Automating Testimonial Collection

I’m a big fan of client testimonials as social proof you can do what you say you can do.  I’ll not rehash the whole subject here, but I wrote a post called the Power Of Testimonials.

I’m also a big fan of automating repetitive tasks, and typing in testimonials I’ve solicited for clients manually is a big old pain in the backside, so I looked at automating the whole process.

A Tale Of Three Plugins

I’m using three  plugins to automate the whole process:

1) Testimonials By WooThemes

I’ve selected this testimonials widget over the plethora of others out there because it is compatible with my theme and it’s incredibly easy to add testimonials to pages, sidebar and the home page too.

Before anyone starts I know there are other testimonials plugins that offer this functionality out of the box, but none fitted with my theme as well as this plugin.

2) Gravity Forms

Ah probably my favourite plugin, and so well worth the investment in a developers license all those years ago.  Gravity form does so many automated tasks excellently, like add emails to Mailchimp, adding client details to Freshbooks.  But it also allows us to add testimonials with it’s post creation functionality.

3) Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types

This final plugin is the key, it allows the gravity forms functionality that adds posts add custom posts types.

How It Works

I’ve set up a form on this page https://neilmatthews.com/add-testimonial using gravity forms, but it is a special type of form.

When someone adds an entry it creates a draft post on my site, but not just any old post a custom post type of testimonial.  So entering data on that form automatically generates a testimonial entry on my site that I need to review and publish.

No more re-entering text, automated testimonials woo-hoo!

Automating The Ask

I’ve als0 automated the request for a testimonials.  I use Freshbooks for my invoicing, and there is an automated email sent out to clients when their invoice is paid.  I’ve added the following text.

If your project is complete and you enjoyed working with me a testimonial is always appreciated, you can leave one automatically here https://neilmatthews.com/add-testimonial

Automation Rocks

Whenever I find myself grumbling about a routine task in my business processes I always looks for at three things remove, automate, systematise.

Can I remove this from my business – answer no testimonials are very important, can I systematise it so it can be outsourced, well yes I could but why pay a VA to add testimonials when it can be automated.

Results no more tedious copying and pasting of testimonials plus more testimonials coming in because I’ve automated the ask and don’t forget to do it.

Wrap Up

What are you automating in your business?  I’d love to hear what you have done in the comments.

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