Online testimonials are a great way to market your business. Fortunately, you have a number of options and venues to solicit and display testimonials and reviews to promote your website and business.

• Local Review Sites and Directories: These are great, classic ways to begin collecting testimonials. Directories like Google Places and Yelp tend to attract testimonials on their own, without as much promotion on your part, when compared to other testimonial collection methods. As an added benefit, Google tends to aggregate the reviews from these sites and incorporate them into search results. If you keep your accounts on these sites active and are able to collect numerous testimonials, you may improve your positions in the SERPs.
• Facebook Profile: Facebook now offers an easy and straightforward way to collect testimonials. When you set up a business profile, you will get a “Reviews” tab on your page. Make sure this tab is visible to visitors and encourage your customers to leave reviews via your other social media accounts (including prompts on your Facebook wall). This is a great way to easily collect reviews that you can use or display elsewhere, such as a testimonial page on your main website.
• YouTube Reviews: Video testimonials are a dynamic way to show off the quality of your product or service. Ask customers who are taping their testimonials to share a link with you, so you can promote the video through your own channels. Soliciting video testimonials via the web may be trickier than asking for written ones. If you have a lot of face-to-face business with clients, ask if they would be willing to let you tape their testimonial for your YouTube channel. 

It’s important to remember that if you decide to make a strong push toward cultivating testimonials, you must be able to respond to your customers. Thank customers for taking the time to give you a testimonial, and always be sure to address negative comments, should they arise. If potential customers can see that you took steps to remedy problems with another customer, it can make a negative review look quite positive.

In recent weeks, Twitter has announced that it will be updating its look and feel.  Many of us who use Twitter on a daily basis are excited for these new changes.  For those of you who haven’t heard that Twitter is updating, here is a run down of some of the items that it will be changing:

Pictures and Movies in the interface – In the past when someone Tweeted a picture or video by way of Twitpic or Twitvid, one would click the link in the Tweet, and it would take them off page and open a new tab or browser to view the photo or video.  With this update, these photos and videos can now be featured in the right rail of the interface by clicking in the tweet area, but not on the Tweet.  If you click on the link that is contained within the Tweet, you will still be taken offsite.

Twitter Profile Information – Currently, if you were to click on a username (@morevisibility) in your twitter stream, you will be taken to their Twitter profile page where you can see additional information and their most current Tweets.  With this new update, a click on the username will display a mini profile in the right rail.  From here you can then go a step further to read more about them or see related content.

Endless Stream – When using Twitter presently, you must scroll to the bottom of the screen and then click a button to view more past tweets.  With Twitters’ new rollout, you will not need to click buttons to receive older content.  As you scroll, content will update automatically and you will be able to see all the past information.

Overall, I think these changes will be great for Twitter, as it will keep users viewing one page more often and it will be easier to see related content as you browse through all of your Tweets.  Twitter has stated that this rollout will be happening over the next few weeks.  As you see this rollout happening, let us know what you think!

Managing online accounts, social media logins and other profiles is not something new.  In fact, our Executive Vice President of Client Strategy, Danielle Leitch wrote a piece in a previous newsletter aiming to alert companies as to how important it is to manage their online accounts.

While the article mostly discussed social media passwords, it is important to have a plan to manage all of your business accounts.  Some of the common mistakes we see are that companies task their employees with setting up and managing multiple online profiles for their business.  If no plan is in place, the employee may simply use their company email address.  In most situations this is ok, but if the employee leaves, it can be a headache for the next person responsible for these accounts.  The email may be easy to figure out, but the password could prove to be more difficult to find. 

To make it easier for online profile management, it is important for a company to set up email addresses that are not necessarily tied to any one employee.  It is also important that there be a way to keep track of these various email addresses and passwords, so that it is easy for other people to get access.  A spreadsheet or a CRM software package can be used to track various usernames, emails and passwords.

You may even wish to create email usernames based on the types of account that it is associated with.  Examples:

• social@yourcompany.com – Use for Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• pr@yourcompany.com – Use for press release syndication services and other public relations type services.
• local@yourcompany.com – Use this for any type of local search sites that you manage such as Google Places or yelp.

It is also important to instruct employees not to use personal addresses when creating various accounts.  This can be even more troublesome if that employee leaves, or someone else needs to take over their duties. In some cases it is also very difficult to get the email changed if you wish to consolidate listings.  When a personal email is used, it also opens up that employee to sharing personal information.