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The following is a guest post from Glenn Nicholas from PublicityShip. Thank you very much for writing this guest article.
A lot of marketers will tell you that including testimonials from satisfied clients can help build trust and improve online conversion rates. But if you’ve been using testimonials, you’ll know just how much work it can be to collect and publish them. And that its all too easy for a few testimonials to appear over and over. This is missing an opportunity with your repeat readers (your most valuable readers).
Jodi Diehl of SunFrogServices has made the task of gathering, managing and displaying testimonials so much easier through her WP-Testimonials plugin. And not only that, she has randomized the display of testimonials, which makes your testimonials fresh for repeat visitors. Simple and effective.
The best way to learn about Jodi’s plugin is to see it in action on her site at WP-Testimonials. Look at the testimonial in the sidebar, and notice how it changes to another testimonial when you read another page on her site (a new testimonial is selected at random each time a page is returned).
We use Jodi’s plugin on our own site at PublicityShip. We’ve extended her plugin in a few small ways, including a link to our full list of testimonials at the bottom of the widget. The testimonials were so useful we introduced a second sidebar, as we didn’t want the testimonials to be lost ‘below the fold’.
One of the best aspect’s of the widget is the use of a simple form to enter the testimonial details - short version for the sidebar widget, longer version for your /testimonials page, and client name, organization and web address. All you do is enter the details using this form, and from there on the new testimonial starts to appear along with your existing testimonials.
Note: this is a new plugin, and installation may require a few tweaks - see the comments for the plugin if you have trouble. if you want to use this plugin with Wordpress 2.3, you will need to include this fix until the core plugin is updated.
Replace this line in wp-testimonials.php:
require_once(ABSPATH . ‘wp-admin/upgrade-functions.php’);
to this:
if( file_exists( ABSPATH . ‘wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php’ ))
require_once(ABSPATH . ‘wp-admin/includes/upgrade.php‘);
else
require_once(ABSPATH . ‘wp-admin/upgrade-functions.php’);
Glenn Nicholas
I thought that I would write about some great articles that I have read this week. I recommend that you read each of these. They are really great.
I have recently entered into a group writing project at Daily Blog Tips. I submitted my article on 10 Forums to Make You a Better Blogger. My article is in the Technology and Internet Category. I am not sure that this is the most appropriate category for my article, but I hope people like it.
In addition to my article (a little cocky I know), I highly recommend reading the following articles.
- How to Increase Your Blog Subscriber Number - TechnicalItch provide a really useful tip for encouraging people to subscribe to your blog.
- Tips for Gaining Page Views and Returning Visitors Using Series Posts - Bluejar.com gives an awesome tip for increasing repeat visitors and RSS subscribers. By writing a series if you hook people into your topic with your first post, they will want to come back to you blog to read the next posts in your series.
- 10 Ways to Show Reader Appreciation - Reader Appreciation Project has written a great article for how to show your readers that you appreciate them. Well, let me implement one of them here. If any of you would like to write an article here on Newest on the Net, please leave a comment below. I would love to show off your work here.
- 5 Tips to Increase Comments - Ad Tracker writes a nice list of tips for increasing comments. I really need help in this arena. You are all so quiet.
- 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog Posts - While nothing in this list is profound, that is the point of this post. These are some tried and true ways to improve your blog posts. Every blog post would be much better if the writer followed these blogging tips.
- 18 Ways For Writing Better Pay-Per-Click Ads - Derek Beau provides some great tips here for improving your PPC adds.
- How I Improved My AdSense CTR by 51% Using Auction Ads - The Newspaper Blog has an ingenious idea for getting viewers to notice your AdSense Ads. I will be adding AdSense to this blog shortly.
- Simple SEO Tips to Improve Your Blog’s Search Rankings - Here are some simple tips for SEO optimizing your blog. These are so simple and we should all implement these for our blogs.
- Top 10 Tips For Driving Traffic AWAY From Your Website - These are some great tips for what to avoid doing. Nice angle Binary Moon!!
- 5 Tips to Being Interesting - This is a great article for all aspects of your life. I must admit to you all that I have a habit of talking about myself too much.
During the month of August, I participated in one of the best online experiences that I have ever had. I joined the Thirty Day Challenge. The Thirty Day Challenge is a free program created by Ed Dale and Dan Raines to teach people about Internet Marketing. The goal of the challenge was to make $10 online within 30 days. While not everyone won the challenge, many did and everyone learned a ton of stuff.
Each dayEd Dale would post a training article and usually an audio or video. The training materials were some of the best things that I have ever seen on the Internet. Here is the latest one that Ed did regarding Twitter.
This is just one of probably 60 videos. I cannot recommend joining this more. Here are some 3rd party resources for the Thirty Day Challenge:
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