The power of social proof should never be underestimated.
A business can tell people how great they are, share lots of stories, and even provide evidence via case studies. However, the most powerful and the most persuasive marketing and sales messages come from our own happy customers.
Reviews show future potential clients that you are a credible, trustworthy business. And, that you go above and beyond to deliver a great product or service. These positive recommendations are the key to helping customers make decisions.
Once you have client testimonials you really want to make the most of them since you worked so hard and did such a great job getting them. This is why you should repurpose your client testimonials so you can share them far and wide. Therefore, they don’t end up just sitting on your website. Here at Content 10x, I regularly repurpose client testimonials to make sure that everyone sees them!
Here are some unique and clever ways you can repurpose your testimonials to get more exposure and more clients.
Why are client testimonials so powerful?
I don’t know about you, but as soon as I am looking to book a hotel, I head straight over to TripAdvisor. Then I have a look at the reviews. If there is a large number of negative reviews, I won’t be booking.
Same with restaurants on Yelp! If you are stuck between two places and can’t decide where to eat, you’ll likely let the reviews decide for you. So, when it comes to your business, you really should care about getting positive reviews.
Thanks to the internet and social media, recommendations and testimonials are more prominent than ever before. We can see thousands of reviews at a click of a button and we trust real customers much more than a sales pitch.
Reviews share the customer’s story which is exactly what people want to hear about. But this also provides you with brilliant marketing material too!
So, once you get a piece of marketing gold in the form of a testimonial, what do you do with it? Yes, you should celebrate because you deserve it! But let’s take it that one step further and repurpose client testimonials for the whole world to see…
Repurposing written testimonials
There’s lots of ways to get testimonials, but one of the quickest and easiest ways is by sending your clients an email asking for one. Don’t be shy about it, after all if you don’t ask you don’t get!
Hopefully, they will then write back to you with a testimonial, most likely in the body of the reply email. This is great as written testimonials are incredibly versatile.
Here’s how you can repurpose a written testimonial.
Adding testimonials to your website
Adding a client testimonial to your website is generally the first repurposing step everyone takes. This is a smart thing to do as people will check out your website before buying your product or service so it’s a brilliant place to start.
However, don’t just add it to your testimonials page, feel free to sprinkle them like magical fairy dust across your entire website!
Maybe the testimonial is for a particular product or service? If so, add it to the relevant page on your website as well.
Other great places to add testimonials are on your homepage, about and contact pages. This way, no matter where someone lands on your website, they are going to see your glowing reviews.
Create quote graphics
You don’t have to have a graphic designer to transform your testimonials into eye-catching social media images. There are many great websites out there that make it so easy to create your own. One example is Canva.
You can then resize the images for each social media platform by adjusting the dimensions.
Here’s an example of a social image we created for Twitter from a testimonial we received from our awesome client, Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert:
Remember to include the testimonial along with an image of the client, plus their name and title to make sure that it looks credible to your audience.
If the testimonial is really long and wouldn’t look good on social media. Why not break it up into smaller quotes and create more than one graphic? This gives you more opportunity to post and makes sure your visuals will have an impact.
You can then share these images on all your social networks. This in turn will bring attention to your business success and celebrate your hard work. You just might bag some new clients too!
Repurposing video testimonials
What if your client goes that extra mile and provides you with an awesome video testimonial? Like this one we received from our client Emma Mills of Mi PA.
As with your written testimonials, you should share the video on your website on as many pages as you see fit.
Create video teasers
The best thing about a video testimonial is it gives you a great opportunity to share video content on social media.
You’ll want to consider how long your video is. If it’s ten-minute long testimonial, firstly, wow! Your clients must love you! But is that going to be engaging on social media? Plus, for platforms like Instagram which only allow videos up to 60 seconds long it won’t be possible for you to upload the full-length video.
What you can do though is cut that video down and pick out the best bits. These are the bits that praise you the most (but, remember to check this is okay with the person who provided it first).
These short video teasers will be great to share across all your social platforms. This means a potential client might see them and think, ‘Hey! That sounds like a company I want to be doing business with.’
Here’s an example of how we edited Emma’s testimonial to make it more suitable for sharing on social.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cop8hGk1CCQ
Top Tip: It’s a good idea to add captions to your video testimonial as most people watch videos on silent when scrolling through social media.
Sharing client testimonials on YouTube
If you have a YouTube channel, that would be another great place to share your video testimonial. You could even start a client testimonial playlist, similar to the Instagram highlight reel! This way, you can send potential customers over there with a link to check out what your happy clients think of you.
Sharing client testimonials on social media
Even if you have a video testimonial, whilst we really recommend sharing video teasers on social media because video is always by far the most engaging form of content, you should still consider creating some quote graphics based on the video testimonial as well. For example, here is a quote graphic that we created from the video that Emma Mills provided us with:
You might think it’s not a good idea to share your testimonials on Instagram Stories as they disappear after 24 hours, but don’t let this put you off. You can share both written and video testimonials on Instagram Stories.
If you want to share a video testimonial on Instagram Stories and it’s over 15 seconds long, Instagram will split your video into 15 second sections.
One thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need to create a vertical version of the video or image before posting it on your story like this one we used for Emma’s video:
Now they may only appear on Instagram Stories for 24 hours, but I’ve got a solution to that…why not create a highlights folder called testimonials or client feedback? You can then add the story image and videos there too so they sit there permanently right at the top of your profile.
It’s nice to have testimonials all together in one place, it’ll make it easier for potential customers or clients to scroll through them all!
Here’s what it looks like on my Instagram profile:
LinkedIn is another great place to showcase client testimonials as it’s the central hub for business. Whether you are looking to find new potential clients or connect with others in the industry, it’s the perfect place to show off your achievements.
One thing you want to make sure that you do is add both your video and written testimonials as media to your profile.
In the media section of your LinkedIn profile, you can add graphics and links. So, for written testimonials, you can add the social media images you made and for video, you can share the YouTube link if you’ve uploaded it.
It’s very similar to Instagram highlights in the sense that these testimonials remain on your profile permanently for everyone to see. Another great portfolio of social proof for future clients to access!
Repurpose client testimonials for your podcast
If you happen to have one, you can include client testimonials in podcasts too! I said don’t be shy and I mean it, don’t think of it as bragging or showing off, think about it as growing your business!
You can extract the audio from a video testimonial and include it on your podcast at the start, end or halfway through.
One of my favorite podcasts is the Model Health Show with Shaun Stevenson and he does exactly this with his podcast reviews. He doesn’t necessarily receive audio reviews, but what he does is he takes written reviews submitted to podcast apps, and he turns them into audio — clever!
You just have to read them out loud yourself or if that feels a little strange you could hire a voice-over artist to read them out for you.
Repurpose client testimonials for print
Another great way to market to your target audience is to include you client testimonials on your giveaways at events.
At events you will encourage people to find out more about your business and a great review gives you credibility.
When I spoke at Podcast Movement, I had leaflets with lots of testimonials printed on them. I also had a huge banner made for the booth that has testimonials all over it!
So, if you are speaking at an event or even just attending, be sure to consider ways to get testimonials onto leaflets, banners, business cards etc.
If you have more than one testimonial to choose from, make sure you pick the ones most relevant to the event and from your most well known clients in that industry.
In conclusion
I hope that these repurposing ideas have inspired you to truly make the most out of your client testimonials, you earned them and you deserve to show them off.
And if you don’t have any client testimonials yet, hopefully, this will motivate you to start asking for them. I’m sure your clients will be happy to provide them.
So, now it’s time to start broadcasting all this social proof in creative ways to show how great you are, prove your credibility and bag more clients. Go for it!
Thanks for reading!
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Originally published at https://www.content10x.com on August 22, 2019.
