Posted on July 20, 2016 in General
The Power of Reviews Revisited, Part One
This blog entry is different from what you normally read here. Wanting to revisit the topic covered in a previous post, the power of reviews, I spoke with Michael Dobkowski of Glacial Multimedia for his insight. He is the product manager for MDidentity, a tool for reputation management.
In the blog post from last year, some statistics are cited that are very hard to ignore. For example, that 90% of customers’ buying decisions are influenced by online reviews. We all know that online reviews are everywhere – you don’t even have to seek them out, they’re right there on your phone when you all you wanted to know was how late the corner store is open. Those star ratings are here to stay, and are increasingly important to any business, from a pizza shop to a medical practice.
The conversation I had with Michael was terrific. I only had a few questions for him, and yet we talked for half an hour. If you have questions about managing your reputation, I would recommend getting in touch with him for his knowledge and expertise in this area.
The Inescapable Online Review
Is it better to have no reviews than to have negative reviews? Here’s what MDidentity‘s Michael Dobkowski has to say:
Having no reviews is horrible – people will go right past [your listing]. But having the occasional negative review – let’s say you’ve got 20 reviews and two of them are bad – that’s fine. It shows that you’re legitimate. People expect that someone would say something negative; if they don’t see it they’re going to be suspect. But more important is how you react to it – if you do nothing with it, people will assume that you’re guilty by omission. If you do respond to it, people will judge you not on the negative comment, but on the response itself. That tells the potential patient who’s in the research phase that this practice cares and is willing to work with patients when problems arise. So the response becomes far more important than the actual review. It’s an opportunity to show people what a good practice this is by dealing with it rather than letting it sit there.
Michael had much more to say about reviews, their influence, and how to be proactive about them, and we’ll cover that in our upcoming blog entries as we continue to revisit the power of reviews.
