User Review Management:

It’s amazing to me that so many restaurant owners get crazy mad at user reviews online yet do so little about them.

I can understand.  Restaurant owners (and all local business owners) work so hard, day in and day out, on so many aspects of their business.  One thing they do know is food and to hear some ‘guy’ talk about their restaurant who clearly doesn’t know what they are talking about is frustrating.  Worse yet, when you see insanely off base reviews with a one star rating, what else are you going to think than “competitor”?  It’s a tough field of play – publicly displayed user reviews that is.

But to not pay attention and manage and address these reviews is insane.  Some people writing reviews about your business may be idiots, but actually most of these people are sincere.  Most of the reviews are 3+ out of 5 stars i.e. positive.  And most aren’t written by competitors or recently ‘released’ employees.

Here are some tips on managing your user reviews online:

1.  Respond.  Pure and simple.  There are a ton of ways to respond, but overall be authentic, have a backbone and set the record straight when necessary, apologize if necessary, own it if you came up short or don’t know exactly what happened, and overall, just be professional.  Have some fun.  Have a bit of a sense of humor and just reach out a bit – make a connection.  These people just want to be heard and recognized for the most part.  You have no idea how many people will change their horrendous reviews or give you another chance.  You’ll be amazed.  And if not “amazed” at least pleasantly surprised.

2.  Say thanks!  So many people miss the importance of responding to 4 and 5 star user reviews.  They figure they’ll just get back to the 1 and 2 star reviews.  If you had to choose, and you don’t (respond to all), respond to your fans.  This takes someone from a fan to an ambassador of your brand and restaurant offline.  This gets  the word of mouth from the ephemeral “online” world to the offline, very real, on the street word of mouth world we all so love and understand.  This translates into conversations that happen all the time:  “so and so got back to me at such and such restaurant and was so nice to me about writing a great review.  It was great – I’ll definitely be going back – it is a great restaurant.”  See, they had a great experience in the first place – make it an even better experience with a nice follow up reply and they’ll talk about you – that is for certain!

3.  Rate the positive reviews about your business as helpful “yes” on Google Maps or “funny” or “useful” on Yelp.  This helps ascend your good reviews into various searches.  It’s online PR.  It can only help and it takes close to no time.  Yes, it’s a bit “schilly” but you know, if it’s helpful, it’s helpful and if it’s not, it’s not.  Who knows better than you?

4.  Read the user review guidelines on Yelp, Citysearch, Trip Advisor, Zagat, Google Local Maps, Live MSN and Yahoo.  If your reviews tend to be close, or clearly break these guidelines, stick up for yourself and send an email to these properties requeseting a review of the user review.  Most of them will take these considerations very seriously.  You not agreeing with the review does not suffice.  It has to infringe on the rules set forth by these sites (racial comments, language, pesonal attacks, etc).

5.  Start your own blog and respond to these user reviews on your blog.

These are just a few suggestions.  What have you done to manage your user reviews?  What success stories can you share?