How to Post Google Reviews to Facebook and Instagram With Review Harvest

What does Review Harvest post, and where?

Review Harvest turns your five-star Google reviews into Facebook and Instagram feed posts and stories, on a schedule you set, using templates you design. The difference from a tool that posts a link to the review with your logo, or the same photo over and over, is that you control how each post looks.

One note before the steps: this walkthrough comes from a preview recorded before the feature went into beta. The interface was expected to change, so menus may not match exactly.

Connect your pages and set a schedule

You will see two options, one to connect Facebook and one to connect Instagram. Click Connect on each.

Both must be business pages. Posts cannot be created automatically on personal pages.

Then choose your posting schedule. Stories and feed posts are set separately, and you choose the time of day. For example:

• Stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, with weekends off.
• Feed posts on Wednesday and Saturday.

Auto posting or manual approval?

Turn on auto posting unless you know you will check in regularly. Most people forget to approve posts.

With auto posting, Review Harvest takes your templates, shuffles through them and posts for you. A built-in filter decides whether a review is one you would want posted: it has to be five stars, a certain length and a certain sentiment. A review that only says “great work” does not make it through.

With manual approval, each post waits in your queue until you approve it.

Build templates you would be proud to post

There are two kinds of template: a feed post template and a story post template. Click to create a new one.

1. Pick a background. Basic backgrounds are included, but your own photos are the recommendation: your team, your crew on a job, anything that shows what you do.
2. Upload the photo and click Create template.
3. Fix the size. A high quality photo is large and comes in zoomed, sometimes far enough to blur a face. Drag the size down until you can see the whole scene.
4. Position it. Move the photo left or right and up or down. Drag the review card and make it bigger or smaller. In the example, a family at a beach bonfire stays visible at the bottom and the review sits in the sky above them.
5. Check three lengths. Switch between a short, a medium and a long review to see how each one looks.
6. Add elements. Click Add elements to upload your logo, or more photos if you want a collage.
7. Set colors. Change the stars, the text and the background to your brand colors.
8. Save, then do the story version. It works the same way in a taller format. If you only want feed posts, turn the story template off.
9. Publish. Published templates are listed at the bottom of the page.

Make five or ten. Review Harvest shuffles through them as reviews come in, and you can delete one, add one or change its photos later.

What kind of photos work best?

Quality photos are the key. A logo on its own as the background will probably not look great. You do not need a photographer. Photos from an iPhone or an Android have plenty of quality.

Take a few photos with the review in mind:

• An employee pointing off to one side, with the review placed where they are pointing.
• An employee holding their hands out, with the review placed in their hands.
• For a home service business, stand in front of the work: a plumber by the toilet, an HVAC tech by the system or the ducts.

Approve, edit and reuse reviews in the queue

Click the review queue to open your posting queue and the list of all your reviews.

In the posting queue you can:

• Approve a post, for the feed, the story or both, or click Post now to publish it immediately.
• Fix the review text when a customer misspelled something or wrote in odd casing. Keep it to that kind of fix and be ethical about it.
• Click the settings icon to use a different template for that review, or to move and resize things for that one post.
• Change the order, so one customer’s review goes out today in place of another’s.

In the list of all reviews you can search by name or by something the review said, then add an older review to the queue.

Very long reviews are truncated, because the text cannot be shrunk until nobody can read it. If the best line is in the part that was cut, delete the part you do not need so the line you want is the one that shows, then approve the post.