A good word-of-mouth from customers helps entice and attract potential leads to consider your brand. Facebook reviews provide an excellent channel to customers to share their experiences to others on the platform. This means the more positive reviews you have on your page, the more leads you attract. But the opposite is also true, where negative or fake reviews from spammers impact your brand’s reputation negatively.
This means you must know how to approach reviews posted on your page and handle the negative and fake ones.
In this CommentGuard article, we’ll discuss what are Facebook reviews and can you delete them?
What are Facebook reviews?
Consider Facebook reviews as product feedback/experience you post on sites like Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy, etc. On Facebook you can share your experience and opinions about a product, page, business, or place by recommending a “Yes/No” and a written feedback.
These reviews get displayed on their respective pages and profiles and are accessible to anyone who visits the page.
For instance, say you have a local coffee shop that has a Facebook page. Now, your customers can visit your page and leave reviews sharing their experiences on your menu, ambience, location, service, etc. If another user comes across your page, they can go through the reviews to make an informed choice to visit your shop.
Why do Facebook reviews matter?
Facebook reviews help you build a solid social proof to assure potential customers that your business is worth their attention and investment. Positive reviews on your page, enhances your reputation on the platform, creates good word-of-mouth and generates leads.
Trust and credibility
Say someone is looking for a nearby coffee place to visit and their friend tells them about the amazing experience they had at your shop. Not only does this put in a good word-of-mouth, but also builds trust and credibility on what you offer. Positive Facebook reviews work the same, except on a larger scale. You can advertise and gain trust of millions of potential customers in no time, enticing them to visit your business.
Visibility and reach
Facebook reviews are tightly integrated with Google searches. This means when someone searches for your business, the reviews get displayed in the results and on your Google Business Profile. Hence, increasing your visibility to non-Facebook users.
Customer engagement
Enticing your followers and customers to engage in meaningful interactions with your content helps build social proof around you. Facebook reviews act as a great channel for customers to engage and provide valuable feedback. You can respond to both positive and negative reviews to show your commitment to customer satisfaction.
Feedback and Improvement
While negative reviews degrade your credibility, they provide a great avenue to understand customers better and improve your product/services. Constructive critical reviews help you learn valuable insights and enhance the user-experience by focusing on the feedback.
How are Facebook reviews different from comments?
Users on Facebook, share their experiences and opinions through the comment section. This means when you share a post on your services/product, customers can comment on it.
So, what is the purpose of Facebook reviews?
While Facebook reviews seem similar to comments, they serve unique functionalities.
Reviews
Facebook reviews have two components: You can recommend a business with a “Yes/No” and provide a written feedback. They are particularly used to share experiences and feedback on a business, place, or page. When a user comes across a review, they know it’s about how a page or brand is and treats its customers.
Comments
Comments are a more general form of engagement. Users interact with posts, stories, and ads by commenting their opinions. They aren’t specifically perceived as feedback on a brand or page. When someone comes across a comment section, they are more likely to comment or interact without focusing on the experiences of others as a factor to evaluate a brand.
How spammers misuse Facebook reviews to spam?
Having a plethora of Facebook reviews (mostly positive) helps you get genuine feedback, build trust and visibility. Unfortunately, there’s an ugly side to this. Facebook allows anyone to leave a review on your page and unhealthy-competitors/spammers use this as an opportunity to bad-mouth your business.
Fake reviews
Positive reviews on your page significantly add value to your business by spreading good word-of-mouth but fake reviews destroy your reputation creating doubts about your products/services and customer treatment. This Is where spammers come in. They post fake reviews with terrible experiences and inconveniences to damage your reputation. Unhealthy competitors also use this ugly trick to impact your brand’s business.
Review farms
Review farms is a concept of using a coordinated process to use fake profiles to harm a business by promoting another. Facebook allowing platform users to post reviews presents an avenue for individuals to use a bunch of fake profiles to post fake reviews to either boost their reputation and harm yours.
Inflammatory content
It’s natural to get frustrated and react to fake reviews on your page. Spammers use this trick to provoke reactions from page owners. This can create a negative impression of how you handle reviews amongst your customers.
Scams
Unfortunately social media platforms like Facebook, serve as channels to promote online scams. Spammers use fake profiles to post scams as reviews with links, clicking on which redirects users to malicious websites exposing their personal information. When this happens, customers start to distrust your brand and consider alternatives.
How to delete Facebook reviews?
Deleting fake reviews from your Facebook page helps you promote genuine feedback and maintain a clean review-section. But Facebook doesn’t provide you the option to delete someone’s review from your page. You can either react to a review, report it, or remove all of them.
Here’s how you can report a Facebook review:
- Navigate to your Facebook page
- Click on the “Reviews,” tab on the left-hand menu.
- Find the review you want to report and click on the three-dotted icon.
- Select “Find support or report review.”
- Follow the on-screen instructions to report the review.
Keep in mind, reporting doesn’t mean Facebook will remove the review immediately or after some time. A dedicated team analyzes the reported reviews. If the review violates Facebook’s Community Standards or Terms of Service, the team takes action.
How to remove reviews from Facebook?
Although you can’t delete, you have the option to remove reviews from Facebook.
There are two sides to this:
- It helps you turn off the fake/negative reviews.
- It also means removing the positive reviews.
Well, if you wish to turn off reviews on Facebook, here’s how:
- Navigate to your Facebook page.
- At the top right of your page, click on “Settings.”
- Select “Templates and Tabs,“ from the left-hand menu.
- Find the “Reviews” tab and click on “Settings” next to it.
- Toggle the “Show Reviews” option to turn it off.
Now, Facebook will turn off reviews from the page’s main view.
Strategies to deal with fake and negative Facebook reviews
Handling fake and negative reviews is critical to your online success. By carefully attending to complaints, bad experiences and targeted criticism, you can advertise your brand values and commitment to your customers.
Investigate the issue
Most fake reviews posted by spammers include accounts of bad experiences with your services or complaints. The goal is to attract the attention of genuine customers and potential leads to doubt your commitment and products. Hence, before jumping into replying to such reviews, take the time to understand the specific concerns raised in the review. In case of malicious complaints, politely point out maintaining your brand’s voice and tone.
Respond promptly
Half the battle in handling fake and negative reviews is staying calm and professional. Spammers know they are “getting on your nerves” by posting fake complaints and experiences. Naturally, anyone would react impulsively and that’s where you set an unprofessional example for your genuine customers. Hence, when you come across fake or negative reviews, acknowledge the issue and express your commitment to addressing it.
Encourage and share positive reviews
Fake and negative reviews degrade your reputation but the positive ones work wonders in solidifying it. One of the most effective ways to deal with fake/negative reviews is to bury them under the positive ones. The more positive reviews you have, the stronger brand reputation and trust you create. Hence, encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, share success stories or positive experiences on your page consistently.
Monitor and report
When you come across fake reviews and are completely sure of their nature, report them. This will help you keep your reviews section clean and contribute to fellow brands by acting against fraud accounts.
Learn and improve
Whether a negative feedback is from a fake review or genuine customer, see it as an opportunity to learn and improve. Understand the core issues and address them with effective solutions. This will lead to more positive word-of-mouth.
Conclusion
Now you know what Facebook reviews are, how to turn them off, and ways to handle fake/negative reviews. Consistently attracting positive reviews from customer experiences boosts your brand’s reputation and business by many folds. Negative reviews do the opposite. Hence, approach them with care, report the fake ones and keep the customer at the front and center.