The Power of Social Proof in Social Media Advertising

Social media has changed the way we engage; it affects our decision making and shapes the world we live in. As social media continues to evolve, it provides organizations with new and exciting ways to engage their audiences, and advertise. However, to drive real action and harness it effectively, it’s necessary to understand the science behind social media.

Explore the value of adding social proof to social media adverts with Sinan Aral, Faculty Director in the Social Media Strategy online short course from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Transcript

The impact of adding social proof to your social media ads

So, if you think about Facebook ads, there are a number of different ways that they show social proof in the ad. For instance, I might see an advertisement for Netflix, and it might say, “Hey, you know, here’s an ad for Netflix one month free. Here’s a trial.” But, next to that, it’s going to say “Your friend, Josh Smith, is a fan of Netflix.”

And it’s going to give me a sense that my friend has endorsed Netflix, or it has essentially given me some sense that my community likes this brand. Experiments have shown that this kind of social proof or endorsement boosts the relevance as well as the effectiveness of advertising.

WeChat case study

We conducted a massive experiment on WeChat to determine what the boost or lift from social cues and ads was, and we inserted social cues randomly that were real social cues, but for some ads, we blocked those social cues and for some ads we’d let them be posted. And those social cues included likes and comments, and other types of cues from your friends on Wechat, on ads that you saw. We’ve studied 71 products over 25 different categories in an experiment that had 37 million people in it. And what we found, essentially, was that this type of advertising was incredibly effective. And what do I mean? Well, adding a single like to an advertisement caused a 33.75 percent increase in the click-through rate on that ad, which means that showing social proof for your social media messaging can really generate increases, lift, in click-through rates for those advertisements or messages.

How to use social proof effectively

What can brands do from this kind of knowledge? Brands could differentiate budgets and invest more in social ads for products and services that display positive lift from social advertising. Things like food and fashion, and less so for financial services or credit cards. And they could more generally work to insert social proof into their messaging on social media.

So for instance, if my post gets more comments and likes, it’s going to be shown to the friends of people who have commented and liked. And therefore the social structure of the digital social network, the substrate, is going to be an important part of how that message cascades out into the community of social media users.