If you are in business for yourself online, it is especially important that you understand the concept of social proof.  When you are an online business, most visitors to your websites see you as as unknown entitiy, hiding behnd the anonymity of the internet, which makes them anxious. What if they give you their hard earned money and you vanish? They want reassurance. They want to know that you are a real, legitimate, established business.

How can you give them this reassurance that you’re real and legit? 

One way to do it is by using what is called "social proof". Social proof is a concept first championed by persuasion master Robert Cialdini, and it basically just means that people tend to do what other people are doing. So if a lot of people are buying something, other people will be likely to buy it. If people see two restaurants, one with an empty parking lot, one with a full parking lot, they are much more likely to go to the restaurant with the full parking lot. People follow the herd. They figure that if other people like something, use something, trust something, et cetera, it must be legit.

Customer testimonials are one way to provide social proof. If you go to the home page of my site, www.thepressreleasesite.com, you will see that I have testimonials high up on the home page – along with a picture of myself, which is another way to reassure potential website customers that you are real.

Along with those customer testimonials you should use press releases. This doesn’t mean that you have to conduct an expensive publicity campaign. You can write your own press releases or hire someone to do it for you, send them out to a few press release distribution sites (good free ones are free-press-release.com, bignews.biz, prlog.com – and put them on the Media Room page on your website.

When people search for your company,  one of the things that they will find onine is your press release.

Even if your press release is not picked up by mainstream media, you have created your own online publicity campaign. You have instantly created the image of a much bigger company, an established company that’s so important that they have their own media room, and that has press releases about their success all over the web.

Along with a well designed website with customer testimonials, this provides the kind of social proof that makes people more likely to trust your company when they are looking to do business with someone.

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 My goal is to help my clients. Most of the time, I do this by writing press releases and doing social media marketing with the goal of promoting their website all over the internets, and making sure that their website is fueled by that all important Google Juice.

However every once in a while this is NOT a good idea. And if I think so, I will tell my client so. Politely, of course.

Here’s when you don’t want to send out your press release:

• When your website is not up and running yet and just has a "coming soon" placeholder on it.
• When your website is butt-ugly and has text running over itself and practically screams "My business is doing so badly I can’t afford a web designer!"
• When your website copy  is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.
• When people who arrive at your website don’t know what to do or where to go. Your website should be well laid out and designed to encourage people to take a specific action – sign up for a newsletter, buy your products, buy your services, contact you for more information…if they just show up, read, and go away forever because you haven’t at least presented them the option to stay in touch or purchase…than you’ve wasted your press release. 

So in other words – don’t go out and get traffic and send it to your website if your website isn’t ready for it. I’m not saying your website needs to be PERFECT – God knows mine isn’t – but it at least needs to be professional looking and needs to present people with a way to get in touch or buy from you or take some other desired action. 

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