About Referral Rock
Editorial standards
Since 2014, Referral Rock has helped businesses run their referral programs. Since the beginning we've accumulated a lot of knowledge along the way based on working with customers, respected works of others, our own research, and our desire to contribute.
The majority of our work is directly about referral marketing or adjacent topics that serve our marketing and business audience. This may span research in software tools, referral program examples, original research, word of mouth, affiliate marketing, brand ambassadors, partner marketing and influencers.
Based on our own personal interests in these topics, we believe we are growing the corpus of knowledge in these areas vs contributing to the noise.
This page explains why we publish, how each article gets made, and who is accountable for it.
Last updated: October 15, 2026
How we write, research, and check our work
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Experience with real programs. Our team sets up and supports referral programs every day. How-to guides, setup walkthroughs and integration articles are written or checked by people who know how the tracking, rewards and connections actually work.
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Sources you can check. Every statistic, quote and claim is checked against its original source, and we link to it.
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Original work. We strive to contribute original ideas to topics, but many of our articles are written in a way to help various business audiences understand concepts from their point of view. While some of the ideas may be repeated and repackaged throughout our content we stand by our approach to help audiences understand the subject matter.
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Kept current. We update articles based on new research, insights, examples, our own product updates and trends where each article shows the date it was last updated. We view our work as maintaining a library of useful content that is relevant, helpful, and useful.
Who writes and reviews our articles
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Real bylines. Every article names the person who wrote it and links to their profile, with their role and background. We don't use made-up authors or AI-generated headshots. The majority of our work has been done inhouse by writers employed by Referral Rock, but over the years we've had guest posts and freelance writers.
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Former staff keep their credit. Articles were written by people who have since moved on. Their byline stays, and their profile says they're former staff as long as the majority of the structure and ideas of the content remained intact with subsequent updates.
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Referral Rock Editorial. Oftentimes we've had articles that have been updated many times over the years. In this case it becomes challenging to credit one individual author. At that point we might reference Referral Rock Editorial, who is made up of many contributing people, as the core writer of the article. Articles credited to Referral Rock Editorial were written over the years by former staff and freelance writers. Today's team maintains and updates them.
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Expert review. When an article shows "Reviewed by", a specific person on our team fully read the article, checked it for accuracy, and is at liberty to make minor updates to improve the reader experience.
How we use AI
We use AI as a sparring partner: to help with research, test an outline, or rewrite a section so it reads more clearly. It never has the final word. A person on our team reads, reviews and checks every article, checks each fact and source for accuracy, and approves it. We don't publish mass-produced articles or anything written only by AI.
Referral Rock Editorial Team
Learn more about our team members and expert reviewers.