Everybody knows that social media is one of the most engaging marketing tactics. But what many people don’t know is that you need to make it engaging. Just setting up a profile on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram is not enough. You can’t expect that any post or picture will immediately boost your conversions and increase your sales.
The world of social media has grown vast and in order to capture the attention of your audience, you need to know how to do it. Maybe you’ve been advertising on social media for a long time and you think you know the tricks of the trade, but the behavior of users is changing and social media platforms are following their change. Maybe you’re aware of that as well and you’ve already made your social media strategy for 2018, but have you thought it all through?
Social media marketing is at its core the process of storytelling and anybody who has ever tried to tell the engaging story knows that you need a vast knowledge of the elements that shape your users’ attitudes, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and perceptions. It sounds like you’re gonna need a crystal ball for the job, but the truth is that a comprehension of basic psychological factors will be enough. The most common mistake marketers do is that they don’t look further than their screen – beyond all those conversion and traffic data there is a human face who is eager to be a part of your story. But first, you need to pull them in.
Yes, the behavior of users is also changing, but there are psychological roots which can help you to find the behavioral patterns that are less likely to change. Here are some ways to use these patterns to improve your social media strategy in order to create a positive reaction in the community.
It is a fact that today is getting harder every day to capture people’s attention. The cinema, this giant medium of storytelling is getting pretty absurd with their teasers and promos that practically tell you the whole story just to make you buy the ticket. This psychological principle of reciprocity has never been more present – the audience today wants to know exactly what is it getting for their money, loud and clear.
They won’t buy the ticket unless they’re sure what they’ll be watching, which is an almost impossible marketing task. The situation with social media marketing is basically the same, but they buy ‛tickets’ after they’d heard the story, which means they need to stick till the end. This reciprocity is supposed to be pretty simple – you give your audience a quality content and earn their trust. But the problem is they’ll need the proof of quality and you have just a couple of seconds to provide it before they move on to the competition.
It is like a logline in the movie – one sentence and that’s it. Now you have pictures, videos, animations, even VR to make them stay, but don’t throw it all in. You need to go straight at the center of the target and you need to be honest. Just remember the logline for Ridley Scott’s Alien – ‛Jaws in space’. Simple, engaging, and it wasn’t a lie. Sounds like a perfect hashtag, doesn’t it?
If there is no ‛Jaws’ in your story to attract the audience, the presence of ‛stars’ on your ‛poster’ will surely make up for it. It’s not a secret that today only famous actors can make people visit the cinema and you can use this phenomenon on your social media platforms. Although it seems that these platforms are all about individuality and self-expression, there is a FOMO effect which reminds us that we all feel a strong urge to do the things the others are doing. Conformity is rooted deep in our nature, making us pretty vulnerable to outside influence.
We’re ready to change our behavior in order to match the behavior of people we look up to and that’s why utilizing influencers is one of the best ways to make users interested in your story, especially on Instagram. These people of authority always make your brand more trustworthy and people often use celebrities, but this is not a strict rule. Your social proof can be built by experts in the field of your business, by testimonies and recommendations of other users, even friends, and family.
When it comes to social media marketing all-stars cast is measured by the number of followers, shares, and likes which all lead to the hallo effect. In other words, we live in a world where a Facebook ‛like’ makes you a trustworthy person, so make a use of it to create as many positive traits for your brand as you can.
The tone of the story is the most important thing – the key is in how you present something (nobody will be attracted to Ryan Gossling picking his nose). When it comes to design people today have finally accepted the importance of psychology of colors but for most of them, this is as far as they’re willing to go. According to experienced web development experts, every story is perceived through series of images and you have to be aware that every element – every line, every shape, every proportion – has its effect on the audience. Words are not an exception – if you remember the Alien we mentioned at the beginning you’ll definitely remember the effect of the slowly emerging title.
So look at your social media profiles as posters for your brand. Put every designed element in its place, provide all-like-share-follow cast and put in a nice clean #logline as a cherry on top.