It is essential for every social media marketer to know a thing or two about social media psychology seeing that it is their dream to boost audience engagement and have customers trust entirely in their brand. But how does one learn social media psychology? By going back to the basis of psychology, which entails knowing why people act the way they do.

Knowing social media psychology will help give you an in-depth understanding of your social audience. By connecting the patterns of their past behavior, you’ll be able to predict future responses and even get to influence it.

In this article, we are going to see some basic social media psychological principles that will you can add to your social media strategy to connect with your target audience on a whole new level.

Psychological Marketing Tactics for social media marketers

 Post contents people are likely to share

The word social means relating to one another, and this is the reason why most people are on various social media platforms. When creating content, ask yourself this question, is this something people would love to share? Would it be appropriate or inappropriate for the friends and relatives of your target audience to see?

According to the study conducted by New York times, there are five reasons why people share contents which are:

• They believe the content can help others
• To create a brand
• To stay connected with others
• The feeling of fulfillment
• To show affirmation and support

Create materials that are informative and capable of helping someone out there who cannot get hold of such information. When your audience sees such information, even if it’s not something that affects them directly, they will share immediately to those they feel need it.

Also, the kind of contents you put out there needs to focus on your niche or line of business. Don’t go posting about sports equipment, and in the blink of an eye, you are creating content about automobiles.

Some of your audiences are following because your content is related to their brand, and most times, they get contents from you to feed their audience. So, in a case whereby you do not have a defined niche, it would be challenging to get users to share your content or even follow you.

Some people share content to stay connected with friends and loved ones. That’s why you’ll find some people tag their friends to see a hilarious or touching post. To take advantage of this, you can include a call-to-action to get your audience to share or tag someone. For example “Tag that friend you know cannot do without a smoothie blender.”

Your content should also sound like something written by an expert in the industry and not by some amateur. It must include insightful facts and written with confidence and impeccable grammar. Such content would encourage your audience to share.

Another way to get people to engage and share your content is by posting positive materials. These contents stir up the right emotions in your audience such as laughter, happiness, love, peace, calmness, and so on. Avoid posts that will incite anger, arguments, depression, etc.

Finally, write contents that stand for a cause, be it immigration, bullying, animal rights, rape cases, inequality, and so on. Most people crave to see brands take a stand on a pressing societal issue. You don’t have to make posts like this regularly, but doing it once in a while shouldn’t be a bad idea. But it would help if you were diplomatic about the causes you support, so you don’t lose followers unnecessarily.

Use the peer’s influence

People get influenced by their peers whether positively or negatively.  It is normal to see someone search online for a product because a friend recommended it. They trust their friend, and if that friend was bold enough to trust a brand, they are also going to believe it. An individual may want to buy a particular sneaker because a friend or someone they know was wearing it.

How do you use peer influence? If you need to boost interaction or engagement with your audience through your content, you’ll need to make use of user-generated contents to get content ideas that will appeal to your audience. You can also post positive customer reviews to assure your audience they are in good hands.

Include visuals in your content

Humans are by default, visual learners. They prefer something that can help their imaginations explore rather than simple text. It is for this reason books for children are filled with illustrations. As some people grow, they tend to control their love for visuals, but this doesn’t mean they don’t get delighted when presented with it.

Including visuals, be it images or videos in every content you post, engages more people than text only, especially when people are looking for products to purchase.

Colors brighten up everyone’s world

Imagine a world without colors. So, why would you want to put your readers through such excruciating pain and subsequent depression by continuously churning out colorless pictures? Like visuals, people get more attracted to a post when there are colors present.

However, when using colors, ensure it represents your brand, and it fits the message you are trying to pass across to your audience. Avoid going for stereotype colors, instead, let the colors connect with your content and bring it to life.

Include emojis

Emojis have a way of creating a connection between the audience and your content. It is emotionally powerful as it makes one seem like they have a face to face conversation with the poster. Always endeavor to include some positive emojis in your content to drive engagement.

Allow free trials

Another social media psychology trick is trying out the psychological concept known as the endowment effect, which means the value someone places on something after a personal experience with it. Get your target audience to see the value of your product by allowing free trials. If it’s a quality product, your prospects will purchase it without minding the cost.

You could also engage in product giveaways through a contest or by dropping of contacts. If they like your products or competitions, they’ll either purchase something or follow your social media handles to get more information about your brand and products.