… or at least fans. Fans can have huge impact on the performance of a business. You only have to look at Apple and see how effective it has become in getting its fans to promote its products. For smaller businesses or lesser known brands this is more difficult to achieve but there are ways to get happy customers to endorse you online. These include:

Ask for Feedback and Reviews Directly

This where many of us struggle but you have already done the hard part. You have essentially asked someone to buy your product or service so why not ask them to review it? People are often more than happy to do this as long as the process is easy to complete and short. Some thought should also be given as to what stage you will ask your customers for these. A friendly note on an invoice, a follow up email or on the telephone or all popular methods.

Provide a Platform

This is the crucial part. You need to decide on the right platforms for which to get your customers to leave reviews. Certain platforms will be more suitable than others for your target audience. Think about their needs and where you will get the best coverage.

Make it Easy

You need to make it as easy as possibly for people to access your profiles. Provide people with the links they need and with several options. They may already have an account on certain review sites which in turn will make it easier for them to leave a review. You don’t want to have to make customers manually search for your company profiles.

Connect with People

Ok so you have asked for reviews and had numerous responses. What do you do now? I hate this word (engage) but anyway engage with your reviewers. Respond to their reviews and make open and honest responses. Don’t be offended if you are criticized in some way. Learn from it and offer an incentive to the user.

These are some of the basics methods you could instill into your everyday business practices. The great thing about this is that it has an added benefit in terms of local search. Google uses reviews and citations to rank businesses in its local search results. This can be great for driving good volumes of traffic to your site. If you haven’t already claimed your business listing i would highly recommend doing so.