Page 134 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com
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your status and influence. Even if it’s dead wrong.
While this may seem outrageous, as business professionals we have to deal
with what is, not what we would like it to be, and the fact that the world is full of
pretenders is nothing new—it’s just that these days they may have an
opportunity to find innocent victims on the Internet on a much grander scale
while eluding reprisal with the simple push of a computer key.
The care and nurturing of these badges of social proof is big business and an
important source of perceived influence. In the long term, people will probably
make decisions about your true influence based on your opinions and content.
But in the short term, badges are an important part of social proof and a factor of
content transmission.
Strategies for social proof
Strong social proof makes you more confident that you’re in the right place and
the content before you is share-worthy. Weak social proof is like walking into a
restaurant at 7 p.m. and being the only customers there. It’s a bit unnerving and
lonely, and you might wonder if you should turn around and leave. But if the
restaurant is filled and lively—perhaps there is even a wait for a table—you feel
better about being there. Social proof works the same way. Symbols of traction
make you want to be involved and buy in, whether it’s a restaurant, an online
video, or a Pinterest page.
To help your content really take off, it has to take off a little bit first. Here’s
an example of what I mean. A Fortune 100 company (whom I will not identify!)
is putting a tremendous amount of effort into its blog. In fact, 90 different people
are active bloggers for this company. The content is well-written, interesting,
relevant, and timely. But despite the fact that this company has more than
300,000 employees, the average number of social shares for a typical blog post
is five. The message that number sends? “Even we don’t care.”
If this company were to ask only a portion of the 90 people involved in
writing the blog to also ignite it on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, it would
certainly improve the probability that more organic sharing would be coming its
way.
My sincere hope is that you will never cheat your way into favorable social
proof. If you’re trying to build a lasting brand and a meaningful Alpha
Audience, radical honesty is the only way to build trust. Character equates to
power in the long run. Here are 10 ethical ways to “prime the pump” on social
proof and improve the perceived credibility of your content:
