GatherUp Features & Updates – GatherUp

Q: How do I promote my Google reviews on social media?

To promote Google reviews on social media: 1. Choose the right platform 2. Be authentic and transparent 3. Highlight the best reviews 4. Include visuals 5. Use relevant hashtags 6. Publicly thank the reviewer 7. Engage with your followers 8. Use a content calendar

Announcing TextBack: User-Activated Reviews Via Text

Liezen Van Loh — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 16:13:51 +0000

With busy lifestyles, bold headlines, and near-constant connectivity, the competition to engage consumers is fierce. But, by putting the customer in control with our latest feature TextBack, you can benefit from their connectivity.

GatherUp has long offered outbound SMS requests to request reviews from known customers, those that have phone numbers in their customer profiles, but TextBack is different. TextBack is an inbound SMS channel with instant review access for your customers right from their phone.

TextBack is an invitation to your customer to provide user-activated feedback and reviews via text. It’s simple, quick, and gives customers access to your business in-the-moment so you know exactly when what happens.

TextBack Gives Customers What They Want

Consumers want to be able to communicate via text and SMS from their phone. A recent study shows 71% of 30- to 44-year-olds and 65% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they would text a business more frequently if they had the opportunity.

TextBack offers a customer real-time entry into the review process from their mobile phone using a keyword and phone number provided by your business location.

A customer sees this invitation (signage, receipt, flyer, etc) and takes action by sending a keyword text (our default is “feedback”, but you can add a custom one) to your TextBack number. Then, GatherUp auto-replies with a text message giving your customer easy access to the feedback and review process.

Depending on the Request Mode you are using in GatherUp, TextBack will help you capture Net Promoter Score (NPS), Survey questions, 1st-party reviews and 3rd-party reviews on sites like Google, Trip Advisor, and Facebook.

Why Text Works For Customer Feedback & Review Participation

You can increase participation in your feedback and review request process by inviting customers to do something they already do a lot… use their phone. The average consumer checks their phone every 12 minutes and puts in a total of 4+ hours of screen time every day.

When you offer TextBack you can utilize a consumers own device, and habitual phone use, to give them instant access to your review and feedback process.

Where Other Solutions Fail, TextBack Succeeds

No email? No phone number? No problem. TextBack offers a way for your business to connect with unknown customers when you don’t have their digits or email. It turns marketing, transactions, and environments into review request opportunities for your business. Invite your customers to contact you by displaying your TextBack number and keyword in a variety of channels.

Signage

Think about what your customers see at your business location… and know that they likely have their phone handy. Displaying your TextBack number in the line of sight of your customers can help you reach those you couldn’t otherwise, and serves as a convenient entry point for all customers to give feedback.

Billboards
Signage in waiting areas
Table signage
Floor signage
Point of purchase signage

Receipts

Purchases create a transaction. Transactions create a receipt. Receipts create an opportunity to deliver a TextBack invitation to your customer. Add your TextBack number and keyword to receipts generated by your current systems to fast track customers into the feedback and review process.

Paper receipts
Email confirmations and receipts

Flyers

There are many uses for flyers in business. With a quick design update or sticker, turn your business flyers into an invitation to your customers to give feedback and reviews using TextBack.

Programs
Inserts
Coupons

On-Site Staff

Turn real-time conversations into feedback and online reviews by providing staff with small cards that list your TextBack number and keyword to invite customers to provide feedback. For increased attention, add TextBack to materials that include other useful information.

Appointment Reminders
Coupons
Business Cards
Product Specification Documents
Samples

TextBack Helps Capture Customer Emails And Mobile Numbers, Not Just Reviews

Use TextBack to capture contact information (name, phone, and email) to build your customer list and enable future communication. TextBack is perfect for industries where capturing a customer’s email or phone number is difficult or not part of the normal process. Get creative displaying your TextBack number across different channels and in different ways to drive your customers to take action.

Get Started With TextBack

It’s easy to get started with TextBack. If you are not yet a GatherUp customer, sign-up on our Pro Plan or higher to start capturing inbound SMS feedback and reviews. If you are already a customer but not on our Pro Plan or higher, you can upgrade from our Basic Plan with these quick instructions.

New Feature: Twitter Monitoring

Aaron Weiche — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 16:05:25 +0000

NOTE: As of September 29, 2023 GatherUp no longer provides Twitter authorization, social sharing, or reporting.

We are excited to announce we have added Twitter monitoring for our Pro, Pro Plus and Executive Plan customers. Basic Plan customers can take advantage of this new feature by upgrading to our Pro Plan which includes SMS feedback requests and the ability to monitor 10 review sites.

Then with Covid and other issues lots of staff now work from home but you can utilise employee computer monitoring so that you can track their activity and be sure of what they are doing.

In our never ending quest to bring efficiency to building and managing your reputation online, you can now monitor Twitter for up to five keywords. Monitor your brand mentions by adding any user handles (example: @getfivestars), hashtags or keywords.

Twitter Monitoring Report Set-up

This new feature is already in the platform for customers on our Pro Plan and up. This feature is available at the “location level”, once in a location profile just click on Reports in the platform and select Twitter Report.

Your first step is to click the “Edit” button to add in your keywords to monitor.

Enter in up to five (5) keywords, hashtags or Twitter handles, in any combination, that you want to monitor. Enter just one at a time and hit the “Add” button. You will see them created below under “Currently Monitoring” and you can remove them by clicking the “x”.

One you have added those the report will populate within an hour displaying the tweets mentioning your monitored terms.

The Twitter Report will update hourly in the platform.

Social Sharing Adds Twitter Integration, Cropping & Themes

Liezen Van Loh — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 08:00:00 +0000

NOTE: As of September 29, 2023 GatherUp no longer provides Twitter authorization, social sharing, or reporting.

GatherUp’s Social Sharing feature was launched earlier this year to help you turn reviews into stunning social media content. Users love how simple it is to create custom social media images in seconds from your 5-star reviews. Now, we’ve added more helpful tools to Social Sharing for you to use.

Post directly to Twitter via GatherUp
Image cropping using guides
Themes double from 5 to 10

Direct posting to Twitter

In a single click, you can now post your reviews in an engaging image to Twitter as well as Facebook and Google posts with direct posting via GatherUp. Instagram images are available for download so that you can manually post to your account.

Authorize GatherUp to access your desired Twitter account so that you can save time and post your custom social images directly to Twitter from GatherUp.

To post directly to Twitter via Social Sharing in GatherUp authorize your account

To post to your Twitter account directly from GatherUp, you will need to authorize the account first. Because Twitter Authorization is at the user level, each user that wishes to post directly to Twitter will need to complete this step. You will need to be logged into the Twitter account you wish to connect to before starting the authorization process.

A user must authorize the Twitter account to post directly via GatherUp

For detailed instructions check out the Twitter Authorization user guide.

Image cropping using guides

We’ve adding more control over how your background images display by adding image cropping as an option when creating a new theme. The ability to crop allows you to zoom in and out on your image. Using guides, you can understand how the background image will be cropped for each social media site’s image size.

Cropping uses guides to assist image placement in custom backgrounds for social media posts

Once you click “Crop”, guides appear that represent image post sizes for Facebook/Twitter, Instagram, and Google. Move or resize these guides to ensure key elements are visible in the image background of your post on each social channel.

10 Themes Now Available

We’ve doubled the design themes you can create and save from 5 to 10 themes. Now you can use an even bigger library of custom themes for your posts. Themes are an incredible tool to save time and build your brand into Social Sharing with images, photos, colors, and more.

You can now store 10 design themes for the background styles of your posts.

Social Sharing images are valuable in more places than just social media. Businesses are using these custom images across marketing channels to add visual impact to their website and email newsletters. More templates mean you can create a variety of backgrounds to meet your needs.

How To Get Started With Social Sharing

If you are not using GatherUp, sign-up today to turn customer reviews into beautiful branded social media posts in minutes.

If you are an existing customer on our Pro Plan and higher, Twitter Authorization, image cropping guides, and 10 templates are available in your account. Simply log in to get started.

For further help in set-up or use, please view the user guides:

How to Turn Customer Reviews into Social Media Content

GatherUp — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 22:33:39 +0000

Posting customer reviews on social media is a powerful way to showcase positive customer feedback so you can reach and attract new customers, shape the conversation about your business, and help influence customer decisions.

Why social media? Many people don’t trust traditional advertising anymore — that’s certainly the case with the majority of millennials (84%). Instead, people want other ways to get product, service, or business recommendations that they trust — and outside of getting recommendations from friends and family, reading customer reviews that educate and inspire is often preferred.

Combining trusty reviews with social media’s power and reach can drive brand awareness and sales. Research shows that when reviews are shared on social platforms, the conversion rate is over five times higher for LinkedIn, over eight times higher for Twitter, and 40 times higher for Facebook than the average.

Therefore, posting customer reviews on social media as part of your review management strategy is important so you can capture those audiences that are regularly hanging out there and either already following your business or brand or intrigued enough to start following you.

In this article, we’ll talk about the benefits of posting customer reviews on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other social media platforms, along with several tips for turning reviews into social media content.

Benefits of sharing reviews on social media

Having a presence on social media allows you to connect with your audience and broadcast the message about your brand or business that you’d most like to convey. Positive customer reviews are a great source of brand messaging that when shared on social media can provide several benefits. Here’s a quick review:

1. Build trust and credibility

Positive reviews from satisfied customers act as social proof that your business is legitimate and delivers on its promises. When potential customers do a search for a business like yours and can read a bunch of positive reviews about it, they are more likely to trust and choose it over others.

2. Increase brand awareness

Posting customer reviews on social media increases your business’s visibility and reach. Your followers already like you and have signed on to see your content. But when they’re moved enough to share your posts to their networks of friends and followers, suddenly you’re able to get in front of new audiences and attract new customers that haven’t yet tried your business.

3. Help convert customers

Sharing reviews on social media helps new customers who are actively looking for products and services like yours find and become interested in your business. Because so many people research and read reviews before making a purchase, seeing a positive review on social media can be the extra nudge a new customer needs to convert — as we showed at the beginning of this article.

4. Boost engagement and loyalty

When you post customer reviews on social media, you’re helping to build a loyal community around your brand. Hearing from you as the business, seeing what other customers are saying about you — all if it encourages your followers to read, like, comment, and share your content while you get to show your audience that you listen to, value, and actively seek customer feedback.

Difference between posting customer reviews on social media and a social media review

Before we dive into the nuts and bolts, it’s important to understand that a business posting customer reviews on social media and a customer writing a social media review represent distinct ways of sharing thoughts and opinions about a product, service, or experience.

A social media review is written by a customer directly on a social platform. These reviews tend to be concise and consist of a brief comment, rating, or a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down reaction. Social media reviews are quick and easy to consume and are definitely important sources of customer feedback. But these reviews often lack the depth of information that you can get in more traditional reviews.

In the other scenario, when you as a business share customer reviews on social media that have appeared elsewhere online — such as your website, Google Business Profile, or third-party review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, G2, and others — you’re able to provide followers with more detailed and personal accounts of a customer’s experience. These reviews are often rich in context and can offer deeper insight into the reviewer’s perspective. Even if you choose not to post the full review, you can still pick out a sentence or two with the most beneficial details and shine a spotlight on that.

Bottom line: by posting customer reviews on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms, you’re able to get additional, positive, high-impact content about your business in front of your current followers as well as whole new audiences.

8 tips for posting customer reviews on social media

In the crowded, noisy world of social media, it can be tough to stand out and be heard. In order to have the greatest impact, here are some key tips for turning customer reviews into impactful social media content:

1. Choose the right platform

The first and one of the most important steps in posting customer reviews on social media is knowing which platform to use. Different platforms have different audiences and suit different purposes, and you want to ensure your review reaches the right people in the right way. Here’s a breakdown of popular social media channels and what they’re best for:

Instagram: Instagram is ideal for visuals: beautiful photos of content related to your brand, products, services, or customer experiences. Customer reviews and testimonials that include quality photos, or can easily be enhanced by quality photos, are ideal for Instagram, and can be accompanied by the text of the review to tie it all together.
Facebook: Similar to Instagram, Facebook works well for visuals — and also for text. You can repurpose a customer review you share on Instagram for Facebook. Videos are also a great source of engagement on Facebook, so if you include a video with the review, you could see a boost in user engagement.
TikTok: TikTok is all about videos — a few seconds to several minutes long — that harness trends, memes, and other cultural moments. Keep in mind that, while it is changing, the TikTok audience is still a bit younger than for other social platforms. In 2022, 67% of the platform’s users were 18-19 years old and 56% were 20-29 years old. So, if your business caters to a younger crowd, TikTok is a great option for posting customer reviews in compelling video form.
X (formerly Twitter): X’s feed is made up of short-form content, so brevity is key as far as how much text you write when posting on platforms like X. If you want to share a longer customer review, it’s better to include it as an image or video. Or you could do a teaser of the review and then provide a link where users can access the full review where it originally appeared, such as on your website or a third-party review site.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is largely made up of plain-text posts, but you can include images and videos as well. LinkedIn followers use it for career-related information, industry news or trends, and to connect with others in their field, so posting a customer review that can be tied back to a trend or expert advice in your particular industry is a way to share positive feedback about your business while also making it relevant to the LinkedIn audience.

Note that these platforms provide their own tools for users to post feedback, ratings, or reviews, along with ways for you as the business to re-share that user-generated content. As we outlined above, getting a customer review within the social platforms where you have a presence is a valuable form of feedback in its own right. But to reiterate, we’re focused here on posting customer reviews on social media that were originally generated from other places online.

2. Be authentic and transparent

Customers value honesty, so it’s crucial to be honest and transparent when posting customer reviews on Instagram and other social platforms. Other than to accommodate space or text constraints, resist the urge to edit or manipulate reviews just to make your business look better. Instead, let your customers’ real experiences speak for themselves.

For example, maybe you got a mostly positive review with a lot of great details over on Yelp, but there was also one minor complaint in it. Instead of editing that part out when you share on social media, leave it in. Leading with transparency and showing your audience that you aren’t afraid of receiving suggestions for improvement can go a long way toward building trust and credibility with your customers.

3. Highlight the best reviews

That being said, not every review is appropriate for sharing on social media. Vaguely worded reviews don’t add a lot of value to your social sharing strategy and can actually hurt your business reputation if people start to think the reviews are fake. Instead, pick out the most impactful reviews, such as the ones that mention specific services, products, features, benefits, or experiences that can really set your business apart from the competition — the more detailed, the better.

The goal is to share the reviews that will help potential customers understand exactly why they should choose your business and what their experience is likely to be.

4. Include visuals

Visuals are an essential component of posting customer reviews on social media as they help your posts stand out in a sea of text-based content. Use photos, videos, or graphics to enhance customer reviews and make them more engaging and memorable. Here are some ideas:

You can use an image generator to create branded graphics that can be automatically resized to fit various dimensions.
Consider pulling out and featuring a quote from the review to use in a graphic.
You can also take simple screenshots of the full review and use those for your visuals.
Short videos or even video testimonials also work really well, especially if you have a relationship with the customer who left the review. You can ask them for permission to use the video if they included one, or see if they’re willing to make a quick video testimonial for you. Plus, if you want to post on platforms like TikTok, videos are a requirement, as we discussed above.

Stock imagery in marketing has its place, but on social media, it’s even better to use any images that your customers happened to include with their review as it lends a more authentic flavor to your post.

5. Use relevant hashtags

Yes, hashtags are still a thing. Hashtags in social media help your posts reach a wider audience, since they effectively function as a search tool that allows people to find information and discover your business — even if they don’t follow you. When posting customer reviews on Instagram and other platforms, use relevant hashtags that relate to your business or the review and include them at the beginning or end of your post.

For example, if you operate a hotel, you may want to use hashtags like #travel, #vacation, or #luxury. Or if you have a dog grooming business, you can use clever hashtags like #doglovers or #petstylist. You can research popular hashtags in your business category or niche to further maximize your reach.

Hashtag challenges — which challenge followers to take some action or perform some activity related to a product or service — are especially useful if you want to gain traction on TikTok. For example, if you run a restaurant that serves tacos, you could start a #TwoTacoTuesday challenge that challenges customers to eat two tacos every Tuesday and post about it when they do. You can include the hashtag challenge with any customer reviews that sing the praises of your tacos. Not only does this increase engagement by getting followers involved in the fun, it can also give a boost to sales because more people can associate the hashtag with your restaurant and become interested in checking it out in person.

6. Publicly thank the reviewer

When posting, be sure to thank the customer in your post. This is a nice, personalized touch that shows you appreciate their positive feedback and value them as a customer — and it can help nurture a more loyal relationship with them.

It has the added bonus of showing the wider audience that your business is human and that you treat your customers like humans too. If a potential customer sees someone else being called out and thanked for their feedback, they may feel inspired to write a review as well — creating a welcome snowball effect of more people giving you more reviews.

7. Engage with your followers

Remember that social media works best when it’s a two-way street. Neither you or your followers want to feel like you’re talking into a void and no one ever responds. When you post a customer review on Instagram or elsewhere, proactively invite your followers to comment on and engage with the post. You can ask warm, funny, or witty follow-up questions — whatever best reflects the voice and personality of your brand — and see what comes back. Questions get others thinking and talking about the product or service mentioned in the review or your business in general.

Then be sure to monitor for any comments that come in and respond to them promptly and thoroughly. Make sure to answer any questions the commenters may have for you and thank them for their response.

8. Use a content calendar

Finally, staying organized is half the battle when tracking and sharing customer reviews. There are many places where customer reviews can pop up, and just as many opportunities to reshare the really good ones.

You can boost the impact of your post by keeping a content calendar. Knowing when to post and where enables you to maintain a consistent presence on your social platforms, where followers can regularly see what you’re up to and stay engaged with your business. And if you’re running a particular marketing campaign, you can strategically time your customer review posts to help reinforce campaign messaging.

Maximize the value of customer reviews with social sharing

With one customer review, you can create a powerhouse of content for posting customer reviews on Instagram and other selected social media channels. The most effective way to do this is to use a review management platform that includes a social sharing feature. This type of feature allows you to take customer reviews posted anywhere online — your website, Google, review sites, and more — and share them directly to your social platforms with just a few steps.

You’re able to maximize the value of positive customer reviews by increasing their reach — and increasing your brand awareness as a result.

To learn how GatherUp’s review management platform with social sharing can support your customer review strategy, start a free trial today.

FAQ

How do I promote my Google reviews on social media?

To promote Google reviews on social media:

Choose the right platform
Be authentic and transparent
Highlight the best reviews
Include visuals
Use relevant hashtags
Publicly thank the reviewer
Engage with your followers
Use a content calendar

How do you showcase testimonials on Instagram?

Instagram is ideal for visuals: beautiful photos of content related to your brand, products, services, or customer experiences. Customer reviews and testimonials that include quality photos, or can easily be enhanced by quality photos, are ideal for Instagram, and can be accompanied by the text of the review to tie it all together.

Which customer reviews are good for social media?

Vaguely worded reviews don’t add a lot of value to your social sharing strategy and can actually hurt your business reputation if people start to think the reviews are fake. Instead, pick out the most impactful reviews, such as the ones that mention specific services, products, features, benefits, or experiences that can really set your business apart from the competition — the more detailed, the better.

What kind of visuals work for customer reviews?

You can use an image generator to create branded graphics that can be automatically resized to fit various dimensions. Consider pulling out and featuring a quote from the review to use in a graphic. You can also take simple screenshots of the full review and use those for your visuals.

Short videos or even video testimonials also work really well.

Revolutionizing Review Management: AI-Powered Features and Competitor Reports Unveiled!

Steve Hartman — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 16:12:39 +0000

In today’s digital age, online reviews wield unparalleled power in shaping consumers’ perceptions of businesses. According to a recent survey conducted by Moz, a staggering 94% of consumers say that positive reviews make them more likely to use a business, while 88% consider online reviews as trustworthy as personal recommendations. Conversely, a negative review can deter 40% of potential customers from engaging with a business. With such profound implications, effectively managing online reviews has become paramount for businesses striving to thrive in the competitive landscape.

Recognizing the critical role of review management, we are thrilled to introduce our latest innovations, including AI-powered review responses designed to streamline and enhance your review management efforts.

GatherUp, your Reputation Coach, provides you with the guidance needed to excel in reputation management by providing help and assistance at critical points in the process.

Let’s delve into these groundbreaking capabilities:

AutoReply: Crafting Personalized Responses with AI Precision

Responding promptly to customer reviews demonstrates attentiveness and care, fostering positive relationships with your audience. However, manually crafting responses to each review can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. That’s where AutoReply comes in. Powered by ChatGPT’s AI learning model, AutoReply generates personalized responses to positive reviews effortlessly. By leveraging natural language processing (NLP) techniques, AutoReply ensures that each response resonates authentically, strengthening the bond between your business and its satisfied customers. Learn how to enable AutoReply in your account here.

Limited BETA Suggested Responses: Turning Negative Feedback into Positive Outcomes

Negative reviews present opportunities for improvement and reflection, but crafting appropriate responses can be a delicate balancing act. Suggested Responses leverage the power of AI to provide tailored suggestions for addressing negative feedback effectively. Drawing upon a vast database of responses and sentiment analysis, our AI engine generates empathetic and constructive replies, turning potential detractors into loyal advocates.

With one click of a button, you can approve and send review replies from the notification in your email inbox. You’ll get notified when a negative review gets posted and we’ll send you a suggested response. No more writer’s block. No generic templates. A personalized, unique response every time!

Competitor Report: Gaining Insightful Competitive Intelligence

Understanding your business’s standing relative to competitors is essential for strategic decision-making. According to a 2022 BrightLocal study, the three most important factors in deciding whether to choose a local business were average star rating, how recent the latest reviews are, and the number of reviews.

[BrightLocal study]

Our Competitor Report feature offers comprehensive insights into your reputation compared to industry peers. By analyzing review volume, average rating, and recency, this feature empowers you to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for differentiation.

Lagging behind competitors in review volume? Consider ways to increase your review requests being sent and optimize for performance. Try sending requests with SMS rather than just email. Make sure to ask ALL customers to leave a review. Automate as much of the process as possible by leaning into an integration or using the Client Staff Form to upload customer emails or phone numbers without logging in.

Ratings are important conversion opportunities for consumers looking at your business versus competitors. The key is to be in the ballpark. Data shows that a perfect 5.0-star rating isn’t believable, and less than 4 stars often don’t get you considered.

Don’t forget to respond to negative reviews. Providing a reasonable and customer-focused response can sometimes lead to a customer changing their negative rating to positive.

Review recency is the number of days since your last review. You will likely lose out on potential business if your most recent review is from 3 years ago. It’s best to ask customers to leave reviews consistently over. Watch a video overview here.

Why Effective Review Management Matters

The Moz survey underscores the significance of review responses in shaping consumer perceptions and driving purchasing decisions. It reveals that 97% of consumers read businesses’ responses to reviews, with 71% expressing that they are more likely to use a business that responds to reviews. Moreover, businesses that respond to reviews are perceived as 1.7 times more trustworthy than those that do not.

In essence, effective review management isn’t just about addressing customer feedback—it’s about actively shaping your brand’s narrative, fostering trust, and cultivating lasting relationships with your audience. With our AI-powered review management features, you can navigate this terrain with confidence, delivering exceptional experiences that resonate with customers and propel your business to new heights.

Embrace the Future of Review Management

As consumer expectations continue to evolve, staying ahead of the curve is essential for businesses striving to thrive in today’s dynamic marketplace. With our AI-powered review management solutions, you can elevate your brand, nurture customer loyalty, and outshine the competition. Embrace the future of review management and embark on a journey towards sustained success. Experience the transformative power of AI today with GatherUp.

Social Sharing Adds Instagram Integration

Steve Hartman — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 14:48:26 +0000

GatherUp’s Social Sharing feature was built to help you turn reviews into stunning social media content. Users love how simple it is to create custom social media images in seconds from your 5-star reviews. Now, we’ve added the most visual social sharing platform, Instagram, to your direct posting arsenal from within GatherUp.

The importance of Instagram

Instagram boasts over 1 billion users, 71% of whom are under the age of 35. The average Instagram user spends nearly 1 hour per day on the platform posting, sharing and browsing images from topics of interest. It’s a powerhouse communication tool!

If you’re one of the 71% of all US businesses using Instagram, you already know how engaging the platform is. It’s a great way to visually showcase your brand to customers or potential customers. .

Before, if you wanted to post an amazing review or testimonial from GatherUp on Instagram you had to download the image, then upload to your platform. We’ve removed the extra step so now you can upload to your Instagram account right from within GatherUp!

Displaying elements of your business that customers need to see or “experience” before trying such as menu items at a restaurant, or the pool at a hotel, will be showcased beautifully on Instagram. If you’re a home builder or contractor, there’s no better way to highlight the before and after work than on a visual medium like Instagram.

Directly post to Instagram

In a single click, you can now post your reviews in an engaging image to Instagram as well as Facebook and Google posts with direct posting via GatherUp. All images are available for download so that you can manually post to your account.

Authorize GatherUp to access your desired Instagram account so that you can save time and post your custom social images directly to Instagram from GatherUp.

Important note: Since Instagram is owned by Facebook so you’ll actually be authorizing your Facebook account. Your Instagram account must be linked to your Facebook account and it must be an Instagram Business account.

To post to your Instagram account directly from GatherUp, you will need to authorize the account first. Because Instagram Authorization is at the user level, each user that wishes to post directly to Instagram will need to complete this step. You will need to be logged into the Facebook account you wish to connect to before starting the authorization process.

A user must authorize the Instagram (Facebook) account to post directly via GatherUp

For detailed instructions check out the Instagram Authorization user guide.

Get started sharing reviews on Instagram

If you are not using GatherUp, sign-up today to turn customer reviews into beautiful branded social media posts in minutes.

To authorize or set your settings navigate to the Publish section for a location. Select Social Sharing.

To build a social sharing image and to post a review on your preferred social channel, find the review you’d like to share. Click Manage on the right side, and select Social Post.

From there you’ll choose your Social Media platform, edit text size, choose or create design themes, add any content to the post. Hit Publish Social Post when ready!

For further help in set-up or use, please view the Social Sharing user guide.

Build your brand online by sharing reviews on Instagram

Instagram is one of the largest Social Media platforms in the world. Users are highly engaged. Help your brand stand out by incorporating wonderful reviews in your Instagram strategy. Instagram is a visual medium, so make sure you incorporate stunning visuals into your design themes.

GatherUp makes sharing reviews on your favorite platforms simple and easy. Have fun and be creative when marketing your reviews and watch new customers come through your doors!

Social Sharing Images Benefit More Than Social Media

How to Use Customer Reviews to Improve Your Business

New Feature: Share Reviews Automatically on Social Media

Steve Hartman — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 14:45:48 +0000

Nearly two years ago, we launched Social Sharing to help businesses turn their reviews into stunning social media content. You can post reviews with custom backgrounds directly to your social media channels such as Google Posts, Facebook and most recently Instagram. This was a huge opportunity for marketing teams to reinforce social trust on their Social Media profiles.

Sharing reviews, whether on your website or on Social Media, has its benefits. In fact, the vast majority of consumers read reviews before making a purchase. Any chance you have to build trust using a customer review is an opportunity to win a new customer.

Our social sharing feature was initially a manual process. But it doesn’t have to be manual anymore. Businesses and agencies can now set up Social Sharing to post automatically!

With the addition of Automatic Social Sharing, you can set up rules and let our system post to your channels directly without having to manually post each time you want to share an amazing customer review.

Why Automate Social Sharing?

There are obvious benefits to creating automation for an otherwise manual task. It speeds things up on your end. It allows for a “set it and forget it” way to post reviews on Social Media.

Automatic Social Posting also creates a more consistent Social Media presence. Consistent posting is effective because your audience begins to follow your cadence and understand that when they return to your Facebook page, for instance, there is likely to be new content available.

There’s a great analogy here: Say you’re dating someone and they text you 3 times after your first date. But then you don’t hear from them for a week. After a week they text you once without responding. You’d be a little confused right?

Same thing applies to your Social Media strategy. Use Automatic Social Posting as part of a consistent content plan and you’ll have fresh content. Your customers, and potential customers, will find new, useful content each time they visit your profiles.

How does Automatic Social Sharing Work?

Within your Social Sharing settings found in the left-hand navigation bar, you will now have an option to set up parameters for which reviews will be shared automatically and to which social channel.

Choose your channels on which to post, create a custom theme, choose the reviews to share, and how often you’ll be posting using this automation.

Upgraded Social Sharing to help businesses grow

Social sharing is a unique way to leverage our 5x Review Strategy, and showcase your reputation via Social Media. We’ve taken the manual work out of this process and made it even easier by automating the posting of your best reviews on your favorite Social Media channels.

Along with the recent addition of direct posting to Instagram we are doing our best to enhance our popular Social Sharing feature and listen to our customer needs.

For help getting started with Automatic Social Sharing, view the user guide.

If you are not using GatherUp, sign-up today to start capturing customer feedback and reviews to turn into unique visual images that you can share to your social media profiles.

The Value of Sharing Reviews on Your Website

GatherUp — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 18:59:01 +0000

Customer reviews are important for local businesses to attract new customers and give them the confidence to purchase from you. When people are looking for real information about the experience others have had with your business or your products and services, they look to reviews to help them decide whether to move forward or not.

Though they’re highly important, reviews that appear on a Google search results page aren’t the only ones that matter. Sharing those and other reviews on your website is also a critical component of any review management strategy.

Here’s a quick discussion of the value of sharing reviews on your site, and how GatherUp’s review widget can help.

Why you should display reviews on your site

Customer reviews act as highly relevant content generated directly from your audience that’s specific to your business. Search engines like Google place a lot of value on this type of content and use it to help determine search rankings. When customers leave reviews, Google can verify with more certainty that your business is what you say it is, and that you do or sell what you advertise.

When you share reviews on your business website, you can actually give your site a bump in search results. And appearing higher in search results can get your business in front of more of your potential customers.

In addition to improving local SEO, displaying reviews on your site increases your business credibility and improves your reputation. People expect to see reviews in a Google search. But when they land on your site and can also read reviews there that are from verified customers, they have that much more reason to trust your business.

How to use GatherUp’s review widget to share reviews

GatherUp’s review widget enables you to display both first- and third-party customer reviews on your website. First-party reviews are written directly by your customers on your website; they include both the content of the review itself and a rating, and they’re owned by your business. Third-party reviews come from sites that are independent of your business, such as Facebook or Yelp, and are owned by those sites.

Here’s how the review widget works:

Customize the layout and design: Choose from different layouts such as vertical, horizontal, or full page that best accommodate the format of your website, as well as design options such as font, color, buttons, and social media links to align the look and feel of the widget with your brand.
Decide which review content to display: Choose to display first- and third-party reviews, or limit the review content to one type or the other. If displaying third-party reviews, select which sites to monitor, such as Google or Facebook. Whenever a customer leaves a review on a site you’re monitoring, the widget pulls that review into your website.
Adjust other settings: Select the number of reviews to show on the page, calculate your average rating per all reviews, and adjust other settings that apply to all reviews or are only specific to first- or third-party reviews.

By sharing customer reviews directly on your business website, you strengthen your review management strategy and help build a more credible online presence — attracting more customers, increasing conversions, and earning more revenue in the process.

Strengthen your review strategy with GatherUp

It’s important for a comprehensive review management strategy to include the ability to share reviews. When you use GatherUp’s customer experience and reputation management platform, you get the automated tools you need to monitor sites for reviews from your customers, then pull in and display first- and third-party reviews on your business website — raising your credibility with potential local customers and increasing your conversions and revenue.

How to Turn Customer Reviews into Actionable Insights

GatherUp — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 18:48:02 +0000

One of the goals of customer reviews is to get more of them, since a large body of quality reviews helps to build up your online presence and lend more social credibility and trustworthiness to your business. But once those reviews start coming in regularly, how do you keep up with what’s being said about your business, and what, exactly, should you do with the information?

In other words, it’s not just about getting the reviews themselves but turning them into actionable insights and practical next steps. After all, if you don’t know what to do with the feedback you’re collecting, your customers may as well be talking to a wall.

With two important GatherUp features, you can start extracting value and real-world ideas from your customer feedback that help you know what to address and improve — or what’s working well — so you can give your customers the best experience possible.

Here’s a closer look at these features.

Tag and monitor keywords

GatherUp’s auto-tagging feature allows you to track what’s being said in your customer reviews by tagging specific keywords in those reviews.

Here’s how it works:

Input and auto-assign keywords as tags: Determine the keywords you want to look for in reviews — such as specific products or services, product and service categories, or positive, negative, or indifferent sentiment, for example. Then input those keywords into GatherUp as tags. Reviews that include those keywords and sentiment will be auto-tagged. You can also choose to apply those same tags to older reviews.
Capture and segment reviews: When auto-tagged reviews come in that contain your keywords, you can then segment those reviews by topic to help you uncover valuable insights on key areas of your business. For example, if you tagged the keyword “slow,” you can segment all the reviews you get that mention “slow” to give you insight into which customers said this and under what circumstances.
Promote reviews on web pages: Finally, you can feed specific reviews to your product or service pages on your website to help build trust and increase conversions. For example, you could promote reviews that were tagged with positive sentiment and mentioned a specific product on your site’s product page so potential customers have more information and can feel more comfortable about making a purchase decision.

By identifying themes in your customer reviews — products or services that are routinely mentioned, sentiment that is routinely expressed — you can elevate the great work you’re doing by sharing positive reviews on your website while also tracking and evaluating areas where you may be falling down so you can make improvements.

Crunch and simplify large amounts of customer feedback data

GatherUp’s Smart Insights feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) to distill all your customer feedback data into an easy-to-understand report with actionable next steps.

Here’s how it works:

Generate a report: When you have customer feedback activity — whether for a client (if you run an agency), a certain location (if you run a multi-location or franchise business), or your main business if you only operate a single location — you can generate the report to get insights about that feedback.
Learn what’s working and what isn’t: Once the report is generated, you can see 5 examples of “Where you’re crushing it” and 5 examples of “Areas of improvement.” For example, if you operate a restaurant, you could get insight that you’re “crushing it” on the quality of service and tastiness of the food, among others, but where you need to improve includes hygiene and food quality.
Download and repeat: You can download the report into a PDF so you can share with other stakeholders, and you can regenerate the report as often as you like to get new or different insights.

By extracting the most important trends and highlights across your entire body of reviews, you get specific details about what to keep doing or what to change that can make a big impact with your customers and your overall business. And because AI does the legwork and analysis for you, you don’t have to burn hours of time combing through the feedback and reviews yourself. You get a handy, digestible report with zero manual effort on your part.

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Get to insights and action faster with GatherUp

Your customer review strategy isn’t complete without actionable insights. When you use GatherUp’s customer experience and reputation management platform, you get the automated tools and insight you need to quickly understand what your customers are telling you and take action so you can improve their experience.

New Feature: GatherUp Now Integrates With Google Sheets to Improve Your Workflow

Holly Stanley — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 13:31:04 +0000

We’ve just launched a new Google Sheets and GatherUp integration to allow businesses to connect a Google Sheet to GatherUp. Whenever a new customer is added to your Google Sheet, they will be automatically added to the GatherUp account and sent a feedback request. Just like our other GatherUp integrations, this one is designed to help businesses save time on tedious admin and maximize their customer reviews.

Today we’re looking at how the integration works, its key benefits, and how our other GatherUp integration can help streamline your workflow.

What are the benefits of the Google Sheets integration?

Integrating your tech stack is one way of streamlining your workflow and centralizing your data. But there are 4 key benefits you can enjoy from integrating Google Sheets with GatherUp.

1. Save time on admin

You can simply add customer data once to your Google Sheet. The integration then takes care of automatically adding it to GatherUp to trigger a customer feedback request.

Say goodbye to manually adding customers into GatherUp or having to bulk upload a CSV document. That means more time to dedicate to other high-priority business tasks. It’s one less item on your admin list and you’ll get more time back.

2. Connect Google Sheets to other software integrations

Most other software connects to Google Sheets so the integration can act as an intermediary between other software solutions and GatherUp to make adding customer data more efficient.

For instance, if you have your Google Sheet connected to your newsletter subscription provider or CRM, that data will automatically be sent to GatherUp. Your Google Sheet will act as a centralized hub for customer data and be the link between your tech stack.

Currently, Google Sheets is a free integration so you can take advantage of connecting it to other software platforms to provide an even more complete data collection.

3. Eliminate the risk of human error

When you have to enter customer data manually, not only is it painstakingly slow but you run the risk of making typos.

When you’ve got mountains of customer data to enter, it’s only natural to make a couple of mistakes. But these mistakes could cost you a few valuable customer reviews. Without these reviews, it may be harder for prospective customers to find your business.

Using software integrations to ensure all your customer data uploads are accurate will prevent human error and ensure that you maximize your customer feedback requests.

4. Automate review requests and follow-ups

Once your data is uploaded on GatherUp, you can automate review requests and follow-ups just as usual. Automating your review requests within GatherUp means that you won’t need to worry about missing customer review requests or forgetting to send out follow-ups.

When all your customer feedback requests and follow-ups are sent out timely and regularly, you’ll maximize your chance of receiving customer reviews and feedback.

Instead of having to enter all your customer details separately into GatherUp every time you want to send a feedback request, the Google Sheets integration handles the admin for you.

How does the Google Sheets integration work?

The Google Sheets and GatherUp integration works by enabling you to enter data once into your Sheet. You can also use this Google Sheet as an intermediary between another software tool and GatherUp, a la Zapier.

No matter how you choose to set it up the integration automatically adds the customer data to your GatherUp account, triggering customer review requests.

It’s easy to integrate your GatherUp account with Google Sheets. All you need to do is log into GatherUp, choose a location (if you have multiple locations or you’re an agency) and select integrations from the menu bar on the left-hand side. Select Connect under Google Sheets.

You’ll need to authenticate your integration to your Google account and the Sheet connection. Before you get to this step, make sure to name your Google Sheet something that’s easy to identify like “Taco Shop Customers”. That way you’ll quickly recognize it when you’re preparing to connect it or are confirming the integration.

During the app configuration, choose your communication preference for sending customer feedback requests. Currently, you can choose between sending feedback via SMS and email.

Next, your Google Sheets integration will go live –– it really is as simple as that.

The best part is that integrating with Google Sheets is free –– you won’t be charged any additional fees in your subscription.

For full details on setting up the Google Sheets integration check out our User Guide. If you need any other support or simply have some questions about how the Google Sheet integration works, reach out to support@gatherup.com

What other GatherUp integrations are available?

Our integrations are there to make your life easier when it comes to requesting customer reviews and feedback. As well as a new Google Sheet integration, we have 5 other direct GatherUp software integrations.

Choose to use GatherUp integrations with CRM solutions like Salesforce and Hubspot. Alternatively, link GatherUp to email service providers like MailChimp or Constant Contact to trigger email and SMS review request campaigns. We also offer a direct integration with popular accounting software tool, Quickbooks.

Of course we have a Zapier integration that allows GatherUp to connect with any of the 500 apps in the Zapier directory. Using Zapier, you can connect with popular apps like HelpScout, Gmail, and others.

To power up our integrations and make it easier for you to automate customer review requests, we’ve teamed up with industry-specific POS and EHR platforms Toast and AthenaHealth.

If your preferred apps aren’t currently listed under our integrations or Zapier’s but integrate with 3rd party vendors through Webhooks, let us know and we can create a tailored GatherUp webhook for your GatherUp account to send to your preferred app.

Integrate Google Sheets with GatherUp to save time and increase customer reviews

By integrating GatherUp with Google Sheets, you’ll ensure seamless data transfer between the two platforms and make sure you never have to waste time manually uploading customer data.

You won’t need to worry about human error or about having differing customer data lists spread across multiple platforms. Instead, you can enter your customer data just once and let the platforms automate the rest of the review request process. That way you can dedicate more time to pressing business tasks instead of worrying about tedious admin.

For help configuring GatherUp integrations, check out our user guide.

Ready to integrate more of your tech stack? Request a free GatherUp demo today.