Testimonials have been the main way business owners have been able to add credibility and trust to their businesses for brand new prospects and perspective customers to feel more comfortable when making a purchasing decision. Now, with the wide spread acceptance of blogs and blogging, webmasters can use their blogs as a new and superior method of exhibiting and enhancing those testimonials. Here are 5 examples of what I mean:

Give your clients/customers the opportunity to publish their own blog (on your site) instead of just giving you a

testimonial. The blog would include regularly updated entries of how the customer is using your product to improve their life. You could give customers a fr-ee product or a rebate in exchange for them publishing it on the blog.

See if your customers/clients would be willing to write blog entries about goals they have reached using your product, the positive emotions it's given them, the fears and worries your product has taken out of their lives, how bad their lives were before they bought it, how it has helped other people in their lives, etc.

Your customers and clients could update it daily, weekly or monthly, depending on how frequently they use your product(s). You could publish the blog entry right in your ad or link directly to the blog itself. You could either provide the people with blog space for writing the blog or have them e-mail you the blog entries for you to publish yourself.

You can make the blog extra persuasive and credible by also including customer's personal profile, pictures, online video of them using your product, net audio of them talking about your product, even scanned handwritten letters. Today's easy to use technology makes these suggestions (and many others), simple to implement.

A blog would likely outsell the common, age-worn testimonial because it's updated on a regular basis and reveals more personal information about the client/customer. A blog is considered more personable which would make people more apt to read it and believe it's legitimacy.