How to Use the Six Principals Of Persuasion In Your Social Media Strategy
When it comes to social media, we all have a way of constructing and refining our content to position ourselves the way we WANT to be seen. Our self-presentation on social media is often more prominent than reality, and we can say the same thing about brands who utilize social media marketing tactics.
Social Media marketing allows marketers to create brand awareness. This is because there is an opportunity to solve every problem with the content and psychological innovation. Additionally, social media marketing provides endless opportunities to customize a message and individualize an experience for every user. The intention behind every social media marketing campaign is to persuade and influence your audience. But, in order to achieve this goal and master the art of persuasion, marketers must learn how to connect, engage, influence, and persuade their audience.
Social media campaigns typically have a pre-ordained outcome and therefore require marketers to strategize the best way to persuade an audience to reach that outcome. When we are able to understand how to connect with our audience, influence their decision-making, and persuade them to make a purchase through our social media content, then we are well on our way to reaching our desired pre-ordained outcome. The best way to achieve this objective is to utilize the six principals of persuasion.
The Six Principals of Persuasion
The six principals of persuasion are consistency, reciprocity, authority, social proof, liking, and scarcity. These six principals can be applied to social media marketing campaigns to influence the decision-making process of your target audience. Read on to learn how to apply these principals to social media marketing to attain your social media goals.
6 techniques to persuade Your audience on social media
1. Consistency
First and foremost, the principle of consistency is essential for increasing engagement and followers. Consistency within social media is a vital tactic. This is because posting content consistently on social media provides more opportunity to increase engagement with each user with generates a pattern of habit for that user to crave your content. Consistency is key in social media marketing and allows you to grow your reach by becoming recognizable among your intended audience. Consistent posting, consistent aesthetics, consistent branding, consistent voice, and consistent brand personality are essential to creating a successful social media strategy.
2. Reciprocity
Second, we have the principle of reciprocity. Reciprocity is a concept that suggests humans feel obligated to return a favor or give back when they receive from others. There are many ways to demonstrate reciprocity in social media, such as connecting or following someone or sharing free content and knowledge with your followers. Creating reciprocity on social media builds strong, profitable relationships based on a mutual need to feel important. For example, if you received a follow request on Instagram, you will likely return the favor and follow them back. If someone comments on your post, you will likely comment on their next post.
3. Authority
Next, we have the third principal, authority. Using social media to build brand authority is a tactic used by many. It is the idea that your social media accounts will create brand authority by displaying the number of followers and, therefore, the number of people who engage with your brand and purchase your product. When a brand shows its field of knowledge in an industry, it gains authority and credibility. Brands gain credibility by utilizing headlines, bio’s, and caption’s by including powerful statements such as “scientifically proven” and “research shows.”
4. Social Proof
Following the principle of authority, we have social proof. The social proof principle is the idea that people trust things that are trusted by others. Therefore, the more social media followers your brand has, the more likely you are to gain more followers. This is because of social proof, it’s a psychological and social proof that people copy the actions of others whom they trust, look up to, and strive to be like. If your brand has many followers who comment on and interact with your posts, then another user who views your post will be more likely to follow you or purchase your product because your brand has gained the approval of others. For example, celebrity endorsements and social media influencer posts gain the endorsed brand more followers and result in an increase in sales because that celebrity or influencer has a large following of users who strive to be like them. If users see their favorite celebrity using your product, they feel that your product is “celebrity-approved,” which makes it good enough for them to purchase.
5. Liking
The fifth principle is liking. As social media marketers, we need to create content that our target audience will like. The goal of social media content is to increase engagement; therefore, it is essential to create content that is attractive, relatable, and impactful to your audience. What is it about you or the brand that makes people want to follow you? Is it your industry knowledge, your ability to connect and hold intimate conversations with your audience, your humor? Whatever it is, it’s essential to narrow it down and create content that fits your brand’s image to encourage your followers to like you and your posts. We like people who have similar interests as us, and we like attractive things, so we are more likely to engage with brands on social media who we can relate to.
6. Scarcity
The sixth and final principle of persuasion is scarcity. The idea of scarcity is that people want what they can’t have. Social media marketers utilize this method often by posting content that alludes to a product being extremely limited, almost sold out, or on sale for a limited time. When consumers think an item is going to go out of stock because of short supply, is only available or on sale for a limited time, is in high demand, or is a unique product, they are more motivated to make the purchase. Many industries use the scarcity tactic to persuade consumers to make a purchase NOW rather than later. If you haven’t read my blog post on the principle of scarcity, you can do so here.
If applied correctly to your social media strategy, the above principals will lead you to success. Robert Caldini’s six principles of persuasion have been used for many years by marketers. They are successful because they appeal to our subconscious instincts as marketers and help raise awareness for brands on social media. If you’d like to learn more about the principals of persuasion, I’d love to connect!
