How to write an effective online review
By chrysolite, 21st Aug 2010 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutWritingTips
Many article websites accept service and product reviews and I guess I'm not the only one googling for some information on a product I want to buy or a service I want to use. But how to write a product or service review? What is it that reader, you or I, want to know?
- What does a well written review look like?
- Types of reviews
- What exactly is a review?
- Promoting the review and more networking
What does a well written review look like?
Reviews have to be well-written with a catchy title, good grammar and punctuation, but every day language. Nothing fancy. Let your opinion flow in, compare and let people know your judgement. A little list may help not to forget an important issue:
- Who would want to buy the product or service?
- Why? What are the advantages over competitors?
- When? Is it a timeless product or service or related to seasons or holidays?
- What's so good (or bad) about this product or service, compare, recommend, judge?
- Where is this product or service available (state address of company, URL etc., remembering that the internet is international, but commerce often not or not yet.
- How can I help to promote a good product or service?
- Introduce a rating system if you write a lot of reviews.
Write about the virtues and the flaws of the product or service and your own opinion about it. The art here is how to express anything negative without using four letter words which would be too easy, wouldn't it?
Types of reviews
There are many types of reviews. Is the review of interest to the general public or are you writing a professional review for experts? Or both?
What exactly is a review?
A review is simply an evaluation of a product or service and often describes also a company's integrity, honesty and reliability as well as guarantee issues, price, longevity of a product or service.
It's also a good idea to state what's "in it" for the reader or for the reviewer.
In some cases you may even wish to add some educational value by examining words that are meaningless or misleading to the customer, but sound good in advertising, i.e. "natural".
Also state, if the product or service is of interest locally, nationally or internationally or for what age group it is meant to be.
Promoting the review and more networking
Of course, we submit our articles where ever we can or earn money with it, but with reviews we can go one step further:
With only 1 short email, we can inform the company or manufacturer of the product or service reviewed and ask them proactively to link to our review from their website. This will give the company more credential and more exposure to all our articles and reviews, if we've done our linking and networking properly.
Thanks for calling in!
Comments
11th Sep 2010 (#)
Excellent. I would add, if the review is of a software product, you might also do a tutorial from start to finish: where you got it, how you installed it, how you tweaked it to get it working, what your experiences were and your overall impressions. You can get two articles for the price of one this way; the review and a how to for somebody else.
And, if you're doing book or movie reviews, please, please do not give away the ending!
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11th Sep 2010 (#)
Thanks, j.m. raymond. Good ideas! Had a bit of a holiday, but now back with more "stuff". See you round!
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