How To Add A Recommendation Box To Your Facebook Page

Facebook Recommendation
Boxes Let Fans
Give You Stars!

Adding a recommendations box to your Facebook fan page can be a great way to collect visitor reviews if your business has a physical street address.

(Be careful though not to confuse these boxes with the same-named boxes that you add to a website to show recommended posts to visitors who are Facebook users.)

We haven’t heard a lot about the recommendation box for pages in the last few months though, because it (at least temporarily) stopped being able to be added dependably… and started requiring patience that most page admins would rather not bother with. ;)

The recommendations box has improved quite a bit over where it was two years ago, but one factor remains consistent… you can not have one if you are not in certain page categories and if you do not publish a mappable street address.

If you’d rather not make certain things public and/or you lack a business front, there are some premium app options for fan ratings available to you with a nice selection of features and support.

What is most stunning about the default tool though is that the social sharing of the recommendation (which happens by default but is goverened by the fan’s settings to a degree) has recently been re-styled and looks stunning:

and here’s another…

And a view of the recommendations feature itself from mobile:

(Tip: Don’t send anything to that address above, I quite literally pointed it to a nearby cornfield!)

Unlike in older versions of this tool, where bad ratings could not be suppressed, the new version lets the page admin either HIDE a problematic rating or Report it for Spam. This is tools that just a few years ago local page owners were begging for!

Revamped in 2011 for display on “Timeline” version of pages, the tool remains a staple of local pages, while unfortunately showing signs that it may eventually be phased out due to it’s new lower placement on the fan page.

I hear your cries of, “just give me the darn thing! “

Here’s How To Add the Recommendation (Review) Box
To Your FB Business Page

Getting the Facebook Pages recommendations box to display is simple… when the ongoing bug does not make it fail to show up and then show up two months later of it’s own accord, LOL!

Step #1: On your Facebook Page, select Edit Page > Update Info > “Page Info” tab.

Step #2: Change your page type (if necessary). Formerly, only a couple page types include the recommendation feature: “Local Businesses” & “Companies & Organizations“. I’m not sure if this is still true but it likely is. So if you can not get the box to display you likely have a category issue.

Step #3: Add a valid physical address

Step #4: Check the box “show this map on the page”

Step #5: Go check your page… and either cheer or wait!

(It took mine nearly 2 months to show up but several clients of mine got them this week with minimal wait so the trouble may be solved.)

Tip: It is very important that the Bing map be able to locate the address and map it. If the map will not recognize the address, you’re unfortunately out of luck but can try as I did, giving it a slightly fake address to make the map work if that does not present a problem for local customers.

That’s it!

It’s really that simple!

What do you think? Are you collecting social reviews and testimonials? Any questions? Let me know in the comments below!

And please stop by my page (click here) and leave me a review!

PS: Sadly, this has no blog widget to display the reviews, unlike some of the premium options which still may be a better bet for you depending on your needs.