Summary: <br> When you were a kid at<br> the amusement park, did you want to ride the roller coaster with no line or the<br> one with the line zig-zagged five rows deep?<br> <br> <br> <br> As an adult, do you<br> want to vote for the third-party candidate who lines up with your values, or<br> the candidate who has the best chance to win?<br> <br> <br> <br> People want to do what they see other people doing. The technical term used in marketing psychology for this phenomenon is “Social Proof.”<br> <br> <br> <br> Since customers are unlikely<br> to choose an empty restaurant they have never been to before, some restaurants<br> hire temporary employees to eat there during the opening weeks to generate<br> interest.<br> <br> <br> <br> “Wow! That place is crowded! It must be good.” <br> <br> <br> <br> Which is not that different from: “Wow, that book has 10,000 reviews. It must be good!”<br> <br> <br> <br> Customers want social proof.<br> <br> <br> <br> We’ve explored the social triggers of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.authormedia.com/223/" target="_blank">Urgency (Episode 223)</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.authormedia.com/225/" target="_blank">Scarcity & Ubiquity (Episode 225)</a>. The better you understand what motivates readers, the better you can motivate them to read your book. This is the heart of marketing. Please use it for good. <br> <br> <br> <br> Why do I need social proof?<br> <br> <br> <br> Social proof creates a<br> cycle. <br> <br> <br> <br> To loosely paraphrase<br> a parable of Jesus, “To him who has reviews, more will be given. But to<br> him who does not have reviews, what few reviews he does have will be taken away<br> by Amazon’s algorithm.”<br> <br> <br> <br> Social proof is why<br> you see metallic stickers touting, “USA Today Bestselling<br> Author.” People are more likely to buy a book if they know other people<br> are buying it too. <br> <br> <br> <br> But you don’t need to<br> be a USA Today bestselling author to use social proof. <br> <br> <br> <br> Before we talk about<br> how to demonstrate social proof, let’s talk about how to gain a following in<br> the first place. <br> <br> <br> <br> The key to social proof is to have a social following worth following. <br> <br> <br> <br> How do I gain a following?<br> <br> <br> <br> Here are four general<br> tips on how to generate a following and become more popular. <br> <br> <br> <br> Tip #1 Focus<br> <br> <br> <br> Pick one area to<br> demonstrate lots of popularity rather than dabbling in lots of places. Dig one<br> deep well rather than two shallow wells. If you have multiple genres, cut all<br> but the most popular and focus on more books in that genre. <br> <br> <br> <br> You also want to focus<br> your writing and marketing on the individual. Find a real-life human in your<br> target demographic and then focus on thrilling that specific person. Then grow<br> the number of real humans in that representative sample. Ideally, you want to<br> make these people your beta readers.<br> <br> <br> <br> On my Novel Marketing podcast,<br> I focus on my patrons, and more specifically, the people in my <a href="https://www.authormedia.com/mastermind-groups/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">mastermind groups</a>. Most of the new episodes I’m<br> creating come from questions asked by people from the Facebook group, Patreon<br> page, or premium mastermind groups.<br> <br> <br> <br> The result of focusing<br> on fewer people is that the content has improved, and the podcast has become more<br> popular. Let me say that again. By focusing on fewer people, more people<br> listen.<br> <br> <br>
