Let’s be honest. People no longer use Facebook to just connect with friends and family—they also use it to connect with brands, find products and services.
Additionally, they use it to share their thoughts and opinions. And at the intersection of these two uses are Facebook reviews.
Are Facebook reviews important?
As a service provider, you must be wondering how Facebook reviews can be of benefit to your business, right? Well, there are plenty of perks that come with the reviews. The most common ones are:
People are looking for information on social media
Research by Pew Research Center shows that over 40% of U.S adults always check online reviews before purchasing a product or service.
Modern customers aren’t like the customers of the past that bought services blindly and hoped for the best.
Currently, before a client can start working with you, they have to research your company and the services you provide.
And what is a better place to explore than social media, where you are likely to find raw, unbiased opinions of past customers?
Suppose you have a Facebook page for your business. In that case, customers can freely leave reviews of their experience, and anyone searching your business can see what everyone has to say about your business.
When potential clients come to your business’s Facebook page, they expect to see reviews, and when you don’t have them, you might give the impression that you don’t have clients. It might also mean that you provide shoddy services, then remove the reviews left by disgruntled customers.
When you have many positive reviews on your page, you build confidence in your brand, which gives you credibility. As you can guess, this brings more business your way.
Facebook is the leading social media platform.
With over 2.2 billion active monthly users, Facebook is not only the go-to platform to connect with friends and family but the best place to find product information and reviews.
In a recent survey on over 2,000 U.S. internet users, over 49% said that they visited Facebook to check online reviews for local businesses.
With such heavy use and interest, it’s only logical to take advantage of the platform to connect with your customers and collect as many reviews as possible.
And since many people are looking for reviews on Facebook, your collected reviews will be visible to many people, which gives you an easy time building your brand.
The beauty is that you don’t have to use advanced tricks to get reviews. We will talk about that later.
Facebook reviews significantly help in building a positive brand presence
With 68% of online shoppers saying that online reviews influence their buying decisions, and over 80% of them saying that they trust online customer reviews, as they are more personal and authentic, you should strive to get as many positive reviews as you can.
You might have the impression that you only need to collect positive reviews, and when you get negative reviews, you are doomed, this isn’t the case.
If you are strategic with handling negative reviews, you might end up turning a disappointed customer into a raving fan.
A good rule of thumb is to respond to negative reviews as soon as they come about. Be empathetic with the client and explain what went wrong and how you will prevent such an incident from happening again.
How do you get more Facebook reviews?
Now that we have seen the perks of getting Facebook reviews, how do you do that? Here is how to go about it:
Encourage your customers to “check-in.”
Most social media users love sharing what they are doing and places they visit, especially nice establishments. You can take advantage of this using “Check-in.”
Check-ins are Facebook’s version of geotags, and they help boost your presence on Facebook.
When someone checks in to your business, Facebook shares the post with the user’s followers, and when someone hovers over your business name, they can see a preview of your Facebook page and even visit it.
When accompanied by photos or a compliment, check-in is a powerful endorsement or recommendation and can go a long way towards influencing people to visit your business.
You might be wondering how you can encourage your customers to check-in, right? One of the most effective ways is to give your customers a discount or freebie.
The beauty is that after a customer has checked in, Facebook sends them an automated reminder asking them to rate or review their experience. This gentle nudge, coupled with the exclusive discount, pushes the customer to leave a recommendation.
To take advantage of the Check-in feature, you need to ensure that your business page is appropriately configured.
After logging into your page, click on the Edit Page Info, scroll to below the map and check the box: Customers visit my business at my street address.
Just ask for reviews.
Sometimes getting reviews is as simple as asking for them. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you can have a few signs in strategic areas of your shop asking the visitors to review your business. Remember to include the name of your Facebook page on the signs.
You can also ask for reviews through emails or simple use review management tools. Do you have the email addresses of your customers? After delivering a service, send them an automated post-purchase email thanking them for allowing you to serve them, then ask them to leave you feedback.
Remember to insert a link to your Facebook page to make it easy for them to find your page. Don’t place the link too far down the email when doing it, as only 25% of people make it to the bottom.
When crafting the email, you don’t have to be fancy in your wording. A simple message such as, “Thank you for allowing us to serve you! If you would, please take a moment to leave us a Facebook review. We’d love to know about your experience,” is enough.
If you use phone messages to communicate to your customers, craft a similar message and send it to your client with the review link embedded in the message.
You can also ask for reviews directly on your website by having a button going to your Facebook page.
Another excellent way is to write a Facebook post asking for reviews, then boost it to those who already like your Facebook page. Since they already like your page and business, they are likely to give their review.
Finally, you can go the old school way, call your favorite customers, and ask them to review you on Facebook. Since they love your business, they will likely leave a positive review that will go a long way towards bringing in more business your way.
Can Facebook reviews be deleted?
As much as we are pushing you to get as many Facebook reviews as possible, there is the risk of getting a few negative and even sometimes unfairly hurtful reviews that might damage the credibility of your business, and you might want to delete them.
Can Facebook reviews be deleted? Unfortunately, you can’t delete them the same way you delete or hide unwanted comments on your page.
If you don’t want the negative reviews to show, one thing you can do is to disable the recommendations on your page.
To do this,
- Click on the “Pages” tab on the left menu on your Facebook newsfeed
- Then click on “Page Settings” on the left-hand menu
- Click on the “Templates and Tabs” on the left menu
- Find the “Reviews” option and turn the tab off.
While this will hide the negative reviews, unfortunately, it will hide all the reviews (including the positive ones), rendering your efforts to collect reviews useless.
As you might be thinking, this isn’t a wise move to make, is it? Besides hiding the reviews throwing your hard work to waste, it also harms your brand as potential customers looking for unbiased views about your business can’t find them.
To avoid this, you shouldn’t disable recommendations. A great way to approach negative reviews is to respond to them.
Even the best businesses make mistakes and rub a customer the wrong way. When this happens to you, and a customer leaves a scathing review, move with haste and address it.
When responding to a negative review, be professional, as this is a testament to your business values and good customer service.
You should then apologize and promise that the mistake won’t happen again. As mentioned above, if you are sincere in your response, you can easily turn a peeved customer into one of your best fans.
If you feel that a particular review is malicious and you don’t have a proper way of responding to it, report it to Facebook, and they will investigate and decide whether to remove it.
Did you know you can capture negative reviews before they are published on Facebook? Visit Score My Reviews page and learn how to use the review management platform to do that.
Can you link Facebook reviews to Google?
Yes, it’s possible to do it. When creating Google and Facebook business profiles, ensure that you use the same details. This is to help Google identify that the two accounts are linked.
This way, when a customer leaves a review, the Google spider craws the web, and if it finds a rating on your Facebook page, it automatically, using an algorithm, adds it to your Google My Business Knowledge Panel, and with time, Facebook reviews start appearing on your Google My Business panel results.
Sometimes you will use the same profile details, but Google fails to link the two. In such a case, work with a web designer and mark up your Facebook link with the “sameAS” schema.
The beauty with markups is you can use them to tie all of your social media profiles to your Google business page so that the reviews left on all the platforms show up when someone Googles your business.
My Facebook reviews are not showing. What should I do?
It can be frustrating doing all the work of asking for reviews, then you find them not showing on your business page.
If your Facebook reviews aren’t showing, chances are you have turned off recommendations.
If you have been away from Facebook for a while, you should know that since 2018, Facebook reviews have become recommendations.
Facebook made this move to make it possible for business pages to appear when users post asking for recommendations.
Even if you didn’t turn off the recommendations, they might have automatically done so, and you need to turn them back on.
The other reason you can’t see the reviews/recommendations is that you haven’t claimed your Facebook business page.
You need to claim your page to enable reviews.
To do this,
- Visit the Facebook Business Manager, then open the settings
- Click on “Accounts,” then “Pages,” and then “Add.”
After doing this, Facebook will ask whether you want to add an existing page or claim somebody else’s page. After making the selection, enter the page name and URL.
After claiming your business page, your reviews will be visible to everyone, and you will start reaping from your efforts.
Parting shot
Facebook reviews are vital for your business, and they not only allow you to connect with your customers but also help your customers give their experience with your brand.
You don’t have to be fancy about getting the reviews. Encourage your customers to check in or be a straight shooter and ask for reviews.
You will come across negative and sometimes malicious reviews in your quest for reviews. Unfortunately, you can’t delete these reviews, so the best way to handle them is to respond to them, explaining the problem and how you will prevent it from happening in the future.
If a review is too malicious and you don’t have a good come back, report it to Facebook for removal. You don’t want a malicious person to intentionally spoil a brand you have worked so hard to build, do you?
