AP 0391: How Do I Encourage My Readers to Leave Reviews?

AskPat 391 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 391 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. We have a quick question today from Matt.

But, before we get to Matt's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is AWeber.com. The email service provider that I recommend if you're just starting out building your email list. Or, maybe you're not happy with the service provider that you use. I would recommend AWeber to start out—because they are amazing. They have great customer service. They make it super easy to begin building your email lists so you can then send out broadcast emails whenever you want. But also, timed, sequentially timed emails through your autoresponder series. Which is really important for you to start automate some of what you do. Which is what we're all about here at SmartPassiveIncome.com. Automation, building systems, being able to keep in constant contact with your audience without you having to do work, because, you've already put in the time to write those emails beforehand; to be incredibly powerful for you to sell whatever it is you're selling; or to at least keep your audience engaged so that they do open your emails when they do come out. And they are important. So check it out AWeber.com. That's AWeber.com/askpat. You can get it for 30 days for free. AWeber.com/askpat.

All right, here's today's question from Matt.

Matt: Hey Pat, my name is Matt April and I actually have a question for you, for my wife Lynn.

So, Lynn is a blogger, and she has her own blog. Her blog is called FreshAprilFlours.com. And, that's flours like the ingredient. Lynn just released her first ever cookbook, titled The Chow Down. And, it's over 20 recipes of different puppy chows that are just amazing. And, so if you're not sure what puppy chow is, you should definitely check out her blog. She has some great recipes on there that aren't in the book.

But, what my question is for you is, we just released it on Amazon and it's available for purchase on Amazon, as well as on Barnes and Noble. And what is your recommendation, or maybe your three best tips for how she can get reviews online for her book without having to use any sort of budget to get those reviews. How can we entice and encourage her community to leave reviews for her book?

Looking forward to your answer. Thank you do much everything we do. And, yeah, I'm excited. Okay. Bye

Pat Flynn: Hey, Matt. Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it. And to Lynn out there who might be listening to this too. Thank you, thank you so much. I think this is great. Congratulations on the release of your cookbook. I think that's awesome. Both on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I have done that as well. I've released a book on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And, you'll find that most of your stuff will happen on Amazon in terms of sales and reviews and things like that. So, the thing … The first thing I want to mention, is that when you're gonna ask for reviews, the best thing to do is to have them all in one place. So just forward people to review when you do that. And I'll show you how to do that in just a second.

To just Amazon. Amazon is where you're gonna get the most bang for your buck. In terms of the algorithms and the search engines and also the reviews that you get over there as well. So, make sure to just drive people toward Amazon, and even if people don't buy on Amazon. Maybe they even buy on Barnes and Noble or they find your book through a giveaway that you do or something like that. They can still leave a review on Amazon. They just won't have that verified purchaser stamp there on their reviews. So, that's just the first thing to keep in mind.

Now, there's three things I'm gonna offer you in terms of building your reviews. I mean, even before that, the first thing you want to do is just make sure that you understand that if you don't ask, you won't get. Some people will leave you reviews. But, a lot of people won't until you ask them. And it's okay to ask, especially if they've enjoyed your book or that, you know … One ask, two asks maybe is okay. Obviously if you keep asking and you just annoy the heck out of people, they're not going to leave a review or they might just leave you a terrible review. Now, you want honest reviews obviously. But, it's okay to ask and if you don't ask, you don't get. So, that's the first thing.

Second thing, is something you can do now for a future book. Which can help you with this cookbook that you already have or something that maybe you already have already that you can tap into. And that is, some sort of ambassador group. And this is something that was taught to me by Jeff Goins when he was on Smart Passive Income Podcast Episode 79. He talked a lot about Amazon selling and book selling strategies. And one of those things was to create an ambassador list. And that is just a list of people, doesn't have to be very huge, maybe even 20 to 100 to maybe even a little bit bigger. It could just start off as five even. But, you have this list of people, this group people who become your ambassadors, they are just truly in love with what you do. You've perhaps have an idea of who these people might already be on your website. Put them on a special email list where you give them things before anyone else see's them.

It gives them a lot of value in becoming an ambassador, but, in exchange they get to do some things for you. For example, one of them being leaving you reviews. So you can be sure that when you come out with a book, whether it's this book now or books that you've come out with in the past or of any future books, you know that you are going to get at least that many number of reviews. And, you can see why it doesn't have to be a large group of people in order for this to be very powerful. But you do need it to be those people who just love you to death, you're a true quote raving fans, as they say. So, creating an ambassador group will do you very well. You can start by building an email list of them. Say, “Hey, if you are really in love with what I do and you want to be on a special list where you get things ahead of time and I might ask just a few favors from you over time, you can join this list.” And, you can use AWeber to set that up or whatever other email service provider you have. Or even if you don't have one, you can just at least create a spreadsheet of these people. Get to know them, provide value to them, and they will help you out in return. So, that's number two—your ambassador group.

Number three, I would set up a column in, for example, something like TweetDeck or Hootsuite or what ever social media platform you're using beyond or third party platform you're using to organize your social media. TweetDeck is an easy one that you could use. Create a special column that has the title of your book in a search. So, for example, you want to search for people and get notified whenever somebody mentions your book. You might see that people are going to be talking about it on social media, perhaps on Twitter or on Facebook. And whenever that comes up you want to be there to follow up, and it's okay to ask for a review. If they say, “Oh my gosh, I love this book, you guys have to check it out,” and they say that to their followers, you can come in and say, “Thank you so much for recommending my book, I'm the author, just want to thank you. And secondly, if you wanted to leave an honest review, I'd really appreciate it. Here's a link for you,” and you link to Amazon. So again, keeping in mind, just paying attention to where the conversations are happening in and around your book is a great thing to do.

And, the fourth thing that I would add—I know I said three but, you know we like to over-deliver and also this one just came to mind—is, another great way to get reviews, is to do some giveaways. So, give away your book to either people on your website or maybe you connect with another influencer and give them, for example, ten copies that they can give away. And then you can get those email addresses or maybe you know because of people in your own audience. When you give those away you can easily, in exchange, ask for a review. And that's another great way to start building up your review base. And I thinks that's really important, because reviews are extremely important for the, for the life of your book. And, you know, the more reviews it has, the more social proof it has, but also the higher it ranks and the algorithm and on the search engines, on Amazon and, you know, it can only help you.

So, hopefully that helps you, Matt and Lynn. I appreciate it, I appreciate the question coming in and hopefully that gives you some quick ideas on how you can start to get reviews. And also, just again, going back to number one—ask, ask your audience if anybody's bought it. Maybe ask for some feedback, but also give them … You can even, you know, I, I would hesitate with giving incentive to leaving you reviews, specifically saying, for example, “Oh, I'll give you a ten dollar gift card if you leave a review.” I would hesitate to go down that route, because then you're not going to get those honest reviews that are actually going to be helpful. You don't want people to discover that when they're potentially going to buy your book, these reviews that say, “Oh well, you know, I got a ten dollar review card for this,” because, a lot of people are honest about why they are leaving a reviews. And they'll say something like that, so I wouldn't go down that route. But if you provide value for, with, to them in some way, shape, or form. Perhaps you build your ambassador list, where you find these conversations that are already happening of people who are getting a lot out of your book. You are more than welcome to ask and you're likely to get some reviews as well.

And, yeah. So, hopefully that helps. Matt and Lyn,n thank you so much for the question, I really appreciate it. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, Matt. And, for anybody else out there who has a question that you'd like to potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.

I also want to thank and mention AWeber.com, today's sponsor for keeping it real, making it super easy for people to start building their email list. I've used them ever since I started building my email list. And although I've explored other email service providers as well, I still continue to use AWeber on a lot of my websites and platforms because, it's just super simple to use, very easy to embed web forms and they do work with a lot of the other third party platforms out there, which like shopping carts and different software like lead pages and things like that. GoToWebinar for example, can chat with it as well, I believe. If you use different tools, there's a bridge tool that can connect both of those.

But anyway, AWeber, amazing, check it out. Go to AWeber.com/askpat and you can check it out for 30 days for free. Again, that's AWeber.com/askpat.

Here's a quote to finish off today from our good friend Jay Abraham, he says, “Understand that you need to sell you and your ideas in order to advance your career, gain more respect and increase your success, influence and income.” I'm going to read that again because it's quite long, but, “Understand that you need to sell you and your ideas in order to advance your career, gain more respect and increase your success, influence and income.” Jay Abraham.

To you, take care and I cannot wait to serve you in tomorrows episode of AskPat. Thanks guys.