Social Proof in Social Media Marketing: How to Benefit From Social Proof

Whether you are a marketer, a business owner, or just a freelancer working online, you need to know what exactly is social proof and how you can benefit from social proof.

You might be wondering, what exactly is social proof? Well, social proof is the genuine opinion from common people expressed in the public platforms, mostly social media. You should not mistake word of mouth marketing with social proof. Word of mouth sounds almost similar to social proof but these are two different concepts. Word of mouth means you buy a certain product, you like the product and you tell your cousin and your cousin will also buy the same product. Social proof means people openly share positive views about the product in public platform. Here is one example of social proof. A couple of years ago, When Ronaldo removed the bottles of Coca-Cola from his table and grabbed a water bottle and said water is best, the Coca-Cola company lost its share value. This is the social proof, people hear the real people, they will follow the people whom they have idolized. In case Ronaldo had removed coca-cola and placed Red Bull, sales for Red Bull would have skyrocketed.

What is Social Proof in Marketing?

Above all digital marketing tactics, why is influencer marketing considered the most effective marketing method?

Influencer marketing is the most effective marketing method because it gives “social proof.”

So, what exactly is social proof?

Social proof is recommendations, opinions, testimonials, and reviews from real people, the people who are active on social platforms.

People don’t believe what the big companies say in their advertorials, but they believe when they hear from the people they follow, people believe when they see common people just like them vouching for the product or services.

One big example of social proof comes from Elon Musk. A lot of people started buying dogecoin just because Musk said “Dogecoin to the Moon.” Dogecoin was a joke coin until Elon Musk said Dogecoin is the money of the earth.

Many people are easily influenced by social proof.

Best Strategies to Build Followers on Social Media

Yes, everyone starts with zero followers, but getting 10 from zero is not very difficult if you involve your friends, families, well wishes, acquaintances etc. You will always find people who are willing to help you want to see you become successful. All you need is to connect with the right kind of people. If you are using social media, you might have already noticed that it is extremely difficult for ordinary people to get followers on social media. If you are in this position, here are three methods to build followers on social media.

Create Quality Content: Celebrities get huge followers because they already have a lot of fans, however, ordinary people can build followers only when they offer good content. Remember, a factory labourer called Khaby Lame became the most followers person on TikTok only through his engaging content.

Run ads: Running ads will cost you money, however, this is the easiest way to build followers. on facebook you might be able to build 1k subscribers by spending $10.

Running ads for your social pages (boosting or promoting you post, or running ads for your pages) can help you get a lot of followers, nevertheless, if are a good content creator, you can get followers without spending money on ads. You need patience to build followers organically.

The best way to build followers, likes and views is through organic method, organic method means you don’t use third party tools to manipulate views and follows. The key to getting views and follows is to be active. If you publish videos regularly, let's say at least 2 videos every day, your videos will remain in the algorithm for a longer duration and thus you will get more exposure. When People see your videos and find your videos interesting, they will follow you. Therefore, you should publish actively and publish good videos.

Do you know why Elon Musk has put his Twitter deal on hold? Well, that's because he is asking about the number of bot accounts on Twitter. Everyone knows Twitter has a lot of bot accounts, but we just don't know what is the percentage of bot accounts. In my opinion, most of the strategies related to building Twitter followers will only build you, bot followers. Bot followers will not help you, it is just a number. You will benefit more when you have 1k human followers instead of 10k bot followers. One of the easiest ways to build followers is by following other people in the hope to get followers. This strategy is very slow and you will have to follow a lot of people and not all people will reciprocate you. The second option is buying followers through sites like fanslave, You get real human followers, but most of the followers are not interested in your content.

How to Grow Your Instagram Account to Build Social Proof

If you want to benefit from social proof, you need to build your social media platform.

I have not started on Instagram yet. However, I would like to grow my Instagram account because everyone seems to be using Instagram these days. If I try, I think I can get just about 200 followers by cross-sharing. I can ask my Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections to follow me on Instagram. However, I don't think I can go beyond 200 followers or a maximum of 500 followers. I believe Instagram is a platform for celebrities and great content creators, I am none.

I believe advertising can help me get followers. But I am not in favor of buying followers on Instagram. I may spend $160 and build 100K followers (based on the price offered by various social media exchange sites), however, will these followers interact on my posts. I doubt. These followers are either bots or have fake accounts. Even if they are real people, they have created an empty account just for the purpose of following other accounts for little rewards.

I am yet to get started on Instagram, therefore, I am not in a position to give any advice on how to build followers on Instagram. Based on how people are building followers, I think reaching out to friends and family on various social sites and asking them to follow you on Instagram can help you build followers. this is the easiest way to build a following.

Is Facebook the Best Platform for Business Promotion and Building Social Proof?

Do you think Facebook is the best social media platform for business promotion?

Facebook can be the best platform for your business promotion only in the countries where it is widely used. For example, in China Facebook is banned. So, if your customers are Chinese you will have to advertise on WeChat. China has a 1.7 billion population, therefore, it offers big business opportunities.

VK is a Facebook-like social media platform for Russian audiences (it is also available in other languages), VK is more popular among Russian-speaking audiences compared to Facebook. If you want to target customers in Russia and Russian-speaking countries, you will have to use VK.

How to Generate Sales Through Facebook Ads

Whether you are selling online or offline, whether you are selling digital products, physical products, or services you cannot generate sales without advertising. There are a lot of advertising platforms. If you are new to advertising, you might be confused about which advertising platform to use for your business.

In my opinion, Facebook is the best because it is the most visited site on the internet and a site with the most members. That’s why it is easier to reach a huge marketplace globally by advertising on Facebook. You can start promoting your products on the part of the globe within minutes.

Facebook ad is also probably the cheapest way to advertise because you can advertise for just $1. They offer various kinds of ads such as Cost Per Action, Cost Per Milie, Cost Per Like, Cost Per View (video ads).

You can build genuine followers by using advertising. However, you might have to spend more than $100. I need traffic from higher tire countries and when I have to target my ads to higher tier countries, I will have to pay more money, and I could end up paying a lot of money to facebook. Before you can market on social media, you need to build followers. IN order to build followers, you will have to share interesting content and advertise your page or account, or promote your shared content. You will be successful only when you have a lot of followers. Once you have followers, you can take care of other things.

Getting 10K followers or even 100K followers for that matter is not very difficult if you are willing to spare some money in advertising. You can run ads on facebook and easily get followers. I am saying this from my experience. You might consider expenses too high but that's business and you are investing for larger profits.

Importance of Digital Marketing

If you already have an idea and some money to spare, your online business can be set up within 30 minutes. However, generating sales can take months, and in worse case scenario, sales might never come. So, how do you ensure that you do not end up shutting down your business? Well, first and foremost, you need to boost your business's visibility with SEO. When you do SEO, your store will show up in search engine results, and you are likely to get traffic, and sales. Secondly, promote your business through digital marketing. Use multiple channels for digital marketing, for instance, social media marketing, search engine marketing, etc and spread the word to attract customers. These two methods, if done correctly, will ensure that your business will thrive.

Here are my two cents on getting traffic. Create a facebook page and Twitter account, build a large following, not by buying followers but through organic means or advertising. Once you have a big following, start sharing your content. Let say your facebook page has 10, thousand followers. If only 10 percent visits your website, you will have 1000 visits.

A celebrity is likely to have a lot of followers on twitter, Instagram, facebook etc. If you can have a celebrity write on your blog and if the celebrity shares his/her post on the social site where he/she is very active, you can have tons of visits on your site, this will make the post (written by the celebrity) viral which will earn you good revenue.

Social Media and Digital Marketing

There are three ways to get traffic from social media. The best method is by promoting on your timelines or pages. This method will work if you have a lot of followers. The second method is to run ads on social media. This method costs you money but is also the best method if you want fast result and have some money to spare. Third method is through influencer marketing. You partner with social media influencer and promote your website for traffic.

Even when they are not bots, these followers are the people who follow account for small incentives. let you are bought service for 5 cents per follower from a certain site. This site has users and pays 2 cents per following. The people follow accounts for money. These are real people but the account they are using to follow are built specifically to follow accounts.

I don’t think you should use a third party application to build followers or even views because this will be considered manipulation, which the platform like TikTok does not like. Buying followers is also considered bad practice. Your account could be banned if you are bringing followers by paying third party sites. If you promise rewards for following you, it will also be against the terms and conditions. If you want to build your tiktok account, you need to build your account organically such as posting good quality videos, publishing videos regularly, using trending sound tracks for your video, using for your page hashtags, etc. Do not take short cut to build your followers and views. If you take short cut, you might lose your account. If you manage to build 1000 followers, you can start live stream and when you go live stream, you can easily build more followers.

you will benefit through this method only when you already have a following on your social media. Let's say you have 10k followers on tiktok, when only 10 percent of your followers checked the link and 10 percent of those who checked the product bought the product, you will generate 100 sales, if your mark-up is $10 per product, you will be generating $1000 profit. However, what if you just have $1000 followers and 10 percent checked your product and no one bought the product, will you earn money?

If you have a huge following on social sites, you don't need search engines for traffic. Since you can easily build followers by spending on ads, getting traffic from social sites is easier than getting ranked high on search engines and generating traffic. A little bit of tweaking with title and description is all you need for search traffic.

If you build social media following by buying followers, these are either fake accounts, or bot accounts, or accounts of people who follow other people just because they receive incentives and they have no interest in the accounts they follow. These followers do not help you. You may not have a single like even if you have 1k followers.

People who are buying social engagements are doing for two reasons, for for personal vanity, two to trick advertisers and make money from false advertising. Some time back a popular Indian singer said that he bought followers on Instagram. He was criticised for doing that but he was also praised for admitting

The sites that sell social media followers or social media exchanges are actually a broker between the owners of social pages and the social media followers. Just like you join these programs to build a social following, a lot of people join these programs to earn some money, they follow your pages for money.

When you buy social media followers from various programs, these followers are either bots or have fake accounts. Even if they are real people, they have created an empty account just for the purpose of following other accounts for little rewards. Therefore, buying social followers does not actually help your account.

Since these days anyone can build $100K followers if he or she can spend $100-$200 for buying these followers from various social exchange sites, you need to be careful about choosing influencers. You need to check whether the followers are genuine or fake. You also need to see the engagements on the posts