This week Domino’s Pizza made a really brave and innovative move by posting live customer feedback on a display in Times Square. The comments were edited for language and relevance but not for positive or negative opinion. This kind of transparancy has become one of the hallmarks of social media.
It made me think about how important it is to get real and believable testimonials from customers. It is no longer good enough to have a ‘Testimonials’ page on your website full of glowing, well thought out recommendations. People need to believe that they are 100% real. Social media gives us the opportunity to prove the validity of our customer feedback and although we aren’t all going to be as brave as, or have the budget of Domino’s Pizza there are a few ways we can collect convincing testimonials.
If someone says something good about you on Twitter mark the tweet as a favorite. Once you have collected a few you can link to your favorites page from your website, blog, Facebook page or email signature. You can even embed the live stream of your favorites directly onto your website.
YouTube
If someone is speaking their praise direct into camera there can be no denying that it is real. Video testimonials can really work. Try to keep them short and to the point and most importantly in the words of the person giving feedback. Try not to put words into their mouths.
Channelship have done this really well as have the Kerry County Enterprise Board however I do feel the Enterprise Board could have benefitted more from a lot of short videos rather than editing them all toghther. Internet Video viewers have a short attention span and an 8 minute long video would be enough to put some people watching.
Blogging
We’ve mentioned Buyers Broker’s Blog here before. They use blogging to display customer testimonials, written in their own language and including a photograph. They are very believable.
Screen Grabbing Facebook posts
It can be frustrating if people compliment you on Facebook as even though they have gone out of their way to recommend you the post is only visable to people who visit your page, it will not appear on the news streams of people who like your page unless they happen to be a friend of the person posting it.
To share these comments with your Facebook likes you can screen grab them and post them as photos to your Facebook page.
You can grab recommendations from anywhere on the Internet forums and add them as a photo album to Facebook or even Google+.
What creative ways do you have of collecting testimonials from your customers? I’d love to hear your ideas so please leave a comment below.
Maybe it’s just the Irish self-effacing character in me but I wouldn’t have thought of doing this with my Twitter stream. I do favourite these kind of tweets, but I do it so that when my self-esteem has taken a knock, I go back to read them again to give myself a little boost – never thought of sharing them as testimonials before now.
I don’t do it as much as I should. But there’s nothing like writing a blog post on it to spur me into action. I know what you mean though, it does seem like boasting to use these as testimonials however they are so much more effective than the static ones you might find on a website I think we need to get over our bashfulness 😉
I never have the balls to put up testimonials on my site – you’re probably right, it’s the Irishness in us. I think there’s two forms of testimonial – one for your service and then you as a person. It annoys me a little when I see someone retweeting praise someone’s given them as a person. For example if Mrsxyz retweets “RT @MrABC: @Mrsxyz, you’re fantastic and I love your work” as it seems a bit cocky. If I get a bit of praise on Twitter, I prefer just to tweet them a thanks. However, I don’t have a problem with some retweeting an initiative I may have set up. For example “RT @MrABC The @xyzInitiative really got me thinking more about blogging. Check it out on http://www.xyzinitiative.com” doesn’t annoy me.
Ditto Marie, or screen grabbing facebook. Do you have any posts on how to do either? I was advised to add testamonials to my website as a new company so although felt uncomfortable with it at first felt it was something I had to do. As you say though Amanda, nothing like the real thing.
I agree Simon, there is no way I could ReTweet something nice someone has said about me. However somehow I don’t think it’s a bad thing to share them on a website! There’s obviously some rule in my head that thinks one is all right and the other isn’t.
Having said that these tweets are real testimonials, why should we be more scared to share them than the ones we artificially extract from people for our Website or Linkedin?
Dee I’m going to do a video on embedding favourites this week. Are you on PC or Mac? I’ll recommend a screen grabbing app for you.
Thanks for the mention Amanda.
We see video as a very exclusive breadcrumb. When it comes to testimonials, it is a much nicer way to digest what people said about you or your company. Those videos, though, should not only reside in the “testimonials” page of our websites, but also in our YouTube channel, LinkedIn company page, other pages of our site and Facebook pages for instance.
I never thought of favouriting tweets that are complimentary – great idea.
I use Louder Voice to collect reviews – they then show up on each product page and I can also have them showing up alternately on the home page 🙂
They are so important especially when you are selling something online.
Hi Lorna,
I agree customer reviews for e-commerce are essential. I love the way Louder Voice works, better than a mere testimonial it gives feedback on the actual product.