Social Proof and Why it Matters to You

What the heck is "social proof"?

According to wikipedia, social proof is "a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed."

Blah, blah, blah... was that what you heard, too? Cause it sure is what I heard!

Let me try to make this a whole lot easier. Essentially, social proof is a sort of "herd mentality". Social proof is what your momma was always worried about when you were growing up. Remember when she would say "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?"? Well, she was just asking you (in her own momma fashion) if you were planning on being a victim of social proof!

Social proof comes into play when someone can't decide how to act/react in a given social situation. Our natural inclination is to "follow the herd". We (often wrongly) assume that because a group is acting/reacting a certain way, that is must be the right way to behave. Our daily lives are filled with examples of social proof in action. For instance, sitcoms will often used a "laugh track" when they record which subconsciously makes the viewer think "everyone else is laughing, so that joke must have been funny." Or how about this one: Have you ever been around when a standing ovation occurred? Chances are, you weren't the one who started the ovation... but I'd be willing to bet you stood up. Buy why did you stand? Because everyone else was doing it, right?

Sometimes, we take even more subtle cues when we react to social proof. The next time you're near a restaurant, go into the bar area and look at the tip jar. I would be surprised if you didn't see money in the tip jar, even if nobody is in the bar. You know why that money is there? It's called "seeding the tip jar", and it's a trick all good bartenders use. When you "seed the jar" you add a few bills so that the real customers will see you've been tipped, and (hopefully) follow suit. As a former bartender, I can assure you that an "unseeded" jar is much harder to get a first tip in than a seeded one!

So why does social proof matter to us as artisans?

Because capitalizing on social proof can be the difference in "making ends meet" and "breaking the bank" in your studios!

Think about it like this: the last time you went to a craft fair or a market environment, I'm sure you saw a table with some poor vendor standing around twiddling his thumbs... and I'm sure there were also booths with tons of people crowded around. So what's the difference? Do you really think that the lonely vendor had that much of an inferior product to the crowded one? I doubt it. Most likely what happened was that the crowded vendor had a group walk up and start browsing, which made her look busy. Then, once she looked busy, everyone else saw it, and wondered "what's going on over there?" and headed to check it out. Don't believe me? Try this experiment: Get a group of ten people and go to the grocery store. Now, take all ten of those people and just stand by the broccoli. Pretend like you're all looking at the broccoli. I will bet you $10 that within just a matter of minutes someone (if not multiple someones) will wander over and try to see what you're all doing. That's social proof at its finest!

So how do you build social proof in your studio?

There are a few way to do this, and the first is one that Artfire has already given you! You know that little box that looks like this:

on each of your listing pages? That thing is a dream tool for building social proof! Every time you add something to your market hub, one of those icons goes from "grayed out" to bright and attention grabbing! Each of those icons means you belong somewhere, be it Facebook, indiepublic, Etsy, or what have you. And the more you belong, the more people will want you to belong to them!

Another good tip is to use testimonials from past customers, and, again, Artfire is helping you out here, too! Go look at your kudos/karma page. See how you can make your kudos public? Do it! Let all your potential buyers see those great things others have said about you! And, you can even take it a step farther by copying and pasting some of those awesome comments into your studio pages! So what if you don't have any karma or kudos yet? Call or write your former customers and see if they will send you a nice compliment! Check your past emails and see what kind words were sent to you! Put those words to work for you! If someone compliments you at a show, write it down and use it later on your studio pages! Use any and all positive feedback to build your social proof!

Okay, so what if you're already doing these things? Well, it's time to get brave! Think outside the box, and see how you can use your connections to your advantage. Do you know someone who has a popular blog? How about asking them if they would mind writing a feature on you? Or are you friends with someone who is considered an expert in their craft? Send them one of your pieces and ask them for a review! If you get a favorable review, ask if they'd mind if you used their name and words on your blog or in your studio! Have you won any awards or taught any classes related to your craft? Put that info where the world can see it! All of these things will make others look at your name and think "Wow! I should check that out!"

One last tip, look at your blog posts and see how many comments you have on each post. If you have lots of readers, but not so many comments, reread your posts and see what you can do to make people more involved. Comments on blogs are a great example of social proof. It's often like a snowball effect; a few people say something and then suddenly you're inundated with blog love! Try to make your posts engaging. Work on asking questions and be open to hearing the answers, and you will start to see your comment section grow! Additionally, reply to your comments! Not only does this show you care what your readers think, but it increases your comment number and drives up social proof!

I hope this hasn't been such a long post that I lost you guys... I apologize for being so long winded, but I really hope you can take something useful away from this. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I would LOVE to hear your ideas on how to build social proof!

♥

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Twitterfeed and Your Artfire Studio - A Tutorial

Hi everyone! I was planning on waiting a bit to go all "computer nerd" on you again, but it seems that a lot of people are eager to learn to use Twitterfeed, so I thought I'd go ahead and post this now.

In order to use Twitterfeed, you need a basic understanding of RSS Feeds first. If you haven't already done so, it may help to read my post about RSS feeds before you try to tackle Twitterfeed. (Go ahead... I'll wait... :wink:)

OK. You guys ready? (This is so easy it's gonna blow your minds!)



*** I'm going to use my studio again, but you can feel free to use yours so you don't have to do this twice! LOL ***

First, you're going to need a Twitter account. (If you haven't set that up, please go here and do so before you go any further.)
Once you have your Twitter username and password set up, follow these steps:

1. Open one window and go to Twitterfeed. Click the blue link that says "Login to twitterfeed" and you should see this:

Also, you need to open another window and go to your Artfire studio feed. (Just use the directions you learned in my earlier post to get there!) Once you have this window open to your studio feed (and it looks like this:)

go back to the Twitterfeed window.

2. Go to the little box that says "OpenID Login". See that little "Blogger B" to the right of the box? If you click it, a pop up will show up that looks like this:

The easiest thing to do is to use your Blogger ID (assuming you have one). As you can see, mine is already showing in my example. (If you don't have one, you can use your google login, your yahoo login, your LJ login, and so on. Hopefully you will have at least one of the logins listed. Just use whichever you prefer! Be sure you remember which login you use, though, as you will need it to edit your feed or add new feeds later!) Anyway, to use your Blogger ID, just click on the Blogger icon in the popup box. You will see that the box now looks like this:

Just highlight the part that says "username" and change it to your own username, then hit "login".

3. Your page should now look like this:

Click the blue link that says "go to my twitter feeds (or create a new one)". This will take you to a page that looks similar to this (Yours will be different, because I already have 4 feeds set up... don't panic if yours doesn't look exactly like this yet! LOL):


4. Near the bottom of the page, you will see a link to "Create a New Feed". Click that, please. You should now see this:


5. In the "username" box, type your Twitter username, and in the "password" box type your Twitter password. Just to make sure you did it right, click the link that says "test twitter authentication ". If you did, you will see a green check mark. If not, retype it until that green check shows up. (If you can't get it to show up, you may need to go to Twitter and make sure you can login using the info you are typing.)

6. Go to the 2nd window you opened (the one with your studio RSS feed showing) and copy the address from the address bar. Come back to the Twitterfeed window and paste that address into the box that says "RSS Feed URL". Be sure you click "test rss feed" after you paste the address, and make certain you get another green check mark! If you don't get that check, you won't be able to create your feed later!

7. At this point, you can change how often Twitterfeed checks new feeds, but it's already set to check once every hour. This is usually sufficient (unless you're one of those "power listers" out there LOL), so I'd just leave it as it is. Also, you can type up to 20 characters in the box labeled "Prefix each tweet with:" if you'd like. For my Artfire feed, I typed "New on Artfire". You do not have to do this, but if you do, each time Twitterfeed tweets for you, it will place whatever you type at the beginning of the tweet.

8. The last thing you need to do is to click "Create". Once you click "create" it should take you back to this page:

As long as you make it back to that page you are done! You have now created your very first Twitterfeed! Now, all you have to do is wait an hour or two and check your Twitter page. You should see tweets showing from Twitterfeed! (Just FYI, the very first time Twitterfeed checks your newly created feed, it will only show the last thing you added to your studio. After that, it will show up to 5 new listings. This means that if you add more than 5 listings between checks, only the last 5 will be "auto tweeted" for you. Likewise, if you only add one listing, just that one new item will show on Twitter.)

I hope this has been helpful. If something isn't clear, please let me know, and I will do all I can to make it better. Also, if there are any other things you'd like me to try to help with in the future, please leave me a comment and I will do all I can to help!

p.s. You can also use this with your etsy shop! Just follow the steps but substitute your Etsy feed for your Artfire feed! ;0)

p.p.s Please add me to your Twitter friends if I'm not already on your list! I would LOVE to see all of your Twitterfeeds in action!

<3
* Originally posted on Ninja Jenn's Blog *

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The Mysterious RSS Feed Button

Recently Artfire added an RSS feed button to each artisan's studio. While this made me super excited, it has come to my attention that this little button is a source of confusion for quite a few people out there. So, in light of this new revelation, I thought I'd try to do a little "de-mystification" post and hopefully help some of you guys use and understand this valuable little tool.

First of all, let's start with what an RSS Feed actually is. If you try googling "RSS Feed Definition" you will come up with all sorts of computer mumbo jumbo. You'll see all sorts of "geek speak" relating to "XML documents", "aggregators", and "metadata". But just ignore all that for now! What you really need to know is that an RSS Feed is essentially a nifty little way to get the newly-added contents of a web page delivered directly to your virtual doorstep. Instead of waking up and having to go to each page you frequent to see what happened, you can use an RSS Feed to make the information come to you. RSS Feeds are a great way to keep up with your favorite studios, as a properly set up feed will deliver all the newly added listings right to you every single day! To do this, you'll need a few basic tools.



First of all, you will need a feed reader. There are primarily two types of readers available: a standalone reader or a "plug in" reader. A standalone reader is an application you download and install to your computer that compiles the information for you and works as its own, self-functioning program. You can often find these for free at sites like Download.com. Standalone readers are great because you can pull and read the information as you need it, but on the other hand, you have to actually tell the application to open and run every time you want to see your new feeds. I prefer to use a plug in reader, because it eliminates that need! The difference in a plug in reader is that is functions as part of another application you are already using. For instance, your plug in reader will work in conjunction with your web browser or Outlook. By using a plug in, when you open Outlook, IE, or Safari (just to name a few possibilities), the content you are being fed is right there waiting on you! One caveat though: if you already have a lot of information running (like bookmarked items or tons of email folders) you may end up slowing down your browser too much to make this a viable option. I would recommend trying a plug in reader first (and most of the standard browsers already have these built in!). If you find it slows you down too much, or you feel like your pages are "bogging down", you may want to look into a standalone reader.

The next tool you will need is the feed itself. I'm not going to go into making a feed at this point (if you need to know that, please email me or leave a comment and I'll make a seperate post on that later!). For now, we're going to stick to pages that already have that wonderful little RSS Feed button showing. That button makes this whole thing so easy, and after you figure it out you will be eager to have that button on all your personal pages, blogs, and studios I'm sure! Anytime you see this button () it means that the page you are viewing has an RSS feed available and waiting for you. The words attached to the button may change, but that is the universally accepted symbol for RSS Feed, so keep an eye out for it!

Ok, we know what a feeder is, and we know what button we're looking for, so how do we put it all together? Easy! Follow these steps and you can't go wrong:

(I am going to use my Artfire studio and Safari in this example, but the steps are essentially the same across the board)

1. Go to a web page. (Let's use this one: Ninja Jenn's Artfire Studio)
2. Locate the RSS Feed button. If you clicked the link above, you will see this:

Now scroll down and look to the left of the page till you see this:

3. Click the middle button (the one that says "RSS Feed for this Studio"). Your page should now look like this:

4. Look at the address bar of the page, and you should see "feed://www.artfire.com/rss/studio.php?id=20464". As long as the address you see is prefaced with "feed", you've done it right! (And we're almost done! LOL)
5. Bookmark the page once you are sure you're on the feed page. I keep my feeds in a folder called "RSS Feeds", but you can place them in any folder you like. (If you're using a stand alone reader, copy that address and drag it to your feed reader.)
6. (Final step!!!! And this is a "one time only step, too!!!) If you're using safari (like I am), you need to tell Safari to check your feeds for new information. To do this, go to Safari ---> Preferences and click the tab that says "RSS". Make sure you see this:

Now, just tell Safari what to check and when. For me, my feeds are in my Bookmarks Menu, so I will check that box. Also, I need to make the drop down menu "Check for Updates" say "Every Hour". (This is a good default checking time, just FYI)
*You can also choose to change new article colors and discard posts after a certain time, but you don't HAVE to ever throw them out.*

To read your newly fed articles and updates, just go to the folder where you save your RSS feeds and they will be there and waiting on you!

P.S. I know this seems like a lot, but I promise, once you do it once, it will be super easy sailing from then on! ;0)

Let me know if you have any questions, and check back soon because I will be posting about how to use your new RSS Feeds with Twitter!

<3

*Originally posted on Ninja Jenn's Blog*

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