The greater part of us joke about being dependent on things like Snapchat or Instagram, and we’re all presumably liable of urgently checking our telephones for redesigns. In any case, online networking is changing more than simply our quick conduct.
Consider it: We’ve all seen the scandalous plugs representing the impacts of different illicit substances on your cerebrum, yet the majority of us haven’t considered how apparently harmless things like online networking can have a strikingly comparative impact on both our brains and practices. What’s more, as advertisers, this is something we ought to think more about.
The list of concepts mentioned below are the courtesy of Hubspot.
5 Psychological Concepts That’ll Strengthen Your Social Media Strategy
1) Neuroplasticity
The human brain is constantly altering its behavior and responses to stimuli based on new experiences — this is nothing new. However, the growth of the internet (social media, in particular) has forced our brains to become even more adaptable.
This type of evolution is called neuroplasticity, and the quick, constant evolution of the social media sphere has increased its speed and effects on our collective brains over the past decade or two.
For marketers, the intersection of neoplasticity and social media results in two key takeaways:
Shortened attention spans = the need for bolder, digestible messaging.
Due to the onslaught of information coming at us from various platforms and devices,our attention spans are increasingly divided. In fact, a study from Microsoft reported that people tend to lose concentration after just eight seconds.
For marketers, this means finding a way to devise easily digestible messaging that stands out enough to capture the interest of our audience. To give you a better sense of how to craft this type of messaging, check out this post on successful brands on Twitter. From General Electric to Charmin, these brands are finding unique ways to nail their social presence and messaging, while keeping their followers super engaged.
Increased multitasking = the need for multi-channel marketing experiences.
Secondly, we’ve quickly become a society of multitaskers. And our ability to multitask and interact in several different ways at the same time has trained our brains to continuously switch gears.
The same study from Microsoft identified three natural attention modes that reflect consumer use of digital technology. One of which they referred to as attention ambidextrous mode, in which we “blend tasks together across devices.” We do this because we feel it enhances productivity — whether or not that is true is an entirely different argument.
For marketers, this desire to multitask presents another interesting challenge. And as a result, we’re ultimately tasked with creating multi-touch or multi-channel experiences in an effort to stay top-of-mind with consumers. To help you devise a social media strategy that spans across multiple platforms, start by reading this handy guide on how the news feed algorithms work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
2) Neuroeconomics
The study of neuroeconomics, a combination of economics, psychology, and neuroscience, has become an interesting field for marketers to explore.
Why? In short: Neuroeconomics focuses on how the aforementioned fields intersect, and how various factors affect human thought processes and decision making. For marketers, understanding the inner workings behind this type of human behavior is really valuable.
Paul J. Zak, a professor at Claremont Graduate University, is responsible for popularizing the term “neuroeconomics,” and he has a fascinating perspective on what fuels our decisions, desires, and actions when engaging on social media.
For instance, a lot of Zak’s research is rooted in the idea that social media has the ability to increase our oxytocin levels — a hormone that’s best known for fueling the bond between mothers and babies. And according to an article from Fast Company, Zak sees oxytocin as “the ‘social glue’ that adheres families, communities, and societies, and as such, acts as an ‘economic lubricant’ that enables us to engage in all sorts of transactions.”
In other words, the release of this hormone can have a serious impact on the way we interact with friends, family, and brands on social media. And eventually, it can influence our buying decisions.
3) Transactive Memory
Humans have a “transactive memory.” In other words, we rely on social support — or“external memory aids” — to piece together our own memories.
As Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, put it in a 2000 interview with The Atlantic:
Memory is a social construct: we store important pieces of it in our friends and our co-workers and so forth.”
However, social media has taken this concept to the next level, since we can maintain larger digital networks (both in regard to numbers and reach) than we can in real life.
Of course, this has taken its toll on our collective memory and attention spans — and whether that is a long-term net positive or negative is a subject for another day. However, marketers should consider this when creating and placing content meant for social media.
People generally won’t invest a lot of time into anything a brand creates in the first place, but that might not be due to lack of interest. We’re just becoming quicker decision makers in regard to what is worthy of our attention. Therefore, not only does a given piece of branded content need to have an eye-catching initial hook, it needs to come from a source that the target deems trustworthy and authentic — someone who triggers that transactive memory.
4) FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out
Chances are that you are familiar with the term “FOMO” — or fear of missing out on a fun or exciting activity.
This concept is hardly new, however, it has significantly evolved as we’ve begun to document much of our day-to-day activities on social media. These days, we don’t have to wait for a friend to tell us they are doing XYZ to trigger feelings of exclusion. In fact, all it takes is a quick scroll through your social media feed to spark this type of anxiety. And this is something that brand marketers can use to their advantage in the social sphere.
Nearly everyone follows at least a few brand accounts on social media — whether it be Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. For brands, this means there is an opportunity to tap into this psychological fear to suggest that your audience could be missing out if they don’t buy your product, or attend your webinar, or check out your new website, or … well, you get the point.
Generating a little anxiety and jealousy goes a long way towards establishing a connection with your target audience, but be sure to use the tactic wisely. Some research suggests that there are several real consequences of FOMO — such as “increased dissatisfaction with one’s life” and a “decrease in privacy” — so for the sake of others, keep things friendly.
To help, here’s a great example from the folks at SXSW of how to tap into FOMO the right way:
5) Status Anxiety
At this point, we’ve established that social media can make us anxious or trigger negative emotions … but that doesn’t mean we have to use it for evil. Just like we found a positive way to spin the concept of FOMO, we can do the same for status anxiety.
