From time to time I write about tools that I use in my business, normally in a list post. You might remember one of my most recent posts, “10 Free Tools for Your Online Marketing Toolbox“. Today, I want to focus on 1 free tool/tip and how I use it in my business.
You may know about Twitter.com’s favorite feature. This gives you the option to tag a tweet as a favorite by hovering over the Tweet in your stream and clicking the link called, “favorite”. I used to use it as many people I know did to earmark a Tweet that I want to refer back to. In my opinion it is comparable to submitting a link to Stumbleupon.com.
A very effective way to use the favorite button as a business owner is to instead “Favorite” those tweets in which you are complimented about your expertise, services or articles. Many times when I connect with someone I met on Social Media IRL (In Real Life), I tweet about it right afterwards. So I may say something like, “I just got off a call with the talented @bizguru – Very smart lady. Contact her for your small biz branding needs!” Often times, people mention me in similar tweets.
The idea here is that you can use your Tweets by others that compliment you and your business as a “twitter testimonial”. Of course, in a previous post, I explained the power of testimonials for your small business. So here is how you can use your Tweets as Testimonials.
1. In your blog’s Sidebar You can showcase your twitter testimonials in the sidebar via a widget. There is a plugin called Tweet-stimonials that makes this pretty easy to do. Once you have favorited your tweets where clients or colleagues say good things about you, the plugin uses the favorites to flag your testimonials. Here is a link to the plugin: http://spyr.me/plugins/tweetstimonials/
Twitter Testimonials
Once you upload the plugin to your WordPress blog and activate it, navigate to your widgets dashboard. You will then see the Tweet-stimonials widget in the available widget area. Set it up accordingly, save your settings and then you will see it on your blog. So will your website visitors who may be thinking about working with you. Win/Win
2. In a separate testimonials page on your blog You can create a page in your blog that is strictly for showcasing testimonials. You can showcase a variety of testimonials here, both those you have received via emails and was given permission to use on your site. As well, you can show the testimonials that have come in via Twitter.
First step is to take a Screenshot or Screen Capture of the Tweet that mentions you. You can do so with number of tools. My favorite tool for this is Jingproject.com Once you have done that, save it as an image file. You can then go ahead and insert the image(s) in the relevant testimonials page on your blog.
3. On Product Sales Pages or Services Information Pages on your blog When you create pages that promote your products and services, prospective buyers like to see social proof about your expertise. So it is good practice to include testimonials on these kinds of web pages. Tweet-Testimonials are no less. They can work quite effectively here too.
Go ahead and put this rarely used but effective tool/tip to work in your business today.
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