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If you don’t understand your audience, you can’t expect social media marketing success. And getting inside their heads with a few basic psychology principles is a good way.

This article introduces the most important concepts you can put to work in your social media strategy so continue reading to find the psychology facts that social media managers need to know.

“Social media has liberated people in such a way that many now consider themselves as promoters, advertisers and publicity specialists, this in addition to their “normal” job.”
― Germany Kent

Psychology Lessons and Tips for Social Media Marketers

Maybe you can’t imagine, there are some scientific reasons that audience like, share, comment, click, and purchase products online.

Discovering the psychology facts behind the way people think on social media is the key step in creating better experiences and stronger relationships.

1. Why people share content online

The New York Times did a study to find out why people share the social media content. five key reasons that they found why people share content online

• Improve the lives of other people
  94 percent of participants share because they think the content will improve the lives of their follower. As a marketer, creating helpful content that causes your audience lives better is important.
• To define themselves
  68 percent of participants reported they share content to create an “idealized persona” of themselves. So when you create content, consider whether your audience will be proud to share it.
• To grow relationships
  Four out of five participants said they share online content as a means of keeping connected with others. Consider some ways your content can be used to improve connections between others. Ask your followers to tag other audience in the comments.
• Self-fulfillment
  People like to receive positive feedback and valuable feeling.  The New York Times found that “consumers enjoy more when they share content, and that audience enjoy the content more when content is shared with them so help your followers gain this feeling by creating informative content.
• To get the word out about causes they believe in
  84 participants say the “The way to support causes or brands they care about is share information.” Think about which causes your market cares about and create some contents that support these causes.

These five motivations show that your audience’s main goals for sharing are their relationships with other people, not your brand. Keep this in mind in order to create and share audience-focused content.

2. Gifts and Rewards Encourage Responses

There’s a popular psychological sales method called “reciprocity” that works very well offline and online. According to this method, if you give someone something, anything, they’ll feel the need to reciprocate. Social Media platforms take full advantage of this feeling with contests and gifts. If you ask your audience for sharing a post to win, they will. If you offer them a free stuff like a course in exchange for an email address, they’ll give it to you.

3. Choose the right Photos for your Profile

Many psychological tests results show that profile’s photos determine which people are more predisposed to liking.

Usually, a face with a smile is preferred over a static face. A dark color background is preferred over a light one. and something animated like Gifs is preferred over something static. to boost the chances people will check you out Take advantage of the new rules for profile pics.

4. Few Choices

There is the psychological theory that if you have more choices, the less likely you are to choose one. Usually, some companies prefer the “more is better” approach, but brands like Apple find out that less is more. That’s why there are only a few MacBook’s to choose from.

Just give your audience only the best of the options and don’t give them all. Removing the crap will not only bring up the quality level of what you’re offering, but fewer choices will help them to actually choose what to absorb.

5. Take Advice from People They Don’t Even Know

Making decisions for most people is a hard time. One of the most effective ways to advertise is word of mouth type of advertising. When you combine them, you make a perfect storm for online experts. Most people before buying something will do their research, and about 50% of them turn to blogs or social media channels of people they’ve never met to help them guide their decision.

You can make yourself the expert. Plan a content marketing strategy to position your website or blog with the knowledge the audience needs to make a decision, and you’ll be on your way to taking advantage of this method. When people search for advice, your website or channel is likely to come up more often. It’s win-win.

According to studies conducted by Psychologists, people aren’t that much different when interacting online.

6. Make a Community

People like to be in a community, whether in sports community, in a technician’s community, or whatever. Make them feel they belong to your community. A sense of connectedness in your audience is good for your Market. Make them feel they matter, and you will not need much effort to promote yourself.

7. Impact of Color on Social Media Marketing

Marketers are more familiar with Color that is a part of psychology.

Colors are powerful tools because they affect people’s behavior and how they perceive your business.

Many People might not have thought that color could impact social media marketing strategy, but the psychology behind them proves they are worth an extra effort.

According to a research called ‘Impact of Color on Marketing’, some people make up their mind within about 90 seconds of their initial interactions with products or people. About 55 to 90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone.

An interesting part of this is that certain colors do tell us specific things, and we’ll get to colors in a minute, but it’s less about the meaning behind them and more about whether or not the colors line up with what people expect from your business personality.

So start considering color in your social media marketing content and plan, but also think about how that color lines up with your business voice.

Let’s also take a look at KissMetrics infographic where they look at color. According to them, here are what a few common colors make us feel:

• Yellow: optimism and youth
• Red: the sense of urgency
• Blue: trust and security
• Green: wealth and relaxation
• Orange: aggressive
• Pink: romantic
• Black: powerful
• Purple: calm

8. Emotions are contagious

Based on Psychology, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, certain emotions can help grow the chance of a message being shared. Their result for research shows that sharing the information may be driven in part by arousal level. For example, when your audience is physiologically aroused, due to emotional stimuli, the autonomic nervous is activated, which then improve social transmission.

While all emotion-inducing content was found to have a bigger impact on the people, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that the more positive the content, the more it was shared. To use positivity in your social media marketing strategy:

Share feel-good stories from your customers or industry.

Ask your followers to share their positive experiences in the comments or through a contest. For example, a store chain could pose a question on Facebook asking their audience to share their happiest family meal memory from the recent year.

Add “happy” emojis to your post where appropriate.

Social media

According to the Journal of Social Neuroscience, Scientists found that the same parts of the brain are activated and the experience is replicated online with the use of emoji.

After researching about emoji use on Twitter, Scientists found “individuals who use positive emoticons often tend to be popular or influential, so don’t be shy about using emoji in your social media marketing content.

If you understand your audience’s behaviour, you can go a long way in creating effective social media marketing content. Get inside your followers’ heads to make content that will have an impact on them and your brand.

9. Familiarity Fosters Likeability

It is a great concept that’s been well tested. It follows the concept the more you’re exposed to someone, the more likely you are to actually like them. Put this to work for you by simply being in front of the audience as much as possible, and delivering good content.

The more you do that, the more they’ll like you. It’s actually the whole tactics behind branding. Branding works by exposing the audience to brands over and over again, and that will lead to the same familiarity that they’ll feel when they’re in front of your product on store shelves. Even if they’ve never used any of them, they’ll choose the one they’ve seen more.