A member of my Facebook community asked a great question about Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).
“Why is it important to have reviews there versus my website or my QuickBooks online profile?”
Here are my thoughts.
Why are Google reviews important?
Google reviews are GREAT for attracting local businesses.
A complete and optimized profile with positive reviews will help you rank higher in local searches. For example, if you search for “bookkeepers near me” you’ll see a list of local bookkeepers in your area along with their contact information.
However, as a virtual bookkeeper, the key to getting reviews is to build them on the platforms your ideal clients are most likely to look at.
If your ideal clients are on Facebook, you should focus on building reviews there.
If your ideal clients look at QuickBooks online for bookkeepers, you should focus on building your reviews on that platform and so on.
Whichever platform you choose though, you should always add the reviews you collect to your website. This helps build the know-like and trust factor when visitors find you directly from your website and is a great backup in case any of the platforms you use to collect reviews shut down or have issues (which happens quite often.
Adding reviews to your website
Facebook and Google are the top two review platforms I recommend because you can easily automate the process of adding these reviews to your website using a WordPress plugin like WP Social Ninja to pull in new testimonials behind the scenes! Not only will this help you save time and keep your website up-to-date, but it will also help you boost your credibility.
There are some people out there who don’t trust website reviews that are manually added. There’s always a chance that negative reviews are filtered out or that the reviews are made up entirely so having a plug-in to display reviews directly from trusted sources like Facebook and Google makes it way harder to doubt your trustworthiness.
Should you reply to client reviews?
Once clients begin leaving reviews, you may be wondering if you need to reply.
In my professional opinion, you should absolutely respond to client reviews! (Even negative ones). It’s always great to be responsive to let your clients know that their positive feedback is appreciated and it also lets potential clients get a feel for how it would be to work with you.
I’m sure you’ve heard complaints about previous bookkeepers or accountants not being responsive or communicating well so replying to reviews quickly is a great way to stand out and assure your potential clients that you are different.
Where and how are you collecting and displaying client reviews? Let me know over in the Facebook community!
