You’d have to be living in a cave these last couple of years not to have been run over by the “online social media” bandwagon. It seems no one’s life or business is complete without a blog and a Facebook profile.
If you ain’t on Web 2.0 you ain’t nowhere, buddy.
Hmm. Is it true or is it yet another fad? Does this “social marketing” thing work? Or is it more snake oil?
It’s all of the above!
Let me explain. First thing is there are no overnight success solutions, just as there are no overnight success stories. Behind every sudden jump into the limelight, there’s a hell of a lot of hard work and limbering up.
The exceptions? Lottery winners, reality TV “stars” and the like? They don’t last long, and their demise is often as spectacular as it is predictable.
So please, beware those people growing fat on Facebook and on other social media… on the proceeds of selling you products and seminars showing you how to make a fortune on Facebook. There are lots of reasons to be healthily skeptical of some of their claims.
That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news:
Marketing with social media works… but it takes time and effort.
There is no doubt at all that “social marketing” works. And it’s been working for as long as we’ve been human beings, because it’s founded in our very nature.
All that’s new is the medium by which we’re engaging in it. It’s never been faster or easier to reach so many people with so little effort… the only changes are in style, not substance.
Here’s why…
Without going into too much detail, we humans have evolved to interact closely with around 150 other people. That’s about the limit to the number of people we can really have strong personal relationships with (and that’s where the concept of “in group” and “out group” comes from… and, if the evolutionary psychologists are right, why there’s so much violence in big cities: almost everyone is in the “out group”).
Now… bear with me… despite the selfish nature of DNA, certain strategies of cooperation work statistically in favour of the individual (this has all been shown by “game theory”, a branch of mathematics). And given how evolution works, it shouldn’t surprise us to find we’ve evolved these characteristics.
They’re buried deep in our brains and aren’t just part of what we do – they’re part of who we are and the basis of many of the behavioural prohibitions that span all cultures (for instance, killing a member of the “in group” is abhorred in all cultures).
What does all this have to do with social marketing?
Back in the 1970s, Robert Cialdini did some groundbreaking work in the science and psychology of persuasion. He discovered six fundamental “building blocks” to persuasion. And all of them are tightly bound up with “social marketing”.
Cialdini showed fairly conclusively these are indeed due to our neurology not social conditioning, because they span the entire gamut of human races and cultures.
They are:
1. Reciprocity – if you do something for me, I feel obliged to do something for you in return. See this in the light of social media and interactions where we give away information and advice for free. What do we get in return? Over the long term we get sales and referrals.
2. Authority – we tend to obey authority figures. Why else do we see so many people positioning themselves as the “expert” in their niche? It’s a good strategy, and one I’ve used myself and with my clients to great effect. It’s not a logical thought process we go through in our responses to this, even though we rationalise it that way. An expert is an authority on a subject. We tend to listen.
3. Consistency and Commitment – we tend to feel obliged to act in the way we’ve said we’re going to act. This makes us more trustworthy to others. Our behaviour can be better predicted from our words. It means we’re less likely to bash you over the head and steal your dinner if we’ve said we’re going to behave well!
4. Liking – we tend to be more easily influenced by people we like more than by people we don’t like. We tend to like people who are like we are. Why? Because we can better predict their responses and behaviour. In business, we tend to like to deal with people we trust and like.
5. Social Proof - we tend to follow the crowd. If everyone’s doing it, then it’s probably a good idea. Often the reason we want to do business with someone is… because everyone else is. The “brand” becomes popular. You’ve probably heard people say things like “we’ve sold 7 million copies of this… 7 million people can’t be wrong!“. Well, yes they can. But emotionally, this is a very powerful motivator.
6. Scarcity – we want what we can’t have. I confess, this is less to do with social media and more to do with raw survival strategies. Scarce resources are the cause of most violence in our society, whether it be land, oil, or, in the case of drunken young men on a weekend… women! Interestingly, the human trait of fighting harder not to lose something than to gain it in the first place is also pro-survival, even though it’s often a really dumb thing to do.
Statistically, over large numbers of people and interactions, these traits are pro-survival for the individual (in a world like our ancestors’), so we ought not be surprised they are hard wired into us. Quite simply, humans who had these traits survived to have offspring who had the same traits more often than those who didn’t have them.
How does this all tie together?
Simple.
We all have these characteristics and we unconsciously exhibit them when we talk, and write and socialise. As I said before, these are not just behaviours: they are us. They are part of being human.
On the web our social group, the number of people we can interact with closely on a one-to-one and on a regular basis, has increased exponentially.
It’s no longer 150… it’s tens of thousands.
Although we cannot actually have 10,000 relationships, to our readers it’s as if we do. To them, it feels like they are in our “in group”. Personalised emails, open-hearted blog postings and web-pages, stories about our lives, photographs, copy filled with our personalities… they all go to building this sense of relationship.
So our readers come to like and trust us. They come to accept our status as “authorities”. Our following gives us the social proof. We give unstintingly of ourselves, and get the reciprocation our network is hard-wired to give us.
In social marketing we are capitalising on our very humanity. A lot of marketers talk about how important the “relationship” is without really knowing why this is so.
And now you do know (which is a hell of a lot more than a lot of these “gurus” do, so it’s one in the eye from you for them!)
Ex-bouncer and jiu-jitsu instructor, and recovered computer programmer, Jon McCulloch is a leading independent direct marketing consultant and copywriter, author, public speaker, and entrepreneur.
He’s been featured in the Irish Times, writes a monthly column for the West Cork People, and helps business owners grow their businesses by 50% to 250% within just 12 months with a combination of powerful and ultra-effective marketing and business systems.
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