John DeMato - NYC Branded Lifestyle Portrait + Virtual/Live Event Photographer
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John DeMato Blog

Hi! I'm John. In my blog, I share insights that help Speakers and Expert-based Business Owners create an emotional connection with their audiences through persuasive visual storytelling.

Getting creative with informal testimonials...

 

Have you been leveraging informal testimonials?

 
NYC Branded Lifestyle Portrait informal testimonial.JPG
 

No idea what I mean - well then, please read on, :)

 

Know all those wonderful comments that clients leave on your social posts that illustrate how much they appreciate the way you helped them solve their pain points?

Those are what I refer to as informal testimonials - and they are social media content gold!

Why?

These are unfiltered, unsolicited acknowledgements of your magic, and they are wonderful assets that you can leverage by sharing them with your audience.

Now, if it’s a, “you’re amazing and I love working with you!” comment, those are fine and certainly valid, but, if comment peels back the onion to reveal a very specific way that you helped this person get over their hump in some way, shape or form, then the comment is even more impactful for those who read them.

The deeper the comment, the more it will resonate with your audience.

I have shared a wide variety of these informal testimonials in the past, and they’ve been met with a lot of online - and offline - comments from those in my audience.

And, you can source these types of testimonials from more places than just a comment on your post.

You can also find them in emails, direct messages and any other place where you and your clients interact digitally.

All I do is enable the screen grab function on my laptop, select the the text, and boom - instant piece of content that is from someone else speaking on your behalf.
Once you have the screen-grabbed image, compliment it with a story about that client that compliments and accentuates the sentiment of their words.

Or, contrast this piece of wonderful news by mentioning the struggle and pain they were experiencing specifically prior to working with you, and how you helped alleviate and eliminate that pain.

Or, discuss how grateful you are for having the honor and pleasure of working with someone as amazing as this particular person.

The potential to take the story in a wide variety of directions is always present - the key for you is to figure out how you want to leverage this informal testimonial and build your story around that.

And don’t forget to tag this person in the post - let them know that you appreciate their kind words.

One word of caution - if it’s an email or other non-public comment that you’re sharing, make

sure to either get permission to share it OR black out their name from the post and keep it generic, so, you can still share the value present in the testimonial, but, not out someone if they want to keep their business with you private.

Talking about informal testimonials is one of the many pieces of advice and strategy that I impart on my clients through the Idea Nugget Incubator Program.

In it, I teach them a framework that builds their idea muscles to a place where they are able to recognize, acknowledge and write down a variety of insights, conversations, and lessons that they encounter on a daily basis in order to convert them into teachable moments for those they serve.

After they work through the Program, they will be able to generate endless amounts of social media content and blog articles.

Want more info? I can help you with that.

Click here to check out the Idea Nugget Incubator Program.





PS - For those of you who aren’t in the know, I mail out these blogs 3x a week, and lemme tell you, they’re a real party, so, if you’d like to get in on this, sign up for it here and I’ll throw in a free gift for you, because I care, :)