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8 Tips for Utilizing Testimonials for Good Reputation Management

April 23, 2010 By

Potential online customers look for reassurance that your products or services will meet their needs – one way they do this is through testimonials. They want to know what others think of their experience before purchasing, signing up or booking.

So it’s no surprise that sites like Yelp.com have sprung up to meet this demand…and if you’re a B2B firm, you may be faced with providing another form of a testimonial – references.

Providing customer testimonials on your own site is a great way to keep prospects engaged within your site.

Continue reading for 8 tips on how you can best integrate testimonials into your website and/or blog…these tips were provided to a web site promoting cabin rentals in Georgia but are applicable to a wide range of industries.

1. Leave testimonial in original text

Testimonials have a lot more credibility if they’re left in the writer’s original text. Of course you will want to edit it if it has a lot of typos or any profanity but the testimonial will be much more believable if you leave it in its original text.

2. Include person’s full name and other relevant data

To make the testimonial as meaningful and credible as possible, include the person’s full name, company, job position or location and age. Doing so makes the testimonial transparent to the reader – meaning they will trust it more.

3. Post small snippets in main site to support message

To make testimonials more meaningful, take relevant snippets and include them within your main site’s copy or on the side. Let’s take the rental cabin company for example. If you have a paragraph professing how much fun your cabins are for kids, include a testimonial supporting that fact somewhere nearby.

4. Create a dedicated testimonials page

Have a separate page where you include all testimonials in full in addition to using bits and pieces in your site like tip #3. Include a link entitled “see what others are saying here” after each snippet peppered through your site so visitors can easily access the full testimonials page.

5. Bold important parts of testimonials, points you want to get across

Bold parts of sentences to draw the reader’s eye to main points you want them to come away with – especially on long versions or on your dedicated page. Since most of us scan text online, we will notice bold face text. This will help customers understand what you want them to even if they don’t read the full testimonial.

6. Include testimonials in your blog too

While you have to be creative in the context you use testimonials, including them in your blog presents a great opportunity. You could perhaps include a section – “Customer Stories” – where you could provide a brief intro that would be interesting to someone checking out your services. You can then link to the full testimonial page on your site.

7. Encourage testimonials at each interaction with customers

If a customer expresses something nice about you, ask if they would be willing to allow you to use their words as a testimonial on your site. If you have any reviews on Yelp.com or other review sites, migrate them over to your site as well.

8. Encourage the use of pictures and videos

Give your testimonials an even bigger boost by including a picture or video from the customer. You can include the photo or video next to their testimonial and send them a link once it’s live so they can share it with family and friends.

Testimonials can sure be a fun part of online reputation management, providing you with kind words that you’re doing the right thing and motivating you to keep striving for the best.

As a side, remember there are rules governing the use of testimonials – now you must clearly disclose any material connections (like providing compensation for the testimonial) along with being transparent when a testimonial depicts results that are not typical.

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Online Marketing, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using Social Media and “Old” Content to Drive More Traffic to your Blog

April 5, 2010 By

If you have been blogging for a while like we have here at SEOe, you probably have a stock pile of content that your readers may find interesting and valuable.

Saying your content is “old” however can be a bit misleading…if your blog has tips, insights and other general observations about your niche, readers will find it useful long after you initially write it. Content like this can be referred to as “evergreen” content.

Our friends over at HubSpot recently conducted an experiment with their evergreen content – using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about the rich content that’s on their blog, not just what visitors see on the main page.

At SEOe, we publish 3 feature posts/articles each week so it’s likely visitors and subscribers have not read every one of them. But considering the structure of our blog and what we write about, something from 6 months ago is likely relevant today.

Continue reading to see how over the course of two months, HubSpot promoted carefully selected “evergreen” blog posts, podcasts and other things to promote on social media sites. Their goal was to generate additional traffic without spending time creating new content.

1. Content Selection

To narrow down what they chose to promote, the team found prior articles that received the most comments, traffic and links. Timely content like breaking news events was excluded as were articles they felt were no longer relevant.

2. Promotion

Over the course of two months, the team promoted 57 items on Facebook and Twitter. Considering differences between the two, the team promoted 3 content items per workday on Twitter and 1 per workday on Facebook.

Another factor they considered was positioning the content…which was important since they didn’t want to interfere with promoting their new stuff.  And they didn’t want to make people think they were clicking on something old so they promoted items in a conversational tone rather than listing the title like they do for new articles.

Here’s an example of one of their “tweets,” which they posed as a question:

Stuck in a lead generation rut? Learn some new tips & tricks in our comprehensive Lead Gen Marketing Hub! http://bit.ly/LeadGenHub

To see the effectiveness of this experiment, the HubSpot team tracked the change in social media traffic to the blog. They also created unique “bit.ly” links to each of the content items and tracked clicks to those. On average, evergreen content received 198 clicks along with more traffic from Facebook/Twitter to their main blog.

Here’s one easy way to drive more traffic to your blog that doesn’t require much effort to research and implement. If you have a blog that serves as a “knowledge” resource for your readers, consider particular posts that are still relevant and promote them through Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets.

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Five Really Dumb Grammatical Mistakes

April 2, 2010 By

We’re back talking about grammar today!!

You certainly know from reading web pages and blogs that a lot to good online writing is presenting your copy in a conversational tone…using written words to converse with your reader. In order to do this, we may have to break a few grammar rules. Ending sentences with prepositions, dangling a modifier or using ellipses liberally are just a few examples.

However, there are some grammar mistakes that are blatantly obvious to just about anyone who knows anything about grammar. Some mistakes, to put it bluntly, make you look stupid and can harm your credibility with potential customers.

Continue reading to learn five of these mistakes and how you can recognize the correct term to use when writing for your blog or website.

1. Your vs. You’re

Extremely common among bloggers, it’s easy to avoid this mistake if you take a minute and think about what you want to say. “Your” is a possessive pronoun – “your computer”, “your job” – things like that. You’re on the other hand is short for  you are, a contraction you use to say for example “you’re crazy for using bad grammar in your online copywriting!”

2. It’s vs. Its

Another common mistake that’s fortunately easy to spot. Again, take a minute and figure out what you’re trying to say. “It’s” is short for it is while “its” is another possessive pronoun. An easy rule of thumb – say the sentence out loud using “it is.” If it sounds goofy, then you should use “its.”

3. There vs. Their

A pretty common mistake that’s easy to make – especially in the rush of getting your thoughts down. I even make this mistake, catching it while proofreading.

“There” can be used to refer to a place (ex: I want to go there) or as a pronoun (ex: there is no need). “Their” on the other hand is a plural possessive pronoun (ex: their stuff, their jobs). Do a “that’s ours” test to see which one you should use. If you’re talking about more than one person and something they possess, “their will get you there.”

4. Affect vs. Effect

Another common mistake that even veteran online copywriters have to think about for a minute sometimes.

“Affect” is a verb while “effect” is a noun…it’s actually pretty easy to figure out which one you should use.  You cannot use “the” in front of a verb so think in terms of “the effect” and you can determine which one to use in your particular sentence.

5. Dangling Participles

Perhaps the most difficult to spot, this error can perhaps damage the flow of your entire piece and even confuse your readers. Basically, you’re opening phrase should modify what immediately follows. Consider the following:

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some apples

This sounds like your brother is bringing some rotten apples to you – what a gift!

Instead, this sentence should probably say:

My brother brought up some apples that have been rotting in the cellar for weeks.

Readers mentally expect the opening phrase to always modify what immediately follows. If the opening phrase doesn’t do this, you’ve left a dangling participle along with some confused readers.

These are just a few common online copywriting mistakes many writers commit. It’s important you carefully review copy at least a couple of times before posting. In fact, you should give your copy a good once over and solely focus on grammar to ensure you catch any mistakes.

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , ,

New Webinar Explores State of Inbound Marketing

February 22, 2010 By

Occasionally, we drop in on different presentations circulating online to give us insight into the state of the inbound (i.e. online) marketing industry. HubSpot’s 2010 report gives us some good insights into what’s going on.

The bottom line is this – inbound marketing techniques cost much less, around 60% in fact, than traditional media (outbound marketing) techniques. Therefore, considering the economic climate in 2009, social media and blogs in particular saw tremendous growth over the course of the year.

As you will see in the webinar, the cost per sales lead for inbound marketing channels is much lower. To illustrate, 63% of survey respondents say that the cost for generating a lead through blogs and social media came in lower than expectations…compare that to only 34% of respondents who say the same regarding telemarketing.

Results from HubSpot’s study also indicate that 51% of companies plan to spend more on inbound marketing in 2010. Much of this is due to the poor economy, as companies look to get more for their marketing dollar.

Another trend you will notice – smaller companies spend a higher proportion of their marketing budget on inbound marketing channels like blogs, social media and SEO.

The next section of the webinar focused on changes in business blogging and social media. One graph in particular illustrates the importance of good business blogging. As you will see, the more a company posts something on their blog, the higher the chance they will snag a new customer.

In the end, all inbound marketing channels have to work together in order for your efforts to be successful. You can’t simply focus on your blog without ensuring it is crawled and indexed by the search engines, for example. And you can’t simply focus on SEO without providing timely and valuable content to your readers.

Check out the webinar from HubSpot here – it takes about 30 minutes to watch the presentation but it’s well worth your time.

Filed Under: Online Marketing, SEO Technology Tagged With: , , , , ,

Seven Common Mistakes Beginning Bloggers Make

February 9, 2010 By

Building a blog for your business is a great way to build search engine rankings and develop a following online. All leading online marketing experts agree that providing consistent, relevant and interesting information about your niche through a blog goes a long way to building trust with prospective customers.

But at one time, we were new at something and probably made mistakes along the way. Blogging is no different on that score.

So if you’re just beginning or interested in starting a blog for your small business, here are 7 common mistakes you must avoid if your goal is to turn your blog into a traffic generator and revenue source.

1. Never launching it

Perhaps the most common mistake people make. You write your first post or two while killing some time. They’re great, informative and focused…but they never make it online. You have to get started to finish, and it’s not a blog until you actually publish something online.

2. Using a sub-domain (ex. myblog.wordpress.com)

Another common mistake is simply going to a blogging platform like WordPress and TypePad and opening an account. These are great utilities for posting and managing your blog but if you’re going to the trouble of starting a blog in the first place, it’s worth your time and money to invest in your own domain that you control from the beginning. It’s very difficult to change later on.

3. Spending too much time on design

Many blogs never get launched because the owner spends the majority of their blogging time worrying about design. Looks are great, but the core purpose of a blog is relevant content. Besides, you can easily change the design later on so focus on creating great content instead.

4. Not telling anyone about it

In a blog’s infancy, no one knows about it. There are no links to it and search engines are not ranking you, perhaps not even indexing it. Therefore, the only way to get traffic to it is through direct contact. Tell your friends online and in the flesh of your new blog and utilize social networks to spread the word.

5. Getting discouraged too early

Blogging is no different than most things in one regard – it takes time to build up to success. Give yourself at least six months and maybe even a year before suspending the blog for lack of traffic. It’s hard to get some momentum but once you do, good things start to happen.

6. Too many plugins and “blidgets”

Many bloggers make the mistake of loading their blog up with a bunch of bells and whistles without paying much attention to their content. Resist the temptation to do this and invest your time in content, comments and categories instead.

7. Monetizing too early

Search engines like Google make it pretty easy to throw some ads on your blog. If you’re serious, you need to focus on building an audience first and worry about monetization later. Posting ads for revenue too early will discourage people from looking at your blog long before you have built the critical mass needed to make any real money with it.

Blogging can be fun and rewarding but it takes time, as any real success does. Don’t be discouraged, keep working at it and your efforts will pay off in the long run.

*Subject for this post courtesy of HubSpot’s Blogging Team. Subscribe to their email listserv at http://www.hubspot.com/.

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , ,
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