7 Questions To Ask For Better Testimonials

Let's talk testimonials for a minute.

Last year, I conducted over a hundred testimonial interviews—conversations designed to produce engaging soundbites and compelling case studies as part of content marketing plans for businesses, brands, and organizations of all sizes.

Or, put less pretentiously: I spent a ton of time chatting with folks about how awesome it is to work with our clients.

Testimonials are crucial for any business's digital presence, which makes it frustrating that so many fall flat. Okay, "flat" might be harsh, but definitely not as strong as they could be—mainly because people aren't asking the right questions. Here's the thing everyone overlooks:

A successful testimonial isn't just about getting an endorsement. It’s about guiding someone through their own story. This isn’t some abstract marketing theory—it simply creates a far more compelling end product.

We could talk about Joseph Campbell, the Monomyth, and storytelling philosophy all day long, but instead, let me just give you the straightforward framework I use.

Whether you're collecting testimonials for an author, robotics company, city tourism board, or cheesemonger, this approach takes just 10-15 minutes, and will provide you with more high-quality content than you'll know what to do with.

1) What were things like before? You want people to paint a picture of life (or business) before the solution. Typically, they'll stick to facts or numbers here.
2) Why was that awful? Then you push them. Dig deeper. Another variation is: "What was so challenging about those circumstances that you had to take action?" People often naturally shift toward emotions, starting with "I felt…" That’s exactly what you want.

3) What were you looking for? This one often gets overlooked. Effective testimonials reflect potential clients' current needs. Asking what your client initially wanted—and maybe what they unsuccessfully tried in the past—gets you there.

4) What was it about [insert company here] that made you say YES? This highlights your differentiators. Especially critical for service-oriented businesses like real estate, law firms, therapists, etc. Why would someone pick you in particular?

5) What was your experience like while working with them? Joseph Campbell would call this part the Belly of the Whale. Struggle and rebirth. Everything that happens after they cross the threshold. You’re wanting them to paint a picture of the process, basically. You can ask some followups. What was their favorite part? What was hardest? What was an aha moment? Weave some specifics into the conversation.

6) What are things like now? Bring the conversation full circle. What tangible outcomes resulted from working together? Then push a little deeper into…

7) Why is that awesome? Encourage them to explore the deeper meaning behind these outcomes. What new realities emerged because they chose to invest?

That’s it–easy! Rinse and repeat, and you’ll end up with a vast treasure trove of testimonial snippets you can use, re-use, and re-re-use for years to come. Ultimately, you can take interviews and tighten them up into long-form case studies, or chop them up further into bite-sized reels that can be planted on social media, landing pages, and email sequences.

The main thing–and this extends to pretty much all marketing content–is that you’ll pretty much always get better content from engaging with someone conversationally than by spending a few hours on a script. 

How we lost the war on vertical video

Vertical video doesn’t make sense. Or, well, it didn’t. It still sort of doesn’t, but it makes more sense than it used to. 
Okay, let me start over. 

When I started my career in media production, vertical video was a punchline. The first angry comment on every video was, “Turn your phone sideways.” Our entire media infrastructure was built around videos in landscape orientation, after all–good, old-fashioned, horizontal frames. 

But why was this the default orientation, anyway? 

Well, there are some boring logistical reasons for it. But on a fundamental level, the landscape style frame–what all our TVs and cinema screens and computers display–is set up to replicate your eyes’ field of vision. At its core, it’s that simple: our eyes basically see in widescreen, so video should be in widescreen. Case closed. 

Enter the smartphone. How do you solve for a device that’s designed to be held perpendicular to what we’re all used to? For Steve Jobs, the answer was simple: flip the whole thing 90 degrees. 

Here’s Jobs showing off video on the original iPhone for the first time. “All videos,” he says, almost flippantly, “we look at in landscape.” CASE CLOSED. 

 And then, the moment the app store expanded and smartphone usage exploded, the case was reopened almost immediately.

 2011: Snapchat launches and—without realizing it—kickstarts the vertical video era.

2016: Facebook moves toward a slightly elongated 2:3 native format, Instagram launches Stories to take on Snapchat, and a little app called Douyin appears in China.

2017: Douyin goes global under a new name—TikTok.

2018: TikTok merges with Musical.ly, bringing lip-syncs and dance trends to the masses. A study finds vertical videos keep people watching 90% more than horizontal. 

2019: TikTok crosses 1 billion downloads. 

2020: Instagram introduces Reels—aka its answer to TikTok.

2021: YouTube throws its hat in the ring with Shorts. The competition heats up.

2022–Now: Meta prioritizes full-screen content, and Instagram makes all videos Reels. No turning back now.

We all had arguments against vertical video. It looks weird on computer screens. It doesn’t capture as much of the action. It’s harder to edit. None of it really mattered. Because at the end of the day, people just don’t want to turn their phone 90 degrees to the side. 

 So what are the rules? When do we shoot in portrait mode, and when do we stick to landscape? There are basically three situations that we never use vertical video.

1) Anything with a major call to action. You may be enticed by that famous stat  that says vertical video gets a retention rate of over 90%. Unfortunately, this doesn’t transpose to clickthrough rates. If you want to get a ot of eyeballs, go for the reel. If you want those eyeballs to follow through and do something...not so much.

2) Any piece of video infrastructure. Basically, if something is on a webpage you own–it should not be a portrait-mode video.

3) Email embeds. It makes for a lot more scrolling, and you ideally want somebody to consume that content on a computer regardless.

3 reasons we don’t recommend Blue Yeti mics

It’s four years ago, and everyone is suddenly and frantically on the hunt for microphones. There had been a, uh…notable shift in the way people work and communicate and deliver content, and suddenly my phone was lighting up like a Christmas tree with people asking what microphones they should buy for their Zoom meetings, webinars, and livestreams. 

Now, I should note, I do not (nor did I ever) work in consumer electronics. But for a surprising number of business owners, lawyers, speakers, doctors, and authors, I was still the best option they had readily available in their rolodex. So, in the interest of professional decorum, I spent a whole bunch of money and tested out a whole lot of equipment. 

Then–and ever since then–the following situation occurred several dozen times. 

Associate: “What mic should I get?”

Me: “Well, that really depends on your needs. There’s no one right mic for everyone, and it depends on how much you have budgeted and how willing you are to go through some setup hoops. What you really want to look at is–”

Associate: “My friend said I should buy a Blue Yeti.”

Me: “Oh. I mean, it’s fine. We actually don’t really recommend them in professional settings for most people because–”

And then they’d buy the Blue Yeti. And then I’d get a text months later asking why it wasn’t working. 

Listen, I’m not making any universal statement here. Some people have had fine experiences. Many have dealt with frustrations. At the end of the day, I speak primarily for myself when I say this: If you have a laptop built in the past few years, buying a Blue Yeti USB mic is not going to be a notable step up overall. Why?

1. They can be frustratingly finicky. Blue Yeti mics plug in via USB. In theory this should make them simple to use and relatively dummy-proof. In reality, they kind of end up being the printers of the A/V world, if that makes sense. Why isn’t your computer recognizing it? I don’t know. Yes, I know it recognized it an hour ago. Have you tried restarting the computer? Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?

2. They’re a strange middle ground. Any pro-level setup is going to output through an XLR, then run through a bunch of devices to convert the audio into a digital signal. For people spending the money–people who make their money or build huge audiences via podcasting or virtual speaking–these mics are worth investing in. On the other side, onboard mics have made big strides in the past couple years. This leaves the Blue Yeti (and its competitors…don’t want people to think I’m just picking on one conglomerate) in a strange neither-hot-nor-cold position. And besides–

3. The audio quality is middling. Some of this is opinion, but some of it is just objective. The standard hundred-dollars-or-so Blue Yeti option is not an incredible mic. It pics up a ton of ambient noise. It’s made with cheap components. And audio recorded on it produces notable audio hiss.

So what to do? Unfortunately, there’s no slam dunk answer. If you’re using a cheap-ish usb mic and like what you’re producing with it, great! If you’re hunting for a new setup, it gets more difficult. To a certain degree, it’s a you-get-what-you-pay-for scenario. I use this one. It works admirably. 

The things that have been exciting me most recently are lav mics. What used to be cumbersome by nature now comes in a very small and sleek package. I recommend these DJI mics to pretty much everyone I come across these days. Just clip the mic to your collar, plug the receiver into your phone or computer, and you’re good to go. 

These are great, because they pic up your voice in a nice, crisp way–and that’s pretty much ALL they pic up. Great for people doing virtual speaking who don’t care to have their refrigerators and dogs coming through. Plus, they’re simple to throw in a bag when you’re on the road. 

Audio can be frustrating. Fortunately, there are a ton of opinions out there available for you–way more than there were at the beginning of 2020. Here’s hoping you find the right one for you.

We Captured Exactly 78,129 words worth of footage on Saturday

It’s springtime proper now. At least, it is for those of us in the American South. My condolences to our clients and readers in the Northeast. 

And with the improved weather comes an influx of clients new and old looking to shoot fresh content.

So over the weekend, we had five individual businesses come through the studio to batch-create social media content, homepage videos, campaign promos–you name it. 

And at the end of it all, we ended up with 78,129 spoken words captured on camera. 

That’s 1.6 Great Gatsbys. 

It’s about 9 standard-length sitcom episodes. 

It’s a lot, is what I’m saying. Probably the most we’ve ever shot in a standard shoot day. Here are my contractually obligated takeaways:

Interview-style shooting gives you more (and better) content. I legitimately think it would be impossible to shoot this much usable footage off of a teleprompter in fewer than three days. 

Vibes are more important than scripts when you’re going for volume. When you get bogged down in scripts and the minutiae of language, you can’t fully explore the space. More important than precision is keeping everyone in an upbeat, creative mood.

It’s not a good idea to eat a heavy lunch when you have six hours of shooting left ahead of you. The burger and fries look good; they will seem like the right call. But it pays to look out for afternoon-you. (This takeaway will–inevitably–be promptly forgotten about within the week, as always).

Anyways, huge thanks to the full team–Nick, Michelle, Hannah–and to our always amazing clients. We’ll be sure to post some of their productions over the next few months. 

Why you shouldn’t shoot video over Zoom

If you follow our stuff, you know that the majority of what we shoot happens in-studio or on-location–meaning with a crew and big, cumbersome cameras. 

Every now and then, however, a client’s timeline or circumstances require us to shoot things over the good ol’ World Wide Web. And for basically everyone out in the world, recording video over the internet is synonymous with Zoom.

And that’s because Zoom is really, really good at doing the specific thing it’s designed to do–namely, keeping a consistent live feed going without too much stuttering. Basically, if you’re running a meeting, Zoom is great.

But if you’re recording content? Not so hot. 

It turns out that the REASON Zoom is so good at keeping a steady feed going is that it makes compromises in other areas; specifically, the areas that make video files look and sound pretty. Many people come to us frustrated that even though they’ve invested in all sorts of high-dollar webcams and microphones, their footage still looks cruddy. 

And more often than not, Zoom is to blame. Without getting into specifics about specifically what it’s specifically doing, just know that it’s built to to crush files to smithereens.

So what can we do about it? Here are three distinct options:

1. Record locally. Without exception, a video you record on your phone or on your computer will look markedly better than one over the web. When recording with a simple webcam on Mac, we tend to use Quicktime to easily snap videos, but there are a ton of third-party apps you can choose. Unfortunately, this isn’t always a viable option. Maybe you’re doing an interview or need a director. In that case…

2. Use a dedicated recording app. When you conduct a Zoom meeting, it basically takes everybody’s webcam, crushes up all the pixels, and makes a video stew that gets doled out to everyone in the call. Now obviously, that’s not scientifically accurate. There are other applications and services, however, designed to prioritize quality (bitrate, resolution, etc). They record files locally and then upload them to the host individually. That way, an editor can have full HD (or even 4k) footage while still being able to talk organically with the expert. 
   
   We use Riverside. I would link it here, but I don’t want to imply that we’re affiliates or whatever–just moderately happy customers. 

3. If all else fails, at least click this box. We get it. Sometimes, the ease of use associated with Zoom makes it the best option in the moment. Everyone across geography and generations knows how to click a Zoom link and understands the basic protocols that go along with that. So naturally, many people will default to Zoom when they need to capture a quick testimonial or soundbite. But no matter what, always, always click this little box in your settings. This will force your recordings to default to some sort of industry standard in terms of aspect ratio, frame rate, etc.

So that’s it, really. Not everyone has easy access to a studio. And even if you do, sometimes you just want to do all that for a quick thing. But just because you’re not able to capture world-class cinema doesn’t mean you have to settle for bottom-of-the-barrel video that looks like it was shot on a Gameboy Camera.