A personal testimonial can be a great marketing tool in highlighting the unique value of your blog. However, it is never easy to sing one’s own praises. You don’t want to give the impression of excessive bragging, yet extreme modesty will not serve you well either. The following provides a step-by-step guide to writing an impressive testimonial that will draw readers to your blog.
7 Steps to writing a great personal testimonial
1. Pose questions to yourself of both a professional and personal nature. Questions will help you to clarify the most important points you wish to cover in your testimonial statement. Examples of questions include:
- What is special or unique about your blog that differentiates it from others within your niche?
- What value will your blog provide readers that competitor blogs do not?
- What are some major successes of your firm and what have been your most significant challenges?
- When did you become interested in the area you are writing about? What motivated this interest?
- How did you learn about this field (coursework trade journals, seminars, conversations with colleagues, etc.)?
- What are the core values of your business (e.g. integrity, customer service, quality)?
- What experiences in your life (family, academic, professional) have shaped your goals and how do these play into your blog?
- Have you had to overcome any significant barriers (e.g. economic or health) in your life that formed who you are today?
There is nothing wrong with blending the business with the personal in your testimonial statement. The personal side will humanize your testimonial and permit your readers a “behind-the-scenes” glimpse of some significant factors involved in building your business.
2. Once you have answered each of the above questions, organize your answers into an outline. The answers to each question above can serve as separate paragraphs of your testimonial statement. Make sure that you plan the testimonial so that you adequately to cover the answer to each question.
3. Using your outline as a guide, make sure to create an introduction, body and conclusion. In essence, let readers know what the testimonial will be about (introduction). Provide details in the body of the testimonial using the answers you developed to each of the questions, and wrap it all together in the conclusion.
4. Once you have prepared an outline and main talking points, free write for about an hour or so. Write down everything that comes to mind and do not stop to edit or criticize what you are writing. The goal is to record every relevant piece of information with no regard to organization, writing style, spelling, grammar, arrangement, or logical flow (all this will come later during the editing process). Let go of the internal critic and have some fun since your passion will show through in the testimonial statement and draw readers like a magnet!
5. As per Diana Huff, principal of DH Communications, a Boston-based marketing consultancy and copywriting service, to establish yourself as the expert within your field, share any special challenges that you successfully navigated and include quantifiable metrics that back up your claims.
6. Look over what you have written during the free write and make changes as necessary by either adding or deleting content. However, you don’t want the testimonial to be more than a single page in length or it may come off as too much bragging and turn people off. Take the best of your ideas and develop them further with specific examples and details.
7. Thoroughly proofread and edit your testimonial for spelling, grammatical errors. You might also want to have a second pair of eyes review the statement to better ensure it is error-free. Do not simply rely on spell- check to catch all mistakes since the tool often misses synonymous and grammatical conte
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