Did you know people get as much pleasure from sharing information as they do from discovering it?
The hosts of the Science of Social Media tell us all about ourselves in today’s Listen. Specifically, the psychology behind social media strategy. They tackle a ton of research to give us these 7 factors that motivate people’s engagement on social media:
- Emotion
- The want to entertain
- Our obsession with talking about ourself
- Self-expression
- Staying connected
- Social currency
- Supporting a cause
This 12-minute podcast succinctly summarizes what’s so important about these elements, and how you can use them to better your market strategy. Key points are timestamped below:
- (2:10) Emotions and how social media literally fills our brains with dopamine and oxytocin with every like and share.
- (2:45) The 7 emotions that drive social sharing.
- (3:25) People share to entertain, inspire, and be useful to others, asking themselves (consciously or not), “Will others find this interesting?”
- (4:43) We love talking about ourselves. In fact, 30-40% of all speech is dedicated to talking about ourselves. That percentage jumps to 80% when we go online.
- (5:55) How a study showed psychological arousal to be nearly as intense when a person saw their favorite brand’s logo vs. when they saw a photo of their closest friend.
- (6:20) Self-expression and the concept of the “Ideal Self”.
- (7:50) Staying connected — 78% of people share information to stay in contact with people they would otherwise lose track of.
- (9:10) Social currency is why breaking news does so well on social media, because people want to be the first to share something.
- (9:55) The unified theory of what makes something interesting.
- (10:20) Supporting a cause — 84% of people report to have shared a cause they support on social media.
- (11:20) How brands can authentically support a cause.
::Wipes sweat from brows::
Okay, that was a lot. But we didn’t even include everything! Every second of this podcast is a juicy nugget of information. Highly worth it, if you ask us.