If you’re doing a good job, your business has customers who love you and who love to talk about you.

You’ve spent a lot of time building up your business, and now it’s time to find those customers that think the world of you. You’ll want to reach out to them, thank them, and really treat them special. These are your advocates, and they provide the coveted ‘Word of Mouth’ advertising for your business.

You can group these advocates into different lists, so that when you are ready, you can easily motivate them even more than they already are about your product/ service. Here are some suggestions:

Employees – Your employees can be the top advocates for your business. Your know your best employees are those who love what they do. Ask them to talk about your business on Twitter and Facebook if they’d like, and to post that they work for you on their various social media profiles, like LinkedIn.

Best Customers – Find out who your best customers are, like those who have bought the most from you, or responded favorably on surveys. Then based on your criteria, create your “best customer” list.

Google Alerts – Sign up for FREE Google Alerts with your business name, your name, even you r competitor’s name. See if there is anyone who keeps talking about your business more than a few times. Call this your “Google advocates” list.

FourSquare – If you’ve got a local business, monitor who becomes the Mayor of your business on FourSquare. When they check in, make sure you know and you find them and give them a special discount or deal. They’ll be sure to visit often and tell their friends. Call this list your “FourSquare Mayor” list.

Twitter – Search your twitter handle on twitter.com. You will see who is talking positively about you. We use TweetDeck and set up a variety of keywords to track. Then from that easy interface we can manage our conversations with them. Make sure you RT them asking them to send you an email, include your email address. “Thanks for the RT! Email me at [email address] for a special deal!” You only have 140 characters so make sure you can fit it all and you will get their email address so you can start to build your email list of “Twitter advocates.”

Facebook – Create a Facebook Fan Page and monitor who is speaking up with comments and likes. Set up a “Reviews” Tab and ask your followers what they think about you. Then message them back thanking them. Ask for their email address so you can send them something (free product, discount.) For anyone who “Likes” what you write, add them as a friend on Facebook. Then message them and ask for their email address as well. Start to build your list of “Facebook advocates”.

Blog – See who’s commented on your blog. Most blog platforms enable you to see their email address. These will be your “blog advocates.”

Now that you’ve collected all of your advocates, keep this list fresh at least every month. Then be sure to reach out to them with an email marketing campaign, thank them and give them some extra special love.

Are you finding your best advocates? If so, how?

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