10 Social Media Trends to Watch for in 2023

Nearly 5 billion people use social media and it doesn’t look like that number is dwindling anytime soon. In fact, that number is projected to grow exponentially in the coming years. And it is estimated that the average social media user is active nearly 2.5 hours each day. This means that businesses are occupying this space in order to get in front of prospective customers.

However, businesses need to stay informed on the latest trends to ensure that they are using social media effectively. So, here are the social media trends that you need to watch out for in 2023:

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR), also known as augmented reality (AR) is a new technology that allows users to immerse themselves in an alternate reality. Social media has been using AR technology for a while now to create photo filters and other features. However, VR is projected to pick up even more in the future with nearly $75 million investments in 2023 alone. More VR features are set to come out in the next year to improve the user experience even more.

User-Generated Content

Consumers look for authenticity when looking for a product or brand. They want to know what their current customers think about their company and products before committing to a purchase. That is why many businesses are shifting their marketing focus to showcasing user-generated content, such as reviews, unboxing videos, and testimonials. This is also cheaper for businesses as they can utilize their customers’ content rather than pay for traditional advertising.

Ads

Social media advertising has become the businesses primary budget focus when it comes to marketing. Traditional marketing, through television, paper ads, and radio, are slowly going away as companies recognize the value of social media promotions. Social media promotions are cost efficient, easy to manage, and great for setting a specific objective. With social media ads, businesses can set their objective to:

• Brand Awareness
• Conversions
• Website Traffic
• Purchase

Plus, with the tracking pixel, companies can track who visits their website and track important behaviors on Google Analytics.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has gotten huge over the past couple of years and the trend is upward for 2023. Influencer marketing refers to collaborating with a content creator to showcase your brand to their following. This is great for establishing credibility, as their audience already trusts the creator and therefore trusts their opinion on the brands that they promote. The investment in influencer marketing is projected to reach $16 billion by 2023.

Customer Service Social Media

Although many companies use social media solely for marketing and promoting their products, it is also an amazing customer service tool. Through direct messaging, customers can reach out to a brand directly to ask questions, get help with their order, and address other concerns. This enables customers to get virtually an instant response and feel like they are personally connected with the brand.

Social Listening for Insights

Maintaining a social media presence is great for gauging social conversations, keeping up with trends, and outlining different buyer personas. This type of consumer data is invaluable and can help businesses shape their voice and brand to their target audiences. In 2023, most major brands are going to utilize the advantage that social media gives in terms of keeping up to date with current topics.

Authenticity

Brand authenticity refers to a brand maintaining a specific tone, set of beliefs, and ethics. Maintaining a tone within a brand identity is essential as consumers may be attracted to a business initially because of a product, but they continue to return because they resonate with the brand itself. Customers will actually form an emotional attachment to a brand that they feel they share the same beliefs with. That is why more brands are making it a priority in 2023 to express their point of view in hopes to find like-minded consumers.

Social Audio

Audio content has been slowly gaining popularity over the last few years and platforms, such as Facebook, are starting to create their own audio features. Audio content allows consumers to listen to content on-the-go rather than traditional visual content. Facebook has been working on a new audio feature that allows users to create and share soundbites. We are expected to see all social media platforms create their own unique audio feature in the coming year.

TikTok

By now, everyone knows about TikTok. This app is growing by the second and nearly every business even has their own account to chime in on trends and showcase their services. This platform is particularly popular among Generation Z and therefore an amazing tool for companies that target younger audiences. eMarketer projects that in 2023 44% of all TikTok users will be under the age of 25. This is a huge margin and should be taken advantage of by respective brands.

Social Commerce

Shopping via social media has become immensely popular among Millennials and Generation Z. This allows users to make a purchase within the app itself without having to navigate to an external site. Social commerce is great for companies that provide products that enable impulse buys, such as cosmetics, clothing, and other items. In 2023, social commerce is expected to advance and expand.

Social media is adapting to the social climate, user needs, and technological advances, making it necessary for businesses to adapt as well. By looking out for these upcoming trends, companies can ensure that they catch each wave of trends to maximize their marketing effect.

Social Media 2022: How Often Should You Post?

Many businesses rush into setting up social media accounts and begin posting right away. However, most do not realize that consistency is key when establishing an online following. Followers want to see their favorite brands regularly and be able to predict when they post. This makes creating a consistent social media posting schedule crucial. But that begs the question; how often should you post?

Facebook

Facebook is known as a low volume, high-value platform. Meaning that users prefer when brands have fewer posts as long as they are high quality, rather than many low-quality posts. With that being said, studies found that businesses should post between 3-7 times a week in order to maintain customer loyalty and engagement. This is because not every post will be seen by all of your followers, as everyone is active on social media at different times. So this is a safe range to ensure at least one of your posts will be seen.

Instagram

Brands that rely on visuals thrive on Instagram, as posts are solely visual, whether images or videos. While posts also contain captions, they are more focused on the visuals. Therefore, most businesses are safe to post everyday. Some even post multiple times a day, but this is after they have gained a large following and have found that followers enjoy consuming their content. 

Instagram also has features known as stories, reels, and IGTV. Stories are posts that only last for 24 hours but can be added to your profile via a “highlight.” This feature is perfect for promoting time-sensitive content, such as product drops, flash sales, and contests. Reels and IGTV are video-focused and allow creators to post long-form content. This is great for posting explainer videos, introductions, and testimonials.

Twitter

Twitter is a unique platform as it is extremely fast paced and no one post has a long life-time. Even with trending news, a post will become outdated within 24 hours. This is because posts are limited to 280 characters. Because of this, businesses can post as many times as they feel is beneficial for their brand. It is up to each company individually to determine their best posting schedule.

Pinterest

Pinterest is another unique platform that acts as a visual search engine. Known widely for DIY and crafts, Pinterest is perfect for businesses that can showcase a visual that has a backstory. For example, a chef can post a picture of a dish on Pinterest that links to the recipe. Users can pin this post to their profile or save it for later. Pinterest is great for interacting with clients and giving them another way to consume content. Most brands post between 1-5 times a day, depending on their engagement and product types.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-based social media that focuses on working professionals and B2B. Because this is solely for career-based people, it is important that businesses have high-quality posts that either drive intrigue or conversation. These posts typically take longer to create, and therefore, businesses typically post between 3-5 times per week. LinkedIn allows you to post images, videos, text, and even articles.

Now that you understand the different types of social media platforms and how major brands use them, you can determine the best posting schedule for your company. Keep in mind it is important that once you determine your schedule, you remain consistent. It is always better to have fewer, higher quality posts than many forgettable or low-quality posts.

Why Your Small Business Needs to Run Google Ads: 10 Reasons

Google is the most popular search engine, and it doesn’t look like that is changing anytime soon. With over 8.5 billion searches daily, Google is the best place for small businesses to get noticed. While advertising may seem complicated, and it certainly can be, Google makes it relatively easy for anyone to set up a Google Ad account and begin running promotions immediately. Here are 10 reasons why your small business needs to run Google ads:

Expand Your Customer Reach

As we’ve already mentioned, Google has an enormous reach. The search engine has become so widely used that Merriam Webster Dictionary made it an official verb; “googled; googling” meaning to search something on Google. If that doesn’t tell you how popular Google is, we’re not sure what will. 

The users that made this possible were just people looking for an answer to their question. And many times, the answer can be your product or service. In order to get in front of these people, you need to ensure your business appears at the top of the results page for related searches. Google Ads are automatically placed at the top of page one and you can manually set which keyword terms and phrases you want to target. 

Focus on Different Audience Segments

If you have a broad audience that you want to segment or already have an idea of your different buyer personas, you’ll want to target them differently. This may mean focusing on different keywords, playing with the ad copy, and promoting different products. Google makes it easy to separate different audiences based on their interests and place in the research funnel.

Finetune Intent

The major advantage of using Google ads over other forms of advertising, such as paid social media, is the ability to reach different people based on their intent. For example, when you advertise on social media platforms, you can only target people based on their interests and demographics. You have no real way of telling where they are in their research journey.

With Google, you can target specific keywords and phrases to ensure you are reaching the user at exactly the right time. Let’s take a hair stylist looking for a website developer as an example. Their first search may be “how to design a website” then once they do more research it may change to “websites for hairstylists.” Eventually, their searches will become more fine tuned as they do more research and it will become “website developers for hair salons.” This is the point where website developers want to show up on the results page, as the user is ready to make a purchase.

Maintain Control Over Campaigns

There is no question about your campaign when it’s run through Google. Google gives you complete control over the promotion, including:

• Budget
• Schedule (times and days)
• Audience segments
• Website placement
• Keyword targeting

Manage Your Budget

Let’s dive into budgeting a bit more. On Google, it is not as basic as setting an overall campaign budget if you are interested in more intricate spend control. Google allows you to adjust your:

• Cost per click bid
• Daily spend
• Keyword bid
• Maximum bids

With this level of spend control, you can rest assured that you will not exceed your desired budget.

User-Friendly Dashboard

Some advertisement dashboards make it nearly impossible to understand why a promotion isn’t succeeding with complicated analytics and no assessment. Google Ads take the guesswork out of analytics and shows exactly which ads are performing the best alongside the top key performance indicators (KPIs). With their easy-to-use platform, you can easily view:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Keyword bids
• Cost per click

Improve Google Ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) is still a valuable tool used among most, if not all, major sites. However, a sustainable SEO strategy requires patience and consistent practice. Most companies want results now and don’t want to invest the labor and time into SEO. Google Ads push you to the top of the results page immediately without all of the extra hassle of SEO. So if you are looking for a quick way to get noticed, Google Ads is your best bet. 

Build Brand Awareness

Most people think of conversions when they hear Google Ads. And while many businesses do run them for driving traffic to their site, it is also extremely effective for brand awareness. A study found that marketers prioritize brand awareness campaigns, making these promotions extremely useful. Whether a business is just starting and trying to establish their brand or introducing a new product, brand awareness is essential for gaining trust. Most users won’t make a purchase unless they are familiar with a company, making brand awareness an important first step for every marketer.

Improve Conversion Rates

Google Ads uses complex algorithms to determine which ads are running best at which times to maximize conversions. This takes all of the guesswork out for marketers trying to optimize their campaign performance. Google Ads will even make edit suggestions on click bids and ad copies to improve conversions.

Maximize ROI

Google has established different forms of bidding to ensure every business can maximize their ROI. Depending on the campaign type, businesses may be interested in:

• Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding is recommended for generating website traffic.
• Cost-per-thousand (CPM) bidding is recommended for brand awareness campaigns.
• Cost-per-action (CPA) bidding is recommended for specific conversions, such as product purchases or email sign-ups.

Now that you understand the benefits of running Google Ads, talk with your team about how you could best utilize them.

Does Your Business Need to Run Social Media Ads?

Let’s just cut to the chase. The answer is yes. Social media is booming which means that whoever runs ads on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, or Snapchat will be noticed. It’s impossible not to! Whereas other forms of marketing may have a limited scope and yield less than ideal results.

Here are some benefits that paid social media marketing gives businesses:

Fine-Tune Customer Targets

Facebook itself reaches over 2 billion people, giving companies plenty of users to get in front of. While this number may sound overwhelming, Facebook also offers fine-tune customer targeting to ensure you get in front of the right audience. Facebook has what is known as a pixel. This piece of code is placed on your website where it tracks where users navigate to, as well as collect their demographic information. This allows you to detail your buyer persona and retarget these users! 

Facebook also has pre outlined groups that you can market to if you are just starting out or wanting to reach a new audience. You can target users based on their location, age, gender, behaviors, and even interests. The possibilities are endless!

Build Custom Audiences

Okay, this is where the Facebook pixel really shines. Businesses can build custom audiences based on users that performed a specific action or behavior. For example, a retail company selling shoes can retarget users that visited a specific shoe’s product page when launching a campaign for this item. This enables brands to create a custom ad that is sure to speak to the user.

Track ROI

Every social media platform that offers paid advertising gives businesses access to a dashboard that clearly outlines their performance metrics. By counting clicks, conversion rates, and average spend, social media platforms, such as Facebook, are able to accurately calculate return on investment (ROI). This ensures businesses hit their desired benchmark.

Mobile- Friendliness

Optimizing ads to ensure they look good on both desktop and mobile devices can be a pain. Luckily, social media is primarily viewed on mobile devices, therefore these platforms do the optimizing for you! You can build an ad from scratch or even promote a post that has already gained some traction.

Cost Efficiency

Unlike traditional and other forms of digital marketing, paid social media campaigns are relatively inexpensive for the exposure they provide. Campaigns can be run off a lifetime or daily budget to ensure you spend exactly how much you need. Most platforms even allow you to manually adjust your click bid to ensure you don’t exceed a specific cost for each click an ad gets.

Increased Brand Awareness

Businesses that are just starting or are launching a new product or service may want to begin with brand awareness campaigns. There is no better place to start than social media. Brand awareness campaigns are especially effective, as they do not rely on clicks and are pushed to as many users within the detailed demographic as possible.

In short, all modern businesses should run social media campaigns even if it is just for brand awareness and to build data on their site. This is especially true for B2C companies, as social media ads are notorious for prompting impulse buys.

8 Reasons Why You Need a Blog

Keeping an updated website is not all it takes to keep users engaged with your business. Having an active blog can do wonders for your traffic, brand awareness and customer engagement! Here are 8 reasons why your business should start a blog:

1. Improve Your SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) enables your business to appear at the top of the results page on search engines, such as Google and Bing. How? By scraping your website for keywords and content relevant to the user’s search query. A blog enables you to saturate your website with relevant keywords and phrases to ensure your website appears at the top of the results page.

In return, you drive more organic traffic to your website at zero cost! A study found that websites that maintain blogs have 434% more indexed pages than their competitors. Indexed pages refer to web pages that search engines scrape when looking for content relevant to a search query. Therefore, the more indexed pages you have for a specific keyword, the more likely you are to appear on the first page! And let’s face it, if you aren’t on the first page of Google, you aren’t getting noticed.

2. Expand Brand Awareness

By covering topics related to your brand or products you can grab the attention of users that wouldn’t typically navigate to your site. For example, if a user is researching a specific car part they could stumble upon an article that discusses the importance of the part published by an auto shop. This shop now has the potential to convert this user, who initially was only interested in reading about the product. 

3. Establish Trust with Current and Potential Customers

Through building your blog and consistent content marketing, businesses can showcase their values to current and potential customers to establish trust. Companies that cover relevant keywords give users a chance to familiarize themselves with the brand and their products. In addition to educating the audience, blogs make a business look more developed and professional. 

4. Keep Your Audience Updated

Businesses are constantly evolving, expanding their product ranges, and reaching out to new markets. Without a blog, it can be difficult to keep the audience up to date with all of the changes. By writing both short and long form blogs, companies can ensure they appeal to all types of information consumers.

5. Build Internal Linking

Internal linking is an effective SEO strategy where businesses can backlink different products, pages, references, and even other articles in their blog posts. The more relevant links that you include in your blog posts, the better your SEO. Internal linking also helps users navigate to other relevant pages on your site, which then gives better engagement rates!

6. Get Customer Feedback

Many businesses with blogs also enable a comment section under each article, allowing customers to leave feedback or engage in conversations. Not only does this leave a space open for customers to engage in a two-way conversation, but it also gives them an opportunity to ask questions. This can create a sense of community both between your customers and your business.

7. Build Your Email List

There are many different reasons why a consumer will join an email list. Some are just interested in a quick discount, while others want to keep up with a brand and their content. Companies can segment these consumers by creating a separate email list for those that want to keep up to date with your blog.

8. Get Social Exposure

Most companies with successful blogs enable social share buttons so readers can easily share the article to their Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. This is huge not just for brand awareness but for establishing trust. By a reader promoting your article, they are putting their stamp of approval on your business and showcasing it to their friends and family. This can help companies gain credibility and grow their social media presence.

Now that you understand the benefits of having a blog, make sure you develop a feasible posting schedule before initiating this endeavor. It is more important to keep a consistent posting schedule of quality content than churning out large quantities of poorly written posts.

Why You Need a WebMD Enhanced Profile

Everyone has heard of WebMD, as it is considered the most trusted online source for health information. Users can look up their symptoms and conditions to get more information to help them make informed decisions about their health. In addition to a large database of health knowledge, WebMD also provides listings to healthcare professionals so they can attract potential patients. 

So who gets a WebMD listing? Every healthcare professional automatically gets a free WebMD listing that allows them to list their contact information, collect patient reviews, explain their specialties, list accepted forms of insurance and display medical certifications. So why do you need an Enhanced WebMD Profile? We’ll tell you…

The Benefits of a WebMD Enhanced Profile

While customizing your free WebMD listing is a great starting point, healthcare professionals are easily overlooked for competitors with an enhanced profile. With a WebMD Enhanced profile, professionals unlock the following features:

• Prominent Placement- Be among the first profiles listed for local searches involving your specialities, services, procedures, and keywords for greater visibility. Plus, if you provide telehealth services, you are placed at the top of the results page for all related searches, not just the ones in your area!

• Website Link- Link your website directly on your profile to drive traffic.

• Click-to-Call Button- Allow mobile users to call your office directly from WebMD.

• Online Booking- Allow prospective patients to request an appointment via WebMD.

• Competitor Ad Removal- Remove all ads from competitors that have an Enhanced Profile from your listing to avoid being overlooked.

• Banner Ads- Add banner ads to your profile that link directly to your website to drive traffic.

• Search Engine Optimization- WebMD is an authoritative site, giving you a better ranking on search engines such as Google.

• Competitive Intercept- Place advertisements on your competitors’ listings that do not have an Enhanced Profile. 

• Enhanced Branding- Embed a video or your logo on your profile to highlight your practice. 

The WebMD Enhanced Profile is the perfect way to increase your visibility, drive more traffic to your website, and ensure the right prospective patients find your practice.

The Importance of Custom Website Design

All modern businesses need a strong online presence in order to attract more clientele. This starts with a robust website that is easy to navigate and clearly outlines your business. But where do you start? With a custom website, of course!

Custom vs. Templated Websites

What is a custom website? Well, generally speaking, there are two types of website; templated and custom. A templated website offers pre designed landing pages with a specific outline that you can customize with your content. However, you are unable to move the element layouts or functionality. This can be extremely limiting for healthcare businesses that need to incorporate different widgets, appointment scheduling tools, and other interactive elements in their site.

On the other hand, a custom website allows you to build your site from scratch! Whether you need to implement specific code for a custom design or move elements, the limit does not exist! Therefore, healthcare businesses would be wise to build a custom website do to its limitless functionality.

7 Benefits of Custom Website Design

So custom websites allow you to create whatever layout and design you’d like– but what else does it offer?

Better SEO

Custom websites help you rank higher on search engines, like Google and Bing. How? Well search engines look for the following when ranking websites on the results page:

• Site speed
• Responsiveness
• Relevancy
• User-friendliness
• Security

With a custom website you can build code that ensures your website is running at top speed, is easy to navigate, and is secure. However, the relevancy of your website is up to you. So make sure to keep your content updated.

Brand Maintenance

With a custom website you can saturate your website with customized content to keep your brand and tone consistent. Brand consistency is key when building awareness and trust with prospective patients. Whether you are building or maintaining a brand, be sure to keep the following elements consistent throughout all channels:

• Logo
• Color scheme
• Company/product(s) name
• Font style
• Style choices
• Messaging

Enhanced User Experience

We briefly touched on this earlier, but we can’t stress it enough– prioritize your user experience! The user experience consists of the entire journey a user goes on when they interact with your site, from discovery to conversion. With a custom website, you can constantly change out interactive elements to enhance the user experience, such as:

• Quizzes
• Downloadable files
• Videos
• Images
• Slideshows
• Lead generation forms

Scalability

Perhaps the most important reason to build a custom website, even if you are a relatively small business, is its scalability. Regardless of the size of your company now, your ultimate goal is to grow and expand your clientele. Well, you can’t really do that with a templated website. Although custom websites are a bit more expensive, they are scalable to really any size. This way you don’t have to start over whenever you outgrow your current site.

Professionalism

Most people can tell a templated website from a custom one, simply by the layout. A custom website has a more professional appearance and more functionality. This automatically makes your business more trustworthy to existing and prospective customers because they feel that you care about your image.  

Improved Conversions

Alongside the user-experience, businesses with custom websites experience higher conversion rates simply because they are able to better address the user’s needs. Even if you know what your audience needs, if you have a templated website, you may not be able to provide them with it. A custom website enables you to implement the appropriate elements to improve satisfaction and ultimately conversions. 

To sum things up, every business should invest in building a custom website. It looks more professional, it gives you complete control over the layout, and it improves your SEO. So invest in building a website that will grow your business.

How Online Reviews Can Improve Your SEO

Search engine optimization, SEO, used to be as simple as stuffing a landing page full of redundant keywords in order to rank higher for relevant searches. However, search engines have since gotten wiser and now rank websites by the quality of their content– user generated content being among the most valuable. Therefore, genuine customer reviews can significantly improve a business’s SEO, placing them higher on the search results page. 

Let’s take a look at the specific benefits online reviews have in regards to SEO:

1. More keywords

Reviews are known as user-generated content because customers are content creators too! In fact, they are often considered the most valuable creators as prospective customers often look for reviews when making a purchase decision. And Google recognizes this, which is why the search engine will scrape new reviews, good or bad, for relevant keywords. Customer reviews are saturated with relevant keywords, be it your company name, products, services, or other related search terms.

So, whether the review itself is positive or negative, your SEO only improves! However, you should always strive for positive reviews, obviously.

2. Enhanced competitor edge

Many companies think content curation is the only way to improve SEO. Therefore, while your competitors are focused elsewhere, you can boost your online ranking by generating customer reviews. You should start by collecting reviews on your Google My Business listing so you can improve your overall SEO, as well as your local SEO (we’ll discuss this later). 

Then you should do some research to determine what other review sites are most important to your business. Once you’ve done this, consider implementing a widget on your site that displays all of your best customer reviews. This expands the opportunity of prospective customers reading your reviews, driving your traffic and clickthrough rate.

3. Google favors user generated content

Google looks at the quality of a customer review the same as it looks at the quality of a backlink. If a backlink isn’t relevant to its content or doesn’t provide any additional value, then Google doesn’t see it as an advantage. In terms of reviews, a negative review doesn’t benefit the user, therefore Google favors positive reviews. Google also looks for relevancy and frequency of reviews. Which is why local listings always start with businesses that have the highest number and most recent reviews, disregarding advertisements.

4. Review responses increase interaction

Google My Business advises companies to interact with their customers on their GMB listing by responding to reviews. Why? Well, while they do not explicitly explain this piece of advice, it is obvious that it gives the platform more information to scrape. Therefore, by responding to customer feedback, you not only engage your clientele but you could potentially boost your online ranking. Responding to negative reviews could even persuade the customer to change their feedback.

5. Reviews decrease bounce rates

Bounce rates can kill a company’s online ranking. Studies have found that showcasing online reviews can actually improve a business’s bounce and conversion rates. This is because reviews enable customers to gain knowledge and trust for a business before making a purchase. Therefore, businesses should display their best reviews on popular directories and their own website.

6. Local SEO

Local SEO refers to how local businesses are ranked in their area. For example, if someone from Dallas Google searches “dentists near me” only dentists in and around Dallas will populate. The dentists will be ranked based on their Google My Business review quality and quantity. Therefore, businesses with positive, frequent, and large quantities of reviews will appear at the top of the list. 

SEO practices are ever-evolving, but one thing that will never lose its effectiveness is customer reviews. Businesses should prioritize review generation in order to maintain their online presence and customer reach.

The History of Online Reviews

Prior to online reviews, people relied on recommendations from loved ones and thorough research before making a purchase or choosing a healthcare provider. The research phase back then could take weeks or even months, and therefore the sales funnel was much longer. Thankfully, the internet has since been invented and allows people to view reviews and data from hundreds of credible sources in a matter of seconds.

However, this didn’t just happen overnight. So let’s look at the history of online reviews and how they came to look the way they currently do.

The First Online Reviews

The first reviews to appear on the world wide web were published in 1999 on sites like eBay, Epinions, RateItAll, and Deja. These websites generated over 1 million reviews but was later outshined by Yellow Pages in 2001. Yellow Pages and City Search acted as directories where businesses could list their company and collect customer reviews. 

Because of the success of these online directories, more review sites started forming and catering to different types of businesses. Now there are countless online review platforms, the most popular include:

Google

Google is the largest, most robust search engine on the internet, which is why it was only fitting that they also collect business reviews. Businesses can claim a free Google listing by creating a Google My Business account and start collecting customer reviews the same day. Google then uses these reviews to improve your local SEO, or search engine optimization. So the more reviews you have, the higher up on the results page you appear for relevant searches.

Yelp

Yelp was created in 2004 with the intention of establishing a platform where healthcare providers can collect patient reviews. The inspiration struck when one of the founders fell ill and couldn’t find any reviews for local doctors or physicians. The concept of leaving anonymous reviews made Yelp extremely popular and by 2009 they had collected over 4.5 million reviews!

Facebook

By 2007 Facebook was booming and many businesses were creating platforms to become a part of its rise. This led the website to create a new feature that allowed companies to create their own “Page”. On these pages, businesses could collect reviews from their customers, outline their information, and create informative posts.

Medical Review Sites

Medical review sites, such as Healthgrades and Vitals, are tailored to businesses that fall within the healthcare industry. Although Yelp was originally created for this purpose, dozens of review sites have since been established so patients can leave reviews for:

• Hospitals
• Doctors
• Nurses
• Clinics
• Caretakers

Why Online Reviews are Important for Businesses

Nowadays, consumers don’t make a purchase decision or choose a healthcare provider without performing thorough research, and reviews are a major part in this phase. Without regular, positive reviews, prospective customers are likely to overlook your business for another that makes their online reputation a priority. 

Here are some online review statistics that you need to know:

• 72% of people say online reviews help them establish trust in a business
• 92% of people say they will patron a business if they have at least a four star rating
• 73% of customers place more value on the written review, rather than the star rating
• To out-do your competitors, you need to respond to at least 30% of your reviews
• 54% of consumers visit a local business’ website after reading a positive review
• A 2020 survey showed 77% of people use online reviews as the first step in finding a new physician 
• 84% of patients regularly consult review sites to view or post comments and ratings of healthcare staff 
• 86% of people would pay more for services from a company with higher ratings and reviews
• A one-star rating hike on Yelp can mean a 5% to 9% rise in restaurant revenue

How to Get More Online Reviews

Now that you understand the importance of online reviews, let’s discuss the different ways you can collect them:

Register your business on online directories

First and foremost, you need to list your business on all major directories, including Google and Facebook. Then you should look into review sites that are tailored to your specific industry. For example, if you own a healthcare clinic, you would want to be listed on Healthgrades, Vitals, and ZocDoc. Once you are listed, you can begin directing your clients to your listing to leave a review.

Ask for reviews

Don’t be afraid to ask your clients to leave you a review on the review sites that matter most to you. Some businesses even offer incentives or gift cards to clients that prove that they left a review. Consider launching an email campaign, putting up signage, or even reaching out to customers directly to generate more online reviews.

Reply to reviews

Getting reviews is only the beginning to establishing an online reputation, you must also reply to reviews. Start by responding to negative reviews, as they can significantly harm your reputation and cost you potential customers. However, you should also respond to positive reviews to show customers that you appreciate their loyalty.

Feature reviews

Consider featuring your best reviews on your social media, website, and in marketing campaigns! Studies have shown time and time again that consumers prefer user-generated content over traditional promotions, so give the people what they want!

Stay active online

Make sure you stay active online, whether that is through posting on social media or continuously updating your website. It is not enough to convert a customer, you have to make sure to consistently engage your clientele to maintain their loyalty. Otherwise, you may risk losing them to a competitor that nurtures their relationships.

Online reviews are here to stay, which means all modern businesses need to prioritize generating customer reviews in order to establish credibility. Consider purchasing review generation software to capture reviews on the sites that matter most to your business! Interested in ReviewIQ? Learn more about our review generation and monitoring here