7 Persuasive Social Media Optimization Tips for Audience Impact

7 Persuasive Social Media Optimization Tips for Audience Impact Want to improve your online presence? Persuasive social media optimization is the way you’re going to engage and convert your audience.

Social media has given digital marketers an opportunity to reach customers without really forcing products and services on them.

How so?

By engaging your customers when their not actively searching for your products, and in order to convert them – you have to persuade them.

This is where persuasive social media optimization comes into play.

The whole world is on social media now and to reach your target audience, you’ve gotta be smarter than other marketers in your niche.

To do this, you need to master the art of persuasion to optimize social media posts and influence your audience.

Now we’re going to look at 7 bonus tips to get more insight into social influence…

 7 Art of Persuasion Tips to Influence Your Audience
7 Ways to persuade people using the book “Influence” by Robert Cialdini
Selling your products or services online is all about persuasion and many of the best online marketers today are putting the practices found in the book “Influence” to work for them. Find out how…

The six principles of persuasion as stated in the “Influence” could always be applied in practice.

However, the principles are easy to read, not necessarily easy to transform in to application to persuade people to make a purchase.

Following are some ways that are based on the same principles described in this book to be utilized in persuasive social media optimization:

1. Grooming people: – wonder what that means?

   You would be surprised at how simple yet effective grooming can be.

   Before ever trying to ‘promote’ your product you need to create a mind-set of acceptance for your brand and product.

   This is a trick popular with professional con artists and magicians. e.g. if in a subsequent sentences, the words “foot” and “ball” are used and the third sentence carries a question to think of a sport, a vast majority of people end up with “football”.

   Similarly, you can use small word association to influence potential customers.

2. Use reciprocity: – give and you shall receive!

   The principle of reciprocity is actually very easy to understand. All you need to do is give your customers something with perceived value, such as a piece of information, a service, a gift or anything else that would be considered as a favor. This will leave your customers with a sense of obligation.

   There are a number of ways that you can apply the favor principle to your online business. For instance, you can give away products, discounts and samples.

3. Establish scarcity: – I want it, I need it.

   The Scarcity Mindset Makes Us Focus On The Things We Don’t Have.

   When you’re in a “scarce” frame of mind, you think more about your wants than your haves. This is one of the major marketing upsides of the scarcity mindset. It makes people act.
   

   An article in Influenceology offers a standard explanation of this technique:

   Scarcity refers to any limitation placed on a product or service with the goal of increasing sales through pressure placed on the consumer. The fear of missing out causes people to make the decision to buy. The limitation can be a time-based deadline or a limited quantity, often mixed with some kind of perceived benefit for acting quickly, like a reduced price, a bonus item, or an increase in status (you got in, where others missed out).

   When there is an apparent abundance of an item, there’s no urgency to buy it.

4. Utilize social factor: – 3rd Party Credibility

   The impact of your approach is dependent on two things;

   Firstly, your equation with the target audience.

   Secondly, how well your words are in sync with reputable sources like major brands, accredited intellectuals and so on. Hence, it is wise to keep a few names handy in advance whose words and line of thinking match your approach. You could always sneak in a reference of the same to add credibility to persuade people better.

5. Beauty of symmetry:

   
   Most people buy not a product they buy the sales person.

   What this implies is that most people buy what they like, with respect to the seller and not the product.

   People could like your product, but until then they only know the person influencing them to buy.

   People are more likely to appreciate you when they find similarity in thoughts and opinions with you. Hence, even if you want to say something in contrast to their belief, agree to disagree. Choose an appearance that your target audience would like.

   All these elements together enhance the probability of their being persuaded by you successfully.

6. Appreciate and compliment:
   

   If you want people to appreciate your thoughts, appreciate theirs first.

   And you need not fake it; even a difference of opinion can receive appreciation. When people see that you appreciate even an opinion different than yours, they are more likely to listen to you carefully with acceptance. That is the best time to talk about how your offering could benefit them.

7. Use authority:
   

   Authority is a little different than social influence.

   Speaking with authority about your product is one thing, but being able to reference other well-known authorities in your industry is a true source of influence.

   We are more likely to be persuaded to complete an action if the request comes from a source that we view as credible or in a position of power.

   A great example in eCommerce would be expert reviews.

   This is because we believe that this credible source must have our best interests in mind, even though that is not always the case.

If you sell products, I highly recommend reading Robert Cialdini’s book. It’s a quick read and provides valuable insight into the principles of motivating your customers to a purchase.

All of the simple ways mentioned above can be applied to persuasive social media optimization.

Now we’re going to look at 7 simple ways to optimize social media posts to persuade customers and boost your business’s online presence:

Persuasive Social Media Optimization Starts at the Account Level   1. Let your customers decide the platform

Don’t just jump onto a platform because you think it’s popular.

Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all work differently and promise different results for different types of products. Having a well-structured approach on just one or two platforms is way better than creating up hasty strategies on six different networks.

Identifying the most rewarding social media platform will depend on the kind of product you are selling.

Understand your consumer base and know where you are more likely to find them.

If, for instance, you sell wedding gowns, Pinterest and Instagram would be more recommendable as they are designed to favor photo posts, if you sell SEO services then targeting marketers or even design agencies on Facebook is a better way to go.

2. Create incentives through giveaways

Engaging with your consumers is understandably an effective way to draw their interest to your product.

However, if you want to stand out from the rest of the marketer pool, you have to make the interactions rewarding.

For example; if you need to ask questions about your website or product, you could reward the customer with the quickest answer with a gift.

You can also attach giveaways to retweets and shares where anyone who shares your post gets an automatic entry into a giveaway.

Plainly engaging with customers in the comment section is essential, but it’s just not the persuasive motivator it once was. Marketers have overused it, and there is simply no excitement in one-on-one “chats” with social media admins anymore.

3. Use hashtags

Twitter’s hashtag invention is a beneficial tool for marketers. You can embed hashtags in each of your posts to make it easy for users to locate your posts on Twitter and potentially click on your links.

When used strategically, trending hashtags are a key to persuasive social media optimization and most certainly encourage engagement and improve the ROI of your marketing investment. Try to find relatable hashtags and, where possible, tweak your tweets accordingly and align them with trending hashtags.

4. Post frequently

According to a study,

70 percent of marketers said they post about their product on social media at least once a day.

19 percent said they post three or more times while a meager 16 percent said they post less than once a day.

The fact that such a huge percentage of businesses are so active on social media means that you could easily be dwarfed if you don’t up your game. You cannot afford to go against the grain here if you are still trying to build your brand recognition.

Post as frequently as five times a day even if it means altering some of your posts a little bit and reposting them. This is the best way to attract new consumers that are not familiar with your industry and are ready to try the first product that comes their way. Also, it allows you to redirect the competition to other aspects of your brand that you are better in.

5. Try visual content

With so many products at the disposal, potential consumers are likely to spend more time on visually appealing posts than plain writings. Use high-quality pictures and short videos to pass your message.

That said, avoid over-focusing images at the expense of targeting a specific audience. That is a backward tactic that will only attract the wrong people to your posts. Videos and images increase engagement, but how do you know the ones to use to resonate with the audience you are targeting?

These tactics work best if you know what your potential customers like, and it’s only essential that you invest in understanding them first.

6. Complete your social media profiles

Your about is the first thing users bump into when they come across your post on Facebook or Twitter. In this era, your social media accounts are considered your second websites and failing to provide sufficient information in your profile can give your rivals the edge.

Put up a logo of your company as your profile picture and add as much relevant information under it as possible. Give a superficial description of your business and what you sell with targeted keywords embedded in them. Provide links to important web pages on your website and provide your email address and phone number.

Search engines are indexing social network content nowadays, and the more detailed you are with your descriptions, the more visible you will be on the internet.

7. Use strong CTAs to increase engagement

As pointed out above, the first impression potential customers get lies in your social media profile. Just like in your web pages, however, some customers wouldn’t tell where to go next unless you have a strong call-to-action in your profile to guide them.

A call-to-action could direct readers to read a blog post, apply for a job, check out a new product on your website or see your updated portfolio.

Facebook has added a CTA feature on your page’s cover photo to enhance interaction between you and your audience. On other platforms, you can fix it at the end of your bio with a link to your website naturally embedded in it.

Regardless of the size of your brand, social media is an excellent place to create awareness of your product and get clicks to your site without breaking the bank. All you need to do is understand what works for your customers before getting down to action.

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by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company