Social media engagement is the new Holy Grail. Everyone wants it but often it’s just out of reach. We know it exists but often we find our social media marketing efforts are being largely ignored. So what can a small business do?
How does memory drive us and how can we use memory in social media engagement and marketing?
How important is memory to the way we connect to the world? Think of the films that have explored the concept of memory loss. What about Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Total Recall or even Inception with Leonardo di Caprio? These titles remind us that our memories are integral in defining our personalities, behaviours and how we function in the world.
So much of what we know is based on memory?
We learn what hurts, what is dangerous, what tastes nice, what has warm associated what gives us mental pain. This is a massive tapestry that keeps building and we draw on this resource all the time. Look at a cloud for example. Your brain makes a connection with something you know and tries to find the link. So what on earth has this got to do with social media?
How can I prompt social media engagement?
Well, if you haven’t guessed already memory and association is what any social marketer needs to bear in mind when posting on social media. Ask yourself, is this tapping into the sub conscious? Will any viewer make a link, an association which provokes an action like a click, share or like? How can I prompt them to do that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFMLGEHdIjE
We make sense of things by relating them to our own lives. So consider how this works in social media engagement
We pepper our conversations with phrases like, ‘Oh, that reminds me of….’ ‘I used to have one just like that….’ The last time we had something like that….’ And so on. Once the connection is made then quite often people will act even if they just want to check their hunch. This is about engagement.
Emotion after all drives behaviour whether we like it or not
I see a snake and I feel profound fear, whereas I see chocolate and I want to eat it. I see a lemon and my mouth waters. By the same token I see a post by someone who shares my posts regularly and I have to stop to see what is being said. I see a name on Facebook and know what she shares is worth investigating, so I do.
Therefore it is easy enough to associate an emotion with your brand. What emotion do you have when you consider brands such as Coca Cola, Red Bull or McDonalds for example?
So what if you were to consider some of the most usual experiences that people can associate with almost everywhere in the world? Could you maybe leverage some of that kind of emotion in your posts? If you use video you have even more impact. After all, images are so important to memory. If you base your posts on specific types of emotion people will immediately associate that emotion with your brand or product. Even if you do have to resort to a Meerkat!
Watch this amazing video about working memory right here
