What’s the easiest way to reach every neighborhood in your area?
You use the hyper-local platform Nextdoor.
Research shows Nextdoor is available in all neighborhoods in America. Their platform has 27 million active monthly users, and they’ve defined more than 236,000 neighborhoods, which means there’s a very good chance they reach customers in your local area.
They’re also in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the UK.
Today, we’ll take a closer look at Nextdoor, Nextdoor reviews, and the impact they can have on your local business.
Table of Contents
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Why is Nextdoor important to your business?
Nextdoor is all about neighbors helping neighbors.
Take a look.
This is where other local and review platforms miss the mark. Many of them allow users to post content using pseudonyms, mononyms, and aliases; Nate F, Kimberly P, or headphone (yes, that’s a real Google review).
Nextdoor is different.
Nextdoor, according to the Harvard Business School, requires your real identity.
“Users are required to verify that they have a local address before they are allowed to join a neighborhood’s Nextdoor site. Once an online neighborhood has a critical mass of members, those members can begin creating discussion forums on a range of topics. For example, users commonly leverage the platform to find babysitters, locate lost pets, sell personal items and review local businesses. All users are required to sign up with their real names — aliases and pseudonyms are not allowed.”
The rationale is simple.
Nextdoor wants to build a community, a platform where users feel a sense of accountability. If their platform is all about neighbors helping neighbors, trust is easier to accomplish when you know your neighbor’s real name.
Why does this matter?
Nextdoor isn’t like Yelp, Google, or Facebook. Their platform is used as a facilitator to build real relationships with neighbors in your local community. Trust is an integral part of their relationship-building process.
This can be positive or negative.
According to Nextdoor:
“Every member on the platform is verified so businesses can trust that they are reaching real people who live in the neighborhood.”
If you’ve done the hard work to build a strong reputation in your community, you’ll have the support you need to attract a significant amount of traffic, leads, support, and reviews. If you anger this tight-knit community, you’ll also find these neighbors are motivated to spread the (negative) word about your business.
How Nextdoor compares to other review platforms
More than 27 million people visit the site every month; however, this is a small fraction of the traffic mainstream review platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, or even TripAdvisor receive every month.
Nextdoor users in your community are typically active, engaged, and focused on participating on the platform, specifically focusing on your community.
That’s because their platform requires consistent relational investment.
“Nextdoor is where neighbors go to build connections, stay informed, and help each other in their everyday lives.”
Users display greater amounts of altruism.
Because your neighbors are part of your tribe, they’re focused on taking care of their own.
What your business goals should be on Nextdoor
Nextdoor is viewed by members as an online word-of-mouth platform. If you’re running a local business, their platform can help you achieve your standard goals — more traffic, leads, sales, and Nextdoor reviews from happy customers.
The key component here is relationship.
Take a look at this post on the Nextdoor Facebook page.
“This morning I noticed a woman scurry across my lawn. I was on a zoom so didn’t have time to think much of it. This was on my front step. Next to a small pointsettia.” / via Nelba_MG twitter
Posted by Nextdoor on Saturday, December 5, 2020
See what I mean?
This isn’t the sort of thing you’ll see on Yelp or Google Reviews. It’s going to require consistent, genuine, and ongoing investment in building relationships with members of your community. If you’re looking to build relationships with eager, loyal, and engaged customers, Nextdoor is the perfect fit.
With these relationships established, your business can:
- Create dialogue and relationship with customers
- Generate traffic and footfalls to your local business
- Boost your online/offline conversion rates
- Win leads and generates sales
- Earn glowing reviews from customers
It’s all standard stuff.
How businesses can sign up for Nextdoor
- Head over to business.nextdoor.com. Once there, you’ll need to choose between two options local business or enterprise. If you’re running a smaller local business, click local business.
- If you’re a local business, click ‘Local Business’ to create your free business page.
- From there, you’ll be asked to choose between two options “Neighbor for hire” or “Professional business.”
- Next, you’ll be asked to sign in. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for one now.
- You’ll be asked to provide the name and address of your business.
- If your business has a name or address that’s similar to others in their index, you’ll be asked to choose from the list.
- Next, add contact details outlining how neighbors can get in touch.
- Finally, choose a category that best describes your business. When you’re finished, click “Create new business page.”
- From there, you’ll be taken to your Nextdoor profile.
- You’ll need to verify your business to offer transactional options like gift cards or takeout options. You’ll also need to “Get Recommendations, Create a Local Deal, or Become a Neighborhood Sponsor” if you’d like to begin reaching neighbors.
At this point, you’ll be ready to begin optimizing your Nextdoor profile.
How to optimize your Nextdoor profile
Neighbors and businesses use Nextdoor for a variety of reasons. Neighbors use Nextdoor to:
- Meet their neighbors
- Ask questions, make a request, or post a poll
- Buy or request services
- Sell products and services
- Create and organize events
- Get recommendations (Nextdoor reviews)
- Post alerts
Businesses use Nextdoor to:
- Share your education and expertise
- Build relationships and engage with your local community
- Run local deal ads
- Create and share special offers with your neighbors
- Monitor your reputations (via recommendations)
Here’s how you optimize your page.
- On the left sidebar, click “Your Page.”
- That will take you to the settings page for your profile. On this page, you’ll be able to:
- Change, update your logo and cover photo
- Edit your business info and business hours
- Add categories
- Share your story
- Add photos to your photo gallery
- Head over to “Your Reputation,” then click “Get Recommendations” to share your Nextdoor page via email, link, Facebook, and Twitter.
- Next, click on “Content” to create posts and local deals for neighbors in your community.
Filling out your Nextdoor profile and providing your neighbors with content is the easiest way to optimize your profiles. The more consistent you are with producing content, the better your results will be. Here’s an example of a business post.
Source: Nextdoor
Optimizing your Nextdoor profile is straightforward. Make sure your profile has a generous supply of the content I’ve listed above. You want to make sure your profile provides maximum value for neighbors in your community. Focus on relationships and adding value first before you make a pitch.
Now that your account is optimized, you’re ready to generate reviews via your Nextdoor profile.
Requesting Nextdoor reviews with your profile
Reviews on Nextdoor are known as Recommendations.
Recommendations are the driving force behind discovery on Nextdoor. You’ll need at least one recommendation for your business to appear in the businesses section that neighbors use to find a local business.
Source: Big Buzz Inc
Here’s why this is important. The order that your business appears in a recommendation category (e.g., plumbers, restaurants, home remodeling, etc.) and in search results depends primarily on the number of recommendations (reviews) you receive. Other factors like proximity and relevance (via keywords) play an important role as well, but recommendations are the key. Nextdoor lists the top businesses in your neighborhood listing each category. Your business and your most recent recommendations will appear in Nextdoor’s search results when customers search for businesses in a particular category. Neighbors can recommend your business in one of three ways.- They can add a recommendation in the ‘Businesses’ section on Nextdoor.
- Visit a business page directly to write a recommendation
- Mentioning (tagging) a business when discussing or replying to another member’s post
So how do you go about getting recommendations for your business on Nextdoor?
That’s the easy part, you ask!
Here’s a basic template you can use to request recommendations from customers on Nextdoor. Feel free to customize this as you see fit.
Services request template
[Name],
Thanks so much for trusting us with your [services rendered]. You could have picked anyone but you chose us. It really means a lot.
Would you be willing to recommend our business on Nextdoor? We’re interested in the good and bad parts of your experience.
You can do that here: [Link to your Nextdoor Business Page]
Thanks for your trust,
[Signature]
If you’re looking for more ideas you can use, here is a comprehensive list of review request templates for your business (specialized by industry).
It’s pretty straightforward.
Ask customers if they’re willing to write a recommendation for your business and, more often than not, they’ll be willing to share their experience. Just make sure you follow the rules.
What rules?
- Only Nextdoor members can make a recommendation so customers will need to sign up for an account if they’d like to share their feedback
- Nextdoor encourages businesses to request recommendations
- Don’t offer incentives in exchange for recommendations, you can be penalized, content may be removed, or your account may be terminated
- If you’re recommending your own business, disclose your involvement with your business
- Make sure friends and family who share recommendations on your behalf disclose their relationship with your business
- If customers request a recommendation on Nextdoor, you’re welcome to reply with information about your business, just disclose your involvement with your business
- If customers leave a negative review you can respond to the post or send them a private message directly
- If a customer recommendation violates their community guidelines, you can contact Nextdoor to have it removed. If it doesn’t violate their community guidelines, the post will most likely remain on their site
If you’re doing great work, earning recommendations on Nextdoor should be easy and semi-automatic. Just respond to customers consistently with information and requests about your business.
Want to speed things up a bit?
You can search for, and reply to posts requesting recommendations. Nextdoor members can request recommendations from other members. Since you’re a member, you can search for these requests and recommend… yourself.
Source: Nextdoor
Just be careful.
You’ll want to make sure that you’re adding value and maintaining transparency. This shouldn’t be a hard sell and it shouldn’t be smarmy or socially inappropriate. This is all about people helping people, remember?
Responding to these requests is a great way to attract and convert prospective, hyper-local customers who are in your area.
Your Nextdoor point-of-contact
Nextdoor provides members and businesses with helpful options you can use to get in touch. They promise a 24-hour response time, 7 days a week.
If you need to reach out to someone at Nextdoor, you can use any of these methods to get in touch.
Advertising and performance tracking on Nextdoor
- Tips and Advice Ads: This ad format allows you to display your expertise while showcasing how your business can help nearby neighbors. Here’s an example of that ad format.
- Conversation Starters Ads: With this ad format, you can invite neighbors to engage with your business, and it makes it easy for them to reach you. Conversation starters ads run by default once you’ve signed up for a neighborhood sponsorship. Here’s an example of that ad format.
Neighborhood sponsorships can be set up on a month-to-month or annual basis.
- Real Estate Listings: Nextdoor also offers real estate advertising to agents. Using Nextdoor, you can create brand exposure or share education to demonstrate your expertise. Here’s an example of these ads in action.
- Local Deals Ads: If you’re running a local business, you can also run Local Deals Ads for as little as $1. Local Deals allow businesses, neighbors offering services, and Neighborhood Sponsors to share discounts neighbors in their community. Here’s an example of this ad format.
- Sponsored Posts for national brands: If you’re a regional or national brand, you can participate in Nextdoor’s advertising program. The minimum ad spend is $25,000 per month, and it’s only available to established brands. You’ll need to contact ad sales to learn more about this program.
What about performance tracking?
Nextdoor provides you with performance data inside your account.
You’ll receive detailed metrics showing you who viewed, responded to, clicked on, and redeemed your offers. You’ll also have information on the number of people in each zip code who have viewed or engaged with your content.
Again, Nextdoor’s platform revolves around relationships.
The better you are at building and nurturing relationships with your neighborhood, the easier it will be to win new customers and attract amazing four and five-star reviews.
Nextdoor gives you access to every neighborhood
According to Nextdoor’s internal research, 1 in 4 US households are active on their platform. More than 76 percent of members, 20.5 million people each month, have been influenced by Nextdoor reviews. Their platform is available in all neighborhoods in America.
The impact they can have on your review portfolio, on your local business is huge.
It’s an incredible opportunity many businesses miss.
But this opportunity depends entirely on your mindset. Neighbors helping neighbors, that’s what their platform is all about. Altruism, compassion, support — these values play a larger role on their platform.
It’s your chance to support your community.
Give your neighbors the support they need and you’ll find you have a community that’s eager and willing to support your local business, amazing relationships guaranteed.
