The Social Media Psychology Project Wade Harman, Wade Harman

Creative Commons - BY -- 2016 Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Erica. You have been a wonderful rock while I was getting this business started. When others laughed at the possibility of using psychology for social media, you clapped. Here’s to having the last laugh. Acknowledgements

To my friends in this business. All of them. There are too many to name here. For you who have purchased this book, I want to thank you. You should be acknowledged because you have taken the first step in getting to know your business from a psychological perspective. All my best to you on your endeavors. Table of Contents The Psychology of Content 1 How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content 1 The Psychology of Communication on Social Media 4 Including Your Audience on the Instagram Social Network 8 The Attention Economy- Why Trigger Response is Vital Marketing 10 The Differences We Make 15 The Benefit of Being A Marketing Misfit 15 How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content 20 The Psychology of Making Money on Social Media 24 Why Making Your Product Scarce Is Powerful In Marketing 31 The Pinterest Secret That Will Impact Your Social 34 The Psychological Aspect of Relationships on Pinterest 37 Why We Love The Audience 42 The Psychology Of Connection: A Scientific Approach To Relationship Marketing 42 The Perfect Solution To Your Social Media Traffic Problem 46 Why You Want Your Social Media To Go Viral 49 Color Psychology-Marketing Strategies For Social Media 50 How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too 53 The Psychology of Content How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

The Psychology of Content How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

I sat at my desk this morning and looked out the window. The deer were on the porch again. They love eating my wife’s flowers. Even though they have millions of other things to eat out in the woods by my house, they choose to come on MY porch and eat the tops off the flower bulbs.

It’s getting to where a guy can’t even have any peace because the deer are always knocking on the door looking for a handout.

What does this have to do with content?

As a content writer, you have one job to do after you bring someone to your articles.

Keep the reader engaged.

I have something those deer can’t get anywhere else, and for that reason, I can’t keep them away.

There are many different strategies that you can use to keep people engaged on your content and I want to talk about those for a few minutes.

1 The Psychology of Content How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

But first I would like to help you understand the cognitive approach and how the brain perceives this information. Knowing this could mean the difference between keeping the reader engaged on your site and watching them walk away.

What Does The Brain Say?

We already know how the brain receives visual stimulation, and how it perceives time as well. All of these facts are important to remember when you craft different things in your marketing.

But to understand the mind and how to retains written information could be the clinching point in keeping people truly engaged on your content.

The Trigger Points

First of all, we have to research how the brain does an every day task. When in comparison to reading, you must think about what people do every day. One thing that most people do is read. So we’ve got to figure out how people comprehend the written word.

Studies have suggested that the brain doesn’t typically see words alone, but they see familiar words linked as pictures in their mind.

Understanding this aspect as a content writer, your main goal is to write in pictures.

That sounds impossible, but the point that you want to focus on is to tell that story. So, now that we have a small look into how the brain receives written information, let me show you some important strategies to remember.

Actionable Tips For Content

Demian Farnworth has shown me one of the best strategies for keeping people on my content.

The strategy is to keep the paragraphs short.

Maybe only write five words.

Or two.

Either way, this keeps the brain more engaged.

Copyblogger says to create scannable content. In other words allow the reader to retrieve the information by simply writing the cliff notes with the heading and sub-heading tags.

2 The Psychology of Content How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

These trigger points allow people to have a sense of accomplishment with your article. It also brings them to the end of your content quicker leaving room for a call to action later.

Actionable Tips For Emotional Responses

Once you have figured out the structure of your article, it’s now time to create the emotion that engages the reader.

Simply writing about 10 Tips To Build Your Blog isn’t going to be good enough. People can get that particular blog post on hundreds of other blogs in search. But what makes your post better than the others?

To begin with, you must remember the hook.

The Hook

Probably the most important thing for your content is the hook. This is a short story, or some shocking statistic, that grabs the readers attention and makes them want to learn more about what you have to say.

The hook has been researched by many different psychologists, and one study says that a great hook will trigger the right hemisphere of the brain which is the imaginative, emotional, and dreaming side.

It’s so important to engage the right hemisphere when you write your content because of these facts. Telling stories and sharing details of how someone is going to do something brings the right hemisphere to life as they imagine themselves doing the things you have told them.

There is nothing more powerful than someone seeing themselves do what you’re explaining.

The hook gets the mentally prepared, and it activates and ignites the right hemisphere which allows the reader to visually see this happening for them.

Perhaps the hook is a story like the one I told above. While it didn’t directly affect what I was trying to say, you started using your imagination to see the deer eating my flowers and immediately bridged that with how people could be that interested in your content as well.

Induce the imaginative side of the readers brain to get them ready for the engagement later.

The Left Brain is Important Too

A great piece of content marries the right and left brain together. Depending on whether or not you’re right brained or left brained, you may find writing for the left brain difficult.

This is a more logical sense of writing. Statistics, analytics, things happen when you do this and there are no

3 The Psychology of Content How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

variables. Writing for the right brain means that you are more descriptive in your story-telling, you can make the words jump off the page at the reader.

But combining both areas are important to help the reader logically realize why they need what you have.

Last Thought

While it may be easier for you to just sit down and start typing the first thing that comes to your head, you may want to try some strategy on a white board before you start. Remember that you want them to do something when they get to your site.

For example, I want you to subscribe to be the first to listen to my new marketing psychology podcast when it comes available! It’s gonna be awesome!!

So…

Draw your article out before you begin.

This will help you “see” the article better and if you can, then you can be sure that the reader will be able to see what you’re seeing by the time they get to the finish line.

What are some of your thoughts? Have you found the Holy Grail of writing content that you would like to share? I’d love to hear about your ideas in the comment section below!

The Psychology of Communication on Social Media

4 The Psychology of Content The Psychology of Communication on Social Media

Mark Schaefer once told me that everything can be communicated.

This made me think long and hard about the derived strategies that everyone keeps coming up with on social media. We all want 2 things:

1. Social media visibility 2. Blog traffic

These two things can ensure that our message is spread and our brand is successful online.

But if everything can be communicated, then that makes everything communicable. Therefore, communication is the glue that holds your success online together.

How well you can tell your story, how personal you can make your brand, all of this is communication prompts that rely on psychological triggers to enter deeper into the human persona your brand is after.

How effective can you be at communication? That will tell the real story of your success.

Communication Psychology

The ability to communicate can mean the difference between your survival and your downfall in an online

5 The Psychology of Content The Psychology of Communication on Social Media

venture. The elements of a communicable system operate on the same principle, the ability to transmit messages from a source to a destination.

Communication psychology can be broken down into two categories:

1. Verbal communication 2. Non-verbal communication

Verbal communication

At the very basic, verbal communication can be understood when people speak the same language. To be able to convey a message and have someone understand what you are saying can be taken very lightly sometimes.

To have the power of verbal communication means you can shape people’s mindset and opinions because you have communicated effectively.

A great example of someone with powerful verbal communication skills was Martin Luther King Jr. To establish a movement all by yourself is no simple task, but with effective verbal communication, it can be done.

In his Psychology of Language and Communication, Dr. De Gruyter explains that the power of speech is one of the most effective weapons world leaders have in their arsenal.

Non-verbal communication

In a recent study, psychologists examined how non-verbal communication usually has a greater impact on how we think and feel about others.

There are two types of signals in both verbal and non-verbal communication:

1. Signs-when someone blushes, you know they are embarrassed because of something. 2. Signals-if someone gives you a ‘thumbs up’, then you know that they approve of something you have done.

Non-verbal communication happens all the time on social media. This can be done through:

Google Hangouts and other video marketing efforts Visual marketing Implication strategy in conversations

Social Communication

6 The Psychology of Content The Psychology of Communication on Social Media

Communicating effectively with your brand on social media is part of the marketing strategy in which you can be the most effective.

This is having a social listening strategy where you can be sure to communicate your message the best possible way. It is also being included in conversation and curation around the social networks where you target market congregates consistently to have the biggest impact.

It is important to communicate socially with your brand because this is how you create a memory in people’s mind of what you stand for. Therefore it is crucial to be where these conversations happen and insert yourself strategically in engagement.

Some social media communication strategies are:

1. Social Listening 2. Spending 15-20 per day finding conversations where applicable 3. Curating content that is helpful 4. Empathy marketing for better results-when you can put yourself in someone’s shoes then you will understand how important their needs are.

Social media is an integration of the people. Understand who you are targeting by creating social media persona’s and then search that group to give the best communication possible.

Blogging Communication

This is your brands platform where you can fully tell your story to completion.

Social media is only part of the story. Your blog is the ultimate communication tool that you will use to spread your message. That is why it is so important to understand the effects that your brand will have when you spend quality time on social media.

The blog is powerful.

This is where the reader can understand more about you after seeing snippets of what you’re telling them on social media. Connect the stories from social and your blog so it creates the same message to the reader/follower. This makes for a better experience and it ensures they are not confused when they receive the message you have on your blog.

When you have connected the dots from the social persona, what they want, and how you can give it to them, the message becomes clear when these people land on your website.

Final Thought

7 The Psychology of Content The Psychology of Communication on Social Media

The psychology of communication is very important to your business. How you tell your story can mean the difference between success and quitting. Just having a marketing strategy won’t cut it. It must be singled out, cultivated, and then communicated well to create the opportunities you need to succeed.

Make sure you are bridging that gap between social media and your blog for positive effect on the user.

Including Your Audience on the Instagram Social Network

It is certain that when you “like” photos on Instagram you may be part of this construct that is much bigger than the Internet and one that extends far into the past. You are creating a dynamic between the observer and the observed, and to the way future generations of the Instagram social network are apt to value themselves.

Be Engaging

Nobody wants a window seat to watch your life go floating by. They want engaging and interesting people who will interact with them on a consistent basis.

8 The Psychology of Content Including Your Audience on the Instagram Social Network

So what do you do? Make your followers famous!

Be active on the Instagram social network and show them that you’re as interested in them as they should be in you. Use your favorite Instagram reposting app and find things that you think your audience will appreciate from their stream and start reposting.

Most apps will @mention the person, but make sure that its there so they’ll know you have mentioned them!

When you do this, it becomes one of the sweetest things that a person can see/hear you do.

There is a psychology behind mentioning someone online. Seeing your own face or watching as someone mentions you is psychological proof that this is one of the best things you can do to prompt people to feel motivated to be loyal to you. It gives them a boost in confidence and therefore establishes trust.

Embed their Instagram photos in your blog posts, give them a shout out if they do something great.

Like this one from the great Mike Allton

“If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.” -David Carradine ??

A photo posted by Mike Allton ?? Author ?? CMO (@mallton) on Jun 26, 2016 at 8:30pm PDT

Do What You Love

Most importantly you have to remember to post what you love.

When you are doing what you love it creates a sense of confidence that becomes contagious among your followers. As you enjoy your life or your business, your audience will also enjoy watching as you complete that portion of your life.

Doing what you love coupled with the inclusion of your audience will be a great first step to create action in your Instagram social network!

You will grab their attention, and this is one of the most important currencies online.

9 The Psychology of Content Including Your Audience on the Instagram Social Network

The Attention Economy- Why Trigger Response is Vital Marketing

Have you ever had your child pull your nose in an attempt to get you to listen to them?

That’s exactly what happened to me this weekend as I sat on the couch watching the Clemson Notre Dame football game.

My attention was on one thing, but my three year old was wanting me to look at what he was doing. And, in my defense, I was looking out of the corner of my eye at what he was doing but my attention was on the game too.

Apparently he didn’t appreciate that because he walked over to where I was sitting, grabbed my nose, and pulled my head around where he wanted me to look.

Needless to say, it got my attention!

Attention. That’s the name of the game for marketers online. We’ve got an audience whose attention is elsewhere and here we sit vying for that attention like monkeys doing a math problem hoping that maybe this time they’ll see what we’re doing.

10 The Psychology of Content The Attention Economy- Why Trigger Response is Vital Marketing

I want to talk about the Attention Economy, why it’s so lax, and what we’ve got to do psychologically to get the attention of people we’re trying to talk to in our industry.

The Attention Deficit Disorder of Marketing

The name of the game is speed.

If you can’t nuke it in 3 min, text it in 2 seconds, or make it easily accessible, then we don’t want anything to do with it.

You have seconds to grab someone’s attention when they see your social update, or go to your blog.

There are a couple of theories as to how many seconds you have. Some say 8 seconds, others say 10 seconds, but the fact of the matter is, that’s not a lot of time to say what you need to say to someone.

Even great writers online know that people won’t read their whole article. That’s why we have strategies set in place to help the user accomplish different things quickly, like make the article “skimmable”.

This article from Huffington Post describes exactly what I’m talking about when they explain that skimmable content is more valuable that deep content.

The attention just isn’t there.

But you can still survive with a deficit. You can still succeed in an industry where low attention reigns supreme. The way you succeed is to understand that even though there are low attention spans out there, psychological triggers are the boss, and they are easily manipulated. So easy, to the point that it doesn’t matter if someone has a low attention span toward your content.

If you give someone something they want or need, they’re going to take notice.

Let me explain.

How To Trigger The Yes Response

That’s the goal for any marketer online.

To get the reader, the follower, the potential customer to say yes to them in some way.

They could say “yes” to your content after seeing it on their social media stream by clicking the link and starting their journey. They could say “yes” by subscribing to your email list. The “yes” responses doesn’t have to be a literal yes, but rather an agreement of what you’re trying to do or say in their environment.

11 The Psychology of Content The Attention Economy- Why Trigger Response is Vital Marketing

This is an approach and viewpoint from a book by Robert Caldini called and it follows psychological principles in trigger responses that can help build your marketing.

Let’s get into it.

For my first explanation, I’d like to share a story that I found (in a book and I can’t find the link) that talked about a man that did a study with a robin. He placed a group of feathers in a clump and put three red feathers in the middle of the pile.

When the robin came around to the pile of feathers, since they are very territorial, he immediately started to attack the pile thinking it was another robin that was trying to take over.

Interestingly enough, the man placed a robin dummy out in the field and the real robin wouldn’t even give it the time of day.

The red feathers was the trigger response for the bird.

This is called fixed action pattern triggers and they are a direct response to our inner person.

In the book, Caldini cites an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer, where you can see this concept in action.

Langer approached people waiting in line to use a copy machine and asked, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” About 60% said, “Yes.”

Under similar circumstances, she did the same thing, but instead asked, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” In this case, an overwhelming 93% said, “Yes.”

What happened to increase the “yes” response so dramatically?

It’s a well-known principle that people like to have a reason. A reason helps people make a decision and justify their action. However, in this experiment, “because I have to make some copies” does not provide any new information. It does not actually give a reason.

Therefore, merely using the word “because” initiated a positive response. “Because” is usually followed by information and has become, for most people, a “trigger.” Once the trigger is learned, it is powerful enough to set in motion a behavior sequence, in this case a “yes” response, even in the absence of concrete information.

So give them a reason to say yes to you and your brand!

12 The Psychology of Content The Attention Economy- Why Trigger Response is Vital Marketing

Give Them A Reason To Take Action

You cannot simply write a great post. You must give the person reading that post a reason to want to come read it in the first place.

That’s social strategy.

Then when they get to your content, you must give them a reason to sign up to your list, or buy your product. And it all falls heavily on how well you’ve made your content skimmable and understandable and easy.

That’s content strategy.

For instance, the reason I want you to read this post is because I have a great social media psychology podcast coming out soon and I’d like you to sign up to the list to be notified when it comes out.

That’s my reason. But this reason takes on several responses in your head.

Why would you sign up?

Answer….because, hopefully, you enjoyed this post and you will expect more great psychological marketing strategies in the podcast. Also because you understand that simple marketing isn’t going to cut it anymore. The consumer has gotten smarter and harder to reign in to your brand.

Psychologists have proven that we must have a reason to do everything, and, in this attention economy that we’re smack in the middle of, it’s important to get that reason out fast for better results.

Give A Reason To Click Through

It can start for you on social media.

There are a lot of variables here when you’re approaching an audience that has a steady stream of content flowing through their stream all day long. Things like color psychology, communication and engagement, relationships, trust, etc.

13 The Psychology of Content The Attention Economy- Why Trigger Response is Vital Marketing

Once you have allotted for these things you should make sure that you are explaining why they should come to read your post or buy your product.

Give A Reason To Take Action on Your Site

A great post with skimmable content is still something that people like me have a hard time with. But I believe if your content is great, skimmable or not (you may miss some opportunities if it isn’t), then people will take action.

Take a look at this article that talks about emotional responses and how you can grab them and remember that you’re on the clock with these people. Don’t waste their time and give them the good stuff always.

Consistency is the key to grabbing that faithful follower or customer.

The Final Word

It’s Hail Mary time for the people that haven’t established themselves online yet. Those other guys were here and had established an audience before some of the major changes happened on the net that took a lot of people out.

It is going to be more difficult than ever before to get new customers, but one thing you can always bank on is the fact that people are always going to have trigger responses. Get that down pat and you will come away with some great followers for your brand.

And it’s not their fault that they don’t know you. There’s just so much stuff happening all around them! It’s up to you to use manipulative strategies like this to help them see the important help that you could be giving them.

Good luck.

14 The Differences We Make The Benefit of Being A Marketing Misfit

The Differences We Make The Benefit of Being A Marketing Misfit

You are a misfit.

You were never meant to fit in with the crowd.

You are met with disdain and reproach because you aren’t the conventional person.

You are different.

You’re not in any clicks or lists, and people don’t pick you.

But that’s ok, because there are benefits of being unconventional. This is why you shouldn’t give up.

Be Transformed, Not Conformed

I had a conversation with a guy the other day that showed the true nature of his intent. He didn’t understand why I did some of the things I did, and wondered why I didn’t do it the way he thought I should do it.

I am not one to conform to things.

15 The Differences We Make The Benefit of Being A Marketing Misfit

But conformity is all around us.

When you’re a misfit you have trouble conforming to the ideals and structures of everyday marketing. You have a strong desire to reach goals higher than you and not take the general avenue of success that everyone thinks you should take. But life is too short to be like everyone else.

The avenue that is right for some people, is not necessarily the avenue that will be right for you.

Make sure you understand where you’re going. Have goals set that will determine where YOU would like to be later in the social business, not where others think you should be.

If you waited on the approval of other people, you would still be sitting right there.

Individual Psychology talks about the point of being pulled toward society’s views of how we should act, think, or feel based on the assumption of inferiority.

On the other hand, existential psychology (same link above) talks about what it is like to be a human. In a sense, there is a psychological value as to what makes people conform to different things, not just marketing.

Most of it is based on fear and inadequacy.

Different people have different views on the subject.

Guess what? Nobody is going to agree with what you’re doing if you plan on being different.

Sure, we promote being different and standing out. The whole , but secretly everyone else is still the same. It’s the same old marketing techniques, the same old conversations, and the same old arguments.

As a misfit you understand that pushing against the current takes a little longer to get to where you’re going, but if you can stand it, the rewards of being a misfit marketer are high.

The Rule Breaker

Chris Brogan came out with a book recently called . Talk about a ruler breaker!

You’re not necessarily a rule breaker in the obvious sense, but you are one that doesn’t follow the natural path to where your marketing needs to be.

You jump levels, you astound influencers, you leave a wake behind you that instigates conversation and talk. It’s because people don’t understand how you’re doing it. This leads us to the psychological truths of how people only give you three chances for you to do things their way. And when people can’t figure out why you’re not doing it the way they feel it should be done it brings on negative emotions like fear and/or

16 The Differences We Make The Benefit of Being A Marketing Misfit

positive one’s like motivation.

The Driving Factor Behind Fear

Fear is a strong motivator, so when I added motivation above I also meant that motivation can drive fear as well. But I will be talking about another form of motivation later.

Differential psychology is basically the way people are different. However, when one individual can’t grasp the fact that someone isn’t doing things the way they think they should be doing is supported in the aggressiveness of adaptation.

When someone can’t handle it, or understand why you’re so different, their adaptation breaks loose because everything they thought to be true about something starts to crumble when they see you step up to the plate, crush it, and realize that it wasn’t the way they did it.

This is the underlying causes of why fear breaks out in people. People fear that which they do not understand and, since their adaptation has broken down, it causes a reaction of negative emotions that usually end in some kind of response toward you.

That is why you push against the current and why you’re not in any lists or groups. People are having a hard time understanding how you got to where you got because it wasn’t the way they got there. This is also why it’s not easy, but you love it.

Have you ever seen an individual start this business and in 3 months time they’re at the top? It brings about some emotions, because if you have been blogging (or whatever it is you’re doing) and someone else comes in your niche, and your industry, wet behind the ears, and absolutely kills it in the first three months, there is an emotional factor that makes you scared or jealous.

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The rule breaker is another misfit in marketing because the same rules do not apply. What takes one person 5 years to do, it may only take another 2 months.

It is important to remember that not every path is the same.

Since you’re already a misfit, then you realize that there are others out there bringing up topics and ideas that are just as crazy as yours and it doesn’t matter how long it takes someone to arrive, but what matters is that you have done what you could to help them get there.

Positive Motivation

This is where the idea of positive motivation comes into play.

Let’s pretend that you’re not the misfit in marketing that you really are. When you see someone like this “breaking out” in the industry, do all that you can to help them get to where they’re going.

They may pass you like you’re sitting still in a month or so, but that’s ok, hopefully they’ll remember that you helped them.

Break to Mention These…

I want to take a minute to share some people that I think are breaking out in this industry of blogging and will probably leave me standing in a couple of months. Read these people’s blogs and get what you can from them because they are everything you think they are.

Misfit marketers and bloggers and they’re great

Thomas Hanna, Carrie Anne Foster, Nicky Pasquier, Carolyn Capern, Robert Ryan, Anna Godfrey, Alisa Meredith, Jason Mathes, Gina Fiedel, Ian Grey, and Andrea Beltrami

Allow the positive vibes to flow always because you never know when a misfit is secretly watching you and admiring you.

Here are more facts about misfit marketing.

The Pathfinder

Misfits are weirdo’s because they take the road less traveled. That’s another reason people don’t understand you.

Why do you do it that way?

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You have no idea what to tell them, it’s just the way you like doing it.

It’s not the easy way, but it feels natural to you. That’s what makes you stand out. Natural things come as odd and really doesn’t make sense to you.

But you take the road less traveled because it fits and it works.

One of the things about being a pathfinder is that you will face obstacles that will stand in your way. Sometimes it’s people, sometimes it’s strategy, but that’s the way you like it.

This makes you stronger and it helps your motivation and drives you to do better, whether it be to prove someone wrong or overcome something that you need to do for your marketing.

I’m A Misfit

Yep, you read that right.

People don’t understand why I have friends like Jay Baer and Mark Schaeffer.

They think I shouldn’t shoot for the stars and get there the way I want to get there. I’m unconventional because I’m not doing it the way it should be done.

They think my writing stinks, I’m not relational to people, I don’t smile, I’m a stoic guy, my show could be better, why don’t I do things this way rather than do things the way I’m doing? I am pretending to be higher than what I really am, I’m not thinking like a marketer, we’re moving away from you because of fill in the blank…etc.

If you’re one of those people that think these things then I can’t change your mind about me.

I’m not even going to try.

I am flattered that you would take time out of your day to worry about what I am doing though. But there is a negative effect to all of this. However I want to tell you one thing…

I Pick Me

For all of those people that aren’t in the clicks, in the groups, or you possibly do things the unconventional way, I want to encourage you that even though it seems like nobody is picking you for success then do one thing for me.

Pick yourself.

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There is a problem with some things on social media and it is causing people to fall in line with the “leaders” and push away anything that is different.

But when you take into account all of the people you surround yourself with, you need to ask yourself. Are these people providing me with positive feedback that I can use to help myself? Or are they simply spouting negative things at me all the time?

If it’s the latter, then you shouldn’t be around them.

At some point in your marketing career you will face adversity and negativity. Trolls and jealous people are creeping around every corner, waiting to pounce on you for that weird thing that makes you different.

But you can fix that…

Get rid of the negativity and get rid of the toxicity! It’s not doing you any good. Sure they call it “constructive criticism” but nothing is constructive in a yelling match. If they won’t pick you, then take your weird way of doing marketing and show them that they have to at least respect you.

If they won’t pick you, pick yourself.

I am and it’s working for me.

Let me show you more of how you can unlock your true potential! Sign up using the form below and we’ll help each other make it!

How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

20 The Differences We Make How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

It’s getting to where a guy can’t even have any peace because the deer are always knocking on the door looking for a handout.

What does this have to do with content?

As a content writer, you have one job to do after you bring someone to your articles.

Keep the reader engaged.

I have something those deer can’t get anywhere else, and for that reason, I can’t keep them away.

There are many different strategies that you can use to keep people engaged on your content and I want to talk about those for a few minutes.

21 The Differences We Make How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

What Does The Brain Say?

We already know how the brain receives visual stimulation, and how it perceives time as well. All of these facts are important to remember when you craft different things in your marketing.

But to understand the mind and how to retains written information could be the clinching point in keeping people truly engaged on your content.

The Trigger Points

Studies have suggested that the brain doesn’t typically see words alone, but they see familiar words linked as pictures in their mind.

Understanding this aspect as a content writer, your main goal is to write in pictures.

Actionable Tips For Content

Demian Farnworth has shown me one of the best strategies for keeping people on my content.

The strategy is to keep the paragraphs short.

Maybe only write five words.

Or two.

Either way, this keeps the brain more engaged.

Copyblogger says to create scannable content. In other words allow the reader to retrieve the information by simply writing the cliff notes with the heading and sub-heading tags.

These trigger points allow people to have a sense of accomplishment with your article. It also brings them to the end of your content quicker leaving room for a call to action later.

22 The Differences We Make How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

Actionable Tips For Emotional Responses

Once you have figured out the structure of your article, it’s now time to create the emotion that engages the reader.

To begin with, you must remember the hook.

The Hook

There is nothing more powerful than someone seeing themselves do what you’re explaining.

The hook gets the mentally prepared, and it activates and ignites the right hemisphere which allows the reader to visually see this happening for them.

Induce the imaginative side of the readers brain to get them ready for the engagement later.

The Left Brain is Important Too

A great piece of content marries the right and left brain together. Depending on whether or not you’re right brained or left brained, you may find writing for the left brain difficult.

This is a more logical sense of writing. Statistics, analytics, things happen when you do this and there are no variables. Writing for the right brain means that you are more descriptive in your story-telling, you can make the words jump off the page at the reader.

23 The Differences We Make How To Keep Your Readers Emotionally Engaged To Your Content

But combining both areas are important to help the reader logically realize why they need what you have.

Last Thought

For example, I want you to subscribe to be the first to listen to my new marketing psychology podcast when it comes available! It’s gonna be awesome!!

So…

Draw your article out before you begin.

This will help you “see” the article better and if you can, then you can be sure that the reader will be able to see what you’re seeing by the time they get to the finish line.

What are some of your thoughts? Have you found the Holy Grail of writing content that you would like to share? I’d love to hear about your ideas in the comment section below!

The Psychology of Making Money on Social Media

24 The Differences We Make The Psychology of Making Money on Social Media

There is a new strategy that baffles some people’s social media.

It isn’t cheating either, psychology is something that has been around as long as we have been smart enough to acknowledge that its there.

You use psychology every day too. You may not realize it, but it’s there, hiding in the shadows of your subconscious, waiting to be revealed through some past experience or relationship.

I wanted to write something that would resonate with every business owner that is active on social media, and that is the topic of making money through the use of social.

While money is something that is rarely talked about, it is one of the main psychological factors that drives us, motivates us, and makes us do the best we can for our brand. When we do we are rewarded, and, just like Pavlov’s dog, when someone clicks the Buy Now button, we are motivated, through triggers, to capitalize on that response even more.

The Crooked Path To Making Money

There is no straight and easy way to making money online.

Most people use a platform to create opportunities for their business in order to make the money, however,

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there is still not a direct way to the money.

This is due to the other side of the pocket book. You know, the person that you’re targeting. This person needs more than to simply find your site out of the blue, facepalm, because this was the product they have always been looking for, and then purchase.

It doesn’t happen that way anymore.

Back in the day, one could create that straight path to the money by manipulating the search engines through article marketing and link building. This created an opportunity for the site owner to bypass a critical element in the sales process and use what is called Right Now Marketing, where you could appeal to the wants of a consumer by feeding off of their conscious desire.

Usually when this happens, the person is looking to find something to fill a legitimate need in their life. When you can be one of the top results in those searches, you didn’t have to worry about anything but building links to make money.

In today’s search world, it doesn’t happen quite that way anymore. There is a more human side that is needed with marketing your products online these days.

Now, there is no direct way to make money online.

But all is not lost.

There is an indirect path that is making money every day for most social media personalities and these are the psychological implications that I want to talk to you about today.

The Indirect Path To Making Money

Psychology plays an important role in driving traffic from social media.

Before this will work, you have to have some things in your corner that resonate what your business is about.

Remember the person with the pocket book that you are trying to target?

You still want that person to open their wallet and click the buy button, and it is still possible for them to do that on your site, but there is a more indirect approach to get them to do this.

You have to remember these things:

#1: Being Human

26 The Differences We Make The Psychology of Making Money on Social Media

More and more brands that are becoming successful on social media are the brands that focus on the conversation and engagement with the potential buyer.

That said, the brands that put a human face to their brand are the one’s that are doing the best on social media . As I was researching this article, I noticed something very important, but I almost missed it at first.

A commercial came on the television and before I knew it, I had completely stopped writing and was fully engrossed in what it had to say.

It was Flo the Progressive Insurance girl doing her bit on the TV.

I quickly scrambled to check the differences between her and her employer on social media. The Progressive Insurance organization page on Facebook has 343k likes:

While “Flo the Progressive Girl” Facebook page has an astounding 5 million likes!

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When you can put a face to your brand, more people will be inclined to have conversation with you, engage with you, and remember who you are after the fact.

Scientific research has revealed that the psychological triggers involved with including a human face to your brand makes the experience more memorable and trustworthy for the customer.

The reason for this is the emotional side of the psyche.

We seek out people to give us answers that we are looking for rather than heading to a smart relative or someone we’ve known for a long time.

In fact, studies have shown that people that are knowledgeable about a certain topic will be more able to trust someone that is speaking to that same idea because they have already did their homework about it. When the facts line up with what they already know, and there’s a face accompanying that truth then it becomes a no-brainer.

Flo knows insurance.

People who need insurance have already done their homework…at least some of them do, I know I do when I need it. When you hear language that you have been reading their forms a common bond between the buyer and seller.

We seek out relevance in this internet world and the brand that shows their face to the public is already three steps ahead of the rest of us because it plays to our emotional psychology.

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Side note: I just wanted to point this out. When you think of Moz what face comes to mind? See what I mean?

#2: Building Trust

It’s more than just building links now.

The successful social media entrepreneur will be actively engaging with their followers and potential customers and target base on their respective platforms.

While you may not make a sale right off, what you are looking for is the results from playing the long game on social.

One of the tools to build trust with is consistency.

When you are consistently engaging, answering questions and helping people, when you are consistently bringing helpful information in their stream, people will start to get acquainted with seeing you in their stream.

This is an idea from the Cognitive Consistency Theory where we realize that when people continue to see us, talk to us, and get help from us, there will be a certain form of trust that will be created.

When you understand this, you will start to realize that people expect a certain king of consistency from our brand on social media.

When people trust you, they will buy from you.

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Trust takes time to form and it is through consistency of a lot of factors where you will get it to happen.

The Psychology of Trust

According to the psychological foundations of trust by the University of Minnesota, trust lies at the very core of interpersonal relationships that are made.

Whether you’re doing it online or off, trust is the main ingredient for a successful relationship.

There are three main layers to which people gauge their trust of you and your brand:

1. The degree of trust: This is where people will hold you at arms length, but yet will still listen to what you have to say. You have the opportunity to create a lasting relationship built on trust here, don’t blow it. 2. Trust diagnostics: Where the follower/customer engages more actively and you can see the growth of trust evolve. 3. Attachment orientation: They fully trust you, and while you may not have a personal relationship with this person, they feel attached to you on a personal level and will follow you to the end’s of the earth.

Many people will be graduating and evolving with these relationships in trust all the time on social media and one of the ways that I have found that is best to measure this is to stay true to who you are.

Always be the same person because that person that they came to know and trust five months ago, if you change who you are, you create a ripple in the effect of trust and therefore may have to start over. That is why consistency is so important in building trust. Why authenticity is important in growing trust, and why trust is such an important part of the relationship process.

#3: Building Relationships

If trust is at the core of building relationships, and you now have trust, let’s talk about bringing the customer into the realm of what I mentioned above with the attachment process.

The attachment theory is one that overrides the Dunbar number, which states that a certain individual can only have so many stable relationships at one time.

While it would be nice to create fulfilling relationships with each and every person in your target market, it’s just not possible.

That said, hope is not lost because you can still build the relationship on their side of the fence.

While the above Attachment theory is talking about young children, there is a theory that I am working on that hopes to prove this in marketing.

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Again, this is my own theory, I have no written proof that this works, but I wanted to explain what I am thinking.

Example: A guy with 10 million social followers isn’t going to remember the names of each person. I watched someone like this at the Social Media Marketing World conference earlier this year, people would come up to this person and start talking to him like he was a long lost friend.

He was very cordial, friendly, and professional as he greeted each individual.

But there is no way he could remember each and every one of those people. However, they knew him. They were attached to him on a different level than he was to them, bringing out a form of trust and relationship that had been formed on their end, however, it hadn’t been psychologically formed on his end.

This person, and you probably know him, is active on social media, he is helpful and knowledgeable. People seek his expertise and he obliges. He is consistent, and, in my opinion, he is the perfect example of the Attachment Theory in marketing because while he doesn’t know all of them personally, they know and love him.

If You Build It, They Will Come

I’m not here to hurt your head with theory and studies, but I do want you to understand the importance and power that each of these points will have on you making money on social media.

I can’t show you a direct path to success. I can’t promise you loads of income if you build links. But I can promise that if you stay consistent, stay helpful, and stay who you are that people will be drawn to you and your brand on social.

Money will come, but that’s later. Take the time to get to know your target and what they need and then build a respected and informational platform around that target.

Why Making Your Product Scarce Is Powerful In Marketing

31 The Differences We Make Why Making Your Product Scarce Is Powerful In Marketing

As a marketer, you don’t think in terms of scarcity.

It goes against almost everything you have been taught in direct sales and communication with consumers.

You want to be everywhere, do everything, present as much as you can so you can get the best results possible with your business.

But there is a scarcity principle that will work for your business, and the psychological implications behind it are powerful.

Just as you don’t prefer your products being scarce online, your audience doesn’t either. Let me explain the power behind this principle.

The Psychology of Scarcity

Robert Cialdini wrote The Psychology of Persuasion that talks about influence and he gives six principles that follow this well sought after characteristic.

#6 on the list was the Scarcity Principle.

Let me describe this through a story I found called the Cookie Jar Experiment.

32 The Differences We Make Why Making Your Product Scarce Is Powerful In Marketing

A couple of researchers put two jars in front of a controlled group of people. One jar consisted of 10 cookies. The other jar had only 2 cookies.

The group was asked which jar they would rather have, the one with ten cookies, or the one with two cookies.

Surprisingly, the group chose the jar with only two cookies because they felt there was some connection to value with this jar.

In 1985, the Coca-Cola Company made their infamous switch from their traditional formula to the sweeter formula “New Coke.” Their taste tests indicated that 55% preferred the new Coke over the old.

Most of those tests were blind, but some participants were told which formula was new and which was the original. Under those conditions, the preference for new Coke increased 6%.

What that 6% really meant was that when people know what it is they can’t have, their desire for it will shoot up. Later, when the company replaced the traditional recipe with the new one, it was the old Coke that people couldn’t have, and it became the favorite.

The Wants Of Your Customer

The best way to use the scarcity principle in your marketing is to understand what your audience wants and/or needs from you.

Granted, they’re not going to be scrambling for a product that isn’t personal to them, so it’s up to you to determine what this is.

Many brands can get this wrong because they don’t see the need for social media marketing strategies that include listening and communication with their audience.

When in truth, the fear of missing out is one of the most widely known strategies that marketers possess in their arsenal of tactics.

Using Scarcity For Marketing

Marketers and brands have found that when they limit something, people tend to want it more. It is the “risk vs reward” theory in play here.

The risk for wanting it is thought about less than the reward for receiving the product.

Therefore, it will be worthwhile to switch your advertising campaigns message from how it can benefit the

33 The Differences We Make Why Making Your Product Scarce Is Powerful In Marketing

consumer, to emphasizing the potential for an opportunity that could be wasted for them.

People want to be included.

They want to feel special and be a part of something that you’re only giving to a few.

Take the powerful email list for instance. I have found that using emails that can create responsiveness for your audience will show them the urgency required to take action right away.

Not only does this help your sales, it also enhances the experience of your brand with your customer because you are now giving them an opportunity to receive something that no one else is getting at that moment.

Over To You

What are some ideas that you have where you can build a great marketing strategy using scarcity?

Do you have some experience in using scarcity that you would like to share with the rest of our readers? I would love to hear about them!

The Pinterest Secret That Will Impact Your Social

34 The Differences We Make The Pinterest Secret That Will Impact Your Social

Images impact your brain a lot easier than text does.

If you’ve been in the social media industry for any amount of time you already know this.

That is why it is so easy to build traffic over on the Pinterest platform.

Take Twitter for example, even 140 characters take the brain a little longer to process, which is why Twitter doesn’t do as well as Pinterest when it comes to reshares.

Here’s some psychological secrets to the Pinterest platform that will make you understand why it’s so powerful.

Consume, Create, & Curate

This is what the fine folks over at Pinterest want their users to do constantly.

On Pinterest you’re not under the gun to create original pins all the time. That makes the job of pinning a lot easier on you, therefore you will curate content a whole lot faster.

Psychologically speaking Pinterest is less of a cognitive load on your brain. The more you consume, create, curate, and reshare content the better off your marketing is over on this platform.

Pinterest has mastered the art of minimizing it’s cognitive load on your brain. Simply put, that means that they have reduced the mental effort required to do what they want you to do.

Repin something.

Making something simple is what great social media marketing is all about. You don’t have to make something grand and complex every time you come out of the gate with your marketing on Pinterest. In fact, complex systems make the brain work harder and therefore cause your target audience to give up quicker.

Click here for more classroom experience on social media psychology!

Having said that, understand that simple is better.

It works over on Pinterest as well. They have already proved that.

You can gain a lot of exposure by pinning other people’s content. Curation is creation over there. Don’t make Pinterest harder than it has to be by creating brand new pins every time you visit.

35 The Differences We Make The Pinterest Secret That Will Impact Your Social

It’s just not necessary.

Curation is 90% of the game on this platform, although I’m finding it fun to create images over on DesignFeed.io lately. (They have made it really simple).

In all of this process of collecting and categorizing pins by curation, Pinterest has made what you share extremely valuable and qualified for your followers who will return that favor of repinning. In turn, you have included the interested parties in your curation concepts.

That’s The Secret

We are all motivated to find things that we want to share, things that interest you and your business, so we curate other people’s content.

The secret to Pinterest is the fact that you can capture someone else’s desires with someone else’s content. In return, you have captured a targeted follower who will be there the next time you go to pin something on your board.

The find you by way of curation on your part, but they’ll stay because they enjoy how easy and simple your pins are becoming to them.

One major tip that I would give to your Pinterest marketing is to grab your phone and load the Pinterest app on there (Apple) (Android). Make it a point to go to Pinterest 3 times a day and repin some content from

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someone else each time you visit the app.

You will start to find that other users will be magnetized by your curation and your follower count will rise steadily.

The secret is curation.

Curation is simple.

The Psychological Aspect of Relationships on Pinterest

Pinterest is not a place where communication resides.

It has been said that Pinterest is more of a discovery engine and not a place to build relationships.

So do we flat out turn our backs on this social network?

I realize that without being able to build relationships, or so they say, we are more reliant on other aspects of this network, ie, the mobile strategies taking us by storm perhaps?

37 The Differences We Make The Psychological Aspect of Relationships on Pinterest

I want to talk to you about how you can start building these relationships on Pinterest, even though they say it’s not a relationship building platform, even though the premise is not to connect two like-minded people, it can still be done.

The Round-About Relationship

Ok, so Pinterest isn’t a relationship building platform.

But there are some psychological aspects of Pinterest that happen every day with you, me, and every other person that is consistent on this social network.

That is the psychology of attraction.

There was a magical thing that happened on Pinterest today. Someone was pleased to see you.

By placing yourself in a position where your target audience can see you is called “proximity” and is one of the most effective ways of attraction that you can use.

This happens every day.

The psychology of attraction is a simple, yet powerful, marketing strategy that people don’t even realize. This just doesn’t apply to Pinterest either.

When you are consistent on the Pinterest platform, and you have great pins that speak to people, and help them all the time, then you have successfully pulled them toward your brand.

This is another aspect of attraction called “exposure”, where you allow them to see you through different strategies and techniques that you use to pull them toward you.

You are quietly telling their brain to get used to seeing you in this environment.

People pin blandly sometimes, forgetting that the person that is giving the awesome information has been doing it forever.

So the round about way that you are building relationships with people on Pinterest is by being attractive and being seen.

How To Be Attractive

The secret sauce for success on any social media platform is being attractive.

However, learning how to make people want you can be a little harder than it seems.

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The first step in learning attractiveness is…

Don’t Be Boring

Think about what you would do if you constantly saw boring pins on Pinterest? You weren’t impressed, you didn’t like the graphic, it was boring too, so you moved on.

You can be attractive vicariously through your pinning.

People will start to notice you, if they haven’t already, and what kind of pins your are sending out. It’s important to remember that the way your followers see your image is the way you will be represented personally on Pinterest.

That is why it is so important to find the right image and image editor and carefully craft a couple of images for each blog post you write for Pinterest.

Even boring companies can learn the parameters of excitement on Pinterest

Don’t Be Selfish

Another great way to be attractive to people is to re-pin other people.

I’ve seen brands and individuals fall into the trap of only pinning their own stuff over and over and to tell

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you the truth it gets a little boring.

Plus, people can tell what you’re really there for. Not to build a relationship but to primarily send traffic to your site.

Take some time to find someone else’s pins and add them to your board as well. To be honest, you can also capitalize on this idea and look like a hero to someone else by pinning other people.

You can use their awesome graphic to your advantage to create that law of attraction for yourself on Pinterest. Plus, you can also be helping people that need it at the same time. It doesn’t get any better than that.

The Power of The Pin

The reason the psychological aspect of attraction is needed is because people are habitual creatures. I get used to seeing Jeff Sieh in my stream. I trust him, so therefore I re-pin things that he has put up.

But if I don’t see Jeff the last two times I get on Pinterest I start to miss him.

Jeff curates great content and that saves ME time as well. You will make a great impact on people through just being there every day and putting up great stuff.

While there is not much conversation happening on the Pinterest platform, the same psychological impact is still there. While you are not personally interacting with your followers, your pin is, and because the shelf life of your pin lasts so long, it gives you more of an opportunity to engage with them through your image.

Takeaways

One of the main aspects of using Pinterest is to be there every day.

You’re not going to be the best graphic designer right off the bat, and, if you’re anything like me, you won’t be that after 4 years either.

But if you give it your best, you will start to see the reasoning behind engagement through your images on Pinterest. No, it’s not a one to one style interaction that you’re so used to on other social sites, but it is engagement nevertheless.

So in order to build relationships on Pinterest you must be consistent, curate great pins, and make sure your own images are the best that you can make them. You are inadvertently creating relationships through your images and just being there.

There are many ways that you can build relationships on this platform, and most of them comes by the way

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of the old psyche.

What are some of your questions you have about Pinterest? Does your Pinterest account feel like there’s something missing? I’d love to try to help, so leave me a comment below!

41 Why We Love The Audience The Psychology Of Connection: A Scientific Approach To Relationship Marketing

Why We Love The Audience The Psychology Of Connection: A Scientific Approach To Relationship Marketing

Not so long ago, we referred to a crowd of strangers as a sea of faces.

For brands, this sea was much more than a mass of unknowns. This sea held promise, and the savvy marketer would bait his hook and cast out his line.

It was an era of billboards and advertisements, of broadcasts and images. It was an era where marketers could stand apart from the crowd and hope to reel in their target consumer.

Today, brands can no longer fling forth a message and hope that it hooks. The sea is much more savvy.

Today, people want marketers that care. Marketers that connect. Marketers that invest in their customers and clients.

People want relationships, and savvy brands know that the heart of modern marketing is in the cultivation of those relationships.

This becomes a challenge for those of us that engage across the islands of social media. We don’t

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encounter a sea of faces: we engage a swarm of Twitter handles, Facebook pages, and Google Plus profiles.

So your approach has to adjust. You have to be able to adapt to a world that craves relationships amidst a medium that creates detachment.

Luckily, there are some scientific findings that may help level the playing field. Here are five data-backed principles to building relationships on the web.

1. Smile

Any qualified social media professional will tell you that profiles with faces do better than profiles with brand images.

The evidence for this is not merely anecdotal. In March of 2014, a collaborative study run by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs found that images with faces are 38% more likely to drive engagement. The same study also found that photos which include faces are 32% more likely to draw comments.

Two months later, a study published by Princeton changed the game. That study looked at how faces impact first impressions, and it found that a photo’s context shaped the first impression it created.

For example, the style of photo you would expect on a dating profile is different than the style of photo you would expect in a political campaign. One is geared towards fun and sexual attraction, while the other is designed to communicate focus and a down-to-business attitude. The wrong photo in the wrong context consistently resulted in a poor first impression, even when the comparison photo was of the same person.

Key Takeaway: Use a face on your profile photo, but make sure it is appropriate to the message you want to communicate.

2. Demonstrate Trustworthiness

The heart of any relationship is trust.

Trust is a fickle thing. It is never simply given to you, and it can be taken away with a single misstep. Trust is something that has to be earned.

In 2003, Roy Lewicki and Edward Tomlinson published their findings regarding key elements of trust at the Conflict Information Consortium at the University of Colorado.

Among the more notable findings are what they identify as the three dimensions of trustworthy behavior:

Ability. This refers to the individual’s demonstration of knowledge, skill, or competency.

43 Why We Love The Audience The Psychology Of Connection: A Scientific Approach To Relationship Marketing

Integrity. This refers to how well the individual adheres to principles that the “trustor” considers acceptable. Benevolence. This refers to how well the individual demonstrates concern for the welfare of others.

In other words, if you want to earn the trust of others, you need to demonstrate that you are capable of performing in your field, that you do so in alignment with shared values, and that you genuinely care about the welfare of those you serve.

Key Takeaway: Be good at what you do, and be good to others when you do it.

3. Demonstrate Gratitude

One of the easiest skills to overlook in establishing connections is the simple act of gratitude, but it has surprising results.

In 2012, researcher Sara Algoe from the University of South Carolina looked at the impact of gratitude on relationships. The study found that couples who communicate gratitude not only felt more connected on the day they conveyed that gratitude, but also on the days which followed. In other words, that simple expression drew people together and continued to connect them together.

The benefits did not stop there. Gratitude connects people together, but it also improves your own positivity. That positivity has an enduring impact of its own, as we shall see in a moment.

Key Takeaway: Take a moment to communicate gratitude.

4. Be Positive

It is easy to see how emotions spread when you engage others face to face. A smile and a scowl are very different experiences, and they drive very different reactions.

But what about the superficial emotions communicated over social media?

As it turns out, these are shockingly contagious.

In March of 2014, a group of researchers from the University of Namur looked at the impact of emotion communicated across Facebook.

The researchers took a novel approach. They looked at data from millions of Facebook users and matched posting behavior to weather patterns. They focused on those experiencing rainfall at the time of their post, and found that the poor weather directly contributed to negative emotional states.

Then, they looked at the impact these posts had on their followers. The negative emotions triggered by the

44 Why We Love The Audience The Psychology Of Connection: A Scientific Approach To Relationship Marketing

psychology of weather conditions led to increased negativity among their followers, even though they were not experiencing the same conditions.

The rain in Spain may fall mainly on the plain, but its effects can be felt globally. Emotions spread, even over social media.

Key Takeaway: Be positive. Your emotions are contagious.

5. Practice Generosity

Last but not least, practice generosity.

As it turns out, generosity is not a selfless expression. The practice itself is beneficial and correlates with an increased sense of happiness.

It’s also good for business.

In fact, the practice is so good that Forbes recommends it as a dominant business practice and Relationology identifies it as a fundamental characteristic in authentic business relationships.

More than that, generosity is essential to building any relationship. Why? Because generosity communicates value. It communicates to the other party that they are worth investing in. It also tangibly demonstrates that you have something of value to give.

This isn’t about bribing people. It is about communicating value through actually providing value.

Key Takeaway: Invest in others. Practice generosity.

Closing Thoughts

Marketing is no longer about broadcasting a message.

It is about investing in people. Building relationships. Establishing lasting connections.

So…

Smile. Be trustworthy. Be grateful. Be positive. Be generous.

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And start building relationships that matter.

The Perfect Solution To Your Social Media Traffic Problem

Would you like to have more traffic from social media?

Wouldn’t it be nice to sit back and watch as traffic rolled in every day?

Imagine a blog post you recently wrote receiving tons of visitors from social media in a short amount of time.

Also imagine every time you shared an article it did pretty well in social signals and traffic.

Well forget it. You’re dreaming.

Social media has evolved and so have it’s user base. People want to be tantalized, enticed, offered, and persuaded these days. If you are ignorant of these marketing facts today you may realize your problem.

Take away the marketing greats like Mark Schaefer, Jay Baer, Neil Patel, etc…take those people out of your mind. But what I want you to imagine is content out there you have read recently on social media and it lured you to their landing page or website.

46 Why We Love The Audience The Perfect Solution To Your Social Media Traffic Problem

The content wasn’t that great, heck, you could write an article better than that, however, you see their post received 100k likes or 17k video views.

What the heck?

Granted, in order to keep someone reading you have to be a great writer. But in order to entice your target market from social media to your site you have to understand how to persuade.

Never mind your article right now. You may be the best writer since Damien Farnsworth (I love that guy), but no one will ever see your potential because you suck at the enticement side of marketing.

Here’s some psychological tips which will get them clicking.

Assuming You Know…

Your social media posts need visuals. One of the main ingredients to driving traffic from social media is your image be a great one, be one that is relevant to what your talking about, and can impact your audience quickly. This comes from understanding which color affects them on a psychological level.

These tips will also help you understand how your brand can be effective on social media.

Ok then…here we go.

Persuasion

You find a lot of squeeze/sales pitches (I find them mostly on Facebook) on social media. Admit it, you’ve found yourself being sucked into their story and before you knew it you were at the end of the post description.

Before you get your traffic you have to learn the art of the sale. It’s a pre-sale you have to perform to a new or potential reader in order to get their attention, gain their trust, and make them click.

And it all happens within a matter of seconds.

The Persuasion Slide

I love this example from Neuroscience Marketing:

Basically, it performs like this:

You nudge the customer/audience member by capturing their attention. This is where the image works so well on social media. Remember an image is processed 60k times faster than text. So make it count!

47 Why We Love The Audience The Perfect Solution To Your Social Media Traffic Problem

This determines the gravity, or the persons internal motivation based on the information that has just been given to them. The more they take action, the easier it is for them to slide down to where you need them to be.

The additional motivation in which you provide to help them slide down faster can be an emotional construct with which you are able to connect and be real with the user. This is an important step in the process of persuasion because what you have to say here determines how fast they’ll get from point A to point B.

Using emotional triggers to balance how they react is a great way to do this.

Think about it for a bit. What are you offering? Don’t simply tell the user what it is, they can see it for themselves, but rather show them how it is useful to them through storytelling. Here’s some examples you can use:

Give them a “piece” of what you’re working on. That way, if they want to see more, they’ll slide down faster and click your link. Build an emotional bridge from your content to their heart. What I mean by this is to determine how you can be relevant to this person at that very moment. One of the big things is to understand the position they’re in and be empathic. I understand where you’re coming from because last year I was only making $35/mo. However, using this proven system has made me the business person I am today and it only took 6 months…Whatever, you get the picture. Be relevant to their situation. Use the scarcity principle as a way to “push” them down faster as well. If you have a life changing product in which you guarantee, but only have 5 of them, it makes it more urgent for them to click your link.

Finally, you have Friction. This is where your audience could have skepticism or questions about what you have to give. However, everyone goes through friction in marketing. This can be fought off by consistency and trustworthiness. Over time you can smooth the slide over by continually providing value again and again.

Where there is friction, there is opportunity ~Bryan Eisenburg

One of my favorite people on Facebook to watch is Amy Porterfield. She is the classic example of how you can continually drive traffic to your product or service from social.

The color is perfect because it makes you pay attention, bottom header is perfect because it makes you ask yourself this question of “What if I could make that much money??” The description is great because it details what she’s about to show you.

48 Why We Love The Audience The Perfect Solution To Your Social Media Traffic Problem

Over to you

Have you been wishing for more social media traffic?

If you have, you may want to try out this method of marketing.

What about your successful strategies? Do you have an unconventional one that seems to work every time? I would love to hear about it!

Why You Want Your Social Media To Go Viral

Do you know the holy grail of small business owners on social media?

What would you do if you could create a viral post every time your brand posted on social media?

What if there were people you could trust to help spread your message every time?

Have you ever thought about that?

Everyone desires to go viral and if you could have the option to create a social post that went viral every time you would want that to happen wouldn’t you?

Sure you would!

But you can’t go viral every time…can you?

I Don’t Have To Tell You Why…

You already know why you would want to go viral, but one thing people can’t tell you is the HOW.

You would read this post over and over again if I showed you how to go viral.

Well, let me show you the relationship between going viral on social media and what some influencers have in common with it.

What Viral Posts Have In Common

The relationship that all viral posts have in common is a couple of things:

49 Why We Love The Audience Why You Want Your Social Media To Go Viral

1. Tons of people have reshared it. 2. It spreads a message people want to hear.

Color Psychology-Marketing Strategies For Social Media

92.6% of people say that visual stimulation was the reason they pushed the buy now button.

In visual marketing, color reigns supreme.

Color brings harmony.

Visual stimulation, when done correctly, engages the viewer and brings about creating an inner sense of order and balance in the visual experience.

When you have found your correct color psychology in your marketing your strategy flows, people convert, and customers are attracted to your brand.

In this article I want to talk about picking the right color for your content on social media and why it’s so important for both the reader and the creator to have this fluidity between them.

50 Why We Love The Audience Color Psychology-Marketing Strategies For Social Media

Does Color Affect Your Marketing?

Let’s talk about color in general.

In 1666, Sir Isaac Newton discovered fascinating truths about color when he researched the prism effect with light.

When pure white light passes through a prism, it separates into all of the visible colors. Newton also found that each color is made up of a single wavelength and cannot be separated any further into other colors.

This stands to reason that even when conducting color experiments, colors of all kinds can only be dissected to a certain base-point. After that, it cannot be dissected any further, even with something so powerful as light.

Color is powerful.

Colors affect your marketing because we are creatures that are in tune with the subconscious area of the brain. Emotionally, color psychology works because it affects us on a different level.

For instance, there are two camps that colors lie in.

The first camp is the warm colors like red, yellow, and orange. These colors affect us on two different spectrum.

Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple and green. These colors are often described as calm, but can also call to mind feelings of sadness or indifference.

This means that these cool colors are tapping into the emotional side of the brain and are important to remember that even though using too many warm colors that can confuse your message, you don’t have to worry about over-using cool colors too much.

These cool colors evoke a sense of trust, tranquility, and influence among your target market. That is why most large brands choose their colors wisely, and most use the cool color swatches.

Warm colors trigger emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility. One study suggested that it is important to refrain from using too much of the same color at one time. Especially with the warm colors.

Researchers have said that the color red can hinder performance in some people and their tasks. So too much of a warm color is consistent with putting people off and limiting them to what they could do on your site or social post.

51 Why We Love The Audience Color Psychology-Marketing Strategies For Social Media

However, a study from HubSpot shows us how they wanted to tweak the color of their CTA button from green, which is a friendly, non threatening, color, to red, a more dominant color like we discussed above. See the image below.

This research showed them that the red button outperformed the green button by 23%!

So should we use warm colors then? Seems like a lot of double talk if you ask me.

Researching this further I came to a conclusion…

The Variables

There are a lot of variables that you must think about when introducing color psychology into your marketing strategy.

Everyone is different.

Different people react to different stimuli when it comes to trigger responses. Having said that, you must understand that the person that has just landed on your page and is an outright lunatic for your content may react more suddenly than someone who has never heard of you before.

Color still affects these people though. But what I want to stress is that for some people it doesn’t have to. You’ve already got them.

This is a graphic created by Kissmetrics about different brands and their color decisions with the Buy Now button. As you will see, tweaking something as small as color scheme in your marketing can produce great results for your brand.

The Final Thought

Create a color strategy that is fluid with the message that you want people to know about your brand. Create those bridges, those small tweaks, with your colors to bring astronomical results to your marketing.

For me, the color is blue. I want people to think of someone they trust when they see my branding.

What does your color say about your brand? And, best of all, does it say the right thing?

Start experimenting with your colors on social media, in your blog posts, and see what works the best. You may be surprised at what you find out.

What do you think?

52 Why We Love The Audience Color Psychology-Marketing Strategies For Social Media

Have you got a great color/branding story to tell? Would you like to add to this article with some of your own opinions? Let me know in the comments, or ping me when you share the post!

How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

Mike Allton and I collaborated on this article. To check out Mike’s version, click here.

Are you in the social media industry?

Have you discovered there are a lot of people fighting for attention in this space yet?

If you’ve been in the social niche for any amount of time you will notice the throngs of people, marketers, and bloggers that are all struggling to make their brand known.

Some people make it, some don’t. That’s just the way it works out.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the influence and marketing know-how to grab the attention of your target audience every time you shared something to social media?

53 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

There are some people that do.

Every time.

I have researched the top 5 marketing influencers in the industry and they all have this marketing strategy in common.

First, let me introduce the marketing geniuses I have been watching:

• Jay Baer – ConvinceandConvert.com • Kim Garst – BoomSocial.com • Mark Schaefer – {Grow} & Schaefer Marketing Solutions • Amy Porterfield – AmyPorterfield.com • Dustin Stout – Dustn.Tv

What do all of these people have in common that makes their marketing on social media great?

They use psychology in their strategy.

Whether they realize it or not, they are successful because they have learned certain principles and they attach these powerful triggers to receive tremendous results on social media.

Let me show you how.

One Taps Into The Reptilian Brain

Jay is one of the best marketers I’ve seen to do this particular strategy.

For instance…

Customer surveys are useless if you do them the WRONG way. ?https://t.co/vCT4n8HcUi #custserv pic.twitter.com/p1x9IpNn2B

— Jay Baer (@jaybaer) July 16, 2016

What Did He Just Say?…I’m doing it WRONG??

The reptilian function in your brain is the attribute where you do things without thinking of them, like

54 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

breathing, blinking your eyes, etc.

If you’ve been in the social media industry for awhile you might find yourself doing things over and over again and getting the same old results.

Jay is the best at this because he makes you think about what you’re doing, or going to be doing. For the people involved in customer service that have probably done this one hundred times or more, now they’re thinking Wait a minute, let me double check to see if I truly am doing this the correct way

Bam!

You just received a visitor on your website.

Are you beginning to see how important drafting psychological triggers into your social marketing is now?

Use Emotional Triggers in Word Play

Mark Schaefer is one of the best marketers I’ve seen to do this consistently. Mark is no slouch when it comes to building influence and driving traffic to his product and site.

Mark is a wordsmith Jedi and here’s why.

When to treat a customer like family https://t.co/ABzwP8gDdL

— Mark Schaefer (@markwschaefer) July 14, 2016

Looks simple, right?

That’s the beauty of it.

This integrates the Law of 5 W’s.

The 5 W’s create a question in our brain that has to be answered because the solution is implicated in what we see. We know we are able to get the answer from how the poster has written with one of the 5 W’s.

They are, “Who, What, When, Where, and Why”.

When you connect these words in your blog titles or social media posts you are showing your audience that

55 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

you have an answer to an important question or situation they may be facing at that point in time.

Impacting Curiosity – Frontal Lobe Attack

Curiosity is the name of the game in marketing. If your audience is curious about your blog content or product, then you have a great starting point.

But what about those people who don’t know who you are?

In the age of digital distraction, you have to stand out from the crowd and create something that makes people sit up and pay attention to you and your brand.

One person comes to mind when it comes to impacting people’s curiosity – Kim Garst.

Ok, so I have to admit, I’ve already clicked this a while back. I mean, who wouldn’t want that much free engagement on Facebook?

The frontal lobe is a powerful area to attack in your marketing. As Dr Freeman and Dr. Watts explain, “…which acts as the accumulator of experience, the director of behavior, and the instigator of progress.”

Our frontal lobe desires progress and achievement. That’s why curiosity reigns supreme here.

Create a social post that tells the facts, builds trust, and shares your own experience and your audience will begin to understand how you do what you do successfully.

Kim is great at doing this, and, the best part about her is, she is down to earth and that also brings people to her doorstep on social.

It’s All in The Image Baby

A picture is worth a thousand words

Honestly, this helps my blog because now I can write 500 words and put a great image up and count it as 1,500 words!

Don’t underestimate the power of a great image. Also don’t underestimate the underestimation of a stock photo either.

56 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

If you don’t care enough about your images to simply go to the first free photo site you come to and upload something to your blog, you’re telling your readers that you really don’t care.

Care about your images because it affects people on a powerful psychological level and there’s no better person to use in this example than Dustin W. Stout.

Have you seen #Twitter‘s new Dashboard? Here’s everything you need to know: https://t.co/RIkE9DghZv pic.twitter.com/HSRT7QSVab

— dustn.tv (@dustntv) July 5, 2016

If there’s one thing which could take the championship belt it’s the fact that the image reigns supreme.

Aside from video, there’s nothing more powerful than a great image.

In fact, author Michael Forrester researched in his book Psychology of the Image the factors and trigger response an image has on an individual and his research suggests that when someone sees your image it is possible that you will have triggered something from their past that creates an emotional surge to their central nervous system, which, in turn, causes action.

Don’t make it too hard.

If you are writing about a pain point on Twitter, let’s say advertising, then you want to create an image that shares that pain point to your audience.

It will begin to unlock the struggle they can remember when they look at your image. Along with your title, this could show them you are about to solve all of their problems which come with doing this procedure.

Make it relatable and your audience will find the pain point in the image all by themselves, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

Wake ‘Em Up and Make ‘Em Click!

By far, Amy Porterfield has a monopoly on this specific strategy.

Does she pour over psychological research every day to figure out how to do this?

Probably not. This comes with experience in learning what makes your audience wake up and pay attention

57 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

to you.

You could wait 5 years and learn this as you go, but this next step is helpful if you would rather just start doing it now.

There is something in your brain called reticular formation.

Let me explain this in terms that are simple.

Dan lives in Chicago by the “L-train”. He’s lived there for 5 years now.

When Dan goes to bed, after a couple of hours, around 2 a.m., the L-train comes booming through his neighborhood, rattling windows and dishes and blaring its horn.

Because Dan has lived there for so long, he doesn’t wake up when the train comes by his window anymore.

He has become “used” to the noise.

Later in his life, Dan marries and moves to the country.

He goes to bed and after he is asleep he immediately wakes up because he heard a creak in the kitchen.

Let me ask you this…

How can a man that has lived in the city with the L-train coming by his house every night, a man that can sleep through all of that, get woke up by a small noise in his country kitchen?

That is reticular formation.

All of those years that Dan lived beside of the train, after hearing the noise over and over, Dan’s brain deemed the noise irrelevant while he slept.

He became used to this sound.

However, the small creak in the kitchen wasn’t a sound that his brain was used to which immediately made him wake up from a sound sleep.

Are you creating noise?

There’s a difference in creating noise in which people deem irrelevant and creating a small sound that makes someone wake up and pay attention to you.

58 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

Are you saying the same things as everyone else?

That’s irrelevant noise.

The same is true for your social marketing.

In order to become successful, you need to understand what your audience needs…but don’t stop there, because there’s a good chance that a hundred other people have done the same thing.

Which brings me to believe that those one hundred are screaming in concert with each other and creating a noise that people aren’t listening to.

Go further than your competition and dig deep into your target audience.

Can you dive into Twitter advertising to make them wake up? Would you do better if you could niche down even further, say, Snapchat emoji’s and make them wake up?

Whatever it is, you have to do the homework in order to understand that while you still need to create noise, you don’t need to be creating the same noise as everyone else.

Learn these psychological principles and more!

I have just released a brand new social media psychology workshop where you can learn the top 5 social psychology tips I use every day to build my audience, create leads, and prompt action!

Watch the free workshop today!

Over to you

You are impacting your audience on a psychological level. Whether you know it or not, you are.

Wouldn’t it be nice to understand how to create these emotional triggers to create more action for your brand on social? Even better, wouldn’t it be awesome to have someone who was experienced in the art of

59 Why We Love The Audience How 5 Marketing Influencers Are Creating Action on Social Media – And You Can Too

marketing psychology to help you?

What are some of your strategies you have used successfully to bring people to action online? I would love to hear about them!