Social Media Psychology Studies To Boost Your Marketing

There are hundreds of studies on social media marketing aimed to boost our marketing strategies and help us understand the type of marketing that can maximise sales. As social media is relatively new, this topic is continuing to be explored – we’ve rounded up some of our favourite studies on social media marketing which can help boost your marketing strategies and make your marketing smarter.

Arousal And Sharing

A study by Jonah Berger has suggested that content which arouses strong feelings such as anger and happiness are more likely to be shared. This is because emotional arousal activates our nervous system which makes us more alert to the content we are seeing and gets us ‘fired up’. By sharing content, this allows us to release these feelings and leave this aroused state, providing a kind of closure. Therefore, if you create content that is mentally arousing such as captivating stores, your content will be more likely to be shared.

We Want To Talk About Ourselves

According to research at Harvard University, people can’t help but share their thoughts as it triggers that pleasure centres in our brain in the same way they are activated when we receive money or eat tasty food. Studies have shown that participants would even pay money just to talk about themselves – talk about egotistical! Roughly 80% of social media posts are about the poster’s personal experiences, therefore by encouraging your customers to talk about themselves, you will be able to build a stronger community.

We Judge Immediately

What is your company profile picture right now? Although you may not realise it, a profile photo makes a huge impression in just a fraction of a second. The same goes for the ‘Team’ page on your website. Psychological Science has found that we draw conclusions about people based on a photo in 40 milliseconds! This study showed participants a series of photos that were all very similar apart from the facial expression. The headshots were rated based on characteristics such as attractiveness, trustworthiness, competence, etc. and it was found that even minor differences in facial expression could lead to dramatic differences in how the person in the image is perceived.

We’re going to carry on in our next article with a few more studies which we feel can really help to boost your marketing! As we said, the research in social media marketing is still new and ongoing so we are excited to see what is next.