Social media is a great tool for business and brand visibility and can be an excellent platform for new customer discovery as well as customer reviews, discussions, feedback, and general engagement.
The more active you are on Facebook, the higher the chance that your customers and clients will use the platform as a way to engage with you – whether that be sharing their experience in the form of a review, adding photos and tagging you, or sharing your page with their friends to help encourage some more follows.
But what do you do when the reviews on Facebook start to get a bit out of hand, or you find that bots and spam accounts are overrunning your reviews page with fake testimonials?
This article is for those business owners who want to learn how to remove reviews from Facebook.
The Importance of Evidence
If you are receiving bad reviews that you want to get rid of, the first thing to do is ascertain if the reviews are genuine or not.
You will need to be able to verify whether the transactions or experiences mentioned in the review really happened or not. Fake reviews are much easier to have removed than bad reviews and so if you can prove that a review is take then you can report it with relative ease.
More on that in a moment…
How to Deal With Bad Reviews
If a review is bad but unfairly so, then again it is recommended that you report it.
However, in almost all cases it’s crucial that you also post a response that can be seen by other customers and potential clients. With reviews and testimonials such an integral part of business success both online and offline, recognising and responding to all comments and reviews is a big part of showing yourself to be a reputable business.
Posting a response shows that you are on top of all reviews and care enough to take the time to post a reply to each individual who leaves you a review.
How to Report a Review
If you receive a review that is either unfair or fake, then you need to report it. To do this, click on the three dots in the top right hand corner of the review and select ‘Report’, before identifying the issue.
Facebook will offer a selection of options
- Recommendation Not Relevant
- Unfair Recommendation
- Individual concerns including: Nudity, Violence, Harassment, Suicide or Self-Injury, Spam, Drugs and Hate Speech
Select the one which is most appropriate and provide details.
NOTE: Facebook will often filter out and automatically remove any reviews that contain hate speech, and which violate the terms and conditions of Facebook’s community guidelines. However, the platform cannot distinguish between real and fake reviews and so any reviews that you believe are an unfair projection of your business will need to be dealt with manually.
Can You Delete Any Review?
A review that you report and that is proven to be unfair or false will be removed by Facebook.
However, there is no way of removing or deleting reviews yourself – even if they don’t present your business in the best light.
This, again, is why responding to all reviews is so important. It’s a chance to put across your side in a disagreement and is an opportunity to protect your reputation.
Suffice to say, while reviews cannot be deleted, it is all about the way you handle them that really matters. Don’t let one bad review transform your Facebook page – instead, harness it, deal with it, and start making changes that will have the five-star reviews rolling in!
