Social proof is one of the six pillars of persuasion. Robert Cialdini dedicates all of Chapter 4 — more than 40 pages — to social proof in his book Influence.
Of course, in a marketing setting, you want to use social proof to your advantage. But every once in a while, this technique can backfire.
A Live “Tweet-Stream”?
Apparently, at Yanik Silver’s Underground Seminar #6, they had planned to have a dedicated screen showing a live tweet stream of all the tweets about the seminar.
All the tweets tagged with #UG6 would be displayed on the screen during the seminar.
For some reason, they decided at the last minute not to go ahead with this plan. The live tweet stream was still on the Underground Seminar web site, but it was not displayed in front of the audience.
A Saboteur in Their Midst?
A jaded insider who caught wind of the live tweet stream decided to use it to broadcast his less-than-positive opinions about some of the speakers at the Underground Seminar.
He set up an anonymous Twitter profile (“Illuminated Dude”) for the sole purpose of covering — or, more accurately, exposing — the speakers at the event. You can see his profile here:
http://twitter.com/IlluminatedDude
Not All Social Proof Is Good
In an ad or sales letter, you get to control the social proof. This is a situation where social proof can help further the sale.
But be careful about giving up control of social proof. It can easily turn against you, as the example above proves.
Personally, I’ve found Twitter to be a great place to build positive social proof. I’ve gotten a few unsolicited endorsements, which has been pretty cool.
And yet I don’t have a live, unmoderated tweet stream on my web site either. It would be way too easy for somebody with an axe to grind to take advantage of that.
Just something to ponder as we move deeper into the uncharted waters of social media.
-Ryan M. Healy
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About Ryan M. Healy
Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including BoostCTR, Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, advertising, and business growth, has been featured in publications like Feed Front magazine, and is a regular contributor to WordStream.com, BoostCTR.com, and MarketingForSuccess.com.
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{ 6 comments }
Interesting turn of events. If it were my event, I would obviously be upset that someone had hijacked the hash tag for the event. However, reading through Illuminated Dude's archive, he doesn't seem to be making baseless claims.
In fact, it seems he's been attending Yanik's seminar since year one:
“Who says I'm not already an expert? Look, this whole thing blows. UG1 was great. #UG6 is just a fraud. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
All-in-all, I would say that this exemplifies a bitter sweet positive side effect of social media. Increased transparency is making it easier for people to vet others and spread the word. At the same time, if a scammer cleans up their act, they'll still have to live with the reputation of their former life forever. Used to be, you could just move, or switch industries. Not anymore, that stuff is going to stick with you forever.
I think that's one of the things about the Internet that has really changed how business is done. Like you said, bad things that are said about you last forever. It's no wonder there's so much hoopla about Yelp right now… services like Yelp make it almost too easy to badmouth a business.
I was at underground, and it absolutely SUCKED having this guy ruin the tweetstream. I really wanted to check out what other attendees were saying about the speakers, but the (mostly totally untrue BTW) tweets from one guy ruined it. Also, I'm certain that he wasn't actually there.
I helped create a way to filter social proof from twitter that you might want to check out – http://www.tweetstimonials.com/
Hey Laura,
Thanks for dropping by. I've installed Tweetstimonials, but I'm getting an error:
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: simplexmlelement in /home/content/r/h/e/rhealy5/html/ryanhealy/wp-content/plugins/tweet-stimonials/tweet-stimonials.php on line 90
Maybe it's because I'm running the Thesis theme? I don't know. I may have my web guy look into it.
Other than that, I think the plugin is a great idea. I've gotten a lot of unsolicited testimonials via Twitter.
Ryan
Hey Laura,
Thanks for dropping by. I've installed Tweetstimonials, but I'm getting an error:
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: simplexmlelement in /home/content/r/h/e/rhealy5/html/ryanhealy/wp-content/plugins/tweet-stimonials/tweet-stimonials.php on line 90
Maybe it's because I'm running the Thesis theme? I don't know. I may have my web guy look into it.
Other than that, I think the plugin is a great idea. I've gotten a lot of unsolicited testimonials via Twitter.
Ryan
Laura – Turns out the problem was the hosting. Didn't have the latest version of PHP running on the server. I've got your plugin working now — pretty cool!
Ryan
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