Want to know the different types of social proof you can use for your business?
Social proof marketing is an effective way to gain the trust of your customers and boost your sales over time.
In today’s post, we’ll talk about what social proof means for your business.
Plus, you’ll also learn about the different types of social proof — complete with examples so you can copy them for your brand.
Before diving into social proof types, here’s what we’ll cover in this article:
- What is Social Proof?
- How Can I Add Social Proof to My Website?
- How to Display Social Media Feeds in WordPress
- How to Show Customer Reviews in My Website
- 11 Types of Social Proof for Your Website
Let’s get started!
What is Social Proof?
Think back to the last time you bought something.
Chances are you read product reviews first before actually paying for it, right? This is an example of social proof in action.
Social proof means that whenever people are unsure about something, they look to others to decide how to act.
Why? Because people assume that others have more knowledge or experience about what needs to be done.
In marketing, this means that when your prospect is on the fence about buying from you, they’ll look around for direction on what to do.
So, they’ll look for product reviews about your brand or ask their friends for product recommendations first.
Wondering how to add social proof to your website?
You’ll find your answer in the section below.
How Can I Add Social Proof to My Website?
When it comes to adding social proof to your website, you have 2 options that you can choose from:
- Manual Way: Generate the embed code for each social media post or review and then insert the code into your website.
- Easy Way: With the help of a WordPress plugin, you can automatically show social proof on your website — no coding needed!
If you go for the manually way, then embedding social proof can take a lot of time and effort. After all, you’re manually generating the code for each post individually.
What’s more, customizing your social proof is much harder as well. You’ll have to manually tweak the code to change how the social proof looks.
In case you’re not comfortable editing the code, you’ll need to pay for a developer to do it for you, which can get expensive.
The good news is that you can sidestep this hassle with the help of a WordPress plugin. Instead of manually displaying reviews or social media posts, the plugin can automatically add it to your site.
Below, we’ll show you the best plugins to embed social proof on your website.
How to Display Social Media Feeds in WordPress
Using a social media feed plugin, it’s easier than ever to add social media posts on your WordPress website so you can use them for positive social proof.
And the best option that you can use is Smash Balloon.
Trusted by over 1.75 million users worldwide, Smash Balloon is a collection of the best social media feed plugins in WordPress.
With the help of Smash Balloon, you can create, customize, and embed social media feeds on your site in just minutes!
All it takes is a few simple clicks and you can have feeds of content from the biggest social media platforms out there: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
In fact, the plugin comes with support for:
- Facebook page feed
- Instagram profile feed
- Twitter profile timeline
- YouTube channel feed
- Facebook events calendar
- Twitter hashtag feed
- Instagram video feed
- And much more…
Just follow the 3-step guided flow that will take you through the whole process — no need to touch a single line of code.
What’s more, you get total control over how your social media feeds look. You can simply import a pre-designed feed template and have a unique feed ready to go online.
On top of that, you get a live feed customizer that you can use to personalize your social feeds in detail.
You can freely customize your header, post elements, button design, lightbox options, layout, color scheme, and much more.
Once you’re happy with how your social media feed looks, you can start embedding it directly from your live feed editor.
From there, you can add your feeds to your web pages or widget-ready areas like the sidebar or footer.
For more details, you can check out our step-by-step guide on how to embed social media feeds in WordPress.
Ready to get started? Get Smash Balloon for your site here.
With that, let’s look at the easiest way to embed customer reviews on your website.
How to Show Customer Reviews in My Website
93% of shoppers say that online reviews greatly influenced their buying decisions, so showing customer reviews on your site is a great way to use social proof to get more sales.
For the easiest way to embed reviews from on your website, you can simply use a review aggregator plugin.
When it comes to review aggregators, the #1 option in the market is Reviews Feed Pro.
Using this plugin, you can show customer reviews from trusted websites like Facebook, Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, and Yelp.
In fact, you can follow a 3-step guided flow that’ll take you through the process of creating, customizing, and embedding review feeds — no need for HTML, CSS, or any kind of coding.
You can then customize how the reviews will look on your site. Using the visual customizer, you can freely change your layout, header design, review elements, and more.
What’s more, the plugin gives you total control over the reviews that show up on your feed.
You can add filters to only show reviews with specific star ratings, or hide reviews with certain words.
In fact, you can even moderate your feeds and only show selected reviews, or hide certain reviews. As a result, your reviews feed can focus on showing high-quality reviews and hide reviews from trolls or bots.
To get started, you can check out our guide on how to embed social media reviews in WordPress.
Ready to embed reviews on your WordPress site? Grab the Reviews Feed Pro plugin here.
15 Types of Social Proof for Your Website
With that, let’s look at the various types of social proof you can embed on your website to grow your sales and build trust.
1. Customer Quote Testimonials
One of the best ways to use social proof to boost your sales and grow your business is to display customer quote testimonials on your website.
Testimonials can increase conversion rates by 34%, after all.
This way, your website visitors can see just how beneficial your solution is to your existing customers.
For example, check out how OptinMonster effectively uses the power of social proof on their testimonial page.
By including quote testimonials, complete with the customer’s full name, position and company, OptinMonster powerfully encourages their website visitors to try them out for themselves.
Want to do the same thing for your own business?
You can embed your Facebook reviews feed on your website in just under 5 minutes!
How? Simply install the Facebook Feed Pro plugin so you can do this automatically, even without technical knowledge.
Here’s an example of a Facebook reviews feed we made with the plugin’s help:
Find out how you can easily do this for your own business. Check out the step-by-step tutorial here to embed your Facebook reviews on your website.
The best part?
The Facebook reviews are from your actual users: real people with names, pictures, and Facebook profiles that choose to associate with your brand.
2. Video Testimonials
You can use video testimonials to cast a vote of confidence in your product’s value. This way, video testimonials help you skyrocket your sales as well.
Its effect is similar with customer quote testimonials — both talk about the successes your customers had after using your solution.
And it can be more powerful in conversions: 42% of people say testimonial videos are effective because they showcase actual people.
Because of this, viewers can understand their stories and relate to them more.
That’s why Airbnb’s testimonial page displayed their hosts’ stories via video, like this:
The great news?
Getting video testimonials for your brand is the time-intensive part. But once you’ve already created them, you can easily display them on your website.
With the help of a useful plugin like YouTube Feed Pro, adding video testimonials on WordPress is so easy, even a non-techie like you can do it.
Using the plugin, here’s how we recreated Airbnb’s video testimonial page:
Try it out yourself. Head on over to this step-by-step tutorial to find out how you can easily embed a YouTube playlist of your video testimonials on your website.
3. Testimonial Tweets
Another type of social proof that can increase your brand’s revenue is posting testimonial tweets on your website.
Since the average attention span of a human is now 8 seconds, you can just show bite-sized testimonials that can be easily consumed by your fast-paced prospects.
For example, instead of showing testimonials in the form of long paragraphs, Smash Balloon displayed testimonial tweets about their brilliant products and equally great customer service, like this:
Did you know that you can easily add a beautifully interactive feed of testimonial tweets to your website, too?
It’s simple. Simply let Smash Balloon’s Twitter Feeds Pro plugin do the hard work for you.
In less than 5 minutes, we made this engaging Twitter feed — and we didn’t even have to deal with confusing code to do it:
Excited to try this out for your own business? Check out this nifty tutorial so you can easily embed an interactive Twitter feed on your website today.
If you want to give more control to your audience when it comes to consuming your testimonial tweets, you can also embed a Twitter feed carousel to your WordPress.
4. Platform Integrations
Does your product integrate with 3rd-party services?
Yes? Then, you can use another type of social proof by adding the logos of your integration partners on your official website.
OptinMonster cleverly made use of this type of social proof by displaying all of their email marketing service and platform integrations:
Displaying your platform integrations lends extra credibility to your brand.
When your prospects see that your solution is used by popular brands, you’ll be seen as a trustworthy brand that’s worth considering doing business with. Even if they’re not that familiar with your business yet.
5. Real-Time Activity Popup
Displaying a popup of how many people are actively buying from you or signing up to your mailing list?
Good. You’re hitting 2 birds with 1 stone: you’re combining the power of social proof and fear of missing out (FOMO) marketing to skyrocket your sales over time.
This type of social proof is especially helpful when your site visitors are on the fence about buying from you.
If you show a real-time sales popup on your site, you may be giving them the small nudge they need to make a decision in your favor.
After all, if people are actively buying from you, then you must be great at what you do, right?
It’s real-time recommendations from your users. Instantly shown and effectively done.
If you use a beginner-friendly tool like TrustPulse, you can easily display this type of social proof on your website. You can install the plugin and set up a real-time sales popup — in just under 5 minutes!
Ready to boost your site conversions by 15%? Learn how you can set up a recent sales popup using TrustPulse here.
6. User-Generated Content
Another type of social proof, user-generated content (UGC), adds authenticity to your brand and makes your prospects trust you more.
How? By featuring photos and videos from your real customers, just like what Fabletics did with their testimonial page below:
One of the best social media platforms to get started with curating UGC is Instagram.
Here, you can ask your users to use a branded hashtag of your own. Or, you can just re-post their Instagram posts where you’re tagged in.
Need a super easy way to show Instagram UGC on your website?
You can use the Instagram Feed Pro plugin to help you. For example, we easily recreated the testimonial page of Fabletics with the help of this plugin:
Also, you can even display multiple Instagram feeds on your website to feature different branded hashtags that your business has.
Stop manually embedding Instagram posts one-by-one. Start embedding them automatically instead.
Learn how you can use this type of social proof by following this tutorial on creating an Instagram hashtag feed for your WordPress.
7. Referrals
Recommendations from friends remain the #1 trusted source of marketing.
Compared to glowing advertisements from celebrities, influencers and experts, shoppers still trust the recommendations of their friends the most.
That’s why brands cleverly use referral marketing in their promotional campaigns.
For example, meal kit service provider HelloFresh allows their customers to choose between 2 referral options:
But if you’re still starting out, how can you encourage your existing customers to refer you to their friends?
With the help of RafflePress, the best WordPress giveaway plugin, you can easily create a viral refer-a-friend giveaway just by dragging and dropping the contest elements.
No need to mess around with pieces of code, so you can set up your giveaway in just a few minutes!
Are you interested in running a successful referral contest? Check out this helpful tutorial on creating a viral refer-a-friend giveaway using RafflePress today.
8. Customer Size
Have a large customer base?
Then you can use your customer size as another type of social proof that can help you boost your sales.
When your prospects see that a lot of customers already trust you and do business with you, they’ll be encouraged to try out your solution as well.
For example, check out Instagram Feed Pro‘s testimonial section in its homepage. Smash Balloon included its customer size of over 1,750,000 users to use the power of this type of social proof:
What are other factors you can mention to add more credibility to your brand?
You can also include meaningful metrics such as the number of optimized visitor sessions, served optins and sites using your product — just like what lead generation software OptinMonster did below:
9. Instagram Takeovers
Under this type of social proof, a social media influencer or expert will “take over” your Instagram account for a certain period of time.
During this time, they can post stories, hold Instagram live videos or upload pictures on your behalf.
For example, to boost their Instagram followers, Sheffield Hallam University gave each student a day to take over the university’s Instagram account.
Some of the students posted their photos with the #SHUInsiders hashtag. While others took over their Instagram stories, as mentioned below:
If you did an Instagram takeover using Stories, you can’t just take a screenshot and share that on your website. This wouldn’t be interactive at all.
Instead, you can use Instagram Feed Pro to show your Instagram feeds on your website.
Then, whenever someone clicks your account, your Instagram stories will open in full-screen displays for an engaging browsing experience.
Want to try this out yourself?
Find out how you can display an engaging Instagram gallery on your website by following the step-by-step tutorial here.
10. Include Social Proof in Your Popups
Popups can help you convert your visitors into leads — and into customers, over the long run.
The key is to add a convincing social proof element in its design.
And the best way for you to customize your popups? By using the best WordPress popup plugin, OptinMonster.
Here’s what Syed Balkhi did when he included a social proof element in his popup below — can you spot what it is? That’s right. He included a variant of the customer size social proof.
Instead of putting his YouTube subscribers, he added his total number of views instead.
You can apply the same social proof concept in your own brand. Just check out this complete tutorial on how you can create a high-converting WordPress popup for you to get started.
11. Media Mentions
Next, you can effectively harness the power of social proof by mentioning all of the places you’ve been featured in.
This adds more credibility to your brand, especially if the brands you’ve been featured in are big names in your industry, too.
WPBeginner perfectly made use of this type of social proof by including famous media outlets that featured their brand:
Don’t have any notable media mentions yet? You can also feature your social media mentions on your website.
For example, if your brand has been mentioned on Twitter several times already, you can display your notable mentions using the Twitter Feed Pro plugin.
Using the plugin, here’s an example of how Smash Balloon can show their Twitter mentions on their website:
Want to create your own version? Follow the instructions in this nifty tutorial on how to add a custom Twitter feed to your website today.
12. Google Reviews
As the biggest review platform out there, Google can be a fantastic source of social proof for your website.
That way, you can show your website visitors that regular people out there are happily using your products.
Since people commonly use Google to look up brand reviews, you’ll have an easier time converting users this way. All you have to do is embed your Google reviews like in this example:
And for the simplest way to embed Google reviews, you can give Reviews Feed Pro a try.
With it, you can embed content from Google in just a few clicks with no coding needed. Just like that, you can start creating a much better impression of your brand.
To get started, you can check out our tutorial on how to embed Google reviews in WordPress.
13. Social Proof from Yelp
Another amazing source of social proof for your business is Yelp.
As a trusted review site, people often turn to Yelp when they want to check if a business is legit.
By embedding Yelp reviews, you can take things a step further and show everyone that tons of people have had great experience with your brand.
And if you’re using a powerful reviews aggregator like Reviews Feed Pro, embedding Yelp reviews can be quick and easy.
Plus, you can use filters and moderation options to highlight only your best reviews. That way, you can create a much better impression of your brand.
Just follow our step-by-step guide on how to embed Yelp reviews to get started.
14. Tripadvisor Reviews and Testimonials
Tripadvisor is another great source of user reviews and testimonials — especially for hotels, restuarants, and other similar attractions.
Since you’re showing reviews from a trusted source directly on your website, your visitors won’t have to leave your site to check if your brand is legit.
That way, you’ll have an easy time building trust in your visitors and converting them into customers.
As the #1 reviews aggregator out there, Reviews Feed Pro lets you add Tripadvisor reviews to your website and start growing your sales.
Since the plugin comes with tons of customization options, you can freely change your the review layout, button design, review elements, and more.
Once you’re happy with how your Tripadvisor reviews look, you can use the simple WordPress block to embed it on a page, post, sidebar, or widget.
For more information, check out our tutorial on how to embed Tripadvisor reviews easily.
15. Facebook Reviews
Since Facebook is still the biggest social media platform out there, it can be a great place to find social proof.
In fact, you can directly embed Facebook reviews of your brand on your website and start growing your sales.
A lot of your visitors are likely to be Facebook users, showing reviews from a familiar source can be a great way to convince people to buy from you.
Once you get some Facebook reviews for your brand, you can start using that as a social proof and growing your sales.
Want the easiest way to show Facebook reviews? Reviews Feed Pro has you covered.
With this plugin, it takes just a few clicks to create a feed of postive Facebook reviews, customize how it looks, and embed it on your website.
You can learn more by checking out our tutorial on how to embed Facebook reviews on a website.
That’s it!
We hope this article helped you learn about the different types of social proof you can use to skyrocket your sales over time.
By following the tutorials linked in this article, you can also easily display these social proof types on your own website.
Ready to embed social proof? Get the Smash Balloon All Access Bundle now!
Interested in getting more Instagram followers? You may want to check out this ultimate guide on how to get more real followers on Instagram — organically.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more social media tips and tricks.
