In a recent podcast interview, I discussed with my guest, Michelle Hoglan, about the importance of reviews. You can find this episode at https://gregjameson.com/michelle-hoglan/. (While your there, hop on over to iTunes and leave a review!) As business owners, we’d all like to get a ton of positive reviews, whether it be on Google, Facebook, Yelp, our own websites, or any number of othwer places where customers might be looking to see if they should do business with us.
I was recently asked to create a “leave-behind” for a service company, where the customer could write a review on Google. As it turns out, this process isn’t intutitve, so I thought I’d lay out the instructions for some of the more popular places to leave reviews. Let’s start with Google, where we want to create a direct link, rather than making our customers follow multiple steps when we ask them to review us.
To create a link, you’ll need to get the Place ID for your business. To get your Place ID:
- Go to the PlaceID Lookup Tool.
- Enter your business name in the “Enter a location” field at the top of the map.
- Click your business name in the list that appears.
- Your Place ID will appear on the map, beneath your business name.
Add your Place ID to the following URL to create your link:
- https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=<place_id>
Using the example above, the URL with the Place ID added would be:
- https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJyV7CRWiVbIcRa2D-rd_Sn5Y
You can now use this link to leave a review, or shorten it with a URL shortnerlike bit.ly. For example:
http://bit.ly/ReviewWebStoresOnGoogle
If you like the content I provide each week on this blog, please go ahead and follow the link above and leave me a positive review! 
Another place you want your customers to leave reviews is on Facebook. This need to be done on your business page, not your personal profile. Find the tab on the left called “Reviews” and click on it. Copy this URL to send to your customers. For example: https://www.facebook.com/pg/WebStoresLtd/reviews. (Yes you can leave a review for us here as well!)
The customer will see a box where they can review your business.
After clicking on the star rating, you can then leave an optional, written review.
Yelp
For better or worse, many customers like to use Yelp to leave negative reviews about companies, and potential customers read these reviews. It is important to get as many positive reviews as you possibly can on Yelp, so you’ll want to prove an easy link for your satifies clients. start by finding your listing on Yelp. If you have not yet claimed your listing or built a listing, you will need to do that and have it verified. Once you find your claimed listing, there should be a box that allows visitors to review your business.
Click on your business name. this will open a new page, where you can copy the URL to send to your customers. For example:
https://www.yelp.com/writeareview/biz/5FTqfXwWos2ifEffB8URng
Once, again, you can use a URL shortner like bit.ly to create an easy to remember link to send to your customers, such as:
http://bit.ly/ReviewWebstoresOnYelp
(Again, please feel free to leave us a positive review on Yelp for giving you all this great info every week!)
These are just 3 of the more common places where you will want to ask your customers to leave reviews for you. You business may have sites that a specific to your industry, such as Tripadvisor or Houzz. the important thing is to give your customers the links and to ask them to leave you a positive review. Consider that done for Thanks!!!
Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/
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