Recently, Facebook has unveiled a new way of ranking a business – with recommendations. Facebook has been actively changing the way they are bringing business page accessibility to users in the past several months. As users, ourselves, we have grown accustomed to the 5-star commentary rating for a business. You log in, select a star rating, add in additional information if you’d like to do so, and then bam! You’ve left a review for the business of choice.
The process is still fairly similar, but will change the way businesses rank for the better (we think).
Recommendations Are In
Recommending a business operates similarly to how leaving a review for a business worked. If your customers are trying to share a review for your business, they’ll still select either “Reviews” or, more recently, “Recommendations” under the navigation for your business on the left below your profile image.
Steps to leaving a recommendation for a business.
From there, users are asked the question: Do you recommend this business? They select either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Selecting yes prompts them to share why they recommend this business, select categories, and share their custom feedback before submitting. Selecting no also prompts the same thing, however the categories will be focused on reasons why they did not recommend your business.
While the star-rating has disappeared, this seems to still offer much of the same ability of leaving a review, just more streamlined. Now when visitors are looking at recommendations for your business, they’ll see one of two options. If they see a red recommendation symbol, that means it’s positive. If they see a gray symbol, that is indicative of a negative, unrecommended experience. So continue asking away, all you Facebook review powerhouses! There’s no reason to quit being strong, determined, and confident in asking your customers to share in their happiness with you!
Introducing ‘Rich Endorsements’
How do you know what a customer likes or dislikes about your business with only a star-rating? As a consumer, why should no comment reviews be trusted? You cannot successfully gauge what is good or bad about an experience without additional commentary.
Rich Endorsements offer suggestions to reasons you enjoy or dislike a business.
For this exact reason, Facebook added in what they’re calling ‘rich endorsements’ to alleviate this issue for all parties. By guiding a user through the review process, better insights can be determined about what a business is known for. These insights can better help new customers to be drawn in.
How is my Business Page score calculated?
Since Facebook has allowed businesses to collect reviews for many years now, they are not trying to disregard those ratings. No wiping the slate and starting fresh, so to speak. Just as before, ranking for your business will still be on a 1-5 point scale, just without the stars. Facebook’s algorithm will take into account your prior review rankings and combine that with future recommendations.
Instead of a larger rating scale between one and five, users have essentially now moved to only two options (unknowingly). A ‘yes’ is indicative of a 5.0 rating, and a ‘no’ is a 1.0 rating. The amount of recommendations received, regardless of being positive or negative, plays into the new ranking scale that Facebook is working off of. Since there is less question and variation, reviews will continue to play a strong factor Facebook business ranking.
From what we can infer from research, for now this will be the scoring system. We cannot say for sure if it will remain, so don’t count on it for the long haul. But, it seems as though this is the way Facebook will be operating for the foreseeable future.
Recommendations On & Off Your Business Page.
Lately, when you post on your personal Facebook wall looking for something (like a good restaurant serving Shwarma or a great local beer), your page automatically posts that you’re looking for recommendations, adds in a map, and builds out the map based on what your friends comment on and tag. Facebook added this in over a year ago (back in 2017). Now, at any time that your business becomes recommended by someone organically, it will be pulled into your recommendations and add to your “reviews” that are now recommendations.
Why did Facebook get rid of reviews and switch to just recommendations?
The new way to leave Facebook recommendations.
The overall goal of Facebook is not to make the lives of business owners harder, but instead easier. Facebook saw a shifting trend in business pages receiving fewer and fewer engagement metrics, especially from an organic standpoint. With this decline in reach, engagement, and overall interaction with business pages, it was evident that users were going elsewhere to get their information.
While it may not be totally possible to compete with a search engine directly (let’s be honest – Google is the powerhouse of the for all things search), this area is still one that demands a great deal of change to remain relevant in a business listing, search ranking, and brand realm. This is a step forward for Facebook to attempt to blend online searching and online social interaction together. By bringing these two together, Facebook works to close the gap between search and social.
While frustrating, this can possibly have a stronger impact on your business than you may realize. All the more reason to stay on top of your activity on social media. If Facebook is successful at achieving their goal – and we believe they will – then your presence online will be needed. Having a strong social presence carry through the shift and change will keep you at the top.
How can I build up my recommendation ranking on Facebook?
Earning recommendations for your business is no different than earning reviews was prior to the switch. Of course, asking your customers for reviews during their transaction directly is always a great way to remind them during their experience. But, after they leave, how can you be sure they’ll follow through?
Let Rannko help you to mange your Facebook recommendations both proactively and reactively. Send requests to your customers, patrons, patients, or clients with ease via email or SMS text message. Your customers are your best asset, so making sure they share their experiences is optimal. Rannko can help with this for top sites like Facebook and Google easily.
Once they’ve left those recommendations, go a step further and react to your feedback (it’s valuable, after all). Engage with your customers, relate to them, and welcome them back again. With plans starting at only $39/month, you’ll never have to worry about how your brand reputation is working again!
