Referencing testimonials about your brand that originated on social media sites is a great way to build up trust with your market for a number of reasons. Generally speaking, social media mentions come about organically, when real people choose to mention your company – perhaps with prompting from a marketing or ad campaign, perhaps with no prompting at all – and their lack of agenda makes them all the more powerful, adding real credibility to your brand. They are easy to track back to the source, making them particularly trustworthy. Often they form part of a conversation or exchange, so they can insight users to engage with the brand, helping to promote it online.
Twitter mentions in particular are definitely worth collating and reusing for promotional purposes on your website; short, to-the-point and easy to track, filter and embed, they are a great quotable source to have at your disposal.
Why and How Use Them On Your Website
Quoting social media builds up a trust around your brand for the reasons mentioned above. Referencing it on your website creates positive social media context and puts I front and centre, making you appear friendlier.
Any use of social media review should be at least semi controlled – unless you’re feeling very brave – because you can’t control what people will say about you but you can control what appears on your homepage. And it is easy to be selective about the Tweets that you grab for your site.
- Firstly, you should track Tweets that mention your brand. This is easy to do following instructions from within Twitter
- Secondly, take the time to have a quick read through. Not only will this allow you to highlight ones that you want to place on your site but it will also give you some valuable insight into what people are saying about your brand
- Add the Twitter mentions of your choice to your Twitter favorites by ‘starring’ them
- Take your Twitter favorites RSS feed and use it on your website