Peer reviews, social media, whatever you want to call it…if you want your business to gain customers from the web, you need to manage not only what you say about your business (watch those Facebook entries!) but even more,
what OTHERS say about your business.
A bad review on the web could be costing you more business than you know. It doesn’t matter whether the review is logical, sane, or even right (click any of these most-recent reviews I dug up for you about consignment and resale shops to read them) …what matters is that people do see and read these reviews.
The best way to manage these lousy (or even lukewarm) reviews is to BURY them beneath complimentary reviews by your fans, friends, best customers. Often.
How to tackle this:
Go to Yahoo Local and add your shop’s location… see what pops up and what you can do. Your shop DOESN’T pop up? There’s an option there to ADD your business.
In Google search, put in your category (such as consignment, thrift, resale, furniture) and your area… Google returns a map with such businesses marked. Click on yours, then explore your options.
Don’t forget the search engine Bing. See where they lead you.
Ask.com seems to pick up reviews from Insider Pages so take a look at both. There’s Merchant Circle too and Citysearch.
Superpages is worth a little time; so is Judy’s Book. I’m sure there are plenty more sites; perhaps you’ll share any you know of?
Check out all these sites for reviews on your shop. Then encourage your BFFs or BCFs (best client forever, natch!) to put their thoughts down. Ask a LOT of BCFs… 95% of them won’t get around to doing it. Next month, ask a bunch more.
How to get good reviews:
Ask your email newsletter recipients. Twitter or Facebook it. Put it in your blog and on your web site. Ask customers in your shop if they’d be willing to do so, then ask if you can send them an email with the links to sites where they can. (Don’t bother giving them the link written down on a piece of paper; you need to get them while they’re ON the internet reading their email.)
Do this every month, without fail, and you might just end up with some great reviews. If not, ask your mother or daughter or neighbor or anyone else who’s enthusiastic and reasonably literate.
Just don’t do THIS:
If you’re going to write a review of your own shop, don’t make it obvious that you are the writer. like this poor shop did: I love this place! A friend told me about it while I was shopping for a new work wardrobe at various places and having no luck. Reluctantly I checked it out. I had never been to a consignment shop before. It was fantastic! Not only are the prices amazing but the quality and selection of clothing was fantastic as well! It’s clean, neat and the employees are great as well! I will check it out every couple weeks now. Oh, and they also carry shoes, jewelry and handbags!
And then when you are done…
Now that you have the reviewing mindset down pat, go ahead, if you would like to, and review TGtbT The Manual on Amazon.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
I was slammed on Yelp by a very big, threatening, menacing guy who is now unemployed and has, 8 months after the incident, nothing to do but try to get even. I threw him out of my store. I’d do it again. I may not respond at all. I think anyone would consider why someone would be told to leave the building. Jenny, you are right about Yelp.
[…] nasty, totally-inaccurate (or so we like to think!) and biased negative reviews of our shops by asking our fans, friends, and best customers to put their reviews up on all those sites Auntie Kate talked […]
You failed to mention the worst review site of them all…YELP.com Yelp is not a small business friend and it’s nearly impossible to “bury” unjustified reviews! It seems that the only reviews that stay posted are those made by Yelp users who have nothing better to do than post dozens of reviews. So it does no good to ask your customers to leave a review unless they are already a heavy Yelp user (God forbid). My shop has won numerous awards and on all of the other review sites we have fair and balanced (thank you Fox News) reviews. Unfortunately I only have two reviews on Yelp and both are very negative and likely written by my competitors. Yelp sucks!
Thanks, Jenny, I was wondering when Yelp would be mentioned. I have looked up some shops I know, and I agree, the bias is towards mean (and uninformed). I guess those in areas not covered by that web site can consider themselves blessed!
What else is there to do on a rainy monday? Thanks for the links – I spent all morning (in between helping customers of course!) updating our information on the couple of sites that I hadn’t hit before. It’s easy to get listed and since most people under 40 don’t even use the yellow pages any more, it’s so important to be googlable.
These are GREAT Tips Kate…thank you for helping us look out for the stinkers in life…and business. Hugs. Keep up the awesome work!