Social recommendation

When you share something in your social media, it means your friends will start to getting to know you by the things you share. Lets say you love to walk , perhaps you will share the trails you did in the past, how was your experience, perhaps what makes the experience better or even the products or shoes who make the walking more comfortable and enjoyable. If one of your friends is going to go for a trail experience he probably will trust your recommendations, and will seek your help in that matter. 

On the other side of the coin it is your name at stake when you give some recommendations, you don´t want to say something is good if you did not even taste it first, if you are recommending something base on receiving commission (if they discover that) you loose your credibility. So usually recommendation from a friend or even strangers are a good source of reliable information because people don´t appreciate to associate themselves with things or products they don´t approve first. 

the best part is you don´t have to pay to get those recommendations, if you only ask a customers for that , they usually will give it to you for free, it does represent also an opportunity for them to complain about something if the experience was not so good. 

that is valuable for your business for 2 reasons: you get your feedback to improve your business base on real assessment from your customers and also get your free review to publish on your website to increase sales. That service is not expensive and it is a great starting point as many other services we find today in online marketing. We call this reputation management.

There is a growing importance on social recommendations. According to a study by Mckinsey in 2014, social recommendations induced an average of 26% of purchase across all products categories. That should be enough for you not to underestimate the power of social media recommendation.