If you run a business, online reviews can be an excellent way to win more customers. People tend to trust online reviews written by previous customers because they are more likely to provide a clear and honest account of how you do business. More than that, reviews can help you to get more visibility online, and they can even help with your SEO efforts by building more links to your website.

The problem for many businesses is how to encourage more people to leave reviews. Here are a few ideas that you can use to help you generate more reviews.

Do a Great Service

The simplest way to get good reviews is to always provide an excellent service. If you provide great products and a service that beats your competitors, and if your customer service is second to none and you are always helpful, your customers are simply more likely to leave you positive reviews.

Make It Part of Your Follow Up

Of course, even if you provide an excellent service every time, your customers may still not get around to telling everyone else about it by leaving a review, and you can therefore encourage them to do so.

This is very easy to do. All it involves is letting your customers know how much you appreciate reviews and then pointing them in the right direction. Don’t go out of your way to ask for positive reviews, but simply make it clear in a follow-up email that you take reviews seriously and read every one of them to improve your service. Include a link or two to various review sites, and you could find that the amount of reviews you receive rockets.

Use Social Media

Social media can be an excellent place to get more reviews. People automatically trust the reviews of their friends and contacts on social media, and you can tap into this.

Start by using a dedicated monitoring tool to search for comments that mention your company name. When you find a positive comment, retweet it and thank the person for writing about you. If you can, contact the person who left the comment via another channel and mention that you also love it when people leave reviews on websites, and share a few links with them to review sites.

They have already said something positive, so they may be more likely to leave another good review, especially now that you have made it easier for them to do so.

Never Pay for Fake Reviews

You may be tempted to get more positive reviews by paying for them, but this is really not the way to go about it. If you leave fake reviews or pay for reviews, this will often get found out. Not only is it dishonest, but it can also look very bad for you and can turn into a PR nightmare. So just accept that some reviews will be negative, and then rather than worrying about these, read them and learn from them instead.

Encourage More Reviews from Your Customers

Take advantage of online reviews by making it a part of your marketing strategy. Reviews can be very beneficial for your company, and it is easy – and free – to increase the number of reviews that you receive by following some simple tips. So use the tips above and start taking greater advantage of online reviews yourself.

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