Best of Accounting PR and
Social Media Resources

Take the opportunity to make some noise!

For winners of the Best of Accounting award, this is an opportunity for you to make some noise about your firm's commitment to the client experience! Celebrating the team, the culture, and the service practices that have led to this accomplishment is a sure-fire way to foster engagement across your firm and to let clients know just how much their feedback means to you.

Not an Accounting award winner?

Check out the Profile Page, Testimonials and Shout Outs tabs!

Need help getting started?
We've got you covered! From PR to social media to "how do I talk about this award program?" the resources below are available to help you tell your firm's story of service excellence.

Step 1: Publish a Press Release

On the date of the public winner announcement (check with your Account Manager if you're not sure about this date!) ClearlyRated will publish a public press release to PR Newswire announcing award results and linking to the official list of winning accounting firms. At that time, you're invited (encouraged!) to publish your own press release to tell the story of your specific firm and your journey with Best of Accounting.

COMPLIMENTARY PRESS RELEASE TEMPLATE

We've made some sample text available to you as a starting point for your firm's press release. You are more than welcome to use all (or none!) of this sample text in your own release! We won't be offended 🙂
Press release templates are available for all winners in the Award Resources section of your ClearlyRated dashboard.

RESOURCES TO HELP WITH YOUR PRESS RELEASE

If you've never published a press release before, there are plenty of considerations to be had! Below we have compiled some resources that we find helpful when crafting a press release:

KeyPrinciples: "How to Write a Press Release" - high-level (5min read)
HubSpot: "How to Write a Press Release" - more granular, offers free templates and examples (10min read)
Neil Patel: "12 Ironclad Rules for Issuing Press Releases" - in-depth, for those who want to become PR ninjas (15min read)

Step 2: Announce your win on social media!

On the date of the public winner announcement (check with your Account Manager if you're not sure about this date!) ClearlyRated will publish announcements about the Best of Accounting award results and link to the winners list from our ClearlyRated LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

Below are best practices for leveraging your firm's social channels to help tell your story of service excellence.

Your Social Media Toolkit also provides ready-made social media images and post copy that you can download and edit to easily share your win across all of your social media channels!

Best Practices for Sharing Your Award on Social Media:

Make sure that any content posted to social media involves a highly-engaging image!
There are mountains of research demonstrating how (and why) social engagement skyrockets with visual content. The award logo is a great tool to visually clarify your message, but it's also important to weave in your own brand identity to create that connection in the minds of your followers.
- Insider tip: It can be tricky to create images that are just the right size for the specific social network you are sharing to. Here at ClearlyRated, we use Sprout Social's guide to social media image sizes to keep us in check and make sure we don't end up with pixelated or otherwise difficult-to-read visual content.
Make sure your social posts link somewhere.
It's one thing to advertise your win with a catchy image, but your true opportunity to engage viewers is to invite them to dig deeper into what the award means and why it sets your firm apart. Maybe you link to your recently published press release (see above), a blog post summarizing your journey with the Best of Accounting program, or (better yet!) back to your ClearlyRated profile page - where readers can view your client feedback in the form of star ratings and testimonials.
- Insider tip: Online ratings and reviews are rapidly becoming an essential resource for accounting buyers who are weighing which firm to work with. 90% of buyers continue to research a firm even after receiving a referral. Of those, 3 in 5 read online reviews about the accounting firm to assist in their decision making (source: 2019 Accounting Industry Benchmark Study).
Publish posts that speak to the award but that also hit on the culture and practices that underwrite your firm's Best of Accounting win.
Your commitment to client service, examples of employees who go above and beyond, and testimonials from your clients are all opportunities to tell a broader story about the dedicated efforts that make the magic happen at your firm.
Engage your entire team (especially team members who are client-facing) to help spread the message!
Corporate social media posts only go so far - why not recruit your partners, associates, and firm staff to help share this story with their own networks? Offer a few recommendations for text and images to share, then find ways to incentivize and recognize them when they've done their part to spread the word!
- Insider tip: Clearview Social is one of our favorite tools for incentivizing personal engagement with corporate content sharing initiatives on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Don't limit yourself to a one-time social media blitz!
Continue to post about the award and tell your firm's story of service excellence throughout the year. A regular cadence helps to maximize award exposure with your client and prospect base while continuing to win buy-in for the survey program with your team.
Include relevant hashtags to generate additional visibility (and searchability) for award-related posts. Hashtags are a popular means of categorizing content so that it becomes discoverable by users on a given social media platform. Some of the most common hashtags we see from Best of Accounting winners are: #BestofAccounting #AccountingCX #NPS
- Insider tip: Hashtags are a common point of confusion for non-marketers, and their purpose is evolving in the professional services space. However, a strategic approach to hashtags can generate a great deal of intelligence and, potentially, exposure for your firm. The ClearlyRated marketing team often refers to this article about how to use hashtags before deciding what to publish behind the pound sign.
Be sure to tag 'ClearlyRated' in your social posts!
As Best of Accounting's independent 3rd-party administrator, saying "hi" to our brand in your award-related social media posts offers a quick credibility boost and also gives us a chance to engage with your content. It's a win-win!
- Not following ClearlyRated on social media yet? Let's get connected! We created the following feeds to give you an easy way to stay up to date with ClearlyRated's latest industry research, client feedback best practices, and information about the Best of Legal award program. Follow along with us to get the latest resources!
  - LinkedIn: ClearlyRated
  - Twitter: @ClearlyRated
  - Instagram: @ClearlyRated_cx
  - Facebook: ClearlyRated
- Join our Best of Accounting winners group on LinkedIn.
  This LinkedIn group is exclusively for Best of Accounting award winners, and enables winners to share ideas and strategies while also featuring the award logo on your personal LinkedIn profile page.

Messaging Your Award to Your Clients

Not sure how to raise the topic of your Best of Accounting award with clients? Better yet, want some examples about how to speak about the award program itself? We've compiled a couple of resources to help your team plan out communicating this amazing service win to clients and partners.

Phone Scripts

Sometimes a personal call is the best way to share the news about your Best of Accounting Award with clients and prospects as a way to build relationships. The scripts below are helpful starting points for your staff to use when they communicate your achievement over the phone.

Sample phone call scripts:

"Hi [client name]! This is [your name] with XYZ Associates calling to share the exciting news that we won the Best of Accounting Award! We partnered with the satisfaction research firm ClearlyRated to survey our clients and we're proud to have received a rating of 9 or 10 out of 10 from more than x%. Even more importantly, we are now able to use our feedback to better serve you."

"Hi [client name]! This is [your name] with XYZ Associates, just calling to let you know that we won ClearlyRated's Best of Accounting Award for client service excellence and are excited to share the benefits with our partners. We are very proud to rank among the highest of the competitors for our satisfaction scores, but are even more pleased with the feedback we received and plan to use it to continue to provide an exceptional experience working with our firm."

"Hi [client name]! This is [your name] with XYZ Associates and I'm thrilled to let you know we have just been awarded ClearlyRated's Best of Accounting Award because our clients ranked their satisfaction with us to be superior."

Email Scripts

It's essential to follow up every survey initiative with a 'thank you' to your clients for their time & input, as their feedback is allowing you to improve. But, taking it a step further and actually sharing the results of your survey initiative with clients has immense value.

The most efficient, and universally impactful, strategy we've found is what we call the "2-1-1 follow up methodology".

Read this blog post for a more detailed explanation of this strategy or download our survey follow up email template to see what this email could look like to your clients.

Best of Accounting PR and Social Media Resources