We recently looked at why you should get fans to leave reviews for your music on Amazon and iTunes to convince others to buy, a phenomenon called social proofing.

Social proofing. How we like to follow other people.

Here are some more ways you can use social proofing in your marketing/sales strategies.

• If tickets are selling well for a gig, make sure you tell people.  The fact that they’re so “hot” will encourage others that this is a popular event and they need to get their skates on.

“tickets are selling fast, don’t miss out on this one”

• If you have a popular mailing list, tell others how popular it is.  Fans will be encouraged by its popularity and they won’t want to feel they are ‘missing out’.

“join the hundreds of other fantastic fans and join our mailing list for exclusives and freebies”

• If you have lots of fans at a gig, take a photo of the crowd and use it as leverage to encourage people to come to future shows.

“What a fantastic crowd! If you weren’t here, you missed out on a belter. Still plenty chances to come and see us on the rest of the tour”

• Use quotes from reviews or endorsements from influencers when plugging gigs or music.

“Sounds From The Future blog has called us “the most exciting band we’ve seen in years”. Don’t miss your chance to see us when we play next week at The Boardwalk…”.

• If you don’t have much in the way of journalistic quotes, use comments from fans from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  It’s the next best thing.

Here is a useful infographic from Socialproof.