One important area of online and social media marketing that businesses of any size should really consider in 2015 is online ratings and reviews. According to a 2013 survey by Zendesk and Dimensional Research, 90% of customer say buying decisions are influenced by online reviews.

Whether you like it or not, customers and consumers are giving their thoughts on your product or service in the digital space. It could be on Twitter. Maybe it’s using Facebook’s online rating system. Could be on Yelp.

You know what else doesn’t really matter? If the review or rating is positive or negative. What does matter is how you respond to a customer online. If the review is positive, others like to see your appreciation for their patronage. If the review is negative, people like to see you right a wrong.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Check your social listening results to see if there are any positive or negative mentions or hash tags being used in reference to your brand. Don’t have a social listening tool, Get One!
• Manually search across Facebook and LinkedIn to see if there are any pages or groups that will negatively impact your brand. Reach out to the admins to see if you can change the tide.
• Manually search Yelp for reviews. If find reviews about your brand, bookmark the page or pages that have them. You will need to come back to those later after you develop a strategy.
• Pull together your findings, and schedule a meeting with internal stakeholders (i.e. Customer Service, HR, Legal, Product teams, etc.). Get their input and thoughts. They may have information you don’t.

• Develop a strategy that is inclusive of:

1. How-to respond to a positive and negative rating or review.
2. Escalation for crisis ratings and reviews.
3. A daily or weekly schedule to check online reviews on chatter and reviews on Twitter, FB, Yelp, etc.
4. Gamification and contests around engaging social and digital audiences to give your brand positive reviews.
5. Identification and social right-sizing of positive reviews for incorporation into overall owned social media and online Content Strategy.
6. Demo and invest in a tool to support these efforts (i.e. Bazaarvoice).

What to do about online ratings and reviews? Make a New Year’s resolution for your brand to get real ROI out of social and online programs by re-focusing your efforts. Make 2015 the year that you show customers and consumers that you care about what they have to say.