Check this out: almost 27,000 reviews are posted to Yelp every minute. Not every day, not every week – every, single minute. That’s a whole lot of people talking about a business – whether or not the business knows about it.
Now compound that number with the fact that, today, 88% of people trust reviews as much as personal recommendations – meaning, a consumer trusts someone they’ve never met, but said ‘the sushi was awful’, as much, if not more, than their lifelong friend who said the same thing.
There used to be something of a gray area between social media and sales, but the modern reliance on social and online platforms for peer reviews is changing the game.
- Q: Can a Tweet make my business money?
- A: A Tweet can make you money. But more importantly, a bad one can cost you money.
- Q: Does the fact that Facebook harbors over 2 billion monthly active users and is the second largest review site behind Google mean anything?
- A: Facebook is the review capital of the world (behind Google, as stated) and you best be paying attention.
- Q: I don’t really have to respond to every review, right? Tom4209 from Dubuque’s opinion about my tire shop doesn’t really mean the world, does it?
- A: Yes. Tom’s opinion matters. Because it’s not about what he says, so much as it is about what people hear.
If you don’t believe me that one bad review, let alone a whole slew of them, is costing your business that hard-earned revenue, check out this infographic, “The Economics of a Bad Review,” from the team at SOCi.
