Social Proof, and How You Can Get Some
You’ll hear this term casually dropped on several sites that cover copywriting, but few experts ever go into detail to explain social proof. They mostly say, “Make sure you back up your claims with social proof,” and then move on to discuss something else.
Meanwhile, you’re sitting there thinking, “Great. And social proof is what, exactly? You just implied it was important, so now I’m afraid I’m not doing it. Except you didn’t tell me how to do it. Now I have business anxiety. It’s all your fault.”
Never fear. James is here.
Defining Social Proof: What Is It?
There’s a whole psychological explanation on social proof, but the basics come down to the theory that if you see someone doing something and that person survived the experience, it’s relatively safe to assume that you can also do what they did and survive as well.
Think of high school, when the girl’s bathroom was backed up and only one toilet was working. There was a long line up for that toilet during lunch hour. After a while, though, one girl would get brave and decide that she was going to walk into the boy’s bathroom – where all five toilets worked just fine and there was no lineup at all.
Suddenly all the girls were heading towards the guy’s john. That’s social proof.
Social proof can also mean that someone bought a product and found it useful. Or they read a blog and learned something new. Or they’ve tried a service and got results. They’ve experienced something before you, and they survived – they even liked the experience!
Your perception is one of increased safety and less risk. You feel more comfortable becoming a customer, signing up as a reader or walking into the boy’s john.
Very few people want to go first. No one really likes to be the guinea pig, after all. No one likes to be the first to get burned. No one likes to be the first to discover a scam. No one likes to be the first to buy a product and discover it’s a waste of money or that the advice damaged a business.
So we use social proof to make a decision. Social proof is our personal gauge of risk, and businesses everywhere, across all industries, use social proof strategies to let you know that risk is minimal. That someone has gone ahead. That it’s safe.
If you see five stars in the reviews section of a book at Amazon, that’s social proof. If you see a Feedburner chicklet showing 8,000 readers, that’s social proof. If you have testimonials on your website from happy clients who are thrilled about your service, that’s social proof. If people are referring other people to a business, that’s social proof.
Other people have gone before, and nothing bad happened. On the contrary: Great things happened.
Where Do You Get Social Proof?
Most of the time, you just ask for it. You can solicit social proof by asking people to check out your product or service and give their opinion of it. It’s that easy.
If you have people who already trust you and are prepared to buy your new product or service or have already bought products you have, you can get social proof from their testimonials. Send them a free copy. Have them take a look and provide you with their comments.
Aim for big-name people, if you can, or widely recognized businesses. Those people have already built up such trust among their audience and clients that their word is extremely valuable. Piggyback on their existing social proof and get some of it for yourself.
Even if you don’t know any big names, or you can’t get them interested, or they don’t have the time, you can use this technique of asking with any person you know who’s willing to try out what you want to sell. They get it for free, and you get some valuable social proof that what you’re offering is pretty great.
Use statistics as evidence of social proof. If 50% of your clients refer other people to you, that’s great social proof. It shows that your clients like you so much that they want other people to enjoy the benefits of working with you.
Do you need to mention the names of all those people? Not at all. Social proof is simply showing that someone out there likes you – the more someones, the better.
Any time you have an example of someone who has done what you want someone else to do, point it out. Show a case study. Post a list of recent clients. Put proof that other people have gone before – and they’ve enjoyed what they bought.
Who’s got a good example of social proof, either of being persuaded by it or using it to persuade?
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This is the basis of my marketing technique. My company has a crappy site, can’t get time to work on it, but I’d say about 90% of our clients are referred to us by previous customers.
Most of our proposals are accepted because of this.
Great article. Interesting concept, “social proof”.
Worth a Tweet.
Hi James,
Thanks for this nice explanation of what a ‘social proof’ is. The only thing with getting social proof on the web is that there are many fakers out there. I guess, one must check if the site is legit first for it to be consider as a good social proof. Being a full-time freelancer, the best social proof I’ve got are feedback or ratings clients give me on a finished project in many big freelancing sites out there. This means I can do the work well, just as I often tell my clients in my very own elevator pitch.
Hey James,
Interesting post, as always. Love the whole “social proof” idea.
It struck me that this is exactly what Twitter is all about — at least as a business tool. Someone has found something of interest, and shares it with his or her followers. Immediately, because you read it on Twitter, it is credible. If it’s a retweet, even more so.
(‘Course I would argue that for some, being the first in *is* kinda cool…)
It’s also the brass ring of social marketing, isn’t it? Boil it down, and basically you’re asking other people to market your product/service/idea for you. I guess the idea is not to “sell” the early adopters, but make your product/service/idea so unique and topical and *cool* that they want to Tweet about it anyway, à la “check out my new iPad!” Those die-hards become your de facto social proof.
(Hmm, I wonder how big the “cool” factor plays in the success of social marketing? I’ll have to ponder…)
~Graham
Interesting article about the “social proof” concept.
True.. and thats where the idea of testimonial page on websites comes from
I’m always gracious with social proof specially on-line.
Being ungrateful makes me uneasy. Thanks for the info.
Now isn’t that social proof? lol
@ Helder – Imagine how much better success you’d achieve with a slick site… The DIY principle is what holds a lot of freelancers back, sadly. Get thee a designer on it!
@ Ignacio – Thank you!
@ Issa – There are just as many fakers offline as there are online, actually, which is sad. Says volumes about the world we live in. However, fake or not, the psychological effect is the same. We’re *more likely* to check something out that someone else has approved of. And from that point, it’s buyer beware!
@Graham – Twitter is a mess of social proof in this sense. The RTs that fling around sometimes definitely increase the chances that someone might say, “Well, everyone’s talking about it, therefore it must be good…” Again… buyer beware!
Personally, I’m all with you on the “cool counts”. You can’t lose with that!
@ Loveleen – Yup!
@ Poch – Nah, that’s just nice
I think they called it ‘market research’ before the digital revolution, you know when photos were in sepia tone and women wore bloomers
As long as you’ve got the product / service of best quality, then ‘social proof’ would just come. People talk to other people about it if it makes them happy, convenient or satisfied. More so, Social ‘Proofing’ can also be achieved through effective strategies like mentioned above.
You can even create social proof by quoting industry experts (although I recommend moving to testimonials as soon as you can).
My last suggestion…don’t forget to keep updating that proof as your career progresses.
Interesting. I’d heard the term, but didn’t realize exactly what it was . . . though I do use it. I use testimonials on my sales pages.
LinkedIn also operates on the basis of social proof and doubles as a good place to get some–ask previous employers / coworkers / classmates to recommend you. Even if a recommendation isn’t directly related to your current career path, it can be very valuable–for a freelancer, a recommendation that speaks of high standards and character is almost as important as one strictly about previous projects.
Most people are savvy enough to realize that little that appears on the internet is “social proof” (better known as “validation” in business). Websites that give praise to books, people, institutions, politicians, and the like provide the ILLUSION of “social proof”. What you offer as validation can be (and usually is) a falsification of facts.
Internet “social networking” serves a person’s need for self-validation in much the same way in which people buy bogus degrees and hang them on their walls. “My Space” and “Face Book” amount to little more than an electronic form of public self-stimulation. They are not “social proof” of any kind. One’s webpage proves— what? One’s “My Space” and “Face Book” pages amount to— what?
Signed testimonials are forms of validation if the people really exist and can be contacted.
Leaving one’s name in as many public forums attached to one and two-word responses as possible isn’t social proof. It is an electronic manifestation of narcissism. Period.
Yangzhou College, parts of your comment don’t sit very well with me. I will agree that virtually all of what constitutes social proof can be falsified, fake, or unreal, but to assume that most people are lying or that most social proof isn’t worth something seems awfully cynical.
I think that, for the average person writing a review, there isn’t much incentive to be fake. Why would you want to waste time writing a review on Amazon or some other site that doesn’t accurately reflect what you think? Without an incentive to be fake, I believe that a higher percentage than you think is real.
For those who do have an incentive to falsify results, it’s hard to generate much believable fake positive buzz. People can typically see through manufactured reviews, comments, followers, and links. The difficulty of creating fake social proof is another reason to believe that a higher percentage than you think is real.
If people value their “one and two word responses” with people they know on MySpace and Facebook, then that’s worth something. That’s the real value of social networking–not the floods of spam out there, but the interactions between people who know and trust each other that are facilitated by social networking systems. To an unconnected third-party, someone’s MySpace or Facebook page wouldn’t mean much, but to his / her friends, it’s trustworthy information.
Even if you assume that 95% of social proof is tripe, it still serves as a relative measure of value–if product A has twice as much positive social proof as product B, it’s probably the better product. Even though it has twice as much spam, it most likely has twice as many genuine good reviews, too.
Social proof I think is the back-bone to a Company’s Sales and Marketing success. It always has been…which is often called “Word of Mouth” As online commerce grows we are only just seeing how we can stamp our positive reviews about our businesses online. I recommend the first thing a business does to obtain this is to collect their testimonials and place them on a testimonial page on their site. Then register on review sites such as qype.com, yelp.com. Email your customers to ask them to leave a review about your business on these sites. If you have a really good relationship with your customers try and get them in front of a video camera talking about what their problem was before you came along, what it was like working with you then what are the benefits that have been obtained by doing business with you.
I hope this gives you guys some ideas?