It makes sense that consistently adding customer reviews, stories, questions, and answers helps people find the right products on a site. However, there are subtleties to make the content even more impactful – especially now, with the advent of fairly recent features by Google: Google Caffeine and Rich Snippets.

While search engine providers have talked about fresh content for years, Google Caffeine's enormous and costly infrastructure update centered on freshness gives user-generated content a lot more weight. Maintaining a good SERP (define) ranking now requires that at least some of the page's content is fresh and dynamic, which indicates to Google that the page is still relevant.

Adding customer reviews or user-generated Q&A can obviously help provide fresh content, and to make sure Google can easily find it, make sure that at least a few reviews are included in your primary page for each product or service. A handful of fresh reviews or Q&A content can make a significant impact on how Google perceives that page's freshness.

"Integrated blogging" or adding snippets of customer stories on product pages can also help improve search results. Each time the snippets change, Google Caffeine will see those updates and once again consider your page fresh, and thus more relevant.

Even before Google introduced Caffeine, OpenTable changed the way it displays reviews on its site and saw a measurable increase in search results. OpenTable.com provides real-time online restaurant reservations for diners and reservation and guest management for more than 13,000 restaurants worldwide. Rather than requiring the restaurants to continuously rewrite their content (which just isn't scalable), customer reviews create a ready stream of fresh content for search engines to crawl.

In 2009, OpenTable began placing the content of the first four reviews for each restaurant directly into the pages' code. Since implementing, each restaurant profile page receives updated content as often as once a day. Only three days after making this change, OpenTable noticed an uptick in natural search traffic to the restaurant profile pages and to the overall site, as well as an increase in the number of keywords driving traffic to their pages.

Over the next four months, the total search engine traffic to the restaurant pages on OpenTable.com increased by 10 percent, as compared to the same months in the previous year, and 17 percent from Jan. 2009 to Jan. 2010. The number of unique search terms for these pages ranked also increased by 100-plus percent year over year.

Google Rich Snippets has also improved the impact user-generated content can have on sites, by displaying star ratings and review "snippets" in search results.

Google says its own experiments have shown that users find the new data valuable – if they see useful and relevant information from the page, they are more likely to click through. Google's Rich Snippets show a summary of review information, and pages with more reviews will appear more favorable, so it's important that products get as many reviews as possible.

By paying close attention to how user-generated content is arranged and displayed, its impact can have an even bigger impact on Google search results. Take note of these details and make the most of your users' contributions.

The fundamental question is: How can we leverage fans and followers to drive business results?

A recent study estimates the value of a Facebook fan (Facebook users that  “like” companies) at $136, based on how much more the average fan spends compared with non-fans as well as estimating the value of the fan’s loyalty and  recommendations.

We should be careful about the difference between correlation and causation: a fan is not worth $136 because they become a fan. Loyal customers are more likely to become fans; however, there is value in establishing Facebook as a channel to engage with more of your loyal customers. To facilitate this, clients are using the new SocialConnect “Like It!” functionality to make it easy for customers who write reviews – already engaged customers – to “like” a brand’s page, right after they submit a product review.  Your best customers are those writing reviews, so offer them the “like opportunity” at this stage in the participation chain.

SocialConnect in action (click to enlarge)

Let’s play it safe and say that for a particular retailer, getting a new fan is worth $68—half that of Syncapse’s estimate. Let’s assume this retailer gets about 10,000 customers to write a review every month. Now, let’s assume this retailer gets 10% if these reviewers to like the brand through the review thank-you page. That would mean the brand would be getting 1,000 new fans per month, which would be worth $68,000. How does a “like” turn into additional revenue? The brand now has a new channel to do permission-based marketing to these valuable customers. The key here is understanding what to place in this channel: the voice of your customer.  A customer that has “liked” a brand is likely to be interested in products that have been rated highly by customers like him or her. The reviews shared on Facebook via SocialConnect will take this customer right to the product page, just pixels away from the Add to Cart button. Once they buy a product and write a review, he or she can now share that review back to Facebook.

So far we have seen that up to 26% of customers will share their reviews on Facebook, though, naturally,  this number will vary depending on the nature of the brand and their  customer demographics. Take this same hypothetical example of a retailer receiving 10,000 reviews per month and 26% of them sharing them on Facebook (best case scenario), they would get 2,600 “shares.” With the average person having 130 friends on Facebook, the retailer would be reaching 364,000 potential customers, many of whom may have never visited their website. The message from their friend is trusted (because it comes from a friend), authentic (it is written in their own words) and can take customers right into the product page to directly impact the decision-making process.

The “Like” button is a promising new step in the evolution of social commerce, and seemingly minor developments like this can translate into real business results.

Interested in how SocialConnect can help your business drive real results from social media?

I’m trying new brands every day, looking for the best new stand-by products. Turns out, I’m not the only one. Loyalty is low these days — consumers are on “The Hunt.” Switching behavior is running rampant as people look for deals– 33% of consumers are changing the stores they visit (up 13% since 2008) and 57% are buying different brands (up 5% since 2008, according to comScore.  The internet is getting more and more important in aiding that search.

This is a scary environment for businesses – but it’s also a huge opportunity. Just think – you can acquire a ton of new customers if you can get them the information they need in The Hunt.

Where is The Hunt happening? Two words – Facebook and Twitter. This makes sense; people are searching for product information where conversations are happening and they can get an inside scoop. In fact, 23% of Twitter users are specifically looking for deals or product reviews.

Facebook and Twitter are mainstream and attract an exciting group of consumers – it’s not just for college students anymore. Facebook’s demographic profile mirrors that of the general population – even my Dad, a self-described tech laggard with an AOL email account, is an avid Facebook user. Facebook and Twitter users spend more money online than the average non-networked online shopper. I recently heard an industry analyst say, “Ignore Facebook and Twitter at your own peril.” This traffic trends graph from Compete.com drives his sentiment home.

How can you help consumers find you in The Hunt? That same question has been inspiring us and it drove the innovation in our new SocialConnect™ social marketing suite of products that we’re launching today. SocialConnect weaves your brand and social networks together to acquire new customers, promote loyalty and most importantly, drive sales.

GolfSmith, for example is enabling customers to post helpful product reviews, answers and stories directly from the GolfSmith website to their personal Facebook profiles. All of the poster’s friends – on average 150 potential customers – will see the review in their news feed. Some of our clients are seeing up to 28% of new reviews being shared on Facebook profile. That’s a tremendous amount of free advertising to potential customers from a source that people trust most – their friends.

Gina reviews her club, it posts to her wall, and...

...it shows up in Maria's News Feed

Benefit Cosmetics is taking a different approach and giving shoppers access to their full product catalog directly on Facebook, where new customers are already hanging out. They allow customer to browse and submit reviews all on Facebook, while being only a click away from the purchase path.

Customer acquisition in this time of trial is a big opportunity, but there’s a hidden challenge businesses can’t ignore. Given that switching behavior is high, you really have to work to keep your current customers and any new ones you win. Flash sites like RueLaLa.com and Groupon are doing a great job of this right now – they attract people back to their sites by offering something new to check out on a daily basis. They’re smart – this frequent communication appeals to heavy online buyers, who spend 20 times the amount of money online that light shoppers do– about $592 vs $30. (comScore) Capture their interest and you’ve got a goldmine.

The Container Store and Laithwaites are two companies appealing to this demographic in a creative way. They regularly tweet user-generated content like product reviews to their corporate Twitter accounts. They can filter what’s tweeted, tailoring the content based on seasonal factors, like showing champagne reviews around Valentine’s Day, for example.

It’s official – The Hunt is on and the battles to win and keep the next generation of loyal shoppers are being won on Facebook and Twitter. Bazaarvoice is paying attention to this and the SocialConnect product suite is our answer. Expect a lot more exciting news and investments in this area in the future.

What is far more interesting about Harris Interactive’s new research is that it doesn’t just explore what people are sharing online, it delves into why they’re sharing it.  According to the poll:

• 38% of online adults say they aim to influence others when sharing opinions online
• These numbers are higher for people 18 to 34, with 45% aiming to influence their networks
• 46% feel they can be brutally honest on the internet.

These results mirror a survey we did in 2007. When asked why customers write reviews, 90% of respondents indicated that they write reviews to help others make buying decisions. It makes sense – reviewers want to help people like them find products they’ll love (or avoid products they won’t).

This motivation seems to play into eMarketer’s recent suggested correlation between Facebook use and online spending. According to this study:

• The heaviest Facebook users also spend the most money online
• The top 20% of Facebook users spent an average of $67 online in Q1 2010
• Medium users spent an average of $61 online in Q1 2010
• Light users spend an average of $50 online in Q1 2010.

The numbers keep coming in. Consumers are increasingly listening to others online to guide their purchase decisions. Businesses that embrace this word of mouth and facilitate customer conversations are coming out ahead. Social commerce is no longer just an idea—it is reality.

Reviewer Intent Survey Summary

Our joint study with Keller Fay Group uncovers the motivations and behavior of your most important customers – those who interact with your brand through UGC. It’s available for free download here.

Alex Gruzen, Stuart Wallock, Manish Mehta from Dell, with Sam Decker

Customer Oxygen Award: Dell. I continue to be inspired by how Dell uses customer-generated content to transform their products and marketing. The product development and marketing teams use reviews – both positive and negative – to continually improve the overall customer experience with every product. The customer experience team at Dell uses UGC to transform the way the company does business, putting feedback generated by real customers at the center of many product and merchandising decisions.

Social Commerce Play of the Year: Samsung. Samsung implemented BrandAnswers to answer shopper questions across our network of retailers, and they took it a step further by creating online personalities to provide expert answers online: Mr. and Mrs. Samsung. The move has since become a best practice in the industry, and when Mr. or Mrs. Samsung answers a question, people ask twice as many questions,  suggesting that as a brand engages with its community, the community becomes more engaged as a result.

Tanja Zelko and James Connellfrom Roots accepting their award.

Rookie of the Year (Retail): Roots Canada. Roots hit the ground running with social commerce, launching Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories and MobileVoice in their first year as a client. They also churned out several innovative contests to gather content – then spread this content across every channel, featuring reviews on site, via mobile, in print, and in stores.

BSCA's Jason Wang accepts the award.

Rookie of the Year (New Verticals): Blue Shield of California.

I’m especially impressed by BSCA, a first mover in the health care industry to empower the voice of the customer. Brands in highly-regulated industries can be hesitant to adopt user-generated content, but BSCA has embraced transparency, enabling their members to share their feedback and help others like them buy. The company has created a conversation spot for members as well, where they can ask and answer each others’ questions regarding allergies, diet/food/nutrition, women’s health, first aid, and more.

Social Commerce MVP: Best Buy. Always one of our most innovative clients, Best Buy has formed a comprehensive social strategy for their social commerce goals that spans beyond our platform and into all of their social media efforts. One interesting innovation is their Fact Tags on TVs, which display average weekly star rating and number of reviews. These tags prompt visitors to text for more information, from which they can visit Best Buy’s mobile site where they can view reviews. Led by Senior BestBuy.com Capability Manager Dan Halsey, they have also implemented reviews at the store level, from which managers can act to improve the customer experience at their specific location. Across Facebook, forums, Twitter, the mobile site, the ecommerce site, in print ads, and even in stores, Best Buy has integrated social in ways that drive real business results for the brand – the definition of social commerce.

We’re so proud to partner with these pioneering brands in this transformational time in our industry. Social is truly revolutionizing commerce, and brands like these and many more of our clients are creating this change.

Customer-generated product reviews are a critical component of a successful social commerce program – 74 percent of consumers are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy products online, according to recent research from Manage Smarter. Yet many retailers are still wary of "negative" reviews, fearing "bad" feedback on their products and services will hurt sales.

Fearing negative reviews is a mistake, however. There are many case studies that show negative reviews, at least when mixed with positive ones, are a clear driver of sales. If all of your product reviews are glowing, people will be suspicious of their authenticity. What's more, any customer-generated information about a product, whether it's entirely positive or slightly negative, helps increase sales; even products with three-star ratings convert better than products with no reviews. If your site provides a mix of positive and negative reviews, that shows two things: that you are willing to give your customers the space to share their authentic opinions, and that you value their feedback. The mere presence of negative feedback on your site builds transparency in your brand.

What's more, with a mix of both positive and negative reviews, customers are better informed about the features of your products or services – and informed customers make more purchases.

Embracing negative reviews means creating a proactive program to listen and respond to dissatisfied customers. Each negative review is a chance to make an unhappy customer happy, and to identify why certain products are falling short of expectations. Retailers such as Land of Nod, QVC, Rubbermaid, and Oriental Trading Company have embraced negative reviews as a way to analyze their customers' authentic feedback to improve customer service, fine-tune merchandising, and even improve product manufacturing. These retailers, and many others, realize that negative customer feedback is as important – if not much more important – than positive feedback, because it allows them to better understand their customers and deliver the products and services they want. (Disclosure: The companies listed above are customers of Bazaarvoice.)

QVC, for example, uses negative reviews to take action on customer service and delivery issues, often by reaching out directly to dissatisfied customers. For example, when the company recently discovered that a product had issues with quality and delivery, they contacted 900 customers with an offer to replace the product. They also worked with the vendor to return the remaining product inventory and improve future versions. Internally, QVC executives hold monthly meetings to discuss all aspects of customer feedback to determine areas the company should emphasize and improve.

Even if you allow negative reviews to surface on your site (and you should), you still have to carefully moderate all posts to eliminate inflammatory or rude remarks, as well as other reviews that violate rules of moderation, such as those mentioning price, service, or litigation issues. For these rejected reviews, it's still important to reach out to the people who wrote them, however, because when a customer uses profanity or goes off on a tangent, they are angry. You should communicate with angry customers to uncover and solve their legitimate problems so they will be less likely to spread their rancor to blogs, forums, and other places where you are unable to see, control, or address their comments. (See the #amazonFAIL Twitter-storm fiasco as an extreme illustration of what can happen when your customers feel your brand isn't listening to their legitimate complaints.)

Here are a few concrete tips for getting the most out of negative reviews:

• Trust your customers, and they will trust you: Let your customers share their real opinions – taking the good with the bad.
• Moderate out "flames" and illegal postings: Just because you're embracing negative reviews doesn't mean you should leave up inflammatory or legally-questionable reviews. Your rules of moderation still apply.
• Respond quickly to complaints: The faster you respond to dissatisfied customers, the better. Address concerns in both published and rejected reviews right away, and fix what's broken in terms of products, service, or process.
• See negative feedback in a positive light: Negative customer reviews are a goldmine of critical information about your products and services, as well as a window into how customers view your brand. Learn from negative reviews to improve every aspect of your business.

Pretending that everything about your products or services is perfect can be disastrous to your bottom-line sales. Embrace negative feedback as a gift to improve your products, build trust in your brand, and create a lasting relationship with your customers. You can turn every negative into a positive for your company.

While the long-term implications of Facebook’s new platform features – Social plugins and their underpinnings, the Open Graph protocol and Graph API – are up for debate, I have a few thoughts to share from the Bazaarvoice perspective. Over the last week, since f8, we have received questions from current and prospective customers about what these developments mean for their business, social strategy, and relationship with Bazaarvoice.

First, we believe that the boldness of Facebook’s vision is a net positive for our industry. The ease of integration and use of Social plugins will reduce the barriers – technical, usability, psychological, etc. – for social interactions across the Web. Clicking the Like Button for a product on a retailer’s website, like Levis.com, can trigger a series of increasingly valuable social interactions that escalate that consumer’s loyalty to the brand and acquire new shoppers along the way. Our whitepaper on Participation Chains describes this process of value creation through linked social interactions.

The coming ubiquity of the Like Button and other distributed social interactions – enabled by Facebook, Bazaarvoice, and others – is a good thing for brands and consumers because these interactions build relationships that are mutually desired and transparent, a relatively new concept in marketing and advertising! Facebook has enabled these relationships to be created at a scale that will absolutely revolutionize the way companies manage their brands, marketing strategy, and customer relationships. The wake of opportunity created by Facebook’s actions is massive and will fuel even greater marketing and technology innovation in the months ahead.

Second, we believe that Facebook’s strategy is complementary to our own. The forms of user-generated content captured by the Bazaarvoice platform – Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories, and more – help consumers at and leading up to the point of purchase. In concert with the Bazaarvoice platform, a retailer can use Social plugins to acquire new shoppers and help consumers discover products and services of interest, engaging shoppers early in the purchase process. For example, seeing on Facebook that a friend liked a new model digital camera influences you to click through to the camera retailer’s website, where you read customer reviews of the product as well as recently answered shopper questions on the camera’s features and technical specs. Based on these social influences, you buy the product and two weeks later write a product review (powered by Bazaarvoice!) on the retailer’s website. In the process, you elect to publish your review to Facebook for other friends to see. This cycle can continue perpetually, with exponentially increasing value.

Through our work with TurboTax on their “Friendcasting” campaign (which involved integration with Facebook Connect), we have a ground-breaking example of how the social graph can be used to surface the most relevant and trustworthy advice for a key purchase decision. In this scenario, you determine that TurboTax Premier is the best edition of the popular tax preparation software for your financial situation, especially after reading positive reviews from Steve, your neighbor and Facebook friend who happens to be a CPA. This is a reality today, along with Bazaarvoice platform features like ShoutIt! and TweetConnect. In addition, we are powering complete social commerce experiences within Facebook. Check out our deployment of Ratings & Reviews within Facebook for Benefit Cosmetics. With Facebook’s Graph API and Open Graph protocol, we are now able to envision and develop even more innovative uses of the social graph to enhance every stage of the purchase process. In fact, we have a dedicated team, Bazaarvoice Labs, devoted to rapid prototyping and collaborative development of new ideas like these.

The Bazaarvoice platform provides a foundation for our customers to experiment with and optimize their use of Facebook’s new features and whatever may come next. Facebook tipped the first domino (or rather, kicked it), but there are many others yet to fall. Our fully-hosted technology allows us to rapidly deploy new features and third-party plugins such as the Like Button across our entire network of customer websites. Through that network, we have served over 110 billion impressions of user-generated content, playing a leading role in the socialization of the web. The strategic value of this for our clients isn’t simply the business impact or innovation that we deliver – it is our ability to “future proof” their websites and online business strategies. The form and function of Facebook’s platform features are sure to evolve. Google Social Search is in its infancy but will evolve as well. Something completely unexpected will come out of left field. The flexibility and openness of the Bazaarvoice platform will enable our customers to take full advantage of these developments, while leveraging the influence and voices of their most loyal and engaged customers.

Over the last 10 days, we have experienced a truly revolutionary change in the way the web works. However, as we approach the tipping point of the web becoming pervasively social, there will be hiccups. Privacy and security are paramount concerns, and Facebook’s actions have attracted government interest in short order. Brands that abuse these new capabilities will pay for it in lost consumer trust and reputation. As you contemplate the impact of Facebook’s new features on your social strategy, remember to take full advantage of your partnership with Bazaarvoice. We want to share our insights and lessons learned from serving the world’s leading brands and influencing millions of purchase decisions each day. We welcome your input on our strategy and want to collaborate openly with you on yours. On the social web, there’s no such thing as going it alone!

Notice the new Like Button below? Try it out and let us know what you think!

This blog post is guest-written by Anna Skaya, Community Manager – Europe at Bazaarvoice.

When Bazaarvoice partnered with Argos to build and deliver their User Generated Content (UGC) platform, we couldn’t have imagined the kind of impact UGC would have had on Argos’ social marketing strategy, or how this would have a knock-on effect on conversion. As one of our flagship ‘early adopters’ in the UK, our recent Argos case study highlights details of this exciting discovery, and showcases how the Argos eCommerce team is focused on retaining a competitive edge over its rivals along with delivering a consistently great customer experience. Increasingly fundamental to this now is the decision to make UGC a focal point for online strategy planning.

When Argos first launched customer Ratings & Reviews, our challenge was to find a way of utilising Consumer-to-Consumer opportunities in a way that was relevant and complementary to the established customer experience, while demonstrating additional benefit to the business. When doing so, ROI is always king.

The conversion numbers speak for themselves – 10% increase in conversion on products with reviews, across all categories. Customer reviews form a key part of Argos’ continuing website innovation; and with new key functionality supported by technology partners such as Bazaarvoice, these types of results are just the beginning. There is a lot more in store for this leading online retailer!