Reviews Management: What Brands Need to Know

Reviews management is a crucial part of driving new sales for any brand. At Sociality Squared, we turn to Sprout Social’s Reviews toolkit.

In today’s digital landscape, it is nearly impossible to ignore the power of online reviews. Whether you like it or not, your customers will write about their experiences with your brand online — and what they write can be crucial to driving sales and growing your business. 

Yet, many brands put far too little effort into proactively managing their reputation. This can cause long-term harm over time as potential customers take note of negative reviews and inconsistencies in your brand’s response. 

On the other hand, understanding the impact of reviews management on your brand’s reputation and bottom line can help create opportunities for your business to stand out from the competition by building trust with former, current, and potential customers. 

Read on to learn how Sociality Squared’s approach to reviews management can be your brand growth superpower.

Reviews Management: What Brands Need to Know

What Is Reviews Management?

With 82% of consumers regularly researching brands and products online and a full 98% reading online reviews at least occasionally, the importance of ensuring potential customers’ impressions of your brand in these spaces are positive is self-evident. 

With that in mind, reviews management is simply the process of pursuing that goal: strategically putting your brand’s best foot forward, engaging with reviewers, addressing issues, and understanding what is being said about your business. 

After all, every review — good, bad, or neutral — is a chance for your brand to interact with the writer and make an impression on future potential customers who may read it. 

That said, even the most prompt and polite response can backfire, so just as in any other facet of brand messaging, consistency is key. When you respond to reviews, you should do so in a way that is consistent with your brand’s voice across all platforms. Additionally, you should work to engage with all reviews, regardless of whether they are positive or negative. This way, you can actively manage your brand reputation and minimize potential damage. 

Finally, when responding to negative reviews, always remain as courteous as possible; in some cases, you may even want to apologize for a customer’s bad experience. On top of this, you should aim to do as much as possible to make things right again. Offering a solution can go a long way toward minimizing any negative impressions of your brand. 

If it all sounds a little overwhelming, there’s good news: plenty of reputation and reviews management systems are available. These systems make it easy to ask customers to write reviews, monitor for new reviews, respond to reviewers, and showcase the best reviews on your website and other channels. 

As a Sprout Social Agency Partner at Sociality Squared, our go-to system for reviews management is the Sprout Reviews toolkit.

Sprout Social Reviews Management System: S2’s Choice

With powerful integrations, a streamlined interface, and time-saving organization, Sprout Reviews empowers brands to manage reviews across the sites that matter most to their customers. 

On top of unifying your social media and review management in one centralized platform for a cohesive and efficient strategy, Sprout Reviews also combines reviews from Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Glassdoor into a single stream so you can stay organized, informed, and respond quickly to every review.

Additionally, Sprout allows you to sort, filter, and create custom views to build a more focused and personalized approach while gaining insights and identifying opportunities.

By removing roadblocks to engagement, Sprout Reviews helps brands strengthen their customer relationships effectively and efficiently.

 

Getting Started with Sprout Reviews Management

The first step in leveraging Sprout’s reviews management features is to get started with Sprout! 

Beyond a reviews management system, Sprout Social is one of the most comprehensive social media management tools available, offering a range of features and functions which power social media publishing, scheduling, reporting, listening, and analytics. 

Every client we work with at Sociality Squared gains access to Premium Analytics plus resources, support, and expertise to expand their social media marketing and drive business growth. 

After your initial onboarding to the platform, the next step is to connect each review location to Sprout for easy, centralized access. Lastly, you can begin managing reviews across the internet from a single tab on the Sprout dashboard. 

You can learn about the process of connecting and managing your review locations here.

 

Would You Like Some More Help?

The world of digital marketing has changed dramatically over the past few years, and your brand’s presence across the internet is more important than ever before. 

With so many potential customers looking to online reviews to inform their decision-making, not taking proactive action to manage your reviews and reputation can be costly. 

If you’d like to learn more about how Sociality Squared applies tools like Sprout Social to help define and achieve meaningful business results, reach out today.

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Written By:

Edward Gibbons-Brown