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10 Types of Social Proof to Turbo Charge Your Blog, Business and Brand

Written by - 17 Comments
Categories: Social Media Marketing

So you are in a new city, town or village and you are looking for somewhere to eat. You have walked past empty cafes and others that are busy and almost bursting at the seams with noisy diners.

Which one do you eat at?10 Types of Social Proof to Turbo Charge Your Blog, Business and Brand

You are browsing at a book store and you pick up a book with a catchy title and you check the flyer and you see the words “best seller” and more than 1 million copies sold! You also notice that it has been endorsed by other well known authors or celebrities.

Are you now more temped to buy it?

As you browse and search the web you find some blogs on the topic area of choice, one has no evidence of  how many readers subscribe or share but the other has retweet buttons with hundreds of tweets and dozens of Facebook shares.

Which blog is bookmarked first?

Why Social Proof  Matters

The reality is that most people are followers and providing social proof of popularity as provided by others can make people stop, engage and buy.

Social proof can make people comment on or “Like” your Facebook page. This again adds more social proof and encourages others to become engaged.

Newspapers include how many of its papers are read every day. Magazines list their subscriber count.

Why do they do that? …because it provides social proof and it draws in more readers and it sells more newspapers and magazines.

Movies that have won Oscars shout it out in their advertising and posters.

10 Types of Social Proof

So how do you incorporate social proof into your blog? Consider placing widgets and banners in your blog.

This includes:

  1. Facebook Shares
  2. Numbers of Blog or RSS subscribers
  3. Facebook Likes or Fans
  4. Number of ReTweets
  5. Quantity of Email Subscribers
  6. Awards or Rankings
  7. Total of LinkedIn Shares
  8. The Number of Google +1′s
  9. The Number of Page views per Month
  10. Twitter Follower Count

Remember numbers are persuasive and providing social proof and validating  your credentials publicly will help take your blog to the next level.

Has this worked for you? Look forward to hearing your stories.

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Image by birgerking


  • Anonymous

    Nice one, Jeff! 

    The stumbling block for a lot of folk is how to get past the early stages, where you don’t have engagement with lots of folk online. It can be off-putting – I know I’m pretty unlikely to join a FaceBook page that only has a handful of followers. 

    The trick is only partly adding the website ‘social proof widgets’ – having a good following to show off is pretty important too.
    But which would you do first?

    • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

      Thanks fort the comment. Yes it’s a bit “chicken and egg” scenario. Putting a retweet button not only creates social proof but makes it easy for people to share. Also sometimes it is best to only reveal follower numbers when it gets into 3 figures. At some stage you do need to reveal the numbers!   

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  • http://dempseymarketing.com/journal/media/ Robert Dempsey

    More than anything on this list what has helped me get more business are the testimonials I have on my site. I would argue that testimonials are social proof as word of mouth was the original “social networking” and is still the most powerful today.

    Having a business owner talk about the wealth of value I’ve provided for their business trumps any Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn numbers, especially when it comes to creating a social media strategy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/briancurrin Brian Currin

    Excellent, thanks Jeff.

    I immediately moved my Blog Grader rating up near the top, and added Blog Stats and Top Posts widgets.

    Cheers

    Brian
    http://briancurrin.wordpress.com

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    Thanks Tisa, glad you enjoyed it. :)

  • http://seanclark.com Sean Clark

    Importantly this happens via mobile the majority of the time; is your blog or web site, along with the widgets & banners, optimized for mobile?

  • http://EasyLunchboxes.com Kelly Lester (Easy Lunchboxes)

    Terrific article Jeff! I think the thing to remember though is that the followers and awards are gained after you engage, engage, engage. Yes, it’s difficult to get that going and there was a long stretch of time when I started my biz that I really didn’t know what I was doing… or if it was even working. But I kept communicating and following the advice of those I admired, and lo and behold, 2 years into my biz and I think it’s finally working :)  
    Bottom line – if you’re not putting out good content and engaging on a personal and real level with your fans, you probably won’t get the social proof to post/boast about.

  • http://www.applexmanagement.co.uk kaizen consultancy

    Social proof is a type of conformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for cues concerning the correct behavior.

  • http://pluslogin.com/ classifieds

    Thanks for sharing information about value of social networking sites.It is very helpful to me for improve my business in the internet thank u.

  • http://www.purchasearticlespro.com/ J.K Robert

    Facebook has become a huge marketing tool.  Many companies realize this and have signed up for accounts, but still don’t really know how to use it.  The key is to be active, communicate with the target audience, and provide helpful and interesting content and I Believe http://www.socialaliens.com The most trustable place to buy Real Targeted Facebook fans,

  • http://www.purchasearticlespro.com/ J.K Robert

    Facebook has become a huge marketing tool.  Many companies realize this and have signed up for accounts, but still don’t really know how to use it.  The key is to be active, communicate with the target audience, and provide helpful and interesting content and I Believe http://www.socialaliens.com The most trustable place to buy Real Targeted Facebook fans,

  • http://twitter.com/sudhanshu_80 Sudhanshu Saxena

    Jeff thanks for sharing the information.  Does’t this even applies to individual as in the kind of reputation you have on a subject extracted from the content he/she originates or shares ?

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  • Sydney Hadden

    Good read Jeff, thanks. I think people all think they have to bring their business to social because they see highly successful social presences, but most people out there don’t execute correctly. Content and time commitments are undervalued in a lot of business profiles out there. I think people need to keep in mind when it’s appropriate to delve into the social-sphere…I wrote an article about this if you’re interested…http://www.londes.com/ldm-blog/7-questions-before-taking-your-brand-social

  • Sydney Hadden

    Good read Jeff, thanks. I think people all think they have to bring their business to social because they see highly successful social presences, but most people out there don’t execute correctly. Content and time commitments are undervalued in a lot of business profiles out there. I think people need to keep in mind when it’s appropriate to delve into the social-sphere…I wrote an article about this if you’re interested…http://www.londes.com/ldm-blog/7-questions-before-taking-your-brand-social