Sometimes when I look at the number of followers I have on Twitter (580, very modest by general standards) I get all excited. What a lot of people! Are they really all interested in what I’ve got to say?

If you’ve read the guest blogs from Alison Cross, then you’ll know the answer to that question is probably no! Most of these people are following me just because I’m following them, so at the moment I’m following Alison’s advice and weeding out those that I’m not really interested in.

If you’ve signed up to Twitter, and have ever wondered how to turn your followers into money, a US based not-for-profit start-up called The Whuffie Bank is behind a new idea that rewards you for your online reputation.

The number of times your name gets mentioned, and the context of those mentions, can earn you ‘Whuffies’, a new digital currency that rewards popularity.

The Whuffie Bank then lets users cash in their Whuffies to buy virtual goods, and in the future even real-life products.

Using an algorithm, the bank monitors users’ activity across websites such as Twitter and MySpace, and then assigns Whuffies to posts, comments, and other mentions.

It also looks at when there is third party support of a positive Tweet or post, such as the number of times a Facebook post is ‘liked’, or their tweets are retweeted.

Participants can also trade using their Whuffies. For example, a user might offer 100 Whuffies for anyone to retweet one of their Tweets.

The website thewhuffiebank.org shows how many Whuffies each user has accumulated, along with some graphics that shows the rate of growth over time. All ‘Whuffiers’ are placed into a league, which hopes to highlight those with the best online reputation in different fields.

Looking at the league right now, it is topped by Rev Run from Run DMC. P Diddy ranks second.

Whilst this all seems like good fun, it has an important element. We’ve spoken before about the importance of having a social media strategy: in the online world, giving and getting feedback is so much more common than it used to be. As a website owner, you can put your online reputation to work, by getting good feedback and communicating with your users through social media. Take a look at how to integrate your WebEden website with Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re interested in finding out more about TheWhuffiebank, then you can start by measuring the strength of your online reputation over at Whuffiebank.org by entering your username.

Have you got a reputation that you’d like to trade on? Want to make some virtual cash out of your followers? Is this a good way to get you thinking about your online reputation? Check out TheWhufflebank.org and leave us a comment below.

A survey out last week by Ciao – the shopping comparison website – highlights the huge importance of good reviews for anyone selling online. The detail shows that 76% of people shopping online trust customer reviews rather than recommendations by either sales assistants or even friends.

The idea that users trust the shopping opinion of complete strangers over friends might come as a surprise to some, until you consider that the website carrying out the survey- ciao.co.uk – is a reviews based website…

All cynicism aside, its long been known that customer reviews can drive online sales conversions, and we recently encouraged everyone building a website to make use of customer reviews websites.

The survey of 1,223 people indicated that users tend to turn to review websites before deciding what product to buy, and where to buy it.

The typical format of reviews websites allow people to read the opinions of others who have already bought the product, or shopped from that etailer.

Interestingly, just 2% of shoppers thought that sales people influenced their purchases. A further 19% took sales advice from friends.

So the most important thing to take from this is that if you’re building a website you need to make the most of any customer reviews or feedback you might get.

If you interact with people on your website, ask them for feedback from their experience. If you get positive feedback then ask the person if you can use that feedback.

You can use that feedback in two ways. First, if you have products or services on your website then include a link beside that product to ‘customer reviews’ to allow your website visitors to quickly gain feedback from others, Always try and use real names and locations to make the reviews as authentic as possible.

Second, if you get some glowing testimonials, then ask that user if they wouldn’t mind leaving a review at a reviews website.

Here’s a list of the top reviews websites:

pricegrabber.co.uk
reviewcentre.com
shopzilla.co.uk
ciao.co.uk
dealtime.co.uk
truste-marketing.co.uk
webuser.co.uk
maxxsave.co.uk
dooyoo.co.uk
resellerratings.com

Of course, getting good reviews is only half the story, of which the other half is avoiding bad reviews. Getting customers to recommend you is the holy grail of successful marketing. There’s an old advertising belief that a customer with a something good to say about your product talks to 8 people about it; and that someone with something bad to say does so to 20 others. So the most important thing is to make sure the customer has a good time in the first place!

Have you had a positive and successful experience with customer feedback? Or have you had someone bad mouthing you or your website? Leave us a comment below.