Everyone who’s seriously looking to grow their social media following, knows that there is a psychological element to keeping followers engaged on your profile. If you’re looking to take your social media content to the next level, you’re going to want to use these psychological techniques to keep people glued to your posts

Hidden Technique #1: The Reciprocity Principle

The Reciprocity Principle is a technique I learned from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: Psychology of Persuasion. It pulls on the psychological tendency that human beings tend to repay what we pay back what we receive from others. 

Have you ever invited someone over for dinner and they brought some wine or flowers as a thank you? I bet you felt happy to receive the gift and felt even happier to have that person (or people) in your home.

On the flip side, have you ever had anyone not bring you a house warming gift? How did that make you feel? It probably wasn’t a big deal, but I’m sure you felt less warm to that person than you did to the person who brought you a thoughtful gift they knew you would enjoy.

So how does this translate to high performing social media content?

The Solution: Offer a High Degree of Value in Your Social Media Content

You have probably heard popular marketers talk about ‘giving value’ with content. But there’s a strategic reason why. When you offer a lot of value to your audience, you initiate the reciprocity principle.

There are 3 broad-level ways to create content:

1. Educational content that teaches them something new or useful
2. Inspirational content that allows them to explore what could be and what’s possible
3. Entertaining content that amuses them or makes them laugh

But there’s a better way to say this: people respond to kind behaviour. When you take the time to create amazing content that offers a high degree of value, people will feel significantly more motivated to like, share, and save your content.

I’d love to tell you there’s some unique ‘hack’ to creating valuable social media content, but unfortunately, creating high-value content will always take a degree of work. If you want to level up your content quickly, I do have a solution for you. Download my custom branded templates. These contain psychological triggers that hook your audience in and elevate the level of value they get from your content. 

Luckily, most of your competitors won’t put in a high level of thought or work towards their content and once you find what works for you and your brand, it becomes much easier to navigate.

Hidden Technique #2: Opt for Hypnotic Words

Words carry power. While humans don’t appreciate being lied to, they certainly prefer a glamorized depiction of the truth. 

So what does this mean for your business?

Opt to use words in your social media posts that allow your followers to dream of their ideal scenario. Whether that’s driving a Lamborghini or having soft glowy skin.

For example, telling your followers to “imagine lounging at the beach feeling completely stress-free.” In this example, the words ‘imagine’ and ‘feeling’ are hypnotic because they get people to imagine their ideal scenario. 

Relaxing at the beach and feeling stress-free is going to be highly persuasive to someone feeling stressed. They’re going to want to know what needs to happen in order to get there

This is where your value-filled post should come in to save the day!

Another way to hypnotize people with your social media content is to get them to remember a time when they felt their best. In this case, “remember” is the hypnotic word that gets people to tap into their right brain.

Finally, you want to take advantage of repetition. In many cases, after you’ve had people remember or imagine their ideal scenario, you want to keep repeating the benefits to them.

In the case of Instagram, you’re provided with 10 opportunities to repeat your message. Slides 2-4 should build up the desire to get to the “meat and potatoes” of your post.

This technique is incredibly simple because you are essentially just repeating the same message in different words for the first few slides.

Hidden Technique #3: Use powerful words in your hooks

Did you know that 80% of articles aren’t read past the headline? That means 20% of articles, blogs, social media posts, and emails aren’t read if the headline doesn’t appeal to them.

So what does it mean when it comes to your social media posts?

It means that your hook - whether it’s in a video or a carousel post, needs to grab attention right away.

If it doesn’t, the user will scroll past it and the algorithm will interpret that feedback as a low quality post and suppress it from users.

Luckily, powerful words are easy to come by, here’s a list of words you can add to your copy that will make it stand out:

You can also get a grade on your headline by inputting it into CoSchedule’s free headline analyzer tool. Try to get a score of 80 or higher!

In Summary

Use these psychological techniques when you go to create your social media posts. Utilizing psychological principles can help you level up your social media game and attract more followers to your account.

If you want some done-for-you social media templates that have these principles included, sign up for my Exclusive Instagram Accelerator Training.

See you there!