I recently attended a networking/seminar that was hosted by a wedding magazine. It was great hearing about some of the challenges that these business owners had. But one challenge stood out to me: business owners were commonly struggling with how they could get more reviews and manage them well. 

As you may have noticed most review platforms offer their own review capturing options, but managing all those accounts can be difficult and time consuming. I don’t know anyone that has time to go to Trip Advisor, Google, Facebook, Yelp!, The Knot, Wedding Wire and so forth, do you? Yet the presenter at this event said, you HAVE to get those reviews, you HAVE to respond to those reviews, negative and postitive and you HAVE to be quick. I do agree with this, but this guy was really only talking about his platform, not the other 10 you need to include as well.

A few folks from the audience had suggestions to the question, “How to get more reviews” and it troubled me. The most common answer, which can get those folks in serious hot water, was to pay or reward the reviewer. I heard everything from a free gift to a $25 Amazon gift card to give them a review on Google, Trip Advisor, etc. Folks – this is a direct violation of their terms of service agreement, that you agreed to when you claimed your listing. If you are caught, and I’ve seen it happen, you can end up with your listing being removed. Could you imagine if your 4 star ranking on Trip Advisor was removed? Not worth the risk.

The easiest way to get reviews is to simply ask them to give you one, and be sure to monitor your online reputation so that you can respond accordingly. Sharing reviews on your social media platforms that you have received from guests or buyers can help push others to leave a review too.

With that said, do you know how your reviews are doing?