Should Small Businesses be Encouraging Reviews?
Greg Sterling had an interesting blog post last week ‘Review & Win’ — or Not on whether small businesses should be out soliciting reviews. On the ‘No’ side is Yelp, whose terms clearly state:
“While we understand that there is a temptation to solicit reviews from your customers, it is not something we encourage. The most successful businesses on Yelp have had their reviews come organically.”
Yelp is pretty rigorous about this policy. In fact, they oftentimes screen out reviews if they deem them untrustworthy. Reviews, even legitimate ones, can suddenly disappear from Yelp because a reviewer does not have enough history on Yelp or for other reasons not made wholly clear by the company.
On the ‘Yes’ side are many other big publishers including YellowBook and Insiderpages, who have both run major promotions to solicit reviews on behalf of their customers.
I understand Yelp’s position, or at least their intent. Only having fictional or ‘friends and family’ type reviews is a disservice to consumers. This is part of what Yelp is trying to filter out.
However, I disagree with Yelp that a business should not be out encouraging reviews and that only reviewers approved by the Yelp algorithm are entitled to have their reviews read.
If you are a local business, among your greatest assets is the goodwill of your customer base. Why would you not try to tap into that and encourage it to spread online? Your negative reviews are going to be online (sooner or later), so don’t you want your positive reviews, or at least a more representative sampling, to be there too?
Start taking advantage of the goodwill you’ve created in your business and start inviting your customers to share their reviews online.
