If reviews are an important part of your marketing toolbox, then you’re likely wondering how to showcase those hard-earned stars on the photo-sharing platform Instagram.
Although Instagram is a fundamentally different platform than Google or Facebook, where reviews can easily be shared to existing and new customers, there are still ways to create Instagram business reviews.
And since Instagram is a visual-first social-media platform, sharing reviews on Instagram means they need to look good. In other words, you need to emphasize the aesthetic component of sharing Instagram customer reviews.
Thankfully, there are ways to promote your customer reviews and testimonials to make your company look pro-fesh-to-death (and by that I mean professional).
Curious? Let’s hop to it and start sharing those reviews to Instagram.
First thing’s first: Instagram isn’t a platform for collecting reviews. Unlike Google or Facebook, there is no dedicated feature on Instagram for customers to write reviews.
There are lots of great ways to get customer reviews, but it can be difficult on Instagram.
So what’s the best way to get reviews on Instagram then?
The answer is to engage with customers by delivering an amazing experience so that they leave you positive feedback in Instagram posts and share those posts (and reviews from other platforms) in your own Instagram posts and stories.
This is how to get reviews on Instagram: focus on sharing customer testimonials as social proof.
Social proof reviews are customer reviews and testimonials that “prove” your reputation as an amazing business.
The term “social proof” means the social phenomenon of humans copying the behaviors of others based on similar experiences—this is what reviews and testimonials reflect.
This phenomenon is at the heart of NiceJob’s reputation-marketing software. We make it easy to ask for online reviews from customers and share those reviews as stories across social media.
By sharing reviews on Instagram, you can capitalize on social proof for your target audience and grow your sales!
And it's little wonder why this would be a great strategy for your business. Instagram is a huge source of leads for local businesses.
With more than one billion monthly active users (over half of whom are daily active users), Instagram is ripe with potential for your small business. Consider these statistics on selling your services on Instagram and the subsequent opportunities for your company to grow:
So how can you promote Instagram customer reviews? Below we’ll share five tips on how to optimize and leverage customer feedback on your Instagram profile.
An easy-win for promoting customer reviews to your Instagram audience is to have a dedicated webpage for your reviews and to use the URL space on your Instagram profile to link to those reviews.
If you have a NiceJob account, you’ll automatically have a microsite that showcases customer reviews and testimonials from other platforms (such as Google and Facebook) that you can link to on the profile of your Instagram account. Then in your posts or stories, you can direct your audience to hit the link in your bio to see those customer reviews.
Screenshots to the rescue!
With this method, you are taking a screenshot of a review and posting that picture to your Instagram feed or story.
A couple of things to keep in mind when you do this:
If you are sharing images of your reviews to Instagram stories, you can create a Highlight on your profile where your reviews can live permanently.
If potential customers are visiting your Instagram profile, they may view this Highlight to see the collection of reviews you’ve posted over time.
Knowing that Instagram is all about the pretty pictures (and the captions), it’s worthwhile to turn your reviews into visually appealing images.
There are many simple-to-use and free tools that can help you create graphics that will be suitable for Instagram. Canva, for instance, is a great option.
Here's how we do it:
And here are some other great examples out there:
How to request a review on Instagram? This is a long-game strategy. But if you can get your customers to share reviews of your work to their own Instagram networks, it’s like amplifying word-of-mouth.
Don’t forget to ask them to tag your account when they post so you can reshare to your profile!
Here's an example of a NiceJob user posting a shoutout on their own Instagram story:
And some other examples from small businesses who have received customer reviews via Instagram stories:
And there you have it!
These are the five ways to share your hard-earned stars to Instagram while making sure you’re honoring the visual nature of this social-media platform.
At the very least, you can add a link to your profile or you can go all-in and create some sweet graphics.
At the end of the day, sharing your reviews on Instagram, Google, Facebook or any social-media platform will solidify your reputation and help bring in more business for your company.