Michael Bergbauer - September 12, 2011
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.
