Online review sites such as Yelp, Citysearch and Google’s local search make it easy for customers to spread the word about your business.

Some business owners have found these sites to be a great way to attract new customers and help the owners gain insights about their current customers’ expectations and experiences. But other businesses have been damaged by vindictive or fraudulent posts.

Following are some things you can do to make review sites work for you:

• Set up a complete profile on all the review sites.
• Actively monitor your listings on the sites.
• Encourage your customers to write honest reviews and post them in the directories.
• Make a bid deal out of your positive reviews.
• Learn how to dispute reviews that are fake or false.
• Respond to reviews that you can explain or clarify.
• Mine the sites for insights about your business and about your competitors.
• Become an active reviewer of the companies you patronize as a consumer.

You can monitor the review sites to see what customers are saying online about your business by subscribing to an RSS feed for your review profiles or by setting up email settings that notify you when a new review or comment has been posted. Consumer reviews can be a terrific source of leads and referrals for small businesses. After all, word of mouth is still the best kind of advertising and the hardest to get.

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If you want to learn how we can help you get more leads with this method or you are a busy business owner and want us to manage it for you go to TargetedLocal or call us at 404-530-9564.