Rick Whittington Consulting

With all the talk about “social” this-and-that, you’re probably wondering if I made up the term “social proof.” While I can’t claim to have coined the phrase, I can tell you that using social proof in your business can dramatically increase your sales.

So what exactly is social proof?

In a nutshell, social proof is our tendency as humans to follow the crowd. We tend to rely on other people to guide our actions. Some examples of social proof include:

• Testimonials from real customers for your product or service
• Comments on blog posts
• Recommendations from well-known experts or celebrity endorsements (the “Oprah effect”)
• Customer ratings and reviews on ecommerce sites
• Customers participating in your business’ brand experience on Facebook Fan Pages
• #followfriday recommendations on Twitter (for you non-Twitterbugs, that’s when someone recommends that you follow someone else on Twitter)
• The number of Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, RSS subscribers, blog readers, e-mail subscribers that you have
• Awards you’ve been nominated for or won
• Mentions on other web sites/social bookmarking sites
• Professional certifications or affiliations
• The granddaddy of them all — the referral

How do you get social proof?

Unlike a top 5 spot on Google Adwords, you can’t buy social proof — it must be built over time. The most clever way to build social proof is to invite your customers to interact with your business in new and interesting ways.

Threadless encourages their customers to design t-shirts that the company produces and sells. When the shirts sell, they give some of the money back to the designer. They allow customers to vote on the designs that they like the best, so the customer is ultimately making the decision about what the company sells.

Naturally, designers are more willing to promote Threadless if their shirt design has been produced and sold on the site. You know — the “My tee design was just picked up by Threadless” Facebook status or the “Vote for my newest t-shirt design at Threadless” tweet — help the company go viral. The customers do the marketing for them.¬† Brilliant, right?

In recent talks to job seekers, I’ve been telling them to use whatever means they are comfortable with to build some credibility and notoriety.¬† The unemployed project manager could write an e-book and supporting blog about what project management methodology works best in different company cultures and send links to hiring managers and other collegues. They might use the blog and other social media to promote the e-book, and as more people read and share the book, then job offers will find them.

Do this successfully and you’ve achieved marketing nirvana — people seeking out your business’ product or service. Make your product or service the best they’ve experienced and they’ll tell others, effectively marketing it for you!

Making the most of social proof

• Define and know your audience and what’s important to them.
• Work to be the best at what you do or offer the best product.
• Be passionate about your product or service. Clients and customers get a good feeling when they do business with upbeat people.
• Find ways to get feedback from your customers.
• Find ways to publicize client successes or ways customers are using the products you sell.
• Create a community for clients or customers to interact with each other, and participate in it.

Finally, forget return on investment (ROI). As MarketingFactor.com so correctly states it, “The goal of social marketing is not to generate sales directly from Squidoo, Facebook or YouTube; the goal is to generate something far more valuable for your business: social proof.”

Build social proof and sales will naturally follow.