As a freelance blogger, it feels so good to know you’ve made a client happy.
You wish you could capture the joy of the client at that moment, frame it, and display for all to see. But it’s sometimes difficult to get recommendations or testimonials from clients, because they’re too busy or too distracted.
In a survey by Dimensional Research, results showed about 90% of customers were influenced by online reviews to make a purchase. People put a lot of trust in feedback given online, hence the need for freelancers to collect glowing testimonials.
Without testimonials, it’s that little bit harder to get the gigs you want at the rate you deserve.
No problem. There are several options you can explore to capture the feelings of your happy clients.
The first step is to make sure that you over-deliver. Whenever you’re working on a project, always put in your best effort. By the time the job’s finished, you’ll be left with an excited client willing to give you a testimonial or recommendation no matter how busy they are — because they know you deserve it and they have the “I owe you” feeling.
At that point, you can pick any of the methods outlined in this post to display the testimonial on your site.
Quote client comments
One common way of showcasing recommendations is to display them as block quotes.
When you’ve made a client happy and they say something nice about you, that’s your cue! Ask them immediately if you can quote what they just said and show it to the world. The answer will almost always be a yes.
Then write out what the client said, add it to your website and, if possible, include the client’s name, photo, or website URL to give the recommendation more credibility. That way a potential client can easily contact any of your past clients for confirmation.
If you have lots of testimonials, you can create a page full of them on your website. Try using the blockquote setting or other special styling to make these quotes and comments look attractive too.
Take a look at these testimonials on Sophie Lizard’s website for an example of how simple this can be:
One great tool you can use is the print screen key on your computer keyboard, to capture an online quote or comment in its original context — an email, tweet, or LinkedIn recommendation, for example.
Capture it with the Print Screen [often abbreviated to PRTSC] key on your keyboard, paste it into MS Paint or a similar program, and crop it to the size you want. Then put the cropped image on your website.
To fancy-up testimonials you collected in person, or to make all your testimonials match, you could use an online quotation image creation tool. Qouzio offers great designs for free.
Collect audio testimonials
When you have very busy clients that can only spare a few minutes, grab a testimonial from them when you have them on the phone or Skype.
There are plenty of smartphone apps that help you record your phone calls. Always make sure you get permission to record before you start.
Afterwards, you can choose to upload the audio clip to your website, or transcribe it and use it as a quote. Or both!
If you want more info about this method, read this detailed guide to recording your phone conversations.
Screenshot social media
Sometimes your clients are kind enough to commend your work on social media. It might be on your Facebook wall, on Twitter, Google+, or anywhere your client hangs out online. LinkedIn is great for this — use the “ask for a recommendation” feature to request testimonials from your current and past clients.
With the print screen option I mentioned earlier, you can capture images of these testimonials to add to your website.
Rotating banners, sliders and carousels
If you’ve got a few great testimonials already, how about displaying them in a moving carousel? You can create a slide show using free online tools such as Adobe Express or Pixteller, then add it to your website where it’ll display a rotating set of images.
All you have to do is upload the images and create the slide show. There are different styles and templates to choose from, depending what tool you’re using.
This can be useful for freelancers who have only a few testimonials, because the rotating carousel shows them one at a time, making it seem like you’ve got plenty!
Collect email testimonials
Your client can give you a recommendation via e-mail easily and in their own time — useful if they’re usually hard to get hold of. With the client’s permission, you can screenshot or quote those comments to use on your site.
Here are some examples of how different freelance writers display their testimonials:
- Bree Brouwer has plenty of testimonials with photos on her home page to grab your attention.
- KeriLynn Engel uses her Linkedin profile to display her client testimonials.
- Francesca Nicasio displays her testimonials on a dedicated page.
Always try to get a testimonial from every happy client. When you have a handful of genuine, detailed testimonials on your website, new potential clients who visit your site will be convinced you can handle their assignments.
One great testimonial or recommendation from a happy client can bring you a continuous flow of clients, so make your clients happy in every project and you’ll never have to hunt for work.
Have you captured your clients’ testimonials? How do you show them off? If you need help coming up with ideas, contact me and I’ll gladly help out!
Hi Aisha
Thanks for sharing these ideas – I’ve been struggling with how to display my client testimonials on my website and this has certainly given me a few things to think about.
I love the idea of rotating banners – this is something I’ve played about with on my site (using one-phrase excerpts of full testimonials) and I’ve received some good feedback.
I currently display testimonials on my ‘Hire Me’ page, but I’m thinking of starting a dedicated page once I have a few more to display. Going to check out quozio now!
Thanks for the tips!
Hello Steph,
Glad you found this useful. I would love to see what your final results are with our testimonial experiment.
I really like the rotating carousel idea Aisha!Great recommendations. Sometimes we freelance writers don’t showcase the results of our excellent work ethic and results enough. Like you said, whenever you do a good job, you should always be on the lookout for client testimonials.
Thank you, Daryl!
Freelance writers should never be too busy to show how good they are.
Thanks for the mention, Aisha! You have a lot of great tips here 🙂
Something else I’ve played around with ~ If you’re using WordPress for your writer website & have a lot of testimonials you’d like to display in different ways, I’d recommend trying out a plugin. There are quite a few free testimonial plugins available that give you a lot of flexibility & fun options to display them.
Yep — plugins are awesome ’cause they let you avoid manually formatting all those testimonials! I use a plugin for my portfolio, too. 🙂
Hi KeriLynn,
You did a great job on your testimonial page and it has an authoritative feel to it.
Yes, I agree, WordPress plugins will definitely make it easy to lay it all out nicely, and like Sophie said you can use plugins for portfolios too.
Thanks Aisha, great ideas… I like the idea of rotating banners, and of course a plugin is a great time saver. Client testimonials are also a good way to boost your confidence when doubt creeps in. Use them as a praise file and savor the fact these people are talking about you and your work ethic.
Hi Lorna,
Yes, I agree, testimonials give your ego a boost. This is important because freelancers tend to be on their own and can gain from the boost of confidence that comes with a glowing testimonial.
Aisha,
I don’t have a writer’s website yet, but I bookmarked all of the tools you talked about (and shared with my alma mater-Maryville College)! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I also love the idea of recording what the client says about you (with permission) and displaying it on your website! I would have never thought of this idea.
Cherese R. Cobb
Hi Cherese,
Glad to know that you found this useful. When your website is ready you can hasten the testimonial set up without spending too much time scouting for resources.
Quoting clients will work well for everyone, nice tips.
Thank you!
Great ideas! I like the idea of screen shotting social media testimonials.
And thanks so much for the shoutout! One thing, though. The link you included to my website is wrong. It should be: http://www.aliciaradeswriter.com/client-testimonials/
In case people are wondering, the plugins I use are “Client Testimonials” and “Cyclone Slider 2.”
Alicia
Thanks for the correction, Alicia – I’ve fixed that link now. And thanks for the plugin tips, too!
Hi Alicia,
Sorry about the link. Your site was a good fit for this write-up.
Thanks for sharing the plugin!
I recently changed the tool I use. I’m now using a premium plugin from Elegant Themes (Divi Builder) to display my testimonials.
Great post with a few new ideas on how to display them:-) Thanks!
Thank you Gina!
Great tips!
One thing about asking for testimonials is that you can follow up by asking for referrals. “Who should I write for next?” is a great open-ended question to find new clients.
Hi Anthony, I couldn’t agree more.
Thanks for stopping by!
I love the idea about the LinkedIn screen shots! I always wondered if we’d have to ask permission to use the person’s photo on our site. I got permission to use the recommendation itself so I just copied and pasted the text, but do you think it’s inappropriate to include the photo, without asking, as well?
Hello Shavonne,
Thanks for asking. I think that you should always ask for permission to avoid any future issues.
But the peculiarity of Linkedin is such that the profile picture is attached to the testimonial, so I would use it along with the picture since permission was earlier granted for the entire piece.
This is an awesome post. I loved the screen shot social media tip the best. Thanks very much for sharing this! Good work!
Thank you Theona Glad you loved it!
Great tips!
Thank you for this post!
You are most welcome William!
One more way of putting up client testimonials would be by creating a portfolio on freelance platforms. Here’s one such site where you can show case skill-wise portfolio with client testimonials – http://hourlyconsultant.com