Bizsuccess

Friday, October 1, 2010

By: Susan Gunelius

Customer reviews and testimonials are an excellent tool to help promote your business and position your brand as trustworthy.  Not only is it important that you take the time to obtain customer reviews and testimonials that actually work, but you also need to make sure that potential customers can find those reviews and testimonials that could help move them from browsers to buyers.

Of course, you can publish a list of testimonials and reviews on a page within your small business website, but if you are able to obtain reviews and testimonials frequently, then keeping the testimonials and reviews fresh on your website can give them a big boost.  Similarly, if you can authenticate the source of those reviews and testimonials, your small business website can get an even bigger boost!  There’s a reason Amazon customer reviews are so popular — they work to move browsers to buyers.

Did you know you can automatically display customer reviews published in your business listing on Kudzu.com on your own website or blog by simply copying and pasting some HTML code into your site?  In just a few seconds, you can have a great looking box in your business blog’s sidebar or on a page within your small business website that automatically updates with new reviews as customers publish them within the Kudzu Business Center!  You can even customize the Kudzu Business Center Reviews Widget by selecting the number of reviews you want to appear within the widget box you create, the minimum star rating that can be published within your widget so only good reviews appear on your site, colors, font size, box size, and more!  You can follow the link to learn more about how to create a Kudzu Reviews Widget, see a sample, and get specific steps to create your own.

Another great source to obtain reviews and testimonials is LinkedIn.  The LinkedIn Recommendations feature is easy to use and allows you to request recommendations from any of your LinkedIn connections.  You can follow the link to learn more about LinkedIn Recommendations.  There is not a feature to automatically add LinkedIn recommendations to another website or blog yet, but it is something that developers and users have been requesting for quite some time in the LinkedIn Developer Network.  Hopefully, such a tool will be released soon as it’s definitely one that businesses could use!  In the meantime, you can still obtain recommendations from your LinkedIn connections and copy them to your small business website.

And remember, reviews and testimonials can come from a variety of sources, so don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Check out my list of 10 sources for expert opinions and testimonials for more creative ideas.