What is social proof? Essentially it’s the trust that a reader has in your blog or recipe because they’ve seen other people like it.
Social proof is really important these days because of how much other social proof is out there already between Amazon reviews, restaurant reviews, etc.
We trust what we know other people have liked!
Add recipe rating stars to your header
I recently did this on my sites and it not only looks great in your header but it’s a very practical way to showcase the ratings on your site. This definitely is a custom feature that is part of our semi-custom Crafted websites, but could be done on your own if you’re a bit tech savvy. I was able to create a snippet in WPRM (like jump buttons are) and then use that shortcode in this spot on my theme.
Now when you look at a recipe name on my site, you can see how many ratings it has! This is something regular internet users are used to seeing when reviewing restaurants or other items so adding this type of functionality to a blog is a great idea to show social proof!
Optimize Commenting
- Show comments link in entry meta section to jump to comment section
- Encourage users to comment with a call to action block
- Put the comment box above the comments so they see that first
Showcase a reader comment in blog post
Doing this can encourage people to comment because they want their own comment featured! It also simply shows that someone else enjoyed the recipe and commented about their experience.
Add social sharing plugin and display total number of shares
Social proof essentially shows if something is worth someones time. When you display the total shares of a post, it will show whether or not other people find your post valuable, too!
We recommend using the setting to showcase the share count only if the shares are more than 100, that way it won’t display on newer or less shared posts.
Another way to do this is to talk about this in a post, email or on social media and share something like “The post over 6k people have shared/tried/etc.”
Encourage people to share when they make your recipes
There are a lot of ways to do this, the easiest one is just to remind people to do this! If you’re active on social media, ask your audience to share a photo and tag you.
You can also run a contest and do a giveaway for people who share a photo.
You could also make this into a community affair and create a recipe challenge. Tessa from Handle the Heat does this every month with one of her recipes as a way to encourage this type of social proof and sharing!
Related episode: Episode 194: 3 Quick Wins for E-E-A-T
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