The best reviews are passionate and personal. They offer a rich narrative, a wealth of detail, and a helpful tip or two for other consumers. Here are some additional thoughts for conscientious reviewers.

• Personal experience: The takeaway for contributors is to take the time to learn about a property, service or park before writing a review. That way, the review will be filled with helpful information that contributes to the information process. Here are some additional thoughts for conscientious reviewers.
• Accuracy: Include all the facts. Your review should be honest and unbiased. Help potential buyers make better decisions by leaving an unbiased opinion and honest portrayal of your experience.
• Review updates: Edit your reviews to reflect new experiences or interactions with the business. Don’t tell the same old story you’ve already told. If you’d like to add new insight or tell a story in a new and exciting way, edit your review instead of posting a new one.

Business photos and videos should be broadly relevant to the business and reflect the typical consumer experience (e.g., what the business looks like, what the business offers, etc.). If you post a photo or video that showcases a more unique personal experience with a business (e.g., your smiling group of friends at the bar, the fly in your soup), we may remove it from the photo gallery for the business, but it still may appear alongside your review if you write one about the business.

When you ask a question or answer another user’s question, you’re putting yourself out there, which is a great place to start a conversation but can also prove a bit tricky to navigate. Here are some things to consider when asking and answering questions from customers:

• Be Helpful: Using Twitter well means making a concerted and consistent effort to contribute to the online community. Don’t use Twitter to promote relevant information solely; use it as a knowledge-sharing platform. If you have a company-specific social media policy, it’s a good idea to review it periodically and ensure that it’s being adhered to. Specify: When you ask broad questions or provide generic answers, you won’t get a lot of useful responses. So, instead, try to provide context and more details in any questions or responses. This will help open up meaningful conversations and receive quality answers. Ask Clearly: If your question isn’t clearly defined, it will likely be more difficult for others to understand, and maybe even hear you! Be sure to provide as much detail as possible when asking your question to be better understood! Avoid: Asking a question and immediately answering it yourself; this detracts from the question being asked and isn’t very helpful.

Let your users know who you are and what you’re about. The more information you share about yourself, the more likely you are to attract your ideal customer.

Our ‘Community’ offers a place for you to engage in fun, open, and honest discussions about what’s going on in your community. Although it’s easy to share what’s going on in your community on our chat forums and other comment features, you should always be careful not to post anything unintentionally since you will not be able to delete it later. Since trust between our users and transparency are two things that are essential to our business, we will probably be sterner in dealing with anonymous users who are disruptive to our community than those who stand behind their words.

It is important to keep in touch with your fellow scouts by using the handy messaging feature on RVResortScout. To begin with, please do not use this feature to harass other users or send inappropriate content. Additionally, user accounts are solely for personal, non-commercial use. Business owners should use their free Business Owners Account to communicate with reviewers. In order for their message to be more personal, we ask them to upload a clear photo of themselves.

If you hear about an awesome event going on feel free to post about it. Post it to the Community on RVResortScout, and we’ll make sure it’s made known to everyone. Please don’t use Events to announce recurring promotions or sales, and please do not post events more than 6 months in advance.

I believe that business owners should join in on the action as well. Here are some words of advice:

• From the Business: You can use the listing description section to tell people a little something special about your business. Please keep it relevant: don’t use this feature to attack your competitors, reviewers, or rvResortScout, and don’t use it to seed keywords or post special offers or promotions — we’ll remove them if we see them.
• Public Comments: In most situations, a dispute between a business owner and an unhappy customer can be resolved directly through direct message, but a business owner can also post a public comment that addresses the issue. For businesses to be able to personalize their message, we ask that they upload a clear picture of themselves as well. The public comments you write should not include personal attacks, advertising, or offers to change reviews in any manner.
• Video and Photos: It is a great way for advertisers to promote their products or services on RVResortScout through video and photos. You can be as creative as you like, but please keep the images clean. We do not like imagery that depicts violence, drug use, nudity, near nudity, or suggestive acts. In addition, please do not make videos that disparage other businesses, users, or RVResortScout; or ask for or solicit user reviews; or reply to user reviews.
• Don’t ask for reviews and don’t offer to pay for them either: Please do not ask for a review on rvResortScout from your customers. If you ask for reviews on your business page, you may create bias — a bias that savvy consumers will be able to detect from a mile away over time. It is also important that you do not offer compensation in exchange for reviews (discounts and freebies count too). Lets all do our part to keep the community a healthy and informative place for all RV and outdoor lovers.