Praise for Five Stars: Putting Online Reviews to Work for Your Business

This comprehensive book shows savvy business owners and marketers the techniques for getting the absolute most from online reviews. Apply these winning strategies and proven processes to gain visibility and customers.

—Andrew Shotland, localseoguide.com

Five Stars spills the secrets for getting, managing, and leveraging customer reviews to influence stronger reputations, higher pricing, and positive purchase decisions. Smart marketers will open it again and again as they implement the invaluable advice. It’s a goldmine!

—Barbara Findlay Schenck, Author of Branding For Dummies and Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies

Your online reputation is in the hands of your customers. Make great use of this book in understanding how that might work best for you.

—Chris Brogan, Publisher of Owner magazine and Coauthor of Trust Agents

As more people rely heavily on online reviews to make decisions about everything from where they’re going to eat dinner to who they’ll choose to sell their homes, business owners and professionals can no longer afford to ignore what customers are saying about them online. While the thought of monitoring and managing so many sites is daunting, this guide provides a handy road map to turning your customers’ opinions into an effective marketing tool. This book is a worthwhile investment for any business, whether it has an online presence or not.

—Gwen Moran, Award-Winning Small Business Expert and Author

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Willem Knibbe

Development Editor: Dick Margulis

Technical Editor: Phil Rozek

Production Editor: Dassi Zeidel

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Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-68944-8

ISBN: 978-1-118-76335-3 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-76321-6 (ebk)

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Five Stars: Putting Online Reviews to Work for Your Business.This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

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Chris Webb

Associate Publisher

Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

For Ferdal and Puffulfluf, my vilde chayas. May the wild rumpus never end! With all my love. —gc

To my dear friend Kelly Ryer, who is an inexhaustible source of beautiful music, clever life hacks, and great ideas. —jg

Acknowledgments

Stories from real-world businesses shaped this book. We are grateful for the generosity of business owners and marketers who shared their triumphs and tribulations with us: Shane McWeeny, Adam Sperling, Kathy Setzer, Armando Cosio, Eddy Polon, Russ Palmer, Michael Mandis, Searah Deysach, Sharon Couzin, Alex Smith, Patti Ernst, Steven Lawrence, Eden Marchant, and many others who shall remain anonymous but whose input is equally treasured by us.

Thanks to the academics and professionals in the online reviews, reputation management, and social commerce industries who offered us a wealth of insider knowledge and tips—Matt McGee, Mike Blumenthal, Greg Meyer, Kit Yarrow, Bing Liu, and representatives from the reviewscape—Morgan Remmers and Katrina Hafford of Yelp, Cheryl Reed and Lesley Thompson of Angie’s List, Alison Croyle and Barbara Messing of TripAdvisor, Rick Berry of Demandforce, Richard Anson of Reevoo, Neville Letzerich of Bazaarvoice, Michelle Wohl of Revinate, Michaella Kissack of BrandsEye, Elaine Olshanetsky of ResellerRatings, Mike Waite of Market Metrix, Chris Campbell of ReviewTrackers, Ali Alami of Judy’s Book, Jon Hall of Grade.us, and Brent Franson of Reputation.com. There is nobody more helpful than the kind soul who proffers an introduction, connecting a question with an answer. Many thanks to Alex Robinson, Sharon Farb, Anthony Severo, Phil Rozek, and Rafael Baptista for their assistance.

Two lawyers contributed their expertise on legal aspects of the online reviews space. We are indebted to Katherine Fibiger and Kenton Hutcherson for generously sharing their time with us.

We are grateful to our clients at Gravity Search Marketing, who privilege us with daily opportunities to collaborate, learn, and grow. To the Gravity team, Andrew Berg, Abbie McConnell, and Sue Separk, we extend our humble gratitude, appreciation, and respect. Thank you for sharing your hard work and talent with us!

An abundance of gratitude and rave reviews are owed to our editors at Wiley: Willem Knibbe, whose off-the-charts charm and flexibility made this project possible; Pete Gaughan, who supervised the project and fielded a bevy of difficult questions; Dick Margulis, who helped us shape a whirlwind into sensible text; our hard-working technical editor Phil Rozek; our brilliant and gracious copy editor, Elizabeth Welch; our unflappable production editor and schedule-keeper, Dassi Zeidel; our compositors at Happenstance Type-O-Rama; and the other talented members of the production team.

Surely we were born under lucky stars to have been blessed with such amazing friends and family. Janet Sahni provided invaluable research support to keep our ducks nicely aligned. Kelly Ryer, Joanne Toll, Gloria Felix, Judy Reilly, and Kris Curry offered advice, insights, laughs, and libations throughout the project. Odilon Couzin, Yuen Chan, Rich Frankel, Merry Selk, and Eve Greenfield extended helpful emails and late-night Skype visits. Thanks to our beloved husbands, Lowell Robinson and Todd Grappone, who have given us love beyond measure and supplied us with the things every author needs to be successful: time, leeway, encouragement, and candy. And to our precious children, Jonah, Zehara, Bennett, and Enzo, who spent far too much time fending for themselves while their mothers were buried in research and writing, we can hardly find the words to thank you, so we’ll say this: You’re more breathtaking than a triple backflip on the trampoline, more treasured than a black belt, more awe-inspiring than Godzilla, and more amazing than a game-winning touchdown. We love you.

About the Authors

Gradiva Couzin and Jennifer Grappone are online marketing consultants and partners at Gravity Search Marketing, a full-service SEO, paid search, and social media marketing firm. Gradiva and Jennifer have spent over a decade improving the online presence of a wide variety of companies in entertainment, software, local services, nonprofit, and retail. They work with clients to develop and implement thoughtful, results-oriented strategies for SEO, social media, and paid search. Equally adept with B2B and B2C, the human element and technical details, and local and international targeting, together they deliver a well-rounded, left-brain/right-brain approach to their clients’ digital strategies. Jennifer and Gradiva have been working together in various settings since 1999, and coauthored the book Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day (Wiley, 2011).

Learn more about Gradiva, Jennifer, and Gravity Search Marketing at www.yourseoplan.com.