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Sharing reviews on Instagram can help you attract more customers.
Because potential buyers tend to trust what customers say rather than what you say.
So, you want to amplify all the positive things customers say.
How do you go about it?
That’s what you’ll find in this guide.
You’ll see how to share reviews on Instagram and other relevant information.
Why share customer reviews on Instagram?
If you’re still on the fence about sharing reviews on Instagram, here are 2 important reasons to pull the trigger:
Leverage social proof
If 4 of your friends rave about how the Toyota Corolla is reliable and saves fuel, Toyota Corolla will suddenly look attractive to you.
That’s the magic of social proof.
Social proof makes a product more attractive when people like us say positive things about it.
Put simply, social proof makes a buyer feel they’re taking less risk since people like them have already used and praised the product.
Sharing reviews and testimonials on Instagram can encourage more of your ideal prospects to try your product.
So, it’s a great way to promote products on Instagram.
Educate audience about use cases
If your product has multiple use cases, sharing reviews can help promote the use cases.
You can find reviews or testimonials that talk about using your product for specific use cases.
Then, share them with your audience.
Doing this helps to educate potential buyers about the possible use cases of your product.
Types of review formats
Reviews can come in various formats, like:
- Text: These are reviews written in words. They may be reviews in your Instagram comments, emails, tweets, or review sites. These texts can be featured in images and shared on Instagram.
- Images: These are reviews or testimonials showing images of a customer using your product. For example, this can be an image of a customer slaying with your shoes. These images can be reposted on your Instagram posts and Stories.
- Videos: With videos, you can have many types of reviews or testimonials. Customers can explain how they use your product or the benefits they gain from it. You can also use video tools to capture reviews and share snippets on Instagram Reels and Stories.
You can share any of these formats on your Instagram account. But before you can share reviews, you have to collect them.
Let’s see various ways to collect reviews for Instagram.
How to collect reviews and testimonials for Instagram
A dedicated hashtag to collect UGC
Customers show off products they love on Instagram. Scrolling through your Instagram feed will confirm this.
But if they don’t tag your account, you won’t see all the praise for your business.
This is where a dedicated hashtag comes in.
By specifying a dedicated hashtag, customers can use it whenever they praise your product.
Also, this hashtag will encourage them to publish more content about your products, as other people can find those posts when they click on the hashtag.
Then, a hashtag helps you organize and collect user-generated content (UGC) to share on your Instagram account.
How do you go about creating your hashtag?
You can create a branded hashtag with the name of your brand or product in the hashtag.
To raise awareness for the hashtag, you can put it in your Instagram bio. In addition, tell customers to use the hashtag and show how they use your product or what benefit they derive from it.
Here’s a post created by a GoPro customer:
This post promotes GoPro’s new Hero 13 camera. When you visit GoPro’s Instagram profile, you’ll see the hashtag mentioned in the bio.
And this is just one of many Instagram UGC examples you can follow.
Once customers know there’s a chance to feature on your Instagram account, they’ll create more content about your product.
Review-baiting Instagram posts
These are Instagram posts that attract reviews and testimonials from your customers.
Sometimes, you need to put a call out to your customers to create reviews and testimonials.
You can do this in a few ways.
When sharing testimonials from customers, you can mention your dedicated hashtag in the caption and tell customers to use it for a chance to be featured.
Another way is to highlight product features in Instagram posts. When highlighting a feature, you can ask customers to comment how the feature has been beneficial to them.
Instagram mentions
While some customers will not use your dedicated hashtags, they can tag your company account in their testimonials.
This can be in Instagram posts, Reels, and Stories.
Whenever they tag your account, Instagram will notify you.
So, check your Instagram mentions so that you don’t miss those golden testimonials.
Instagram DMs
During interactions in your Instagram DM, customers can say positive things about your product.
When you see this, you have an opportunity to promote that product on your account.
But you have to ask for permission before featuring the testimonial on your page.
X (Twitter)
While Twitter is a separate social media network, tweets regularly find their way to Instagram.
And you can bring praise for your brand on Twitter to Instagram.
After all, your Instagram audience also deserves to know all the benefits your product has delivered to customers.
By collecting testimonials on X, you have an opportunity to share and reach more people on Instagram.
Here’s an example from Semrush on Instagram:
Sharing this testimonial ensures that people who missed it on X can see it on Instagram.
To share a testimonial from X, screenshot the praise, put it in an image, and publish it on Instagram.
If you collect customers’ emails before purchase, part of your tasks is to reach out after the purchase.
This is ensures customers know how to use your product and get good value from it.
But beyond onboarding, you can also collect reviews and testimonials through emails.
How?
After a few weeks of using your product, email customers to ask about their experience with your product. In their replies, you may find great quotes to use on Instagram.
Alternatively, you can direct customers to sites like Google, Trustpilot, Capterra, G2, and other relevant review sites.
And if you have a review page on your site, you can link to that too.
Here’s an email from Jumia, an ecommerce company:
This email asks for reviews on the company’s website.
But from the reviews submitted on your website, you can get quotes to feature on your Instagram account.
Review sites
Review sites host customer reviews for various products.
These reviews serve as a guide for potential buyers.
But beyond that, they can be a goldmine of praise for your brand.
So, visit your product review page and see what customers are saying about your product.
Some popular review sites include Google, Facebook, Capterra, Trustpilot, G2, Yelp, etc. The most relevant review sites for your business will depend on what you sell.
You can use quotes from review sites to design an image for your Instagram post. You can also add the review site’s logo to the image.
Your website
A review or testimonial page hosts reviews from your customers.
This page provides information prospects may be looking for before buying your product.
Another dimension to this is having a case study page. This is especially useful for software and services businesses.
A case study goes into more detail about the problems a customer had before using your product and how your product solved the problem. They’ll also state the results they achieved.
Any of these pages can be a good source of quotes for your Instagram page.
Here’s an example from Kit (formerly ConvertKit):
Kit can use quotes from this case study to promote some of its use cases.
This is a great way to find reviews to share on Instagram.
Contests and giveaways
Running an Instagram giveaway can help you achieve goals like more followers, engagement, and email subscribers.
But beyond that, you can use contests to collect reviews from customers.
How?
In your entry criteria, you can ask participants to create a video and explain why they love your product. Or they can mention the benefits they’ve derived from your product.
Since there’s an opportunity to win a prize, you’ll get many entries.
You can use a dedicated hashtag for this contest to easily find entries.
Another way to manage entries and participants is to use an Instagram giveaway tool.
These tools can help create a giveaway landing page, collect entries, manage participants, and pick winners.
From these entries, you’ll find testimonials to use in your future Instagram posts.
Here’s a giveaway by Jackery:
The brand asks participants to share a photo of their recent trip.
These giveaway entries will show one of Jackery’s use cases. Potential buyers will see how useful it is while traveling.
How to share reviews on Instagram
After collecting your reviews, the next thing is to share them on Instagram.
Luckily, you have many ways to do that.
Here are some of them:
1. Feature reviews in Instagram posts and reels
This is the most popular way to share reviews on Instagram.
Your Instagram posts and reels will reach followers. Apart from followers, Instagram can recommend the post to other people interested in your content.
You can feature text and image reviews in your Instagram posts.
To do this, use your text in an image. But when writing your post caption, you can include the text as a quote in the caption.
If the customer is an Instagram user, you can tag them in the caption.
But if you’re sharing video reviews, Instagram Reels will work better.
You can use your caption to expand on the message in the video.
Here’s a video review shared by Path Social:
This video aims to attract even more customers.
If you’ve collected many reviews and want to share them at intervals, you can schedule Instagram posts using a social media management tool.
This way, the reviews will show up on your Instagram account at the set time.
2. Feature reviews in stories
If you receive a lot of reviews and testimonials, Instagram stories are a great place to share them.
The beauty of this is that people who view your Stories are likely engaged with your brand.
So, even if your Stories reach a smaller audience, you know it will be more effective since it’s an engaged audience.
You can also tag the customer in your Story.
If you’ve taken the review from your website, you can link to the page in your Story.
3. Create an Instagram story highlights for reviews
While Instagram Stories are great, they only last for 24 hours.
But you can extend their life by adding them to an Instagram Story highlight.
You can create an Instagram Story highlight for your reviews or testimonials.
Then, you can add your stories to this highlight.
This is a great way to optimize your Instagram profile as prospects can see what customers think about your product.
See this Instagram story highlight from Semrush:
The feedback highlight contains stories of customer reviews.
So, while planning Instagram story highlights ideas for your profile, add reviews to them.
4. Pin customer comments
In some of your Instagram posts, customers will leave positive comments about a feature or the overall product.
These comments give your message even more credibility to prospects
You can pin these comments to give them more reach.
Once you pin a comment, everyone who clicks on the post will see the comment at the top.
5. Share in Instagram ads
If a review or testimonial has performed well as an organic post, you can boost the post to reach more people.
Apart from that, you can use testimonials for entirely new ads.
Your testimonial can be the ad image or video. For this use, ensure that the person giving the testimonial is similar to your ad’s target audience.
By using reviews and testimonials in your ads, you’ll increase the chances of achieving your campaign goal.
How to share Google reviews on Instagram
If you run a local business, Google Business reviews can attract more customers for you.
But Google reviews don’t have to stay only on Google.
You can share them with your Instagram audience.
One way is to screenshot the Google review and share the image on Instagram.
However, you can make it more pleasing to the eye with a tool like NiceJob.
NiceJob is a tool that helps you collect and share customer reviews.
So, from your NiceJob dashboard, you can add a background to your review and share it on Instagram.
Another good option is to use Canva.
To use Canva, all you need to do is search for review templates.
So, a keyword like “review Instagram” will deliver many template results.
You can pick one of these templates and import your review and other details into it.
Here’s a Google review shared on Instagram by Propszilla:
Apart from Google Business, these steps also work if you want to share reviews from other review sites on Instagram.
Conclusion
Ready to start sharing reviews and testimonials on Instagram?
Follow these steps to promote your products and services on Instagram.
Samuel writes long-form guides to help businesses and entrepreneurs achieve better results from their marketing activities. He also writes for marketing and SaaS companies that want more leads and customers. Get in touch with him to discuss your content needs.