Engaging the growing TripAdvisor community could result in more reservations for your hotel if you can avoid the following five common mistakes:

1. Take comments personally and respond accordingly. “Prove the date of your stay because such an incident has never been recorded in the archives of our hotel. We regret that some customers spoil the time by writing negative comments for hotels.” Believe it or not, this is an actual response posted on TripAdvisor. It’s a response that, if we’re honest, we’ve all wanted to post at one time or another. When customers write less-than-complimentary comments about our hotels, it feels personal. Most hoteliers I know work hard to run a good operation and the last thing they want is to ruin someone’s vacation/business trip/wedding. When those negative comments are made, it is disappointing and a natural instinct is to defend—or in some cases offend.

However, keep one important fact in mind. When you respond to a review on TripAdvisor, you’re not only responding to the individual who wrote the comment, you’re also responding to the hundreds of potential guests who are reading your reviews. The way you position yourself in your response carries more marketing punch than taking out an ad in a business publication. Would you pay money to run an ad that offended your prospects? Probably not. So why post a less than sincerely crafted response on a medium where the majority of viewers are currently searching for their next hotel room?

2. Never apologize; it makes you look weak. When I speak to general managers around the country and suggest they apologize for a guest’s negative experience, a flurry of discussion always follows. By apologizing, aren’t you acknowledging it was your fault? It certainly doesn’t feel good to be told you’re in the wrong, but if you make it sound like it was the fault of the guest you will likely drive readers of TripAdvisor straight to your competitors. “They tried to check in too early.”; “They didn’t know how to work the equipment in their room”; or “They foolishly checked in on a busy weekend!” These types of responses will make you feel much better, but you may want to rethink this strategy because you won’t be happy with the results.

I fly a lot, which means I spend a lot of time being told by airline employees that instead of getting to Las Vegas for my 11 a.m. meeting, I’ll be sitting in Chicago until 5 p.m. The delay could be due to weather or equipment, but certainly isn’t the fault of the airline or that employee. All I ever want (and have never once gotten) is a little bit of empathy. If an airline employee ever said to me, “I’m so sorry you’re going to miss your meeting, that must be really frustrating,” I would tweet it to everyone I know and always request that airline. I know they can’t control the weather, and by getting that apology I think, at last, someone understands this is frustrating, even though they really can’t do anything about it.

As a result, I would recommend you begin with at least a sincere apology for the experience the guest had, if not for the actual incident that caused it. What you are saying to the hundreds of people reading your response is you actually do care about the experiences your guests have, regardless of where the fault lies.

3. Blatantly sell your hotel in your responses. This is America after all, people love to be sold! The TripAdvisor registered community is currently 20 million strong and growing. TripAdvisor is only a few years old and yet it grew quickly because people wanted the truth. They were tired of being sold a questionable bill of goods by big companies and flashy marketing agencies and they began to rely on each other to find the truth. And when those responses by management begin to sound like they were written by one of those marketing companies, they’ll be considered suspect, or in most cases, just a big turn off. The TripAdvisor community is very self-policing. The staff at TripAdvisor doesn’t need to spend a lot of time admonishing hotels for making blatant sales pitches. The community makes its own decisions.

4. Only respond to negative reviews, or better yet, don’t respond at all. As your eyes scroll down the page of TripAdvisor reviews, you’ll notice the reviews with management responses attached stand out. If you’re only responding to negative reviews, those reviews will be most frequently read by your potential guests. No matter how great a job you do responding, negative reviews are not the impression you want to leave with your viewers. Instead, take the time to periodically respond to some glowing reviews, to ensure that the positive comments stand out as well. Should you respond to all reviews? It would be a challenge to make every response sound sincere and not be repetitive, and it also would become difficult to differentiate the great reviews from the mediocre, so I recommend being selective—but again, respond to both negative and positive ones.

5. Fear the lack of control and discourage your front desk staff from suggesting your guests write online reviews. Your TripAdvisor popularity ranking considers your average scores, the number of impressions of your page and a few other criteria. We’ve been informed by TripAdvisor that one element is critical: the more frequently you receive reviews, the more popular you are. You may have some stellar reviews from three months ago, but your neighbor who has several pretty good reviews this month will likely rank higher than you. I encounter hotel management so concerned someone might write something bad they never encourage their guests to visit TripAdvisor. If that’s the case, you’ll never reap the benefits of being the most popular in your market, which is to say, you will never see the reservation conversions you should. Most reviews on TripAdvisor are positive: The average ranking, according to TripAdvisor is 3.9 out of 5. If you run a relatively good hotel and try to take care of your guests, chances are great they’ll write a positive review. Encourage your guests to participate.

I strongly recommend you embrace the influence of TripAdvisor. The TripAdvisor community is only growing larger, and as much as you might wish it was just a fad, it is probably here to stay. A well-managed TripAdvisor strategy can almost certainly result in higher revenues due to more reservation conversions. In this dizzying world of social media, there is probably no more certain ROI than an investment of time in executing a smart TripAdvisor strategy.

Holly Zoba is senior vice president of sales for the hospitality division of Signature Worldwide, a leading provider of training solutions for the hotel industry. Holly has more than 20 years of sales and marketing management experience in the hospitality industry and is responsible for managing Signature Worldwide’s sales effort by determining best-fit solutions for hoteliers—helping them improve customer service and increase revenue. She can be reached at hollyzoba@signatureworldwide.com or 614-766-5101.