How to Strengthen Social Media Campaigns Using Psychology
Social media campaigns are not just about getting retweets, repins and likes. The aim of such campaigns is to build long-term and meaningful relationships with your target audience.
However, many marketers have resorted to ‘bribing’ users to make them perform specific actions. Here, bribing refers to offering incentives to users, such as a reward for a Facebook ‘like’. Unfortunately, this strategy of bribing your audience to perform the desired actions, would not take you far. It may attract users for a short while, but would fetch you a large number of unqualified leads, who are interested only in getting freebies.
Your goal should be creating such relationships with your audience, which make them perform the desired actions voluntarily, without your need to offer them any incentives. Thinking how to reach your goal? A basic knowledge of human psychology will help you achieve your goal.
Image Courtesy: Sean MacEntee, CC BY 2.0, via flickr
Here are four tips based on psychology, to build effective social media campaigns that establish meaningful relationships within you and your audience.
1. Give a human touch to your brand interactions
Add a unique personality to your brand and let your social media accounts reflect that distinct personality. Your brand profile, posts and voice should show, to whom your fans are talking.
When you think of brands like Old Spice (irreverent, adventurous, masculine) and Nike (up for challenges, sporty), a distinct, vivid picture forms in your mind for each brand. When a brand illustrates successfully, for what it stands, the audience identifies with the personality of the brand. This is the point at which conversations (as well as conversions) begin.
To add personality to your brand while carrying out social media campaigns, use assets like cover image and profile picture. You may include your social team’s photos and the behind-the-scene photos of your marketing room. Moreover, try to add a human face as the profile picture of your fan page. This is because people are more likely to be friends with a human being on social media, rather than a faceless company.
The Psychology Behind:
According to studies, if a brand displays human personality traits, people can easily identify with it. It has also been found that people are more willing to buy from sellers they like.
Image Courtesy: inventorspot.com
2. Use an appealing narrative
Don’t ask your audience to ‘like’ your page just to get a freebie or a coupon in return. Provide a real reason for them to take a specific action. An effective way of motivating users to act in a specific way, is using a compelling narrative in your social media campaigns. Give your audience a glimpse of your brand’s journey till now, or speak about a cause about which you care. Make it an interesting, two-way interaction by asking your fans also to share their stories.
In 2013, Target conducted a social media campaign, which spoke about hunger and needy people. It encouraged people to become the narrative’s part by contributing to eradicate hunger. Target made a charity-driven collection of accessories and apparel. Every purchase provided meals to 35 – 40 hungry people. This social media campaign was immensely successful, and enabled Target to raise enough money for providing meals to 10 million needy people.
The Psychology Behind:
People feel themselves to be important and trusted when you speak to them openly. We feel the need to identify with and belong to people who are similar to us. This is a strong motivator and emotional driver. When you share the story of your brand, or speak about a worthy cause, people are more likely to listen to you than when you simply try to sell things.
Image Courtesy: www.jolkona.org
3. Add fun and encourage participation
Marketers are often so busy making their mark on the social media, that they forget that social media interactions must have fun in them. Have a look at your personal social media account. What do you find people sharing the most? Are they updates and news from some finance company, or one-liners, memes and hilarious jokes? The later, right?
So, do things in your social media campaigns that make people laugh. The more fun you offer to people on social media, the more would be your conversions.
The Psychology Behind:
A study conducted by Ipsos on social media sharing shows that people are most likely to share “interesting” stuff (61%), and the second thing they are likely to share are “funny” stuff (43%). Laughter and fun have proven their potential in bringing people together.
Image Courtesy: roifocus.net
4. Leverage the impact of nostalgia
Nostalgia has a great impact on people. Brand interactions, which invoke nostalgia, make people happy and evoke fuzzy memories. Leveraging nostalgia is a great way to build a communal, familiar and personal relationship with people.
To incorporate nostalgia in your social media campaigns, you may post pictures of your first employees and office, or show the evolution of your products. Write roundup posts or listicles, which induce the feeling of “the good old days” in your prospective customers. You can also create quizzes, which evoke nostalgia and encourage people to share.
The Psychology Behind:
Nostalgia is an effective psychological trigger, which encourages social connectedness, engagement and sharing. It can also result in conversions.
Image Courtesy: optimizesbiz.com
So, make your social media campaign stronger by following these psychological tips. Soon you would find your list of fans increasing, and your brand becoming a popular name in the social media world.
Tamara Watson is an online marketing consultant in B3net Bio – A leading Life Science Digital Marketing Company in Orange County, United States. She loves to explore the new opportunities in business and share news and updates through social media. She also loves to interact with others through her write ups.
