In social media marketing, social proof is an important factor. Social proof refers to this scenario when your argument you have published is verified by the peers of your target audience or potential customers through any trustable evidence. Then it is followed closely by social media monitoring. Whether it is global marketing or local marketing (such as in Hong Kong), social proof and social marketing monitoring are important activities.

The power of social proof

Think of a product review posted by a local Hong Kong customer who have purchased and used the particular product. An example is that a past customer would give praises which would enforce the claim to pay a product, where previously you have also been backing the same product. When social proof is used in the right place and is executed correctly, it may extend the power of your internet marketing efforts to the next level. Checkout some brand social media case studies. 

Assume you are selling product to the local market and you are marketing to Hong Kong audience. One of the best aspects when starting to apply social proof is to be able to use it to inspire trust in other people, especially the local HK audience who are strangers in the first place.

Before buying a product, people would compare prices from many different online stores. The one product would only look the same on all the shopping sites the user has visited. The differentiator is the product reviews that are published on the ecommerce websites by other users. There are also many pure reviews sites out there. They do not actually sell any products.

Having social proof can give you an edge over the competition, whether this social proof is within your brand/business or the individual person. Your product may be solving a very similar problem with your competitor’s product. Your brand strength may be neck and neck with this close competitor. The social proof that you have earned for your brand and you as an individual (i.e. you are the owner of the brand) would highly likely serve as an ideal tie breaker. Having a product to the solution is important, but with a strong social proof, sometimes it is what it takes to do better in marketing and product sales.

Apply social marketing monitoring

The major objective of social media monitoring is to find, identify, and analyze what is being said about a brand, a specific product, a competitor or an entire industry on the internet.

One example when using social media monitoring relates directly to online reputation management. All brand/business owners care about their brand. Basically, an owner would often want to know where and what people publicly say about his brand and him. This information is monitored, and recorded. Ideally, the algorithms would split the messages into different categories with priorities. The owner would receive the negative messages, and figure out whether he will need to respond to them before it becomes too late. It is very much like when you have received bad reviews from dissatisfied customer, it is your responsibility to respond this the customer, whether it is to improve the customer services or make changes to the product.

Clare Louise