Flickr Image Courtesy of Margaret Ornsby
In most areas, the real estate market is on FIRE! Now is the time to grow your reputation with outstanding reviews. Take advantage of giddy buyers and happy sellers NOW.
On the heels of the closing, you should be asking your satisfied clients to write an honest review of you at their choice of sites such as Google Local, Yelp, CitySearch (part of City Grid), Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Zillow or any other review site.
Just in case you haven’t heard, amassing positive ratings and reviews helps increase your visibility online.
Lay Claim to Your Business Listings!
This is risky, but I’m going to assume you have already claimed and/or created your business listings at the more popular rating and review sites. If not, you need to do this or at least ask for help setting up these business listings ASAP. Here’s a resource to help you get started!
You Have Reviews – Now What?
Most agents would be happy with just getting a few reviews. But what are you doing with your reviews?
“5 Dos and Don’ts” When It Comes to Leveraging Your Reviews
- Don’t refer to your reviews as testimonials on your website! Why? The word “testimony” isn’t a commonly used search
term. However, the word “review” is ubiquitous (Hot dang, got to use that fancy word!). Besides, we review everything! We review where we eat, what we buy, and how we are treated. The same is true for home buyers and sellers. That means these realty consumers use search terms like “Best Real Estate Agent Reviews in Clayton, NC” to find agents. Terms like “real estate agent testimonials?” Not so much. That means not only changing your review page headline, title tag, and meta description, but also how you label your review page in your site navigation. (Yes, we will have a conversation with David and have him begin using the term review over testimony.) - Use this Google link to monitor and manage all your reviews – Google.com/business. It makes managing your Google reviews super easy!
- Yes, that means responding to not so great reviews too. We’ve all had that one client that was impossible to please. It’s really important to respond to the negative reviews too. Just do it in such a way as to gingerly “push” the conversation to offline channels like email or private message. If you know the client’s experience was less than stellar, you may want to push their review to a backchannel page like this in the first place!
- Go ahead, toot your own horn for a bit. I love that Clayton, NC REALTOR David O’Doherty used that as
part of his sub headline in a recent post on his blog! It was a gracious (and effective) way to showcase the terrific feedback he had received from a client on his site. My friends in New Hampshire, Jim Lee and Ann Cummings, would call that move “wicked smart!” Want to know another brilliant move by David? He openly, earnestly, and honestly praised his clients on his blog for being “awesome.” (Egad, now I have that crazy Lego Movie “Everything is Awesome” song in my head! It’s a true sign I’m a “Papa!” Comment if you can relate to this!) - Repurpose ratings and reviews from your business listing profiles. It’s as simple as copying reviews from Yelp, Google Local, and other sites and pasting them on your website. Just have the headline state “Review from Yelp”. The reality is that you would rather have your clients leave a review on a site like Google Local than on your site anyway.
It’s Your Turn – How Are You Leveraging Your Reviews?
How are you taking advantage of your “social proof?” Be sure to leave a comment and let everyone know the creative ways you leverage your ratings and reviews.
Until my next post,
Bobby