Building credibility and trust are essential to survive in the market, irrespective of your industry. One of the ways to establish credibility and build trust is by strategically leveraging your customer testimonials on social media. Many people think “testimonial” and “review” are the same thing. But actually, testimonials and reviews are different types of social proof. A customer review is a written statement of a customer’s experience with your products and/or services.
A customer testimonial, on the other hand, is an honest endorsement of your company’s products and/or services that comes from customers who have benefitted from the work your product or service did for them. And sharing your customer testimonials is a great way to build trust for your brand on social media. That said, let’s discuss the importance of sharing testimonials on social media, and the different ways to build trust on social media with testimonials.
Sharing customer testimonials on social media platforms is a widely-accepted form of “proof” that your company and its products and/or services are legit, credible, and successful. When you share customer testimonials on social media, it helps your company in the following two ways:
Put yourself in customers’ shoes for a minute and imagine that you’re looking for a trustworthy real estate agent to help sell your house. Now, are you going to hire a real estate company that has zero customer testimonials or are you going to hire a company that has over 100 positive customer testimonials? Of course, you’ll hire the latter company. The takeaway here is that the majority of today’s customers trust testimonials of a company’s previous customers. Research has also shown that 72 percent of customers say customer testimonials and reviews make them trust a company or brand more. Another research also revealed that as many as 88 percent of customers trust online reviews and consider them as good as personal recommendations. And that’s not the only benefit of sharing testimonials on social media. There is more…
If you’re planning to grow your customer base using social media platforms, you’ll need strong, compelling reasons to convince your potential customers to choose your company over your competitors. Sharing customer testimonials on social media can help to convince your potential customers that your company is indeed trustworthy to buy products from and/or hire for its services. This, in turn, can help you attract and convince more customers for your business.
Now that you’re well aware of the importance & benefits of sharing testimonials on social media, it’s time to learn different ways to build trust among potential customers by sharing testimonials on social media.
Sharing customer testimonials on social media is not only a great tactic to increase engagement but it’s also an effective way to build trust among your potential customers. Research has proven that 95 percent of consumers nowadays read customer testimonials and reviews before deciding to buy a product or hire a service. Put it simply, if your potential customers see multiple people using and praising your company’s product or services saying it’s good, successful, etc., they’re likely to think of your company as credible and trustworthy. Furthermore, they’re even more likely to trade money for products and/or services you see.
For example, let’s say that you’re looking for a fast courier service provider and stumbled upon a company multiple times through its previous customers who are praising it as the Best Air Freight Express Service Provider. Now, you’re going to visit the company website and read more of their customer testimonials. Not only that but if you find that the company can fulfill all your requirements, you’re going to use its services for your courier delivery needs. That’s the power of sharing testimonials on social media. All you need to do is either share the testimonials you’ve received from your customers as it is (without any edit).
Or, if it’s a long testimonial, then you can simply select a line or two that highlights your achievements. Alternatively, you can also share the testimonials’ highlights with a quote converted into an image or video with a photo of the customer. For this, you can either hire an agency or simply use apps like Trustmary to do it yourself.
Video testimonials are more powerful nowadays than text testimonials. And for the past few years, consumers are more inclined towards watching videos on social media because they’re easy to consume and generally entertaining. According to a survey, people nowadays spend more time watching videos than ever before – 84-100 minutes more to be precise. Now that’s a significant increase in consumers’ time spent watching videos on social media.
Apart from that, video customer testimonials are also proven to be the most effective type of content compared to demonstration and explainers videos. Beyond these statistics, video customer testimonials can easily influence emotions and encourage purchasing decisions. The point is that video testimonials can easily hook potential customers and keep them engaged. Just remember to keep your video customer testimonials brief for optimal impact and can be easily adopted across all social media platforms.
The last highly impactful way to build trust for your brand on social media is by sharing snippets of your video testimonials in stories across different social media platforms. Besides that, you can also re-share a post or story that your existing customers have uploaded and tagged you in. If a customer shares a story praising your company’s products or services, you should share it on your company’s social media feeds.
Doing so is not quick & super easy but also more impactful. To take this to the next level, you can save your customers’ video testimonials shared via stories to an Instagram highlight album. Doing so will not only let you save video testimonials to your company’s profile permanently, but it will also make it easy for your potential customers to find them. And while you’re at it, be sure to create custom highlight covers to match the overall theme and aesthetic of your company’s social media profile.
End Note
Customer testimonials are much more than the warm and proud feeling it gives to a business owner. If leveraged the right way, customer testimonials can improve brand recognition, increase engagement, and build trust among potential customers on social media. That said, use the tactics shared in this article across all your company’s social media profiles and you’ll see an upturn in engagement, trust, and overall customer base.
