Online Connections: How important are they?

Times are changing. The world is moving fast; social media is connecting people around the world in every milli-second. Physical human interactions are not becoming a pre-requisite for conducting business anymore. The entire world is becoming the marketplace for even small businesses. A perfect time for anybody to do successfull business, if they levarage the power of social network in the right manner. 

Online Influencers are created on every industry imaginable purely based on the people to whom they are connected to in the online world. Online reputation is becoming a key benchmark now for clients to do business with you. With few clicks, now anyone can amass a treasure trove of information about you. 

In this new world, it has now become important, really important to be connected to the right people online and make sure that the world knows that you are connected with them. These connections now become the key reason for clients choosing your services, employers hiring you, a fortune 500 firm awarding you a contract etc. The list can be exhaustive. 

It is a known fact that human mind cannot perceive the level of connections a person has unless and until he/she works on making the connections appear documented. By documented, it means, by actually showing the connection made in the online world. Invouch (www.invouch.com) is a great platform for anybody willing to build their online reputation and influence by leveraging the power of online connections. 

Try this simple exercise. Use invouch to send connection invitations to all the people who are their in your address book, who have associated with you professionaly. Once that is done, try checking your inbox for possible candidates whom you might have missed to add on the address book. Next try the Sent Items folder. I am sure after this excercise, you should be having a long list of prospective candidates for business connection. It would be a great delight for you, when you see these people getting connected with you and filling inside your connections box. 

As soon as your connection box gets filled, the opportunity to interact with your connections based on their activities also increases. Also, connecting with them on invouch gives much more information based on their invouch activities, thus enabling you to have the human element added to whatever message you are communicating enabling you to show something that others like. This adds a new meaning to the online connection paradigm. 

Meaningful online connections will definitely boost your professional life. You can be connected to experts in area of interest without actually knowing them. This is a great advantage. 

Check out the Connections feature on invouch (www.invouch.com) and start boosting your business now. 

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

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Testimonial Marketing - Story of repeat business for Rodney Marsh

The ringing was faint. Still the dazed mind of Rodney Marsh could hear it. 5:30 AM. The delightful dream of swimming on the blue Caribbean waters was fading away. Numbers, with a wicked grin, started appearing from nowhere; the numbers that he has been contemplating almost every second in the last few days, the very dreaded numbers that he has to present in front of a team of ruthless money making machines; the management board of his company. 

Prima-Dona Energy Consulting was founded on the very same day the late Steve Jobs of Apple stood in front of a packed audience and showed them the first iPhone, Jan 9th 2007. Started with the aim of providing consulting services for government agencies, the rapid growth rate of the firm placed them inside the pages of all leading business magazines. 

Alex Blovak an early immigrant from the old Czechoslovakia, experienced poverty first hand in his home country and vouched he will never face it again. Moving to United States with one goal in his mind – make tones of money and his method was doing anything and everything aggressively. The same aggressiveness is running in the corporate culture of Prima-Dona, the company he started; aggressive growth, aggressive undercutting, aggressive diversifying and what not.

Last year, on a summer morning, after the third hole on Pebble Beach, Alex had given Rodney a four page file with a series of numbers marked with perfect red ovals; the sales targets he wanted to see in a year. When Alex says he wants to see it, it means he must see it - nothing less. A year has passed by so fast and the targets were yet so far.

The tall sixteen floor building with dark stained glasses covering all the sides stands radiating an eerie sense of power to the business housed inside; the headquarters of Prima-Dona. 

Rodney drove through the security gates, the same thing he has been doing religiously for the last so many months. 

“Cannot afford to lose this job. Money is good” thoughts were drumming inside his head. “Need to achieve the targets. No compromise on that with Alex” the more he thought, the more pressure he felt. 

The ringing was faint again. 

Good that it helped to break the train of thoughts. Black and white photo of Mike, his old colleague, now an independent government contractor stared at him from his phone. “Rod, Need a favor to ask” the cheerful voice of his old friend made Rodney smile “Sending you an email with a link. Trying to build a professional profile for myself on invouch, you see. Give me a testimonial will you?” 

This was the first time someone was mentioning about invouch to Rodney. He was curious. “Hey Mike, what is this invouch?” He could see Mike’s smile in his mind’s mirror “Rod, check out www.invouch.com. All information you need is there. Call me if you need okay?” Phone went dead. 

Smell of the new Macbook Pro gave an adrenaline rush every time it was opened, like enticing him to do something wild with it each time. His fingers were still not accustomed to the sensitive touchpad of the artistic marvel that they call, the Mac. The Safari web browser was eagerly looking at Rodney, waiting for him to give its food. He typed in www.invouch.com and the screen displayed the vivid orange colored logo and the simplistic home page of invouch.

A social network exclusively for businesses that helps in managing testimonial collection, he was hooked. Building a profile was a breeze. He connected it to his Facebook and Twitter accounts. On the right hand corner the orange link announced the testimonial request from Mike. Leaving a testimonial with the help of the hint-text from Mike, it didn’t take a minute. 

“Wow!”

Rod took his Rolodex. Long fingers busily started sifting the cards. Old clients, suppliers and those business contacts with whom he worked – his fingers graced those cards after such a long time. Within 10 minutes he had send out 25 testimonial invitations and then it started coming in; strong positive testimonials, giving the inspiration he needed badly for so many days. His invouch profile was getting filled up with testimonials so fast. “Was this so easy?” 

Then it happened again, the same old ringing. 

It was David Humphrey, one of his old clients. “It has been seven months since I talked to him. What does this guy want?” Rod’s mind was racing. There was a slight shivering on his fingers when he pressed the answer button on his phone. 

“Hi Dave, How are you? Long time!” a slight tremor in his voice. 

“Doing great Rod” the booming voice has not changed even a bit after all this time “Yeah, it has been some time. Our business took off so fast we couldn’t even imagine. Been swamped with so many new responsibilities, making me feel like twenty four hours in a day is not enough. It has been really crazy here. Look, Rod, the reason I called, I might be having a very prospective business opportunity for you. We are launching a multi-million dollar project in Rwanda in next few months and we need your expertize to do the initial prep phase. What you say?”  

Rod felt his throat suddenly go dry. It was so unexpected. Things were happening so fast. “Sure Dave. Let’s meet for coffee and discuss” was all he could say. 

“Perfect” Dave boomed again “how about tomorrow 4 PM at my office?” 
“Sure thing” said Rod’s meek voice. 
“Great. See you tomorrow” and the line went quiet. 

He couldn’t believe what just happened. 

Epilogue
That day the phone rang three more times like this. Old clients touching base, giving leads to new business. Those numbers didn’t look scary anymore. Rod now lives in the virtual world of invouch, interacting and connecting with his old clients. Repeat business has been spreading smiles across the management board of Prima-Dona. Alex still plays golf at Pebble Beach. And for Rod, he has a nice little cottage overlooking clear blue waters of the Caribbean from where he works six months in a year and all this because he built a business profile for Prima-Dona on invouch. 

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

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For a story of how invouch helped a vacation rental owner, please read “invouch helps a vacation rental owner.”

Invouch helps a Vacation Rental Property owner in South Lake Tahoe – 2196 Venice Dr

Overlooking the beautiful and serene Lake Tallac, with inspiring views of the snow covered Tallac Mountains; there stands a lovely 5-bedroom house. With its exterior stained with fresh redwood paint and the large logs supporting the trusses in the front, it makes all the drivers passing through Venice Dr, the main road connecting Tahoe Keys to the city center, turn their heads and appreciate the view.

Sonia, working on her daily job and saving whatever she can, bought this lovely house in the late 2012 – during the worst time of the down market. With the dream of hosting this house as a vacation rental property, she has already invested a good amount of money in remodeling, upgrading and further enhancing this 5 Bed 3 Bath Jewel of Tahoe Keys. A positive lady, she wanted to make some extra income from the vibrant tourism of the lovely South Lake Tahoe. A good idea, of course!

She wanted the house to be ready before the “heavy ski” winter season of Lake Tahoe. To make the long “work will be completed in 2-3-4 days” story short, it took almost an extra month from the planned launch. The season had already started. People were flocking to Lake Tahoe. She hired a property management company. Business, far from her expectation, was slow!

Then she found invouch; a social network exclusively focused on making businesses profitable and improving sales, invouch was the ideal platform for her to capture feedback and testimonials from her customers. With invouch, she wanted to create a strong public profile for the property online; people would find it while they are searching for vacation rentals in the South Lake Tahoe area.

Creating an invouch profile was quick and easy. She selected an “Entity profile” for the vacation home, entered the email, name and the profile was made. To further beautify the whole profile she entered the description of the home, contact details to call for booking it and added a profile avatar image. Also, she chose the Specialize In area as Tourism and vacation rental. The clever lady understood that search engines like Google are going to crawl through the entire profile and gather as much information from the pages as possible and will then post her profile accordingly. She wanted the profile to come up when anyone is looking for vacation rentals in South Lake Tahoe. The profile was ready and went public. Check it out below: https://www.invouch.com/2196-Venice-Dr

It was imperative that anyone visiting her profile should fall in love with this lovely home. So she added some nice images of the various parts of her home in the media section of her public profile. It gave a wonderful picture of the entire property to anyone who looked at it – very impressive. Check it out below.

Now came the most important part. She wanted to collect testimonials from her current and past customers to add value for the profile as well as keep connected to these customers for bringing them back. She had to finish few more steps before she could effectively do that.

She had to create a very enticing invitation message that would be sent to the customers for leaving testimonials. Invouch provides an easy invitation message entry and storage option. All she need to do was to configure the invitation message as her default format and the system will store it within itself. Whenever she wants to invite someone to leave a testimonial, this message would be displayed on the form and she can easily customize the message. Anytime, she wants to change the default invitation message, the menu options will help her do that. Very simple isn't it?

She also completed the “Thank You” message customization, which is an automatic email send out to the person, once they finishes leaving a testimonial. A nice message appreciating the efforts and time would solidify the relationship.

The key selling proposition for Sonia was the hint-text. Getting people to leave a testimonial was hard because the creative needs expected of them. However, hint-texts provide an easy way for the customers to know what your expectations are. It also shows that you have already invested your time to make it simple for them by pre-writing the testimonial text. All they need to do is select and edit them. She updated the hint-texts to reflect her needs and expectations. Then she sent out an invitation to one of her old customer. Shortly, she got a testimonial back on her profile page. She was thrilled.

However, she wanted to see the impact of this profile page on online world. She typed in her vacation home address on Google after couple of days. She had a link to her site on Google with five stars. Look at it below.

It is so powerful when her prospective customers see multiple five star ratings for her profile on Google. He business is on a rise now, thanks to invouch.com. 

Check the vacation rental home's invouch profile here: https://www.invouch.com/2196-Venice-Dr

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

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invouch.blogspot.com

Our first article about Testimonial Marketing on GoArticles

Posting an article online was one of the initial milestones of Invouch marketing effort. Gladly, it was achieved today. 

Making the article useful for business professionals who wanted to market their businesses professionally and successfully was the most important need. So it came naturally for us to write about Testimonial Marketing and the way it can boost businesses.

You can find this article here: http://goarticles.com/article/Testimonial-Most-Under-Utilized-Business-Tool/7662229/

This article looks at many ways "Testimonials" can help in building a business brand as well as achieving more sales. 

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

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invouch.blogspot.com

Should I guide my customer in writing a testimonial for me?

It’s a human tendency when you make a customer happy by giving exceptional service by going the extra mile; they want to make you happy in return some how. They would be more than willing to give you a great testimonial if that is what you expect from him or her in return for the service your provided. However, most people aren’t all that sure what you expect from them. They would be definitely glad if there is a little coaching from your side as to what expectations you have.

When you have created a level of trust and built a great relationship where in your customer's satisfaction level wants to reciprocate your great service, it is completely ethical to help them verbalize their feelings. Also, if there is a way you can control the way a testimonial about you is presented, you are helping everyone – the provider, the reader, and your own bottom line – by making the customer give you an ideal testimonial.

So, now the key question is “what should be there on this ideal testimonial?” The answer is quite simple. Take all the benefits of your unique selling proposition, list them and target to have few of the elements of your unique selling proposition covered in each testimonial.

For example if your key selling points are Quick, Cost-effective, Round-the-clock services, then ideally speaking, you should be having minimum three testimonials, each characterizing two key selling points above. 

Now comes the best part of invouch. Hint-texts! 

Hint-texts provide hints to the testimonial provider when they are submitting a testimonial about you. You can call them as a guide for the testimonial provider as to what you are expecting from the testimonial. This is the same kind of a guide for the testimonial provider who wants to help you with a good testimonial. 

Always make sure to tweak these hint-texts each time before you send a testimonial invite as to show what you expect from the testimonial provider.

When you are submitting a testimonial invitation, make sure what is the selling point you want to be highlighted in the testimonial that you are going to receive. Tweak the hint-texts accordingly. 

So for the first selling point, "Quick", you can have hint-texts configured as "This service was express fast and exceeded my expectations of speed" as well as “The fastest service I’ve ever had – I really felt taken care of” etc. Think a bit and you will get some wonderful points. 

In order to avoid the feel of repetition, invouch automatically shuffles the order of how the hint-texts are presented. This is powerful.

As previously noted, make sure that you tweak the hint-texts quite often (recommended is before each testimonial invitation) so that all testimonials received will have it’s own uniqueness.

Once you have collected some initial set of testimonials based on your key selling points, start mix and match. Try to add hint texts encompassing multiple selling points in the same testimonial invite. Over a period of time you will be growing a strong collection of testimonials that are easily readable and helps you boost your online reputation many fold.

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

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invouch.blogspot.com

Why should you provide testimonials?

If I say, “Giving a testimonial is a great way to get free publicity for your business!” would you believe? If you don’t, then you are completely wrong.

If you were in the online world and trying to promote your business online, your first focus would be getting listed on the first pages of Internet search results. To be profiled on the search results, when someone makes a generalized search for the item, service or category in which you conduct your business, is your need. This can happen only if your online presence has been assigned higher value by the Internet search engines. 

One of the common techniques to raise your online page’s value is by being linked to or profiled in other website pages of higher value. Though it may sound simple, getting profiled in other web pages is a difficult task.

Testimonials provide an easier and faster alternative for this problem. 

A testimonial is one thing, where in another company or individual is giving whole rights to put your name, designation, company name and even website URL on their website or other pages. You will be piggybacking on their marketing and sales teams effort in propagating your name elsewhere. What a great idea.  

When you are leaving a testimonial for a person, product or business, obviously the other party needs your complete profile to create value for that testimonial. Thus it is an unwritten approval for you to put whatever details possible about you on the other person’s profile, thus getting the search engines to link both the profiles together and increase value for your online presence.

Using invouch to provide testimonials give you the added benefit where in you can be linked to the requested person. When the Internet search engine crawls on their profile, you will also be found there making your page ranking go up. This is the big plus that you need for your search engine optimization tasks, boosting your page’s value. 

Another advantage in using invouch for your testimonial management is the keeping-in-touch-with factor. When you are leaving a testimonial for someone using invouch, both of your profiles are linked. All your updates get transferred to the requester without additional efforts, thus enabling you to keep in touch ensuring repeat business. 

For a detailed overview of how invouch can help you or your business, please read “6 ways invouch can help your business.”

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

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invouch.blogspot.com

Press Release - Invouch launches a business social network testimonial marketing

Union City, CA: Invouch (www.invouch.com) based in the bay area has launched a new social network today exclusively for businesses for collection, storing, management and broadcasting of testimonials and referrals.

The need for an effective testimonial management system exclusively for businesses worldwide has been there for quite some time. However, the limitations of technology and awareness for online privacy have been limiting effective systems to be implemented for addressing the problem. Invouch is a fresh perspective of answering this need.

“Our goal”, said Jay Mohan, Founder of Invouch, “is to provide a secure yet effective platform for increasing credibility and connectivity for businesses worldwide. Our vision is to connect all the businesses around the globe.”

Invouch lets individuals and businesses create profiles that would enhance their reputation many fold. By incorporating functions like testimonial aggregation and display on public profile, star ratings based on feedback, lead collection system, referral management and broadcasting of testimonials invouch is ready to become the best social network for businesses.

“Signing-up is quick and easy” said Kani, the project manager of Invouch. “Users can invite their contacts for providing testimonials. When contact leaves a testimonial, he/she will be assigned an invouch profile and they become connected to you enabling the system to share each other’s activities and keeping both of you updated.”

To know more about invouch and about this press release, please contact:

The PR Department

29300 Kohoutek Way Suite 110

Union City CA 94587

info@invouch.com

1-855-53-VOUCH

Why should I use invouch?

We are living in a time where more and more people are depending on the Internet to make business and professional decisions. It doesn’t matter if you provide the best service in your industry, or you have the best quality product, or you are the best professional in your industry; people want to hear it from others. People are searching the Internet and trusting what other people are saying before they make decisions.

In this market it is a necessity to have a strong and positive online presence. The best approach to this problem is to have a living breathing web page, where you can collect and display testimonials from your contacts. Searching on the Internet will show your audience a very clear, loud message of your strengths and reputation.

Invouch helps you do that easily. It just takes few minutes to setup your account and configure it to be ready for use. You can configure your customized invitation message, your customized thank you message and even customized hint-texts.

Hint-texts are guides for the testimonial provider regarding some good points about you. The general problem when you ask for a testimonial is the mental block, the starting trouble, where people have the pre-conceived notion that it will take lot of time to think of something good about the person and write it. Creativity, after all, is a tough task for lot of people. Hint-texts give an easy solution, where in clicking on the hint text names fill the testimonial box with pre-filled pointers about you. It is always easy to edit something than write it from scratch. Read more about hint-text here.

Once an invouch account is setup properly, inviting your contacts for providing testimonials can happen with the click of a single button.

For your contacts, providing you a testimonial, it is a very straightforward process, mostly requiring 2-3 minutes on an average using invouch. Once a testimonial is provided, the provider is assigned an invouch account and that user is connected with your profile. All your key activities including the testimonials you receive from others are shared with your connected users. Your name stays in the mind of your contacts without any additional efforts from your end; a plain unobtrusive way of keeping in touch and follow-up.

Getting referred to others by some one whom you know is very easy now using invouch. It is so powerful when someone speaks great about you to others whom he/she knows. With invouch, this is just a couple of minutes task.

For a business, to have a single place where all the staffs of business can congregate together and work towards getting testimonials for themselves as well as their business is very powerful. All these staff testimonials are aggregated and shown as the collective testimonials for the business.

The invouch testimonial widget helps you to spread the word through your website as well as anywhere you can paste an HTML code.

Connecting your social network accounts like Facebook and Twitter helps you to broadcast the testimonials through other channels and all with the power of a single testimonial engine provided by invouch.

In short, you should use invouch for the following important reasons:
- Your invouch profile page is a search friendly page that appears in the search results of most of the search engines.
- Invouch is an easy testimonial collection, storage, management and broadcasting engine.
- Social Networking aspect of invouch helps you on follow-up marketing without additional efforts using the concept called “Connections”.
- Invouch makes it easy for you to be referred by others.
- Single place for all staffs of a business across branches to congregate online and build the reputation for the business.
- Invouch testimonial widget helps to spread the testimonials collected on invouch through other channels like your website or sites that support HTML posting.
- Connecting social networks like Facebook and Twitter helps you spread your reputation faster. 

Article by Invouch

Invouch is a business social network for collecting, storing, managing and broadcasting testimonials and referrals.

www.invouch.com

invouch.tumblr.com

invouch.blogspot.com