To collect Google reviews:

1. Text. Over a third of consumers who receive a text review invite leave one, and approximately 41% of consumers prefer text to communicate vs. 18% who prefer email. If you want to increase your Google review collection, text is the key—and the results speak for themselves. After switching to text to collect reviews with Podium, Paul’s Pest Control jumped half a star on Google within 24 hours and gathered more reviews in one month than they had in five years.

2. Create a Google review link shortcut. The first step in setting up text review invites is to create a Google review link shortcut. This allows you to send customers messages with a short link that they can click to review you quickly and easily.

3. Manage reviews. If you want to collect reviews, it’s crucial to show your customers that reviews matter to you—and that means managing them. Respond to negative reviews within 2 hours and positive ones within 24 hours. Showing your customers that you are responsive and open to taking their feedback will make them more willing to leave you reviews.

4. Change according to reviews. Another great way to increase collection and demonstrate your responsiveness is to implement changes according to the feedback you receive. Ashley Furniture Homestore crushes the competition by continuously improving their business through the valuable feedback they get from their customers.

5. Use a reputation management platform. Managing, responding to, collecting, and analyzing reviews can be quite a task for any team to take on. But using the right reputation management platform makes it easy. After adopting a platform, Vasa tripled their reviews (jumping from 2.9 to 4.0 in star rating) in just three years. A platform such a Podium makes managing reviews successfully a breeze for any local business of any size.