of your profile to vet your store through other customer experiences. With no reviews, your page may give the impression that your customers did not care enough to leave a review. However, the case might be that you have not enabled reviews on your page!
Before allowing people to review your page, you will want to make the reviews portion of your page more accessible to followers. To do this, make ‘Reviews’ a tab on your page by following the directions below.
Make a Facebook Reviews Tab
1.) Select edit page info at the top right of your page
2.) Scroll down and select templates and tabs on the left-hand menu
3.) Scroll down and select add a tab
4.) Find Reviews, and select the “add tab” button on the right
After doing these four steps, users will be able to view reviews by clicking through the menu to the left of your business Facebook page. In order for customers to begin leaving reviews, you will need to allow users to post reviews to your page. Follow the five steps below.
Turn On Facebook Reviews
1.) Select edit page info at the top right of your page
2.) Scroll down and select templates and tabs on the left-hand menu
3.) To the left of the reviews tab, select settings
4.) Slide the button under Show Reviews from off to on
5.) Select save at the bottom left of the reviews editing tab
After following the directions above, you have made reviews accessible and viewable on your page. Now, let’s direct people to this page and start collecting reviews. The first tool to do this will be your review page URL. To get this URL, stay on the tabs portion we used to add the review tab, and click the settings button to the right of the review tab. This will give you a URL for your reviews page. Select “Copy URL.” This URL can be sent to your customers and friends to build Facebook reviews.
We recommend beginning your review journey with your long-term loyal customers. If you followed last week’s Trading Tip on how to build a Facebook business page, you will have already invited them to like the page. You can send them a private message via text or email, and ask for feedback in the form of a review. Paste the link you copied from the reviews tab into your message and they can follow it directly to your review page on Facebook.
You can also share this link in a post on your homepage, asking for followers to leave an honest review if they have been to your business.
Other Tactics to build Facebook Reviews
The most effective way to build Facebook reviews is to remind customers when they are in your store. After checking out, ask customers if they would leave feedback in the form of a review on your Facebook page.
Another way that you can ask for your customers to interact with your page is to ask them to “check-in” at your store on Facebook. This allows them to notify their friends that they are at your store!
For more ideas and tips on how to grow your business call or text us at 440-442-7280, or call toll free 888 800-BLUE. To be the first to know about our Trading Tip of the Week and Bluestone’s news, subscribe to our newsletter.
