The following article has been provided to us by Neil Fellowes from the Total Wellness Club.
If you were going to let someone work on your mind, body or spirit what would you want to feel or know?
Trust in the therapist?
Proof that they have a track record and get results?
Maybe some credibility or authority?
Off-line trust, proof, credibility and authority can be created through a recommendation or referral, such as when a client tells a friend how you’ve helped them.
However, until recently it’s been more difficult to develop these values online. How can you build trust, proof, credibility and authority into your website and online profiles?
The power of reviews
You can now build these values online through the power of reviews.
You are probably more familiar with this than you realise:
Search for a book… or a holiday… try to find a room to rent for the weekend… and Amazon, Tripadviser or Air B&B will come up. These are all websites where people talk about a product, service or experience and share their views. These reviews act like recommendations. They provide social proof and often reassure us by answering questions we didn’t even know we had, or highlighting a benefit.
Don’t mistake reviews for testimonials
When you read a testimonial, you know that it has probably been edited to highlight the best bits, or tell a story, or show what the seller wants to sell.
By contrast, reviews are real, unedited and raw. The reader senses this, especially when they read a less positive review.
It’s easy to be scared of getting a less than positive review. And, true enough, too many bad reviews are bad for business. However, good reviews with the odd not so great one have a positive effect on the reader’s psychology. The negative one makes them believe all the positive ones even more!
In our next blog post on this subject, we’ll be providing some interesting stats about the effect of reviews. You may be surprised…watch this space!
In the meantime, if you’d like to find out more about Total Wellness Club, visit our website. You’ll find more information about how we help wellness practices here.
