3 Psychology Hacks to Increase Your Social Engagement
We all agree that social media marketing is essential for brands & businesses to survive on the Internet these days. Living in today’s social-media-infused world, it’s getting tougher to show the real-life-sociability through social media marketing & engagement. Many start-up brands on social media find it hard to rack up a handful of engagement by organic means.
With 350 million photos on Facebook, 500 million tweets & 85 million videos, and pictures created & posted just to Instagram daily, it’s tough to get your audience’s attention with the content you generate.
With numbers & stats like this, there is a steady decline in the organic reach of an average Facebook page, which is not fading shortly.
On the one hand, with 2.307 billion active social media users, as a business, it is an excellent opportunity to seize, by connecting & communicating through social media platforms, the question remains:
How to Gain Customer’s Attention in Such Fierce Competition Over Social Media Marketing?
Looking at the amount of information blast every second on social media, it seems like you’re battling with your business competitors. All those photos & videos of cute kittens, dogs, elephants & babies & the memes rage shared on social media.
“Does it frustrate you that the content you’re generating has a lack of engagement, or is it convincing you you aren’t good at social media?”
While you’re using all the science & numbers to get double-digit likes or responses, your content gets a cold shoulder. Maybe it’s time to take a look from a different perspective.
“When Science & Mathematics fails, Psychology comes to the rescue.”
Psychology is the one academic discipline (the one you never took seriously in high school) that can help you win this battle on social media & make you a better marketer. Here are the three simple & effective psychology hacks that can help you out profoundly in your Social Media Engagement. An essential step in providing better content & an increase in social engagement is understanding how your customer’s brain works.
Emotional Triggers to Tap into Social Media Marketing
No matter how incredible you’re at the technicalities, the science & stats, strategies & data analysis of social media marketing, at the end of the day, it is “Human Endeavor.” While dealing with social media marketing, the most important factor we often lose sight of is trying to reach out to real humans with actual emotions. If you fail to provoke their emotions & pull at the right heartstrings, don’t feel surprised why your posts fail to get any reactions.
Now the question is, “What kind of emotions are best to play within your social media posts?”
You don’t have to emotionally blackmail your customers or exploit them to buy your product or like your post. Depending on what kind of services or products you’re promoting on social media, few emotions can naturally spread without passing any judgments.
#1. Crafting Happiness & Positivity
Happiness & positivity are one of them. Of course, both are natural phenomena bound to happen at least once in your life. Still, this kind of understanding about the mind’s functionality can help you prepare better social content that your audience would naturally find positive and engaging.
Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School, has got a lot of work done in social media psychology & has combined all these science & neuroscience findings to understand what it takes, the emotions, that impact the user’s decision to forward the social content to their peers. Here is what he has got to say:
“The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared. Before people share a piece of content, they evaluate its social currency. The better it makes them look, the more likely they’ll be to pass it on.”
This is the time to reevaluate & speed up your content strategy to make the necessary changes that can make your readers feel inspired & they share that inspiration with others.
If you’re a start-up company, a simple example is to talk about the lessons you’ve learned, your entrepreneurial struggles, let your audiences know how you planned things & what you did to improve the situation. Most of the time, companies don’t talk about their losses. Giving your readers an insight into transparency in business can pay off well.
“Use goal-oriented content to promote engagement.”
#2. Building Curiosity
Curiosity has helped humans explore uncharted territories in the quest of getting the best food, tools, shelter & other resources from our caveman days & we’re still somewhat curious adventurers. The only difference is then & now is, instead of roaming in the wild deserts of the Sahara, we’re on the hunt for new information scrolling through the vast grounds of the Internet.
We love to read & check our social feeds a million times throughout the day to catch up with the latest news about what’s going on in the world. People watch tutorials, read blog posts, and listen to podcasts from their favorite inspirational personalities to keep learning more & to satisfy their desire of having more knowledge than they currently have.
“Curiosity induces us to seek out and learn more.”
How Can You Harness This Inherent Curiosity In Your Social Media Strategy?
By strategically teasing your followers on social media platforms, you can get a higher rate of engagement. Build curiosity about your upcoming event announcements. Get your followers to the “Behind-the-Scenes” of your work environment. Give them some insights by a live video session, dropping some kind of news on what you’re busy working with. It will not only let your loyal followers be on the lookout for the content. But the casual lurkers can also be coaxed into hitting the like or follow button.
The engagement you will receive will help you dig deep into the type of content you should schedule next & will help you to create a better content strategy.
#3. Creating Urgency
First, FOMO is real!
“Keeping up with the curiosity is what keeps many of us glued to our smartphones — the fear of missing out on the next trending news or the viral video.”
That’s what forces us to hop on social media as soon as we wake up.
We feel anxiety or regret after seeing others having more fun. Achieving better, trying new things, or having those cool party pictures without us, which creates FOMO.
And that’s where you can use “Urgency” as a good strategy in your social plan. As it also creates a sense of loss for people.
“Say greetings to FOMO: In case they don’t act soon enough, they’ll miss out on a worthwhile offer or event.”
You can create a situation to compel your followers to act ASAP, so that they know that they’ve got a limited window of time through your CTA before their chances to cash the deal expire & their options disappear. Try to make it sound like if they don’t act fast, they’re going to lose out on some cash. So this is the right time to decide to sign up!
These emotional triggers can maximize your human energies incorporated in developing the best strategies to win your customer’s heart and promote your products or services.
