Been there, done that, the age-old adage goes. Imagine this – you’re considering going out to a new restaurant, but you simply aren’t sure if the establishment serves quality food, if the staff is professional, and if they provides good food and service at a value. You can’t play through an imaginary meal with your own or somebody’s help – you’ve got to either try the restaurant out yourself or wait for somebody else to tell you how it is.
We listen to people who have visited establishments, especially when it comes to businesses with social media pages. Social media reviews are the king of all reviews on the World Wide Web and here’s why:
The worlds of social media and brick-and-mortar stores are tied closely together
Most people who own smartphones regularly use them in public. Have you ever seen someone using a smartphone in a store? All of us have, whether we own smartphones – whether we’ve never even used smartphones or not.
Believe it or not, most people within your store’s boundaries are browsing through Google, Facebook, Yelp, and other social platforms for making quick judgments on whether to shop or skip. Because of this, you’re going to need to stay on top of social media reviews so as not to miss anyone quickly consulting their phones and deciding if your 3.9 rating on Yelp is going to cut it.
We tend to trust strangers
Turns out we trust strangers just around as much as we trust our friends since around 84% of us trust online social media reviews just as much as we would trust a personal recommendation.
In the past, word of mouth was only so strong – and that might not have been very strong; however, today’s online reviews have people’s names attached to them – sometimes pictures are included, too, which all but identifies people who left such reviews.
Four-star or better
Did you know that more than one in three people wouldn’t eat at a restaurant below four stars? Online reviews matter, but if star rankings are involved, then they matter even more because people are now facing an easy decision on whether or not to visit your business based on one single statistic, as opposed to reading longer product reviews on a product page.
Tying it all together
We often don’t think of the power of online reviews, especially not as powerful as they are on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media giants. Businesses will adapt to these issues by taking their reviews off of such pages entirely, or at least migrating to other websites to leave their now-current, soon-to-be-old reputations behind.
The many benefits of getting Google business reviews help the Google ranking for local SEO (which we can help with) while leveling the playing field for businesses so that even mom-and-pop operations without a marketing budget boost their credibility with customers. Take advantage of them and give them the proper care so your business can reap all the positive benefits (and dodge the bullets that can come from negative reviews).
0 Comments