Here in the digital marketing industry we have grown accustomed to constant changes to Facebook. And we’re not talking about the way the end-user experiences changes to the platform, but rather those that have an effect on businesses and their marketing strategies. It can be argued that changes to the user-experience also affect the efforts of businesses and marketers, and their recently rolled-out changes to the way that businesses are reviewed by their customers, are a prime example of this. So let’s explore these changes in a little more detail, to help your business stay on top of its online reputation management.

From 5-Star Ratings to Recommendations

In its current state, Facebook allows users to review a business according to a 5-star system. They will be, however, switching it out for a far simpler recommendation section. As it stands, business pages will still show their current 5-star rating, however Facebook is users know that the change from reviews to recommendations will be occurring. But how do these recommendations work?

Instead of rating a business out of 5 stars, users will simply be asked whether or not they would recommend a business to others. To answer this, they will just click on either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ button.

Following this, they will be asked to give reasons for their answer.

This simplification of the process is quite similar to the way reviews are gathered on Yelp, and Facebook hopes that this will add value to users looking for products or services, and will also, hopefully, curtail the widespread nature of fake reviews.

Rich Endorsements for Select Marketers

In addition to their new recommendation system, Facebook will also be rolling out what they call ‘rich endorsements’. These are not currently available to everyone, but will only be used (for now) for restaurants, bars and coffee shops exclusively.

According to these types of endorsements, users are asked to select tags that categorise why a business has been recommended (or hasn’t).

The nature of these tags are currently only suited to food, which is why the rollout is currently quite limited. They include tags that describe the service, taste, price, portion size, speed, cleanliness, desert quality, how healthy it is and more.

As more tags gradually become available, we can expect rich endorsements to start becoming available to other industries in time.

Need an Online Marketing Professional? Contact Us Today

Here at Right Click Media we are keeping close tabs on these movements, that way we are able to pass their benefits on to you while they are still fresh. If you would like details on how we can assist you with your online marketing and grow your business alongside our own, contact one of our sales representatives or visit our website for additional details.