Mediaboss Marketing

Joe Smith wakes up one morning, walks out the front door of his apartment building, and takes a selfie with the three feet of snow that have piled up on his Toyota Camry. He tweets out the photo with the header OMG, that is A LOT of snow. He gets a few comments and retweets from friends. An hour later, he arrives at work, logs into Facebook and finds a friends link to http://www.theflatteringman.com. It turns out to be a prank website for a Push Up Muscle Shirt that is part of an Old Spice viral ad campaign. Joe likes and shares it.

By 11:30 a.m., Joe cant look at the Excel spreadsheet in front of him without getting cross-eyed, so he logs into LinkedIn, spots Fast Companys latest post, "What, When, And How To Share On Social Media," and sends it off to the other guys in his marketing department. They were just talking over social media strategies the other day, so Joe thinks the article could help the entire group.

Why did Joe share so much on social media? Why does anyone talk about experiences or products, or buy and become loyal to certain brands? Marketers have been on an endless journey to answers these questions--to take their art and infuse it with insights from the sciences. The difficulty is that the science is constantly evolving, and social media is introducing social interactions that dont have a precedent.

Joe, like billions of other people, is driven by an infinite set of biological, social, environmental, and technological phenomena. Among this set, we now know that dopamine cravings, social identity needs, and the evolution of human decision-making helped to turn our protagonists morning into a social marketing fiesta.

Typically, as marketers we want to know what content will engage the right audiences. But we dont often ask, what is the experience of someone who consumes and shares our brands content? What is Joe going through? We can begin to answer this question by diving into the neuroscience, social theories, and evolution biology behind social decision making.

When Joe and millions of other Americans wake up and tweet about the weather, Instagram their breakfast, or send a Snapchat, theyre getting one undeniable benefit: brain candy.

In 2010, researchers found that 80% of social media posts were announcements about peoples immediate experiences--Facebook status updates like Joes OMG that is A LOT of snow are the norm in social feeds. So in 2012, two researchers at Harvard were curious about this and decided to see how self-disclosure affects the brain.

It turns out that talking about our own thoughts and experiences activates the rewards system of the brain, providing that same shot of dopamine we get from sex, food, and exercise. The reward activity in the brain is also much greater when people get to share their thoughts with others.

Simply put, Joes wake-up tweet gave his brain pleasure.

So what about Joes decision to share the Old Spice ad?

Read more from the original source:
What Sex, Food, And Selfies Have To Do With Effective Social Marketing