Testimonials and Blogs

It’s no secret that the majority of business we see is from word-of-mouth referrals. If you shop at a particular chain store with blue letters on their sign, you were probably told by someone that they had good deals there. Your health care provider was probably referred to you by someone you trust. And if you’re “thinking smart” about your internet marketing, you should also be considering ways word of mouth can happen on the web.

We spend a lot of time talking about business blogs around here, so you may be surprised when I name a great option for word-of-mouth referrals, or marketing if you think of it that way, at the beginning of the next paragraph. This isn’t to say that you should give up on your own blogging efforts. You wouldn’t stop answering the phone just because you got an email account! After all, we call it “word of mouth” and not “word of screen” for a reason. That doesn’t mean raiding the phone lines is the only way to get referrals.

Personal blogs can be a great source of business referral! One of our writers created a blog entry about her recent experience at the dentist’s office and posted it on Page 1’s blog. Her very positive raving is a good example of how people reading their friends’ blogs might follow a link back to your website, or may reply to the post and ask for more particulars about your services.

If you have a patient or client who expresses his or her appreciation for your excellent work, request a written testimonial, and if the person has a blog, ask him or her to post an entry with a link to your site. (You can go to some real depth with this and link their testimonial to their blog and so on, depending on how interested you are in networking your website.) The link will add a little more of that value to your site that we’re always looking for, but the greater reward will be when a new client or patient arrives and says, when you ask, that they got your name from Lydia’s work blog.