Never underestimate the power of social recommendations

Recommendations, either from our colleagues, friends, family and even strangers plays a crucial role in the decisions that we make on a daily basis. This is also happening online where we look for recommendations or reviews within our social circles before trying out a new product, service, restaurant or even the next book we are going to read. It’s natural and human as we are more likely to trust a recommendation from a real person than from someone hiding behind a brand or a logo we cannot interact with.

I love to read and my routine from simply going to the book store to pickup a new book has changed tremendously over the last few years. I now make a point of visiting my favourite review site and before I purchase a book, I read all the reviews regarding the book and my final decision is usually based on other people experiences. I don’t just do this for books I’m interested in, but for many other products as well.

With the huge success of social media in the last couple of years and Google’s number one goal is to provide the best user experience to its customers, Google saw that “social recommendations” can play a key role in determining the validity of good content online, they have started to integrate “social signals” in their core search algorithm. Even though you will see mixed reactions online whether you should focus on social signals, I believe it does have an impact through my own tests and analysis.

Using social recommendations, case studies and testimonials is a great marketing tactic that you can use not only to improve your organic rankings online, but it also provides you with a better way to convert your clients and visitors because of the trust that it builds. It’s extremely powerful. People tend to trust other people more than they trust brands. This won’t change anytime soon.

Think about social recommendations and testimonials by real people as “votes”. These could be either positive or negative although negative “votes” online tend to carry more weight as nothing travels faster than negative news. Online everyone is seen as a citizen journalist where they can basically say anything about anyone or anything. The web is public so look at this as a great opportunity to let the people know how good and trustworthy your brand is through the eyes of people you have helped. There’s a famous quote from Ray Kroc which holds true to this article: “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.”

If your main focus point is to help your customers, you won’t have a problem getting positive votes from them.

Social recommendations and testimonials can take many forms such as Facebook shares, likes, Tweets, Google Places, and even product reviews. When someone reviews a business online on a respected third party channel like Google Places, this can count as a signal directly to Google which can enhance your search engine results through rich snippets.

Focus on social recommendations, testimonials, reviews and positive case studies and you will most definitely increase the value of your business and website. Recommendations has been around forever, it’s now just a new way of doing it online.