Is Your Business Ready for 2021 – 8 Simple Steps to Take to Make 2021 Your Best Year Yet

Is Your Business Ready for 2021 - 8 Simple Steps to Take to Make 2021 Your Best Year Yet

Are you a small business owner ready to say “Bye Felicia” to 2020?

I think that we all are!

However, if there was one thing that 2020 taught us, it was that your online presence is now more important than ever…and this doesn’t just mean your website. Your online presence consists of many pieces, like your website, your Google My Business Profile, your social media spaces and so much more.

Want 2021 to be your best year yet? In this article, we are going to cover 8 simple steps that you can take in January (2 per week) to help your business get ahead of the game!

Week One will cover choosing the best keywords for your business and improving your onsite SEO.

Week Two will take you through everything that you need to do in order to improve your Google My Business profile and start getting leads through Google Local Search.

Week Three covers EVERYTHING that you need to do to create content for the whole year and how to save time and money while doing it.

Finally, Week Four forces you to up your video game and start using the second largest search engine in the world.

Are you ready? Let’s get started!

Week One – Up Your Onsite SEO Game and Be Found More Easily In the Search Results

STEP 1 – Figure Out What Keywords Are Best For You

Is your website working for you as well as it should be? Are people finding your business online? If not, your search engine optimization, or SEO, may be to blame.

To improve your SEO, the first step is to create a list of popular keywords or phrases that you want to rank for. To create this list, I recommend a combination of brainstorming, asking your current clients what they typed in to find you and an online keyword research tool called SEMrush. You can use the free version to find the information that you need.

Take thirty minutes and brainstorm the keywords that you think your ideal clients would type into Google or Bing. When this is done, send an email to a few of your best clients and ask what they would type in to find you. It’s always great to get into their minds.

As an example, one of our clients is a personal injury firm in Greensburg, PA. Their brainstorming list included the following:

Personal injury law firm in Greensburg PA
Personal injury attorneys Westmoreland County
Greensburg Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Attorneys

However, when they asked a few of their clients what they typed in Google to find them, they received a slightly different list:

Personal injury lawyer
Personal injury lawyer near me
Personal injury lawyer Greensburg
Greensburg lawyer personal injury

They found out that while they were calling themselves attorneys on their website, more of their clients were typing in lawyer! They also discovered that none of their clients even thought to use the county that they were located in.

Want to know what keywords you are currently ranking for as well? Be sure to add them to your list! IFTS can send you a free report with that information. Enter your information below. You should receive your report within 10-15 minutes.

Once you have your list, you are ready to use SEMrush! This tool will help you figure out what the most popular phrases are on your list.

First, sign up for your free account here: https://www.semrush.com/signup/?src=header

Then, after you have created your account and are signed in, you are ready to start using this tool. Enter the first keyword phrase from your list into the search bar.

In this example, we will use the phrase “Personal injury lawyer Greensburg”. The following results are returned to us:

This tells us that the number of times that this phrase is searched monthly on Google in the United States is 30 times (the VOLUME). The keyword difficulty (or how hard it is to rank organically for this phrase) is 54%. Anything under 60% is normally a great keyword to rank for quickly.

The other important results to look at are the “Keyword Variations” and the “Related Keywords”. The keyword variations will show you common variations on your searched phrase. The related keywords list shows you phrases similar to the one that you searched. This is a great way to find phrases that you may not have thought about.

Repeat this process with all of your keywords from your list. If the “Related Keywords” list has any good suggestions, add them to your list as well. We recommend creating a spreadsheet that looks like the one below:

Once you have the data for your whole list, go through and highlight the keywords that are searched often and have a lower keyword difficulty. These will be perfect keywords to target across your online presence.

Keep this list for the rest of the steps in this process. It is the basis of everything else!

STEP 2 – Incorporate Popular Keywords and Locations into Your Page Titles and Headers

Now that you have your list of popular keyword phrases, you will need to use them in your website. You will want to choose one or two keyword phrases to be the main focus for each page of your website.

The first important place to use keywords is your page title. The page title is the text in the browser tab. It is also the text that shows as the title in the Google search results.

A good rule of thumb for a page title is to use the following convention:

“Keyword 1 – keyword 2 | Name_of_Company Location_of_Company”

So, for our example, a good homepage title for our law firm may be “Personal Injury Lawyers – Accident Attorneys | Law Firm Name Greensburg, PA”. This lets Google know exactly what your page is about and who your company is.

Create new page titles for each page of your website. In WordPress, you can do this using the Yoast plugin. If your website is in SquareSpace, you can change this in the general page settings. If you have a website developer, just let them know the text that you want to use.

After you have changed your page titles, you will want to be sure that each page of your website has one <h1> header on it and that it contains one of your important keywords in it. This header is the most important and it is another sign to Google that tells them what your page is about.

Week Two – Quickly Improve Your Google Local Presence

STEP 3 – Perfect Your Google My Business Profile

If your business depends on people finding you locally, your Google My Business profile is a great advertisement. If you have not claimed your business profile yet, go through that process described here by Google: https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

Once your profile is claimed, there are 11 things to complete to make sure that your profile is optimized. We have listed them below in an easy to use checklist:

Get the Top 3 Social Media Post Templates for Law Firms to Grow Your Following and Get New Clients

Engage with prospects and save time with your FREE Canva template kit. This kit features the top 3 social media posts for law firms and directions on how to brand them for your own firm in 5 minutes or less.

Enter your email below and get the templates sent directly to your inbox along with an instructional video on how to make personalized edits.

For more in depth information on filling out your profile, check out this article: https://blog.iftsdesign.com/introducing-google-my-business/

STEP 4 – Get More Reviews (and Answer Them)

When Google is deciding whose business to show in the Google Local area (also known as the map pack or 3 pack), they look at a multitude of factors. One main factor is the proximity of the person to your business location. Unfortunately, you can’t do anything to affect this. Another factor that Google will look at is the number of reviews and your overall rating, which is where you can shine!

Google’s number one priority is to be helpful to their end user (the searcher). So, they want to show people the best option for their query. It is up to you to prove that you are that option!

Create a system for requesting reviews from your satisfied clients. If you have one-time clients, ask them for a review via email or text at the end of their purchase cycle. This also gives you an opportunity to have one last touch point.

If you have clients that have a renewal cycle, ask them for a review at the end of that process. This is a nice way to end the renewal and get you credit for doing a great job!

A common objection that we hear is that people don’t know what to say. Make it easy on your clients! Send them an email with a direct link to leave a review on Google as well as a suggested list of questions to answer for the review. This also allows you to “sneak” keywords into your questions…and hopefully, they will repeat those keywords in their answers!

The most important thing to remember about reviews – when you receive a review, reply to it!

This works in a positive manner for your business in multiple ways. First of all, the person that left the review feels appreciated because you took the time to thank them. Prospects who are looking at your profile will see that you read/reply reviews and care about your clients. Finally, it helps with your local SEO because you and your clients are using keywords and phrases in the review and reply.

Need help getting more reviews? Check out our article on “10 Proven Ways to Get More Online Reviews for Your Business.”

Week Three – Make Posting to Social Media A Breeze

It’s hard to have a consistent social media presence without a plan and the right tools to do it! Week 3 is where this is addressed. You should be able to spend less than 4 hours per month to create and post all of your content!

STEP 5 – Sign up for a OneUpApp Account

There are multiple social media scheduling apps available. The one that we recommend is OneUpApp. One of the main reasons is because it connects and posts to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and most importantly, Google My Business.

Google has said that starting in 2021, they will be looking to see who is utilizing their GMB profile updates. These updates will start to be shown on Google Maps. So, if you have recent, consistent updates, your profile is sure to stand out!

To sign up for an account, go here: https://www.oneupapp.io/register

There is a small cost associated with OneUpApp, but because it connects to all of the profiles that you need, it’s worth it! Most free scheduling apps do not connect to Google My Business.

Take a few minutes and connect your social media profiles to finish the account set up. You will now be able to schedule posts to all of your social media accounts at one time! This will save you a huge amount of time and make your business look professional while doing so.

STEP 6 – Create a Schedule for the First Half of the Year (and repeat for the second half)

Now that your social media scheduler is set up, you need to create some content to post. To create this content, start with another list.

Write down every question that you receive from your clients on a regular basis. Most companies can come up with at least 10 or 20. Make sure to include questions, even if you think that the answer is obvious because it may not be obvious to your client.

Aim for 24 questions, which allows you to address one question every week for 6 months.

Why questions, you may ask? As we mentioned before, Google wants to be as helpful as possible for their end users. They want to answer their questions, which is what your content will be doing.

Can’t think of 24 questions? Again, we will turn to SEMrush and your keyword list!

Let’s use the term “Personal Injury Attorneys” as an example. The results for the term are below:

Look at the section titled “Questions”. This gives you frequently searched phrases that pertain to your keyword phrase. So, one question that an attorney should put on their list is:

“Is it worth hiring a personal injury attorney?”

Once you have your list of 24 questions, put them in an order that makes sense. Typically, I suggest putting them into main categories if possible and addressing one main category per month.

As an example, let’s say that the personal injury firm mainly handles cases that revolve around auto accidents, medical device defects, trucking accidents and workplace injuries. These would be great main categories and each one could have 6 questions associated with it.

Assign a week to each question in your list.

There are 2 ways to create the actual content itself. The one that you pick depends on your personality.

Option 1 – Write down the answer to the question. Then, once you have your answer written, record yourself reading the answer as a video.

Option 2 – Record yourself answering the question in video format. Try to keep your answers within 60 seconds. Then, use a free transcription service like otter.ai to create the text.

Once you have the text, post it to your blog and schedule it to release the Monday of the week that it is assigned. Make sure that the page title contains the main keyword in the question. Be sure that your <h1> is the question itself.

Next, edit the video if you want. There are multiple video editing software apps out there that make editing a breeze.

Upload the finished product to YouTube and schedule it to release the Tuesday of the week that it is assigned. Again, be sure to make the title of the video the question itself. The description should have the question repeated in it plus a small summary of the answer. Bonus points if you have incorporated keywords into your answer!

Now, here is a posting schedule to get a week’s worth of content from one question:

Monday: Post the link to your blog

Tuesday: Post the link to the YouTube video

Wednesday: Pull out one helpful sentence from the text and create a quick “quote” post. This can be done using the free version of Canva in less than 2 minutes.

Thursday: Post an additional fact that goes along with the question. You can do this with plain text or you can create another “quote” post.

Friday: Post a link to the video from the week before with the label “In case you missed it” (Obviously, this cannot be done the first week, but it works for every other week)

You get bonus points for using hashtags!

Once you know what you want to post, sign into OneUpApp and schedule the posts. To learn how to schedule posts, check out their video here: https://www.oneupapp.io

I’d recommend scheduling at least one month at a time. This way, you can take a small amount of time from your day and get all of your social media for the month done in less than 2 hours!

Once you get through the first 6 months, you can just repeat your content. The average life of an online post is less than one month, so don’t worry about people seeing repeats. I promise, they will not remember.

Week Four – Take Advantage of Offsite SEO Opportunities

STEP 7 – Optimize (and Create if Needed) Your YouTube Channel

If you don’t already have a YouTube channel, you are missing out on a traffic opportunity. YouTube is the second most popular search engine and it’s owned by Google!

Create your YouTube channel for your business if it doesn’t exist already. Need help with this task? Follow these instructions from YouTube: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1646861?hl=en

Once you have signed in, you can start optimizing your company’s channel! Try using the following tricks:

If you can, use a keyword in your channel’s name. This can help your channel show up for organic searches. For example, an easy way to do this for a law firm would be to name the channel “[COMPANY NAME] – Your Personal Injury Law Firm in Greensburg, PA”.
Make sure to completely fill out the “About Us” section. Be sure to include relevant keywords.
Include a link back to your website. If people want to learn more about your company, make it easy for them to do so. It also helps with your SEO rankings.
Fill out your channel keyword tags. This tells the search engines what your channel is about and who you are.
Create a “trailer” video for your channel, if one does not already exist. Typically, this should be a 30-60 video that introduces you, your business and lets people know what they should expect to learn about in your videos.
People typically decide whether to watch a video within the first 15 seconds, so make that time count! Try to grab your audience’s attention with a big motion, a relevant prop or a question that makes them say “I want to learn more about that!” Bonus points if you can include a major keyword phrase in this time as well.
Do you have videos that would group well together? Create a playlist with them and send your viewers on a journey through your material. Try to create at least 2 playlists.

STEP 8 – Check Out Your Current Backlinks (and Create a Plan to Get More)

A backlink is a link from another website to your own site. Most businesses will have backlinks from a multitude of places, such as:

Local chamber of commerce
BBB
Social Media Profiles
Local News Story
Company that you collaborated with
etc

One major factor that Google looks at when it comes to deciding who shows up first in search results is the number of backlinks that a page has. Now, when the Google algorithm was first invented, it would only look at the volume of links. This paved the way for link farms and other dishonest means of creating backlinks. However, this is no longer the case.

Google now looks at the number of links that you have along with the authority score of those sites. Authority score is basically a measure of trustworthiness. So, more links is not necessarily a good thing. They have to be links from a reputable source.

To see the backlinks that you currently have, go back to SEMrush. Enter your domain name into the search.

The results will show you the number of backlinks that you have as well as the number of referring domains. The referring domains are the websites that contain links to your website.

In the example below, you can see that there are 498 backlinks from 35 domains.

If you click on the backlink number, it will show you some of the links and referring domains. With a paid plan, you can actually see all of the links and the referring domains.

Now that you have your baseline, you are ready to start building links.

One way to build links is to make sure that you are in all of the top local business directories. IFTS offers a list of the top 25 places to get a free business citation here: https://blog.iftsdesign.com/local-citation-pdf/

Another way to build links is to look at your competitors. Make a list of your top ten competitors and enter their domains into SEMrush. How many backlinks do they have? You should have a goal to have more backlinks than them.

You can also look to see who is linking to them by clicking on their backlink number. Check out the referring domains. Go down the list and look at each backlink. Is it a niche directory that you hadn’t heard of? Submit your listing there. Is it a local business group? Enter your name as well. Is it an organization that accepts articles from people in your area? Send them a link to yours!

Backlink building is tough and requires you to stay on top of the task. Choose a ten minute time period each week and start working on this. Aim to gain 1-3 new backlinks per month.

Congratulations! You Made It Through All 8 Tasks!

This is just the beginning, but by jumpstarting January 2021, you’ll be setting yourself and your business up for success in the new year.

Have any questions or need help with any of the tasks listed above? Send me (Stacey Ivol) an email at si@iftsdesign.com or give IFTS, Inc. a call 412.715.6266 for a FREE consultation.

The Complete Guide to Online Reputation for Small Businesses: How to Grow Your Business, Improve Your SEO & Get Found Online

The sales cycle for most businesses today has more steps because customers are smart and informed. The more that you can present your company in a positive light to your target market, the more likely they are to buy from you…and not your competition.

This is where your online reputation factors into the equation.

Growing the online reputation of your business positively consists of two main tasks:

Reputation Management
Reputation Marketing

Reputation Management is the process of soliciting, collecting and supervising online reviews for your business. This will both build and protect your reputation, ensuring the people that Google you find positive, persuasive content. It also will help you improve customer experience with the feedback that you receive.

Reputation Marketing highlights and boosts positive online content that customers provide (like reviews). This may be done through both traditional and digital channels. Leveraging positive reviews/ratings increases the visibility of a company.

These two tasks must be done on a regular basis to be competitive and help ensure the future growth of the company.

Why Should Online Reputation Matter to You?

Don’t underestimate the importance of your online reputation!

Small businesses, especially ones that have a local target market, should have a plan in place to grow their reputation positively. In fact, 82% of local searches are followed with an in-person visit to the store. Local searchers are definitely using the internet to check out where they want to spend their money before they leave the house. Any business that lacks an enticing online presence is risking losing business to well-positioned competitors…even if that competitor has a worse product or service.

Even when you have the best product with the best customer service at unbeatable prices, if you have negative social signals or if your online reputation isn’t great, prospects will be hesitant to give you their time or money. Consumers are now searching for the best service at the best price. They are using Google, Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and more to find it. Social media, search results and online content are allowing buyers to make very informed spending decisions.

“82% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, including 93% of people aged 35-54” (BrightLocal)

When your ideal prospect searches for the type of product or service in your location that you provide, you need to ask yourself two questions:

Does your business show in the search results?
Are you the obvious choice with 5-star reviews and a professional, authoritative online presence?

If the answer to either of the above questions is “No”, then chances are you just lost a customer.

Customers Trust Online Reviews to Guide Their Decisions, But Don’t Just Take Our Word For It…

“Consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before feeling able to trust a local business.” (BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey)

“Businesses ranking in Google’s local positions 1-3 have an average of 47 reviews, while businesses in positions 7-10 have 38 reviews.” (BrightLocal, Google Reviews Study)

“Having a 5-star rating earns a business 39% more clicks from Google local results than having a 1-star rating.” (BrightLocal, Impact of Reviews and Ratings on Click-Through Rates)

Want more clients? Using the facts above, a well-positioned online reputation can help you grow your business more efficiently than practically any other form of marketing.

What are the Benefits of Online Reputation Management for My Small Business?

Crafting a positive online presence has a multitude of benefits for a small business. It will establish credibility and authority, which gives your company a competitive advantage over others in your market. Be the obvious choice for your prospects!

Want a salesman that works 24/7/365, advertising you as the best in your locale? This is what a positive online reputation can do for you. According to BrightLocal, “Review ratings are the biggest driver of clicks in local search engine results”.

Additionally, a great reputation can help with your search engine optimization (SEO). Online reviews, directories, business profiles and more help your website rank higher. Thus, exposing you to a new and wider audience.

You now may be asking yourself, “This is great, but how do I start?”

That is what the rest of this guide will cover.

What Should A Small Business Do To Grow Their Online Reputation?

Step 1: Claim, Manage and Optimize Your Business Listings and Online Review Site Accounts

Review sites are vitally important when maintaining your reputation. This is where consumers go to research companies and products. One goal for your business should be showing up in Google local results with good reviews.

Sometimes, people are willing to take their research to the next level. This is where review sites come in. For example, did you know that Yelp has over 178 million site visitors monthly? They are all looking to confirm that they will get what they want from a particular business.

Make review sites work for you. Build and protect your online reputation by building your review set on multiple sites. Make sure to respond to every review in a way that is consistent and persuasive to potential customers reading.

Claim your business profiles on all review sites that are pertinent to your business. Don’t forget any local directories as well! Complete the profiles and be sure to use keywords and phrases that your target audience may be interested in. Make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) are consistent across all profiles. For example, don’t use “Road” in one and “Rd” in another. Pick one usage and apply it across all online properties. Be sure that your website has the same exact information, as well.

Missing, incomplete or duplicate information in these listings can hurt your business and your SEO!

Some of the top review sites that you may want to consider are:

Google My Business
Yelp
Better Business Bureau
Facebook
Trip Advisor
Foursquare
Angie’s List

Step 2: Create and Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

When you are first starting this plan, Googling your business normally results in various social media profiles for the owner and the business being returned. This is exactly why you should claim and establish your social media profiles.

Social media profiles generally rank highly for personal names and business names. If you have not done much to establish yourself, this is a great way to control what prospects can see about you. You have complete power over what your profiles say and the imagery displayed.

It’s important to claim these profiles as soon as a business is established. Profile names are first-come, first-serve, so it is possible that someone else could claim your name. Don’t let your competition block you, or even worse, create a fake profile and pretend to be you.

An active social media presence lets you promote your brand and establish your voice. Your content will help create relationships with your clients. It also lets you showcase your thoughts, opinions, interesting articles, reviews and more.

When claiming your profile, be sure to fill everything out in its entirety. Include your NAP from above, your website, contact information, logo and lots of photos. People like to see the people behind the business.

Step 3: Solicit and Manage Reviews

Create a process for your business to request online reviews from your customers and make sure that you and your employees follow it every time.

“76% of consumers that are asked to leave a review go to write one.” (BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey)

Monitor your review profiles for new reviews and be sure to respond to all new feedback.

When you receive a positive review, it is easy to write a response. Thank them for their time and review, use their name, talk about your commitment, let them know that their feedback is important and invite them to take another step with your company.

Receive a negative review? You need to reply!

“45% of consumers say they are more likely to visit a business that responds to their negative reviews.” (ReviewTrackers, Online Reviews Survey)

Reply to the reviewer using a courteous tone, and apologize for the experience that they had. Then, offer to discuss the issue offline. This way, potential clients will see that you care about customer satisfaction and that you tried to make it right – allowing you to flip a negative into a positive.

Step 4: Create a Blog with Consistently-Published, Quality Content

Your online reputation also comes from the authority that you have established. A blog is a great way to accomplish this. Blog entries published regularly with proper SEO ensures that the content and images that you create occupies the top search results for your name and business.

Worried about how to start your blog?

Here is our blog quick-start guide:

Set up your blog in WordPress (You can follow this guide if you run into trouble https://www.wpbeginner.com/start-a-wordpress-blog/).
Install the free Yoast SEO plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/).
Identify 13 commonly asked questions that you hear from your customers frequently.
Answer the questions. If writing is not your thing, record yourself answering the questions on your phone and use https://otter.ai/ (free tool) to transcribe it.
Create one blog entry per question.
SEO each entry with page titles, meta descriptions, tags, URLs, image names etc.
Use WordPress’ built in functionality to schedule one of these entries to post every 2 weeks. This gives you a regularly scheduled post for the next half-year.
BONUS: Film yourself reading the blog entry and post the video to YouTube with a link back to the blog. This will help with authority and SEO.

Step 5: Get Started

You now have everything that you need to begin. Don’t jeopardize the time, money (and maybe tears) that you have put into your business by neglecting to build and maintain a positive online presence!

Need help getting started or want someone to take over the responsibilities of this task? Contact IFTS and ask about our ReviewLead free trial. We make online reputation a stress-free experience for you.

10 Proven Ways to Get More Positive Online Reviews for Your Business

Do you want your business to stand out from the competition?

Do you want to completely DOMINATE local search?

Do you want to have a steady stream of leads coming in online every month?

If you answered “YES!” to even one of the questions above, you need to work on building a system that creates a stream of positive online reviews for your business. When someone in your area looks for a business like yours, you need to show up first organically and be the obvious choice.

One factor that Google uses in organic ranking is online reviews. They will look at quantity, quality, how often you receive them and product/service keywords. Then, they will look at the same thing for your competitors. It is crucial that your business does better than your competitors in all of these categories to show up higher in the rankings.

To be the obvious choice, getting multiple positive reviews consistently is key. They help you strongly influence potential customers. Reviews provide the social proof that people are looking when researching a buying decision.

In this post, we will cover 10 ways to get more reviews, increase your visibility on local search and take your company’s online presence to the next level.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #1: Create a “Review Generation Strategy” to get reviews on all of the sites that matter to your clients.

Make sure that you are visible on sites and search engines that are used by your clients and prospects!

To start, identify review sites and directories commonly used in your industry and location. Don’t forget to research lesser known sites that may be specific to your town or niche. Once you have your list complete, create profiles on those sites (if necessary) and start asking for reviews that funnel to those locations.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #2: Ask your 5-Star Reviewers for referrals

Is there anything better than getting a 5-star review from a happy customer?

Not only do they leave social proof online to help others make a decision, but they identify themselves as excellent people to ask for a referral.

Happy customers can make the BEST brand ambassadors for you. They made the effort to leave you a great review, which shows an investment in your business doing well. Reach out to these people with an email or phone call. Thank them for the great review and ask if they know anyone that would benefit from your services. Be sure to personalize these messages. In some cases, they may even offer to introduce you to the referral themselves!

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #3: Train your employees to ask for reviews

Training your employees to ask for a review should be a top priority in every business. To make this an easy, repeatable task, develop an internal review request system within your company. Make sure that all of your employees know how to use the system and stress the importance of its utilization.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #4: Use feedback forms proactively to stop negative online reviews and comments

Bad customer reviews can negatively impact your business in multiple ways. With this in mind, it may be scary to send out review requests to all of your clients. In order to put your mind at ease, there is a middle layer that you can add to your review system that will “catch” those bad comments before they make it to your review profiles – feedback forms.

You can use the feedback forms to funnel the people that want to leave a good review to Google, Facebook etc. and the bad reviews can come directly to you to deal with offline.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #5: Respond to every review to build trust with future prospects and increase your online authority

Generating new reviews and monitoring review sites are not the only review management tasks that you need to perform. You need to respond to every review that you receive, as well. This shows your current and future customers how much importance you place on their experience with your company.

Businesses that have review replies are more likely to receive useful, detailed reviews from their customers. In addition, if people know that you are likely to respond, they will be less likely to leave mean-spirited comments within their review.

Make sure to thank the reviewer for taking the time to leave a review and let them know how valuable their input is. If you do receive a negative review, leave a reply with a cool head and offer to discuss the issue that they had offline.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #6: Request online reviews from your happiest customers

The best time to ask for a review from a client is immediately following their service or transaction. The experience is fresh in their mind. You have just done a great job for them. Their appreciation for you will be the strongest and they should be more open to leaving a review. Make it easy for them and they will put more effort into leaving an awesome review for your business.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #7: Ask your 5-Star Reviewers to leave reviews on multiple platforms (or on video)

Has a client left you a glowing review that you think would benefit others?

If someone has given you a great review, there is now an easy opening to ask them to leave that review on multiple platforms. Additionally, you can ask them for a video testimonial, which is simple to create. They just have to record themselves on their phone reading their review and send you the clip via email or text.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #8: Make collecting customer emails part of your onboarding process

Online businesses typically collect customer emails by default as this is part of the buying or opt-in process. However, when you are in a brick and mortar store setting, email collection should be a part of your buyer’s journey as well. Create a system that will help you easily assemble this information.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #9: Use SMS texts to request reviews

Did you know that you can send a customer a text with a link to a review site?

This strategy is quite effective for companies that already use phone numbers as their primary method of communication with clients. As mobile device usage is so popular, clicking a link in a text message is a fast and easy way for an enthusiastic customer to leave you a review. Because they have received other information from you by phone in the past, they will not be put off by a review request via text.

Ways to Get More Online Reviews – Tip #10: You can use incentives, but be cautious with the rules

Giving customers a perk in exchange for their feedback is an acceptable method of gathering reviews, but keep in mind that there are regulations.

Make sure to look at the “reward” rules for the review sites that you use and follow them. The Federal Trade Commission also has their own rules for incentivizing people to leave reviews. They basically say:

It’s okay to invite people to review your business after an actual purchase if you tell them in advance that they should disclose what they received from you in exchange for the review and that the discount or incentive is conditioned upon their making this disclosure. This protects the consumer by giving them a choice to decide how much trust to put into those reviews.

If you have further questions about this topic, speak with your legal team for more information.

Make Your Reviews Your Best Salesperson

The importance of online reviews and monitoring your online reputation is paramount to the success of your business. This includes the following tasks:

Monitor review sites
Constantly request new reviews
Handle negative reviews
Respond to all reviews
Manage the review system itself
Make sure your employees are using the review system

This process can seem overwhelming. Where is a good place to start?

Luckily, it is quite easy to outsource and automate the whole system. Contact IFTS to find out how to leverage your positive online reputation and protect future revenue without any extra work. Ask about our free trial of ReviewLead to take your company’s online presence to the next level.