Get Found Online in Your Town (Pt. III)

Get involved in the online ratings and reviews game. This is pivotal to your online success, especially if you're a restaurant, hotel, airline, or any other company who deals with customers on a more intimate level. The majority of St. Louis online business directories have rating and review systems established. This give your customer the ability to review your business on a variety of different platforms. Did you know that one negative review can hurt your chances of getting new business? It’s true, you may be losing business because of one bad review on Yelp, Google, or Yellow Pages.

The action step is to claim your business and start engaging with people as you would if they said something to your face. You may have your own way of handling such a situation, but you should most certainly address people who are having both good and bad experiences with your company. Google often links to multiple review sites into their local search, those links contain the reviews about your company. This allows users to see a multitude of information in one place. 

Here are a few of the primary review sites: 

• Yelp
• InsiderPages
• CitySearch
• Local
• MerchantCircle 

My advice is to start thinking of ways to initiate positive online reviews. You can start by collecting testimonials and success stories from existing or past customers who are still loyal to your products or services. I’d also suggest building a “Review Us” page into your website. This page can show your customers how to write reviews on the sites I’ve mentioned previously. Now, get out there and start getting some positive online reviews!