Leveraging Consumer Generated Content - WebMama Q&A

At the upcoming Search Engine Strategies San Jose, I will be on a panel discussing how to ignite your viral campaign by leveraging consumer-generated content. I was interviewed by Kate Trgovac of OneDegree about my thoughts on Leveraging Consumer Generated Content.

She asked 5 thought-provoking (on my part) questions. The full article can be found on onedegree.ca. Here are two of the questions I answered. Any comments or additions are more than welcome.

OD: How do I get my customers talking about me?

BC: Ask them! The onus really is on the business to ask for the review - particularly if you are a local business. If you're a restaurant, make sure you let your customers know that you're on Yelp and you'd love their feedback. Give them a card with their bill that has a reminder to submit a review. You also want to make sure that you're doing this on a regular basis. It seems to me that search engines are really starting to value currency - the business or product that has the more current reviews will get better search engine rankings.

Take for example a Bed and Breakfast in Yosemite. They have had a few negative reviews so the owner is no longer reading TripAdvisor, and certainly not recommending that happy clients post their reviews. This leads to the negative reviews being highly visible in search results - not a good thing for a small business owner.

OD: What do you think about incentivizing customers to write about you? Free product? Chance to win? Etc?

BC: This practice would tilt the reviews positively towards the business which many would say is unfair. On the other hand, it is common practice in many lines of marketing and advertising to give discount coupons, freebies, and awards to encourage customers to return to the business, purchase from the business online, or provide material for case studies.

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