Testimonials (and the effect of speaking)
One of the first things I realized is the benefit you get by offering yourself to the world. Putting yourself out there is often the easiest thing you can do to accomplish all kinds of goals. The best benefit is meeting new people that like what you have to say (when is the last time you stayed behind to talk to someone you hated?).
A few weeks ago I gave a 5 minute presentation promoting an event I’m helping a friend put on. Siqi Chen (founder of Serious Business, Inc., which created Friends for Sale) was in the audience at this talk with his co-founder Alexander Le. When I met Alexander one week later, he told me that they implemented two tips from my talk. It turns out these two tips increased their amount of invitations sent by a significant amount. Siqi will be speaking at the aforementioned event, and is a very enjoyable person whom I would not have met had I given that talk. That’s why I say speaking publicly can be so influential.
As for the testimonial part, I recently asked Siqi if I could quote him here as saying that my suggestions helped improve the virality of their very popular application (3m+ users) and he was kind enough to allow me to do so. So there you go - if my suggestions are good enough for a top facebook app, are they good enough for you? :)
Here’s an Extra - The two tips that helped dramatically increase invites for Friends for Sale. They are simple, but effective:
- Increase the size of your invite solicitation text.
- Suggest a number of invites for each user to send, without forcing them to do so. (15 seems to be the magic number).