It's called Social Proof and in effect the foundation of Social Media. It's really been around forever. The most famous study of social proof is Muzafer Sherif's 1935 experiment. Social proof is also one of Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion, (along with reciprocity, commitment/consistency, authority, liking, and scarcity) which maintains that people are especially likely to perform certain actions if they can relate to the people who performed the same actions before them. This is more commonly know as simply "a referral", a concept and term that's been around seemingly forever.
When you tell someone in your circle of influence that you like or endorse a product or service as "good" or "preferred", the chances that person also buying the product or service increases. Advertisers know this and that's why a referral is so powerful and valuable.
We are all familiar with how referrals work in daily life. How they work on the web and in Social Media are similar, here are some examples*.
Wisdom of your friends social proof – Learning from friends thru the social web is likely the killer app of social proof in terms of 1:1 impact, and the potential to grow virally.
Friends inviting friends to play through Facebook and other social networks helped Zynga grow from 3 million to 41 million average daily users in just one year, from 2008 to 2009.
Moms, arguably the most valuable demographic on the social web, rely heavily on friends and family recommendations. A recent Babycenter study showed moms rely on the wisdom of their friends 67% more than average shoppers; and they rely on social media 243% more than the general population.
Friends referred by friends make better customers. They spend more (a 2x higher estimated lifetime value than customers from all other channels at One Kings Lane); convert better (75% higher conversion than renters from other marketing channels at Rent the Runway); and shop faster (they make their first purchase after joining twice as quickly than referrals from other channels at Trendyol)
They also make better contributors. People who see content from their friends on TripAdvisor contribute personal content to the site at 2x the rate of others, and are 20% more engaged than other users.
Companies will pay you to update and maintain their Twitter accounts. The requirements are a computer and good spelling skills. Learn more, get the details and get started.
Here are two services that pay you to refer products within your circles of influence, again, your friends, family, or followers. How you do this is with a simple post or tweet. The companies are Sponsored Tweets and MyLikes.
Sponsored Tweets
SponsoredTweets.com is an online marketplace that allows you to connect directly with advertisers to engage in sponsored conversations through Twitter. Advertisers compensate you with cash in exchange for a sponsored tweet. Think of it like eBay for tweets.
How it works:
1. Set your price, add a category and some keywords and wait for offers.
2. Choose your offers. Pick some, pick all, pick none. You decide which offers to tweet.
3. Receive payment. If you accept an offer, your account will be credited within 24 hours of your tweet.
With SponsoredTweets you typically wait for offers to come to you and then just accept and tweet those you like or that fit your audience. You are not required to tweet every offer. In fact, I only tweet about 1/2 of the offers I receive.
Start Now
More Work From Home Methods and Jobs
I have many more money making ideas and methods at http://doyahaveaminute.blogspot.com/
If you are looking for traditional jobs, I have work at home jobs on my blog as well. My list now includes companies like American Express, Amazon, U-Haul and more http://doyahaveaminute.blogspot.com/2012/05/work-from-home-jobs-list.html
* Source: Tech Crunch, Social Proof is the New Marketing http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/27/social-proof-why-people-like-to-follow-the-crowd/
