What is your Social Proof? | Social Media Virtual Assistant - Be Social Worldwide

What is your Social Proof?

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What is Social Proof?  Basically, social proof is also referred to as social influence.  Examples of this can be seen when individuals are unable to make a decision, and they follow the behavior of others around them that they think to be more knowledgeable about the situation.   To make it a little easier to understand, it is when we follow the actions of others because we think they are better qualified to make a decision.

Okay, so now that you know what social proof is, how do you gain it?    There are a few ways to gain social proof.  In the online world, there are some different things that you can do to build your social proof.  If you have a blog or website that has many followers, you should display your statistics.  The more followers and/or subscribers that you have, the more you will gain.  When people see that you have thousands of followers or subscribers, they will automatically think that your site is worthwhile because so many others read it.

You should also display rankings, if they are high, badges, and links to interviews.  Rankings can be helpful because they help to establish your “authority”, so to speak.  When others visit your site and see that you have a high ranking, they are more likely to read your content or even subscribe.  Badges are helpful because they let others know where you can be found, and how important others find your information or product.  Lastly, interviews can be very helpful.  If you have done interviews and have the links to them, post them.  The more publicity that you appear to have the more attractive you will become to potential readers.

Comments

  • http://goodelife.wordpress.com Andy’s GoodeLife

    I am having difficulties with your definition of “social proof”.

    What you describe in paragraph one would be the process of gaining social proof, would it not? The actual social proof is the number of “collegues” who are connected to you or upon the hight of your subscribers/followers.

    To gain a higher social proof, your work needs to be percieved as offering value to those who find it and noteworthy so that those who find you are attracted to hang around.

    You description of someone who follows the more knoweledgable is simply that process of gaining social proof. To be specific: the person gaining social proof in that moment is the knowledge giver not the knowledge seeker.

    But any individual’s social proof is not dependent upon one person seeking their knowledge, and much more the sum of all who respect the knowledge giver and show this in terms of higher rankings and followers (although this can be manipulated too, not everyone who has a couple thousand followers on twitter is actually being followed by “quality” seekers, but auto-re-follows, for example, and rankings can also be very easily manipulated with various seo tools, commenting tools etc.).

    So, how is your social proof? (Mine is about nil :) – at least in the English blog-o-sphere…)

    I also noted not deeplinking within your content on this post, so I am assuming you have not given out a post dealing with the various “ranking” sites? Would love to read what sites you deem important for this purpose and why!

  • admin

    Hopefully I can clarify.
    Yes gaining social proof is a process of having followers, being published, doing interviews, writing articles ect…. it is more than just how many friends/followers you have – although some may disagree with me.

    In the post I have given just an example of someone following you within a social network – might believe that you have high social proof value because you have a large following.

    Maybe I should have concluded with this. Social Proof that will stand the test of time, is truly about sharing valuable information to those who are interested in your topic. Meaning my social proof in social media is only valuable to those who value what I have to say.

    Does this help?

    I will work on that post for you, but the top recommended sites in general are
    Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for social media.
    IMHO – Blogs are also a great way to share your knowledge and gain social proof.

  • http://goodelife.wordpress.com Andy’s GoodeLife

    Do you have experience in the rising star FriendFeed? That would be on the top of my list (although I am a complete novice with regards to FriendFeed, am very excited with what I am seeing so far).

    Look forward to your post on the ranking sites… great to have discovered your blog and look forward to some great teaching/learning/networking!

  • http://www.google.com Kelly Brown

    Great post! I’ll subscribe right now wth my feedreader software!

  • http://link Loy23

    I don’t want to pick out or particularly criticize this reaction; far from it. ,

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