FireStarter: Social Proof Optimisation: Appealing to your target audience

Social Proof Optimisation: Appealing to your target audience

Need to reach your website’s target audience? Or perhaps you want to improve your product sales and increase the number of clients your business handles? While driving targeted visitors to your website via advertising and marketing campaigns can do wonders, it is also important to grasp and convert these visitors into buyers, clients and regular readers.

One way to do this is to harness the power of social proof, which is simply the theory that people’s behavioral patterns are highly influenced by the actions of the people or community around them.

We'll examine how you can use the concept of social proof to optimise your website and make it more attractive to your target audience.

What is Social Proof?

Wikipedia defines Social Proof as:

Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior.
Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed.

Robert Cialdini has written about Social Proof extensively in his influential book Influence: The Psychology of Persausion .

In the chapter on Social Proof, Cialdini suggests that;

“One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct…We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.”

Paul Rutherford, a Professor at the University of Toronto offers similar insights. While he primarily focuses on the advertising of public goods, I feel that his thoughts on propaganda do apply to social proof as well:

Propaganda can set the agenda (determine what issues are of importance), prime discussion (determine what criteria are used to assess a person or issue), excite controversy (where news outlets take different stands), or generate support (where the media elaborate its message). Whatever its impact, the result is productive–of comment, argument, and discourse.

Social Proof Is A Public Lubricant

The key point to note here is that social proof is a lubricant in the public sphere. It encourages interaction around a specific topic, personality or event. It forces collective mental focus through catalysts such as group behavior, public debates and organised reporting.

Here are some common examples of Social Proof. I’m sure you would have encountered some of these on a daily basis:

People being attracted to a crowd looking at a spectacle.
People ignoring public fights because most people seem to ignore it.
The use of canned laughter in sitcoms to encourage audience enjoyment.
The seeding of tip jars at bars or cafes to encourage tips.
Manipulation of the line-up queue at clubs to boost its attractiveness.
The use of crowd-centric headlines such as ‘Most popular’ or ‘Australia's best’.
Personalities who surround themselves with objects of social prestige.
The gradual increase in standing ovations as more audience members join in.

An Introduction to Social Proof Optimisation

The term social proof optimisation is not used in common parlance. While Social Proof is primarily a sociological construct, it has gradually been co-opted by marketers seeking to validate or explain the marketing techniques they use.

What is missing from the marketing articles is the detailed application of Social Proof specifically on online entities such as websites or online social profiles. Most of the material largely focused on customer testimonials for ECommerce setups, while neglecting the application of Social Proof for blogs or other types of websites.

In a bid to provide more detailed information, I’ve used the term social proof optimisation to emphasise the use of various types of social proof within the limited framework of a website. Here is a good definition of social proof optimisation: It is a process which legitimates and promotes a website to its target audience, through the integration and use of objective external measures, social networking frameworks and existing public opinion.

The goal of social proof optimisation is make visible the opinions and actions of others toward the website itself, while connecting the website to specific external entities and communities which validate or enhances the website’s reputation and reach.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the steps required to give your online business the proof it needs. FireStarter specialises in building web sites that allow your business to take it to the bank, talk to us on 1300 13 89 31!

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