Have you ever wondered what mentions and retweets are worth to your business or blog besides a boost in the Klout score? Tweets can be the perfect source of testimonials. Collecting them is easy, and publishing them is even easier.
What You Are Looking For
When collecting tweets as testimonials, watch for tweets from readers, customers, well-known people in your industry, mentors, and role models.
Look for tweets where these people are saying something good about you, your skills, your expertise, your content, your products, or your services.
If a tweet makes you feel like your hard work has been recognized and appreciated, then it should be one you save for future reference. Especially be on the lookout for tweets that share a positive result someone received from working with you, reading your content, or using your products.
How to Curate Your Best Mentions
Curating your best mentions while viewing your Twitter mentions on a daily basis is easy. Just favorite them. It’s a fast process that you can do anywhere. You can favorite a tweet in HootSuite.
You can favorite a tweet in the mobile Twitter app.
And, of course, you can favorite a tweet on Twitter itself.
You can access your favorites anytime on Twitter by logging in to your account and going to your Favorites.
How to Find Your Best Mentions
If you haven’t been doing this all along, you can still find your best mentions on Twitter. Simply use the following links and replace username with your Twitter handle.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%40username – Shows you your top mentions.
https://twitter.com/search/timeline?q=%40username – Shows you mentions from those you follower.
https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%40username – Shows you all of your mentions.
Depending on how long you’ve been on Twitter and how often you are mentioned and retweeted, you may not be able to load every single Twitter mention. You probably won’t have the time to go through them all either. This is where the top mentions link comes in handy – it just pulls the most popular mentions and retweets for your Twitter profile.
How to Use Tweets as Testimonials on Your Website
Once you have a nice collection of flattering tweets, your next goal will be to publish them. First, you will want to create a page that you can call testimonials, reviews, what people are saying on Twitter, etc. On that page, you will embed the tweets you’ve saved from Twitter using the Embed Tweet option on Twitter beneath your tweet of choice.
Then you will copy the embed code.
And paste it on your website. The result will be the following.
@kikolani is one of my favorite and consistent writers in the #marketing #seo field #actlikeyaknow
— Aaron Alexander (@AaronAlexander_) February 21, 2013
You can see what a page full of them looks like on my own What People Are Saying on Twitter page.
Why You Should Collect Your Best Mentions on Twitter
I shouldn’t have to explain to you how valuable social proof can be to your business or blog, or how real testimonials can help you gain blog subscribers and increase your sales. If those are not good enough reasons, maybe these will be.
First off, you might discover someone who tweeted one of your posts or complimented your business that you didn’t notice before. I was pleasantly surprised that Google Analytics actually tweeted one of my posts.
Second, everyone gets a little bummed out from time to time. Maybe you don’t feel confident about your writing. Maybe you don’t feel like your blog is successful enough. Maybe you are not making as many sales as you would like in your business.
Those are the times you need that little ego boost to get you back to where you need to be mentally to pick things back up again. Having these little bits of 140 character support in your back pocket to reference can be a great way to get that boost.
Last, but not least, it will help you see how much progress you have made in your business or blog. While perusing my own top mentions, I noticed I had very few mentions in 2009, some more in 2010, even more in 2011, and lots since then. Who needs a Klout score – that’s the way to tell if you have been doing things right with your business or blog.
What do you think about using tweets as testimonials? Please share in the comments!
