Need More Social Proof?

We’re starting to put the finishing touches onto our blog marketing tech stack. Let’s put our attention on the promotion section on this Part 10 of our series here on The Edge…

We’ve already talked about using Social Warfare to put the social media buttons onto your site, control how they look… as well as control what your content will look like as it is shared. This will help create that traffic loop where existing readers can help bring in new readers by the act of sharing.

And even though we’ve already talked about the use of Thrive Comments as a replacement for the WordPress comment system, we want to bring it into the Promotional section, too. See, one of the things that Thrive Comments can do is present calls to action after the person comments. It can even present a different call to action when they comment for the first time than if they post a second time.

One of the things you can do is present an opt-in form after they comment. But, you can also ask people to SHARE your post after they comment. I mean, if a person is invested enough in your content to post a comment, they are pretty much pre-sold on the idea of sharing it, too. Thrive Comments can display those share buttons immediately after they post their comment… thereby turning the act of commenting into a promotional action as well.

But, let’s also talk about sales and conversion.

We want people who have experienced our products and services to help us spread the word, right? One of the primary ways to do that is by seeking testimonials.

But, how do you get testimonials? Do you email people and ask them to send you one? That feels… awkward.

So, we add another tool to our tech stack: Thrive Ovation.

Using Thrive Ovation, you can build a testimonial collection, management and display system right into your blog. With it, you can:

• Put testimonial collection forms into key parts of your site (at the end of courses, in your member area, etc.)

• MANAGE all testimonials in one location, tag them by product, gain approval for publish (if you don’t already have it) and otherwise track the status

• Automatically turn any blog comment into a testimonial (if you’re using Thrive Comments)

• Display testimonials anywhere on your site.

• Integration with Thrive Architect means you can display testimonials easily with nice-looking templates.

• Testimonial sections of your offer pages can even be dynamic and change over time as you add more testimonials to the library

By building this system as well as integrating it into your email marketing (i.e. asking for testimonials at certain points of onboarding or followup), you will be able to build a constant stream of new, incoming testimonials.

Yes, you could use a regular forms plug-in like Gravity Forms to collect testimonials. But, such a system isn’t a complete part of your tech stack.

If somebody submits a testimonial via a regular form, what do you do with it? Where do you store and manage them?

More than likely it would be emailed to you. Then, you have to save it in your email, or clip it into Evernote. You have to have some place to manage this stuff for when you need it.

Then, when it comes time to actually USE the testimonial, you have to do a copy/paste job into your offer page.

Thrive Ovation automates all this. It is a purpose-dedicated tool.

And that’s why I think it deserves a spot in our blog marketing tech stack.

So, let’s see how things look here so far:

OK, I’ll see you on the next issue. We’ve still got some more to do here. We haven’t even gotten into metrics and tracking yet.

Do you have any questions so far from this series?