where should clients post kudos?

<p>In the last 10 months, my wife and I arranged the weddings of our two oldest daughters. Okay, my wife did most of the heavy lifting. I found the photographers. ;-)</p>

<p>After each wedding, I noticed that the vendors we worked with were not shy about asking for reviews. Not pushy, but not shy. One of music outfits actually provided fairly precise instructions. I was happy to give people good recommendations. But it made me realize that I've never done this with my brides or other clients. I get lovely letters from clients afterwards and once or twice I've asked if I could quote them on my site. But of course it's not the same.</p>

<p>I'm rather tentative about this. What I think I'd do is ask a happy client if they'd be willing to recommend me online, and perhaps suggest a couple different places where they could do this. But my problem is, I have no idea where to suggest.</p>

<p>So: (1) If I were to ask for a client review, would it be inappropriate to suggest to the client WHERE they might go to post a review?</p>

<p>And (2): If I were making a recommendation, where would I recommend they go? I have no idea. I'm registered with a couple lead services but don't really care for them.</p>

<p>Any ideas?</p>

<p>Will</p>

<p>I think it's good to ask for testamonials William. You could do a follow up email to each of your clients politely asking them if they'd be happy to say a few words about you, and asking permission to include the comments on your site, marketing materials etc. They don't have to reply to the e-mail if they don't want to, which makes it less intrusive than a phone call. </p>

<p>The Knot and WeddingWire seem to be the most common. I have my WeddingWire reviews in a slideout tab on my blog. They also have a handy feature built-in to request reviews. </p>

<p>Forget about WeddingWire. They changed their listings algorithm so only those who pay for a listing show in the overview for any city/geo. Your name/business/reviews will show up if you perform a google search but that's about it - and how likely is it for any couple to specifically seek any vendor out by name on Wedding Wire? They're going to look at the overview for their given region and will only see those who pay so they won't see any free listings, no matter how awesome your reviews. So unless you're paying for an upgraded listing, WeddingWire is useless [regardless their claims to the contrary].</p>

<p>Looking at the rate google has been evolving, I now specifically ask clients if they'd be so awesome and post a review to my google listing. Let's face it, people use google for almost anything, it's the perfect place to host reviews as well. I'm also not a huge fan in giving more power to websites such as WW or TK who really are just in the business of making money from all sides [incl. our advertising money] to then turn around and tell brides how useless/overpriced we really are and how easy it is to DIY almost every aspect of your wedding. </p>

<p>Thanks to Lindsay, Alex and Katrin for your responses.</p>

<p>I have the free listing with Wedding Wire, that's all. Seems fairly useless. Don't have a listing with The Knot: it's quite expensive and I haven't so far been able to justify it.</p>

<p>@Katrin: I like your idea of posting to my "google listing" (as you call it). Only problem is, I'm not sure what you're talking about. If I search for myself in Google (while logged out of my Google account), all I see is a bunch of links to my website, my blog, articles I've written, etc. I don't see a place where somebody could post a review. Are you talking about my Google+ page, or something else?</p>

<p>Will</p>