We often speak with businesses who already have clients that love their products or services. Sometimes these businesses even have a collection of quality reviews from past clients. However, promoting reviews can feel like a tricky topic. If you’ve ever received a glowing review from a client, you may have felt stuck wondering what to do with it. Should you show it to the world, or does that seem too prideful? Should you add it to your website? Plaster it on your office wall? Share it on social media?

While you could choose to do all of those things (though we don’t recommend having dozens of reviews on your website), today we’re going to discuss some ways to go about promoting reviews on your social media channels.

Why share reviews?

Though it can feel awkward to share about how great your customers think you are, it actually helps future customers a lot. Most people (90%) read online reviews before deciding on a product’s purchase.  And amazingly, 78% of people trust online reviews as much as they would trust a recommendation from a family member or friend. If someone is interested in your product or service, they will want to see reviews.

Sharing reviews on social media may also reach future customers who didn’t even know that they needed your product or service. Perhaps they follow you online but don’t completely know or understand what it is that you do. Promoting reviews on social media is a way to let your followers know that you’ve helped customers with similar problems to theirs, and you can help them, too!

How to get reviews

Now that you know the importance of sharing reviews, let’s get started. The first step to sharing is getting reviews. If you already have a collection of quality reviews, go ahead and skip this section.

If you don’t have a collection of quality reviews, there are lots of ways to get them.

Just ask

Though it may feel scary, simply asking past or present clients for a review is one of the best ways to start. If people are satisfied with your company, they’re usually more than happy to promote you to others. You can do this in a person-to-person conversation, send a postcard or email, or even make a phone call.

You can also create a form on your website where you can easily direct customers to leave a review. Alternatively, it’s easy to create a Google form and send the link to your customers. Linking to Google Reviews is another great idea. All of these are simple ways that you can direct customers, and each will only take your customer a couple of minutes to complete.

Write your own review using a template

Some of your clients may not have the time to sit down and write a thoughtful review. Here’s where you can make their job easy. Create a quick template for your client to fill out, write the review yourself using their answers, and then send the final review to the client for approval before use. Your template will want to clearly show the client’s problem, solution, and success.

Here are some helpful questions to include on your template:

• What were you looking for when you hired our company?
• What made you choose our company?
• Did our product or service meet your needs?
• If so, how did it help?
• Were you satisfied with your overall experience with our company?
• Would you recommend our product or service to a friend?

Promote at least twice a month

Once you’ve collected a handful of reviews (or enough to get started), begin promoting them on your social media channels at least twice per month. As we discussed earlier, sharing reviews will allow others with similar problems to see that you have a solution. Posting your reviews truly helps potential customers, so don’t be too shy about sharing the success that your past customers have had because of your company.

Start sharing!

We hope this post motivates you to get out there, ask for reviews, and promote them! Don’t be afraid to go back to past clients and ask for a review. In most cases, they’ll be happy to help.

Social media is an effective, inexpensive way to grow relationships with past, present, and future customers. Take advantage of it! If you’re not sure where to start with social media, need help promoting your pages, or don’t have time to manage your accounts, check out our social media services here. We want to help you promote meaningful content so that you can reach more people. Book a meeting with us today to learn more!