Social validation is best explained as our need for attention. All of us have a deep desire to be accepted and to share good things about our life, work, family, hobbies, and accomplishments across our social media networks.
This includes great experiences with businesses, products, services, and brands. Your happy customers will become advocates, because they’re proud of doing business with you. When you can tap into this social validation, you can use the power of social media and referral marketing to help your influencers spread positive messages and reinforce trust.
Here are some tips to make the most of social validation and your social media marketing campaigns:
MAKE IT SIMPLE AND EASY TO SHARE
Sharing needs to be as simple as possible; use clear, obvious calls-to-action in your social media campaigns and ask people to share your promotions and incentives. Every piece of online content you produce should be shareable, and if you can tie individual pieces back to specific incentives, so much the better.
The Extole platform is a key part of your social media marketing strategy. You can split-test different content and promotions, measure responses, and ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns.
MAKE SOCIAL SHARING A PART OF YOUR BRAND EXPERIENCE
One of the best channels for encouraging people to share their positive experiences is from within your app. You can tailor every part of the process, delighting your customers and encouraging them to spread the word.
Extole’s APIs are custom-made for your app. You can make referral marketing a native part of your customer’s journey.
TAILOR YOUR INCENTIVES AND REWARDS TO YOUR INFLUENCERS
Social validation is powerful, but it’s made all the sweeter when there’s a great incentive attached to it. Research your influencers so you know what will be most appealing. You can then tailor your rewards to get the most impact. Influencers want some form of recognition and reward for recommending your products to their friends and followers.
Another great way to enhance your referrals is to give a reward to the referred party as well. This increases social validation further, as the referrer isn’t just sharing for their own benefit; their friend also gets something out of the interaction.
Extole can give you some good insight into your most popular advocates, letting you design rewards that speak directly to their needs. This will encourage them to share on social media about your business even more.
DON’T LIMIT SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS TO PROMOTIONS
It’s easy to get into the mindset of just using your social media channels to share information, incentives, and rewards, but they can do much more than that. We’ve all read stories about when a customer service rep went above and beyond on Facebook and the enormous amounts of goodwill that was created. Make sure your social media people understand the power of a great customer experience. If a story gets picked up and goes viral, your referral marketing will explode.
MEASURE, TRACK, AND OPTIMIZE HOW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS PERFORMING
To run a successful social media marketing campaign, you need to understand all of your metrics and measurements. Being able to segment and track influencers and sharers means you can understand the best social media networks for your products and services. You can also learn which incentives and rewards are encouraging people to share and advocate for you.
Extole brings all of this information together into one place, giving you deep insight into how influencers interact and how that’s driving sales and revenue for your business.
If you’re serious about harnessing the power of your consumers, you need Extole. Contact us today to schedule a demo and see how effectively our refer-a-friend platform will work alongside your social media marketing and other referral marketing campaigns.
