If you’re new to content marketing, it can best be defined as using timely, relevant and high-value content to build relationships with your target audiences. To sell without selling. Content can be in the form of blog posts, webinars, email, whitepapers, infographics and more.

The challenge with content marketing for most business owners, though, is determining where to start and what formats will help them meet their objectives.

With that in mind, here is the first question in a series about various business objectives and the content marketing strategies and services to help you achieve those objectives:

Question: What content marketing service do you recommend when your website isn’t getting enough web traffic?

Answer: Blog Writing and Management

Studies are consistently showing that blogging can have a powerful effect on increasing web traffic. In fact, companies that use blogging effectively and strategically can see an increase in web traffic of 92%.

While there is plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of blogging, there are a few harsh realities about blogging that many companies face once they begin to implement it on their own.

Reality No. 1: A Business Blog Takes Time

For every blogging success story, there are far too many abandoned and ineffective blogs.  Building an effective blog requires a significant amount of effort, time and persistence.

If your company’s resources are already stretched to their limits, trying to blog on your own could lead to a dead end and a failure to meet your web traffic objectives.

Reality No. 2: Blogging Requires Advanced Skills

Building an effective blog means:

• Doing research on the interests and needs of your prospects;
• Performing keyword research to align your content with how prospects are searching online;
• Promoting posts effectively in social channels for more exposure;
• Reading and analyzing analytics to determine the effectiveness of your blogging strategy; and
• Knowing when to continue a blogging strategy or when to make adjustments.

While you may have the time to build a blog, you also need these skills in order to see a measurable ROI from your time investment.

How a Blogging Service Helps

Here are five ways a blogging service will help you get increased traffic to your website.

1. Quicker ROI – It’s possible to see results in a few months from a blogging service. If you tried enrolling in blogging courses to learn how to do it yourself or delegating blogging to one of your employees, it may take years to see any traction (that is, if you don’t give up when you fail to see any results.)

2. Expert Insight – Leveraging the knowledge and expertise of someone outside your organization helps you overcome the knowledge gaps that amateur bloggers face, especially when it comes to attracting new website visitors.

3. More Effective Content – Though you may be an expert in your business, there’s no guarantee that you will be able to write about what you do in an engaging way that will help you communicate your expertise. While your goal may be to get more website traffic, your content should also help you generate leads and close sales.

4. Data-Driven Decisions – Along with a monthly analytics report, a blogging service can use data from web analytics to help you spot trends and opportunities to get more results, including increased web traffic, from your blog.

5. Cost Savings – While the cost for a monthly blogging service may seem like just another expense, each published post is actually an investment in your marketing that can bring you web traffic for years to come.

The Wrap Up

I have tried various content marketing techniques over the years to attract new web visitors, but nothing has worked as well as blogging.

I have also seen companies get excited about the potential results of blogging but saw no results because they tried handling their blogging in-house instead of trusting in a partnership that would have benefited them in the long run.

I hope you enjoyed the first post in this series. Let me know in the comments below your questions about how content marketing can help you meet your business objectives. I’ll be glad to answer them in future posts.

Jeff Machado is a content marketing strategist at Fiore Communications. You can follow him on Twitter for more insights on content marketing.

(Photo via Design by Zouny on Flickr)

He is a teacher who focuses on the bigger picture — educating others on how they can achieve true health and reach their potential through a healthy lifestyle – that is Dr. Montilla’s Big Idea.

It is this shift from a focus on traditional chiropractic care — treating headaches, lower back pain and neck pain — to being an advocate for a healthy lifestyle beginning with a healthy spine.

It is what motivates him and drives the conversation with both his patients and the community.

We were able to speak with Dr. Montilla recently about the inspiration behind his Big Idea and how that influences his practice.

FC: What are chiropractors traditionally known for and what are some common reasons patients see you?

Chiropractors have been known to focus on musculoskeletal issues that can lead to headaches, lower back pain and neck pain. Chiropractic works wonders in that area. But, those are just symptoms of an underlying problem. Your nervous system regulates everything! Chiropractic works by removing interference and giving the body a fighting chance to express health. Chiropractic is about bringing balance to the body and allowing the body to maximize its potential.

Patients come to me because they want to change their lifestyle. They want to correct the cause of their problem. I don’t claim to heal or cure anything. The body does that. As Chiropractors we don’t target disease by any means. I work with individuals to design a lifestyle approach through specific chiropractic, nutrition, exercising, etc.

FC: When someone visits your site, it’s pretty obvious that your Big Idea is that “you can achieve true health and reach your potential.” How did you come up with this Big Idea?

It’s simple. People are suffering. This country is suffering. My community is suffering. This is why I do what I do. This how I came up with my “BIG IDEA.”

My family has been affected by disease. Disease such as: Cancer, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Heart Disease and Degeneration. Research proves that they can easily be prevented through a healthier lifestyle. I am on a mission to make sure that many are aware of the opportunities.

Our bodies are programmed a certain way. When there is interference, our body will continue to break down. Remove what is not allowing your body to function properly and great things can happen.

I am dedicated to providing hope; helping others make lifestyle changes that can affect everyone. I believe that one loses hope when they lose their pulse.

My Big Idea is my big WHY.  Get the Big Idea and all else will follow. I want others to experience that. Remove interference and give your body what it needs and amazing things can happen!

FC: What are some different ways you strive to be more than just a chiropractor to your patients?

I am involved in my patients’ lives. I consider them family. I hold their hand through the healing process. Educating, facilitating and empowering!

FC: How has your Big Idea helped you connect with a larger audience, especially people who may have never heard of Verity Health Center or met you before?

It has allowed me to reach out to people that I would never think I would touch. I have been invited to speak at public schools, corporations, and local companies establish curricula that can help everyone save money by making better health choices. Many have gotten rid of their medications or decreased their dosages, after consulting with their medical doctors. All through changing their lifestyle.

It has made in impact in lives of the young as well as the elderly. Whether people come to Verity or not, I want to challenge all to make better health choices. There is much work to do.

FC: What connection have you seen between your Big Idea and how you have been able to grow Verity Health Center?

We are creating a movement where people are making health a priority. They are empowered to not be part of a system, but take matters into their own hands. They are making better health decisions. They are able to enjoy life to its fullest!

FC: You have frequent events to encourage the Tallahassee community to reach true health and their full potential. How do your events relate to your Big Idea?

Each event is geared to bettering the individual.

“Shop with the Doc” is about educating my patients and the community on how eating healthy is easy, how you can save money, and what is and isn’t healthy. If we can do it with a tight budget, so can they! It’s important to me that people feel a sense of empowerment.

“Women’s Night” is intended for mothers, wives and women to have a night to focus on things that they like. It is a night where they are stress-free and enjoy the company of adults.

“Kids’ Day” is about creating a healthy environment for children. We provide a healthy breakfast with clean entertainment. For parents, it is geared to help surround themselves with like-minded individuals wanting to provide the healthiest lifestyle for their kids.

Big Idea Partnerships

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 3

Big Ideas don't stand on their own. They work in partnerships as well, as seen by Verity's Women's Night that brought together multiple local businesses to serve their clients.

FC: What are some other ways that you get the message out about your Big Idea?

Educate. Go to events and meet the community on their grounds. I like to personally shake hands. Serve.

FC: Why would you suggest that other businesses take the time to define their Big Idea?

With no Big Idea, there is no direction. There is no drive. There is no passion. You eventually will hit a dead end.

My Big Idea allows for me to love what I do. You must make it about others — what they need.

Zig Ziglar said it best, “You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want!”  I want others to thrive.

Want to learn more about Dr. Montilla’s Big Idea? Like Verity Health Center on Facebook today.

What lessons have you learned from Dr. Montilla’s Big Idea and how he uses it to let others know about his business? Let us know in the comments!

Yet, when you look at the time and skills it takes to actually get results from content marketing, it is easy to get discouraged before you even get started. The overwhelmed feelings creep in, and you end up getting no closer to attracting more customers online than you were a year ago.

There is an alternative to adding more to your already-full plate. A partnership with a content marketing agency is a great first step.

Here are the secrets that will help you make the choice to invest in a marketing partner:

Secret No. 1: Leveraging Expertise

Businesses that partner with a content marketing agency get the benefit of working with professionals who live and breathe content creation every day. Having a marketing plan is good, but it will be only as successful as your ability to consistently produce compelling content that drives action.

Sure, you can find plenty of marketing advice online by reading blogs or enrolling in courses from knowledgeable and skilled marketing professionals, but your business is unique and an off-the-shelf marketing system may not be a great fit.

And though reading these blog posts and taking these courses may seem more affordable than outsourcing your marketing, they end up costing you more in the long run because you’re not getting strategic counseling specific to the nuances of your business.

Investing in a partnership with an agency allows you to leverage the experience and knowledge of a professional marketer who is working toward getting you results.

Secret No. 2: Better Implementation

As a business owner, you or someone on your staff, may be capable of implementing a content marketing strategy.

But you have to ask yourself if it’s truly the best use of your time.

Trying to do content marketing on your own means shouldering the burden of coming up with content ideas, editing that content, optimizing it, promoting it and measuring its effectiveness.

Each of these steps requires skill sets that may have nothing to do with your core business.

Even if you are implementing a content marketing strategy for yourself, you may not be doing it in a way that will get you the best results to grow your business.

The right partner will have both the skills and the experience to not only execute your marketing, but do it in a way that will meet your business objectives.

Secret No. 3: Burden-Free Marketing

We are all looking for opportunities to work smarter, not harder.

Working smarter often involves learning how to delegate and have the right people doing the right things.

Not only is a content marketing agency the right choice for handling your marketing, they go a step further by eliminating your need to delegate marketing tasks. This is in contrast to hiring an administrative or virtual assistant who needs to be told the tasks that need to be completed.

When you partner with a marketing agency, you have more time to serve your customers, work on new product and service offerings, and spend some extra time away from the office.

The Wrap Up:

You can achieve great results from content marketing. However, the companies seeing the best results are the ones that leverage the expertise and implementation skills of a specialized agency so they can focus on what they do best.

Jeff Machado is a content marketing strategist at Fiore Communications. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him more about content marketing.

To get more visitors to your site, generate more leads and convert those leads into sales, there must be a compelling reason for them to visit — and come back.

So what’s the best way to start drawing more attention to your website in your local area?

Start writing a blog and create content that will help you get found by the people who need your products and services.

Blogging at a Glance

Here’s what you need to know about blogging and why your site needs one to be successful.

• Well-written blog posts start a conversation with your audience and will do more to pre-quality prospects than your best brochures or other marketing collateral.

• Blogs provide two-way communication by allowing engagement between you and your audience through the comments section.

• Blogs are an easy tool to add fresh content to your website, and that comes with many benefits in itself. Blogs are typically updated every few days or weekly, and search engines such as Google will rank a site with recently updated posts higher than websites that do not have as much activity. Higher rankings make it easier for the right prospects to find you.

Now that you know how a blog can benefit you, read what some experienced bloggers say about how to build a successful local business blog.

Feel free to share this infographic on your blog or website. Just include a link back to this post to give us credit.

On How to Blog with a Local Focus

The Problem: More and more business owners are sold on the power of inbound marketing, especially how effective blogging is for increasing traffic and leads. But if your business depends on leads in your local area, you can’t approach blogging the same way as non-location dependent businesses.

The Solution: Write about general topics related to your business, but put a local spin on them. Make sure your titles are optimized to be found by local readers. Samara Hart explains more in her post: How Local Businesses Can Blog Successfully About Anything.

On Creating Content for a Local Blog

The Problem: Creating content is challenging! Many business owners think blog posts need to be a certain way and never get started.

The Solution: Darren Rowse’s post, 12 Lessons from 4 Inspiring Local Business Blogs, is a great resource to turn to if you’re having difficulty coming up with ideas for blog content. Two great tips you’ll find are to use visual imagery if it’s appropriate for your business and to feature customer stories or case studies.

On Why Local Business Blogs Are Effective

The Problem: You’re not fully convinced that a local blog is a good use of your time.

The Solution: 43% of all Google searches are local (meaning city and town names are used in the query.) The more local content you put on your blog, the better the chances of you receiving that free traffic from Google. In his post, Why Local Blogging Works, Matt McGee points out some of the other reasons why a local blog can work for your business.

Now that you know what the experts have to say about building a successful local business blog, what steps are you going to take on your website? What are your biggest questions? Let me know in the comments.

Jeff Machado is a content marketing strategist at Fiore Communications. You can follow him on Twitter for more local business marketing help. 

There also is nothing more frustrating or scary or unsure. There is no one else to blame, excuses don’t matter and when clients don’t pay or you don’t have enough customers coming in, your family eats beans and rice. That is, if you even have customers — or a family.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way, nor would thousands of other entrepreneurs who have traded in regular jobs for the dream of making something for themselves. I am in my 13th year of business ownership, I survived working in my dining room and the Great Recession (assuming it’s over), I have recently added staff and I’m incredibly excited about the future.

Ready for Prime Time

For me, it was not really about not wanting to work for someone else. In fact, I had some tremendous bosses who taught me a lot and valued my contributions. It was much more about following a desire to see what I could do and using my unique experiences and talents to find my own niche — to find a way to contribute to the business community in my own way.

And as a control freak, I love the idea of being responsible for everything, although I quickly learned the value of good counsel and now rely on a group of trusted colleagues, advisors and friends (including my wife) for making important decisions.

Being a local business owner also makes me part of a club that I really like being in. You don’t have to be cool, thankfully, just committed to working hard and willing to adapt to an ever-changing landscape of human resources, economic conditions and technology. It is never boring.

I can never imagine going back, especially now that I have been part of the most powerful economic force in American business. (And I don’t mean debt, although that is a subject for another post.)

Small but Mighty

I believe in small business because it changes lives, impacts communities and drives economic development. Did you know that more than 75 percent of the 1,400 members of the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce have 10 or fewer employees? That means for every Big Box and national chain in town (which are important economic drivers in their own right), there are dozens of small shops and service companies that are creating jobs, paying taxes and contributing to the quality of life that makes Tallahassee what it is.

Plus, for every $100 spent at a local business, an average of $68 remains in the local economy.

Everyone has a Story

I love that behind every local shop or tree service or accountant, there is a story. There is a story about why they started their business, the reason they are willing to assume so much risk and the joy they receive from getting through another payroll.

It is those stories that I love to tell, because they put a face to a company logo and give context to a catchy slogan. And when we can help a local business or association effectively communicate to their audiences, then we have helped them be successful. And that means they can keep growing and hiring and paying taxes and making Tallahassee a better place to live.

And that makes me happy.

Why do you love small business? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Dave Fiore is the Chief Content Officer at Fiore Communications. You can follow him on Twitter and say hi.

Creating a lead-generating website is the vital first step in local business Internet marketing. But, most websites I see are leaving money on the table by not implementing a few simple strategies to get more results from their site.

Here are three improvements that I recommend to all local businesses that want their website to generate more leads:

1. Optimize Your Site for Search Engines

Your website has to be found by the right prospects before you can generate leads online. The main way this happens is through keyword searches in a search engine such as Google.

Let’s say you own a catering company in Sarasota, Florida. You would want your site to be found for searches such as “Sarasota catering,” “wedding catering in Sarasota” or “corporate event caterer in Sarasota.”

Each of these searches come from people who want to do business with a company like yours.

To get found for those searches, you need to update your site to target these keywords. This is done in two ways.

a) Updating Metadata

Metadata is the hidden information about your page that signals to search engines that your site is relevant. Metadata has three main parts: Title, Description and Keywords. Every page of your website should have different metadata.

Here is an example for the Sarasota catering company homepage.

Title: Sarasota Catering

Description: CaterSarasota is a Sarasota catering company specializing in weddings and corporate events.

Keywords: Sarasota catering, Sarasota catering company, Sarasota catering for weddings

While metadata alone won’t help your site get found, it’s important to have it in place to show that your site is relevant.

b) On-Page Content and Formatting

To get found on search engines, the written content on your page should also use the keywords that you want to be found for.

The way you format the content is just as important. There are headline tags you can use to create a hierarchy in your content. Creating a proper hierarchy makes it easier for the software that will scan your site to understand what your site is about.

Don’t try to game the system and stuff your page with your keywords and use tags everywhere. A little bit goes a long way when it comes to page optimization.

2. Add a Testimonials Page

When prospects start to find your site, you must also persuade them why you’re the one they should choose. The most effective way to do this is through social proof in the form of testimonials.

Testimonials give your business credibility. They are the stories that your customers tell about your business, which can influence visitors’ buying decisions.

You’ll recognize this social proof if you have ever bought anything from Amazon. Reading reviews of books and other products helps you determine if you’re making a good investment of your time and money or if you should look for something else.

All of us are influenced by social proof, so your site should highlight, as much as possible, your testimonials and why people do business with you.

3. Start Capturing Email Addresses

Websites in themselves are not effective relationship building tools – and relationships are essential for sustained business growth. You can’t always expect people to visit your site, pick up the phone and decide to do business with you.

Let’s return to the Sarasota catering example. If a newly engaged couple is planning a wedding, they’re going to look at multiple catering websites to decide which company is best for them.

By capturing an email address to keep in contact with this couple, you can follow up to show them why you’re uniquely qualified to handle their wedding. You can share testimonials, wedding planning guides, wedding food trends and more through email.

Sharing content and helpful information will make you more memorable to that couple – putting you in a prime position to be their vendor of choice for their wedding.

If you don’t get their email, they may never visit your website again and you will have lost the opportunity to build this relationship and make the sale.

The Wrap Up

In every website analysis I do, I notice that the local businesses that have these three items are the most successful at generating more leads and converting those leads into customers.

Which of these improvements to your website are you going to make first? What other questions do you have about local business Internet marketing?

Jeff Machado is a content marketing strategist at Fiore Communications. You can follow him on Twitter for more local business online marketing tips. 

As a professional striving to grow a business, the last thing you want is for people to make a mistaken assumption about who you are. LinkedIn is the one platform where your posts are meant for people to gather information about you professionally, such as what makes you the kind of person they would want to do business with. Perfecting your personal brand on LinkedIn can be simple, as long as you devote a few minutes to it from time to time.

Below you will find highlights from expert articles about how to enhance your profile for business, how to make your profile best reflect your image and how to make your profile SEO-friendly.

On Making Your LinkedIn Profile a Priority

Thanks to LinkedIn, people can search through countless profiles to find the perfect candidate or potential vendor they are looking for. If you do not make certain that your profile is representative of the best Brand You, you may be preventing yourself from getting a job or new clients.

In his post, How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Job Search, Jorgen Sundberg emphasizes that your LinkedIn profile “is your shop window to recruiters and potential employers, and the first place which potential recruiters will look when they are considering contacting you.”

He follows with many tips on ways to make sure your profile is perfected and represents you best. Your profile must communicate your job seeking or business objectives, your personal elevator speech and it must be free of grammatical errors.

Show your prospects that you are the right choice by working a little each day on your profile.

On Your LinkedIn Image Positively Portraying Brand You

A profile picture is the first thing most people see on a LinkedIn profile. If your personal picture is not representative of your personality, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.

In How to Create a Brilliant Personal Brand on LinkedIn, Aimee Bateman shares her story of how her profile picture kept her from getting a job. Aimee’s photo, which was in black and white, showed her in a professional suit looking sternly into the camera.

Someone recommended Aimee to a hiring manager, but he viewed Aimee as “hard nosed, arrogant and a little scary.” Her picture alone was enough for the hiring manager to judge her as the wrong person for the job. Aimee follows her story with tips on how to create a personal brand on LinkedIn that is truly representative of you.

On Targeting Your LinkedIn Profile

A common way people find businesses they want to work with is by searching for relevant keywords. Because LinkedIn headlines sit higher up on web pages, any keywords you place in your headlines will be more easily found by search engines. Making your LinkedIn profile SEO-friendly can quickly lead people to your profile and will give you a huge advantage.

In her article, How to Make Your LinkedIn Profile Professional Headline SEO-Friendly, Meg Guiseppi gives examples of what your profile should look like when it is searchable to recruiters. Meg also gives other important tips for making your LinkedIn profile eye-catching with quality content.

How are you currently using LinkedIn to develop your personal brand? What changes will you make to your strategy now that you’ve heard from these experts? Let me know in the comments.

One way companies are utilizing Pinterest to support sales efforts is creating boards specifically for customer reviews. This is an effective and easy way to make your company and its products or services come alive.

Example #1: Southwest Kia Rockwall

An example of a successful Pinterest customer testimonial board is Southwest Kia Rockwall, a car dealership in Rockwall, Texas. The pins on their board include a short testimonial and a photo of the customer with their car, which includes the date the purchase was made.

This is an effective way to communicate with visitors to the Pinterest page (who are also potential new customers) because it gives life to these testimonials. The Southwest Kia Rockwall board has already accumulated 88 pins.

Example #2: Filter Gutter Protection

Another business that is using a Pinterest customer testimonial board is Leaf Filter Gutter Protection. The company sells LeafFilters, a way to safely keep your house gutters clean. Similar to the Kia dealership, this board includes pins with various testimonials and photos of the clients.

Leaf Filter takes this process one step further and incorporates videos into their testimonial board. Not only does this make a deeper connection with viewers, but by linking from their YouTube page, they are using preexisting content to reach even more people.

Pinterest gives businesses the opportunity to repackage content they have already created.

Example #3: iYogi

Although using photos of clients and their testimonials for your Pinterest testimonial board is a great start, there are also other ways to approach it.

Take iYogi for example, a tech and computer support company.

They have taken their customer reviews and turned them into eye-catching graphics. Their board, “iYogi Love,” uses different fonts, themes and colors, which comes across as hip and fresh.

Create Your Customer Testimonial Board Today

Like how these companies are using Pinterest boards to display customer testimonials? Here’s how to start your own.

1)      Create a new board in your company’s Pinterest account with the board’s title incorporating your name.

2)     Gather up all your testimonials and include customers’ photos if available (with permission, of course).

3)     Create the testimonial graphics. You can do this easily using a tool such as PicMonkey, or you can use a website such as Fiverr.com to have someone create many of these photos for you.

4)     Create new pins by uploading these customer reviews and pinning them to your board.

5)     Let your featured customers know that you posted the testimonial so they can share the photo on their favorite social media sites.

What questions do you have about creating a testimonial board on Pinterest? What would help you implement this today? Leave a comment below so we can help!

Anna Fiore is a Content Marketing Assistant at Fiore Communications. You can follow her on Pinterest and start pinning with her.

And that’s what we’re all after, isn’t it?

But the very idea of asking for a testimonial seems awkward to a lot of business owners. You tell yourself things like:

• My customers are too busy to write a testimonial.
• I don’t want to bother them.
• Testimonials really aren’t that important.

This talk stops now.

Here’s my quick rebuttal:

• If you make it easy for them, testimonials take only a few minutes for your customers to write.
• The product or service you provided solved a problem and many will want to share out of gratitude.
• People enjoy being responsible for a successful referral.
• Testimonials have a major impact on conversion rates for all businesses.

In short, you need testimonials.

I don’t want to leave you hanging, though. Often, asking for testimonials is one of those great “theory” things that get ignored in favor of other priorities.

To help you out, here are some tips you can implement immediately to make it easy to ask for testimonials from your customers.

Tip #1: Add Requests to Your Processes

For many business owners, the most difficult part of getting a testimonial is asking. The easiest way to get over the request for a testimonial is to make it part of every transaction. (click to tweet)

Here are some examples you could try:

• Provide a testimonial request card with every invoice you send.
• Send an email they can reply to or have a form on your website for entering testimonials.
• Set up a video camera in your office and ask for a video testimonial after a project wrap-up meeting
• Include a link to a testimonial form in your email signature

When you integrate the request for testimonials into activities you are already doing, asking becomes second nature.

Tip #2: The Share and Acquire Technique

Share the glowing testimonials you receive about your business with your email newsletter subscribers. At the end of the email, tell them that you would like to feature their success story in a future email newsletter. Create a button for users to click, a simple form to fill out and then a page thanking them for sharing the testimonial and letting them know it may be featured in the next email.

Why does this work? Sharing success stories makes your readers feel part of a community. Look at products such as P90X and the Insanity program that get thousands of testimonials and reviews – people love being part of something bigger and to share their own unique experiences. Create the opportunity to do the same with your business.

Tip #3: Create a Case Study

Ask one of your biggest success story clients if you could create a case study about their experience working with you.

You can use the following five questions to help create an effective case study:

• What was happening before you worked with our company?
• Why did you choose to work with us?
• What happened while you were working with us?
• How did we meet or exceed expectations?
• How is your situation different now?

Case studies work because they take a testimonial and expand it to give your prospects a clear idea of what it’s like to work with you and the results they can expect to reap.

Now that you have three actionable ways to get more testimonials, which are you going to use first and why? Leave a comment below.

Jeff Machado is a content marketing strategist at Fiore Communications. You can follow him on Twitter for more inbound marketing insights.

Don’t believe me?

Over 75% of people today trust peer recommendations when shopping for a service or product.

More than 70% of people look at product reviews before making a purchase.

Nearly 63% are more likely to purchase from sites with product reviews and ratings.

In short, social proof that tells stories about your business and credibility is vital to converting prospects into customers.

Consider the following expert opinions about what to expect from different types of social proof, mistakes you might be making and getting testimonials that showcase client results.

On Outcomes of Different Types of Social Proof

There are many types of social influences, such as testimonials, user reviews, trust badges, authority recommendations, award badges and social network icons, that you can place on your website to increase conversion rates.

Although using social proof should be critical in your marketing strategy to shape a more effective buying environment, there is one problem: Each style has its own limitations. You must determine which form of social proof will resonate with your customers or it will not be effective.

Sujan Patel writes about the steps you should take to get social proof and how you should incorporate it into your website to generate the best results in his post, Harnessing the Power of Social Proof. The first steps are to learn about the different styles of social proof and the expected outcomes of each type, identify your business goals and then choose which kind of social proof will meet those objectives. Patel then goes into the various advantages and disadvantages of each kind of social proof you need to consider.

On the Right and Wrong Ways to Use Social Proof

User testimonials are one of the most powerful types of social proof. They let us connect with people similar to us and give us personal insight into the buying process. Testimonials allow us to relate to those who have already made the purchase and are satisfied with it.

Testimonials lead to higher conversion rates and higher sales. However, if your testimonials are not connecting with your audience, you could actually be losing conversions.

In his post, Why Your Customer Testimonials Are NOT Working, Steve Young focuses on customer testimonials as social proof and how you could be hurting, not helping, your business. One of the most important aspects of user testimonials is gathering appropriate feedback. Providing an answer to any objections your audience might have will show them you are prepared and have done your research.

Steve also advises us to make sure the person writing the testimonial will resonate with your audience. If they don’t connect with the writer, then they won’t connect with the message, and the testimonial is useless. Steve mentions the importance of authentic testimonials that show results and overcome objections.

Your audience doesn’t want to waste their time reading generic testimonials. They want to believe you. Posting a reliable, detailed testimonial that highlights some specific feedback will systematically break down the barriers that prospects have about doing business with you.

On Showcasing Client Results

Detailed and numbers-based results given in testimonials will be the best social proof on your website. Every testimonial should show where your client was before they worked with you and where they are after using your products and services.

Whether it is pounds lost, money saved, more followers or an increase in Likes on Facebook, encouraging your clients to leave these types of testimonials will pay dividends down the line.

In her post on keys to amazing testimonials, Christine Gallagher not only points out the importance of getting results mentioned in your testimonials, she also encourages you to ask your clients to leave testimonials that contain a recommendation to work with you. The combination of these two tips will lead to unforgettable testimonials.

Christine closes her post on an important note – make collecting testimonials a habit. Soon after delivering your product or service, ask for the testimonial and put a deadline on when you need the feedback to further the sense of urgency.

How are you currently using social proof in your business? What have your results been? Comment below to let us know!

Jeff Machado is a content marketing strategist at Fiore Communications. Follow him on Twitter to ask your content marketing questions.