5 Psychological Concepts That’ll Strengthen Your Social Media Strategy

21 Jun 5 Psychological Concepts That’ll Strengthen Your Social Media Strategy

Written by Jacqueline Zenn

Most of us joke about being addicted to things like Snapchat or Instagram, and we’re all probably guilty of compulsively checking our phones for updates. However, social media is changing more than just our immediate behavior.

Think about it: We’ve all seen the infamous commercials illustrating the effects of various illegal substances on your brain, but most of us haven’t consideredhow seemingly innocuous things like social media can have a strikingly similar effect on both our minds and behaviors. And as marketers, this is something we should be thinking more about.

Any interaction your brand has with a potential customer on social media influences both their conscious and unconscious perception of your brand or company — you probably know that already. But perhaps you’re not aware of how those interactions fully play out, and to what extent.

For example, there’s plenty of research that suggests social media usage actually triggers the release of dopamine, causing you to experience a rush of positive feelings every time you post, share, Like, comment, and so on. Not to mention, social media interactions can actually increase bonding between individuals, as we tend to view engagement as an act of human acknowledgement.

But there’s even more to it than that. In fact, there’s a lot more going on inside the minds of our followers when they explore and engage on social media than we think. To shed some light on the situation, let’s explore a few psychological concepts as they relate to social media. 

5 Psychological Concepts That’ll Strengthen Your Social Media Strategy

1) Neuroplasticity

The human brain is constantly altering its behavior and responses to stimuli based on new experiences — this is nothing new. However, the growth of the internet (social media, in particular) has forced our brains to become even more adaptable.

This type of evolution is called neuroplasticity, and the quick, constant evolution of the social media sphere has increased its speed and effects on our collective brains over the past decade or two.

For marketers, the intersection of neoplasticity and social media results in two key takeaways:

Shortened attention spans = the need for bolder, digestible messaging.

Due to the onslaught of information coming at us from various platforms and devices,our attention spans are increasingly divided. In fact, a study from Microsoft reported that people tend to lose concentration after just eight seconds.

For marketers, this means finding a way to devise easily digestible messaging that stands out enough to capture the interest of our audience. To give you a better sense of how to craft this type of messaging, check out this post on successful brands on Twitter. From General Electric to Charmin, these brands are finding unique ways to nail their social presence and messaging, while keeping their followers super engaged.

Increased multitasking = the need for multi-channel marketing experiences.

Secondly, we’ve quickly become a society of multitaskers. And our ability to multitask and interact in several different ways at the same time has trained our brains to continuously switch gears.

The same study from Microsoft identified three natural attention modes that reflect consumer use of digital technology. One of which they referred to as attention ambidextrous mode, in which we “blend tasks together across devices.” We do this because we feel it enhances productivity — whether or not that is true is an entirely different argument.

For marketers, this desire to multitask presents another interesting challenge. And as a result, we’re ultimately tasked with creating multi-touch or multi-channel experiences in an effort to stay top-of-mind with consumers. To help you devise a social media strategy that spans across multiple platforms, start by reading this handy guide on how the news feed algorithms work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. View Full Article >>

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