Getting Good Reviews

The first rule of getting good reviews is ASK! The majority of your customers probably love you, and would love to help, they just don’t know how, they don’t want it to take a lot of time, and often they want to be rewarded for their time. So try these ideas:

Ask in your email receipt that gets sent to customers – Let customers know where they can leave reviews or submit videos, give them the links and tell them how long it will take.

Add a postcard/magnet in the bag – Have postcards/magnets created that let customers know they can review your service or product. Studies show that magnets are kept longer than any other advertising form (I have magnets from businesses that aren’t even in business anymore!)

Ask on Twitter and Facebook – Don’t overdo it, but chances are your customers that are already involved in social networking sites are more likely to leave a review somewhere for you. Especially if you:

Reward customers with a discount on their next order – Offer a discount or free shipping with their next order. T-shirts are a great gift as well, I’ve found most people will sell their mother for a free T-shirt.

Responding to Bad Reviews

With the good, comes the bad, and in the online world it’s a lot easier for potential customers to find the dirt on your small business. A lot of small businesses could ignore bad reviews and problems before, but now more than ever, you must decide if you need to confront the issues and try to fix them. Let’s look at when you should respond to a bad review:

You messed up – We all have oopsies in life, and admitting them isn’t a bad thing. Own up, apologize sincerely, and offer to fix the problem. The customer will appreciate what you’ve done, and so will others.

Just the facts ma’am – Customers make mistakes as well, and if they are stating something that isn’t true in the review, you need to correct them. Chances are they could be talking about a different company altogether and left the review in the wrong place.

The ball is rolling – Misery loves company, so sometimes when there is a bad review, more people come out of the woodwork to pile on their gripes as well. One bad review can lead to a mountain, so it’s best to get there in the beginning and start dismantling the issues before it gets out of control.

Of course there are times you should ignore bad reviews as well. Some people just live to be miserable, others just had a bad day and needed to take it out on someone, and there you were. Most people understand that a small business can’t please everyone and will overlook a negative review if it’s clear it’s just a gripe and not a real service issue. Now get out there and get more reviews!

Approve New Followers – 5 minutes

Sort through any new followers you’ve received, determine if you should follow them back, and add them to any appropriate lists. If you organize emails from Twitter this should be an easy task. Twitter also lists your followers by the latest that has join, so you can just click on your Followers list and work your way through. Create lists that will help you join conversations. A book store’s lists might include:  known current customers, local residents, book reviewers, and authors.

Find New People to Follow – 5 Minutes

Search for new people to follow that may be interested in your business. Twitter provides a great search feature so you can find people that have mentioned Doylestown on Twitter, and other websites can help you find people that are located in Doylestown or surrounding cities like Twellow, or by interests like WeFollow.

Respond to Tweets – 10 Minutes

If you’ve organized your followers into lists, start browsing through each list and respond to people, ask questions, or answer any problems they’ve had. You can also go back to Twitter search and search for any keywords to find conversations you want to participate in, for instance if a bookstore has just reviewed a new book, search for the title to see who else is reading or reviewing the book and join the conversation.

Schedule Tweets – 5 Minutes

If you are using a Twitter program like EasyTweets.com you can schedule your tweets in advance. While you want people to know that an author’s book signing is happening RIGHT NOW, chances are, you are probably a bit busy and don’t have time to get on Twitter. You can schedule your tweets as far in advance as you want, so make a plan for the week for days and times you need to tweet specific things, and get them in the system so you can concentrate on business.

Blogging

I doubt there are many dentists that enjoy writing, but a blog is essential for explaining procedures, highlighting success stories and giving dental health information in unique ways as I’ll show one Boston Cosmetic dentist has done with great success.

Connection between teeth and health issues – There are many connections that can be blogged about, or a free report like Helaine Smith and her free report on Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex which garnered her wide media attention and increased her business from $150,000 a year to over $1 million

Proper way to floss – Who doesn’t need a reminder on this, with diagrams?

Helping children prepare for their first visit – Every parents nightmare! Give clients tips on how to have a great first visit with their child

Twitter

Last minute openings – Have a cancellation, see if anyone on Twitter needs an appointment

Dentist is running late – Keep followers up to speed on when they might have to wait a bit for their appointment

New client specials – Great for when you find someone on Twitter that is moving to the area soon

Facebook

Success Photos – Everyone loves to see those super white smiles, highlight a patient each week, ask fans to submit their photos, even a contest to see who needs whitening the most, then post their results

Videos – Offer patients a discount for video taping their procedure so others can see how smoothly everything goes

Okay Doylestown dentists, I challenge you to take these ideas and run with them! Just put down the plaque scraper first please.

Have a Plan

Before you ever do any marketing you should know why you are doing it, and what your goals are. Some people just want to get as many followers as possible, others want to make sales. Writing down your goals before you join will help you create a roadmap for what you will tweet, who you will follow, and how much time you will devote to tweeting.

Be Social

No matter what your goals are, you will never reach then if you simply post your thoughts, links to your business, and ignore everyone else on Twitter. You need to create a plan to engage with others, whether it’s retweeting their information, answering their questions, asking your own questions, or just finding people that have similar interests and can carry on a conversation, you have to interact.

Measure Results

In any marketing you do you want to know if you are getting a return on your investment, even if it’s just time. Determine how you will calculate how much business Twitter brings to your business whether it’s in store coupon codes, online tracking, or simply asking every customer where they heard about you.

There are plenty of Twitter success stories, and with a little planning, you can be one of them.

Blogging

There are so many opportunities for a blog for a book store it’s not even funny (as a matter of fact, I have a book review blog I do for fun just because I read so much, and anything a marketer does on their own, you know there is a way to increase business!)

Review new books you’ve received – Probably the easiest thing to do for a book store, and not just for new releases, how about the top 10 love stories for Valentine’s Day, or African American novels for Black History Month, the list goes on and on

Interview authors, videos, signing announcements – Just like business, readers want to feel connected to the authors of the books they love

New customer of the week – Take a picture of them and the books they bought, they are definitely coming back and telling everyone they know they are featured on your blog

Twitter

Twitter is a great way for book stores to let customers know what is new in the store and more:

Ask questions – Find out what readers want to ask an author, post answers on Twitter and the blog

Reserve new releases – Let your followers order and reserve new releases

Book Clubs – Let followers know what local book clubs are meeting in your store

Facebook

Video book reviews and author interviews – Take advantage of authors that have signings in your store by getting a video interview

Polls – Ask intriguing questions like what makes someone put down a book and not finish it, what book are they embarrassed they haven’t read

In today’s book store market, you MUST differentiate yourself from the box stores, and connecting with your customers is the first place to start. Social media can give you the tools to engage local Doylestown residents.

Follow Everyone, Almost

To engage customers and potential customers in conversation, you generally have to hear what they are saying, and the only way to do that on Twitter, is to follow them. When someone finds your business and becomes a follower, you should be following them back unless they are a spammer. You don’t have to follow everyone automatically, but you should be evaluating everyone that follows you to determine if you should follow them.

Separate

As you can imagine, if you market yourself on Twitter you could have thousands of followers, and it would be very difficult to follow their conversations in any meaningful way, not to mention almost impossible to interact. The biggest benefit of evaluating each follower is that you can decide how to classify them using the List feature in Twitter. For instance, on a book review account I would have lists of readers, writers, and locals. Now I can just click on my list of writers and see only what they are tweeting and respond, then click over to my readers, making it easy to keep up with the conversations.

Interact

And then you should be interacting with them, even if it’s mundane daily experiences that don’t have anything to do with your business. Why? Because you are building a relationship. People want to see your business as a personal entity, they want to relate to you, so telling someone you hope they feel better after they tweet that they just came down with the flu is building a connection. They are going to remember you. They are going to pay attention when you post a link now. If your Twitter account is just a list of your blog links and self promotional material, no one will believe you are interested in them.

Twitter can be a great way to grow local small businesses, but you can’t tweet in a vacuum, you have to put yourself out there. Frankly, if you aren’t being social, why are you even using social media?

First, avoid Flash if you can, and music, no one wants to be accosted when they visit your site. That being said, I love Honey, the food is amazing and the atmosphere is spectacular, and let’s not forget The Freight House which is currently using Facebook (yay!), Chambers 19 one of my favorite Friday night spots, and, well, really there are too many Doylestown restaurants to mention! So what can local Doylestown restaurants do to catch the attention of local customers through social media? I’m glad you asked!

Blogging

As always, I don’t think I know a single business that couldn’t benefit from a blog. Let’s take a look at a few types of posts a restaurant or bar could make:

Secret ingredient – Hold a contest, anyone that guesses the secret ingredient in a new dish gets a free dessert

Review a new wine you’ve added – Choosing a glass or bottle of wine with dinner can be confusing to customers, so give them information on your blog about new wines you’ve added and which dishes they will go with

Cover local food events – Events like Taste of Philly with photos and pre-event news

Twitter

Twitter is a great way for restaurants to contact diners right before they are about to make plans, whether it’s a business lunch or drinks with friends on Friday night, Twitter can help you connect with local residents:

Happy hour specials – Tweet your daily happy hour specials

New menu items – Let residents know you’ve added something to the menu

Events like wine tastings – Having a special event? Let everyone know on Twitter, and take advance reservations

Facebook

Customers can become fans of your restaurant on Facebook and follow your updates so you can keep them in the loop. The key though, is getting them engaged rather than just throwing information at them:

Photos – Post photos of special things that happen, like someone proposing, or the Eagles game crowd

Ask questions – Find out what types of items your fans would like added to the menu

Restaurants by their very nature are social, so taking advantage of social media should be a no brainer for Doylestown restaurants that want to grow their business. I hope you now have more ideas on how to create a comprehensive social media plan for your restaurant or bar.

Let’s talk about florists and flower shops today. We have quite a few floral shops in Doylestown including An Enchanted Florist, Doylestown Floribunda, Carousel Flowers Online and Doylestown Flowers and Gifts. If you take a look at their websites, you’ll notice they are all essentially the same. So, how could a Doylestown florist use social media to separate themselves from the competition?

Blogging

Setting up a Wordpress blog isn’t that difficult to do, finding something to write about can be daunting, but there are endless subjects once you start thinking about how you can help your clients further. For instance, here are 3 topics you could cover:

How to create floral arrangements – A new article for each holiday with photos and step by step directions

Attend Philadelphia flower show – Take pictures and then show how to recreate the look at home

How to make your flowers last longer – Everyone wants their arrangements to last as long as possible, so tell them how

Twitter

Twitter is a tool that allows you to interact with anyone around the world. The real power of Twitter is the interactions between people you follow and those that are following you. Here are a few things a florist could tweet about to gain clients and generally be helpful:

New flowers have arrived – Especially exotic plants or traditional flowers people are typically waiting for like roses around Valentine’s day or Mums in fall

Holiday specials – Create specials just for Twitter followers to encourage them to place an order

Flower meanings – Tweet about the meanings behind flowers such as yellow roses meaning friendship

Facebook

Facebook fan pages don’t work for every business, but a florist can take advantage of a fan page in numerous ways:

Pictures – Have clients submit photos of themselves with flowers they’ve received or sent

Videos – Include videos of arrangements being created in the shop

DIY Arrangements – Have fans submit photos of arrangements they’ve created from flowers bought in the shop

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing site, often used for personal photos, but can absolutely be used for commercial purposes. The great thing about Flickr is that others can use your photos, giving you credit and more exposure. When you upload a photo you can link back to your website so whoever sees your photos will be exposed to your business.

Upload photos if individual flowers and plants – Great for people that need a specific flower photo

Upload Photos of Your Arrangements – A great way to show what your shop can do

Find arrangement photos – Find photos of arrangements you love and show your visitors how to recreate the arrangement

Creating a blog and formulating a social media plan can help a floral shop grow new business by creating content and providing help to potential and repeat customers. Customers want to know that you are going to be there for them before and after the purchase, and they want to connect with you online.