Ratings and reviews have changed. Not our words, the words of Facebook and these changes have now made it easier for people to recommend your page than ever before.

The ‘Old’ Rating System Has Been Retired

Facebook have retired the old start rating system. This now means that when your customers would like to leave a review, they now have the option of either choosing toΒ recommend or not recommend your page.

The addition of the recommendation tool to the platform is helping to make it easier than ever before to discover new events, places, services and things to do in the area, simply by calling upon the advice of family and friends. The process has been designed to be efficient and easy to use and should your customer wish to interact with you, the addition of the new call-to-action buttons will allow them to contact you within just a few seconds.

What Has Changed?

One of the main differences relates to leaving a new review. If you have already left a review (ranging from 1* to 5*), this will still be in place, however, if you would like to leave a new review, you will instead be presented with the question ‘Would you recommend……..?’, with just 2 options, either yes or no.

If you choose ‘yes’ you will be directed to a pop up which will allow you write a few words about which areas of the business you found to be positive.

If your experience was not as you hoped and you opt for the ‘no’ button, you will instead be offered the chance to write a few words about the area that you believe the business can improve.

A Great Opportunity

This update provides a huge opportunity for businesses (particularly those with a focus on local areas) as when someone recommends your business, your FB page will be tagged, which in turn will pull in a rich snippet showing your total reviews.

With reviews playing an increasingly important role in SEO, they are also essential to help potential customers realise that they are dealing with a trusted business.

A Few Keys To Help Generate Recommendations

As with generating reviews, it can be a little tricky to actually get people to take the time to leave a recommendation. However, we have outlined a few tips below which can help along the way.

  • Provide regular updates. People are very unlikely to recommend a page that hasn’t been updated for weeks
  • Ensure your business details are all up to date and correct. Include your bio, website, phone, address
  • Add a ‘call to action’ button to your page. Either a ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Message’ button can be really useful for customers.
  • Choose a great profile image (Don’t forget that this will be used in the snippet when your page is tagged)

Even More Good News!

We understand that no-one likes receiving a bad review! Whilst FB did offer the chance to respond to any poor (and positive) review which was very helpful, one of the major problems with the previous system was it was all too easy for someone to create a fake account and leave a malicious 1* review with no content. It was not possible to report or remove these reviews and this caused problems with the average rating.

Thanks to the implementation of the new system, it is now possible to report reviews which are clearly inaccurate or malicious to FB to allow them to take a closer look.

Contact Us

We’d love to talk to you about your FB page and how it can be used to benefit your business and it’ll cost you nothing to have a chat. Why not give us a call onΒ 01883 372488Β or contact us viaΒ FacebookΒ to see how we can help your business to create an online presence with our web design services that will help you leave your competition behind.

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