Archive for year 2011
10 ways to use psychology to lure web customers
Aug 16th
I’ve been researching and thinking about the psychology of the social web and our Internet relationships. There are many common psychological techniques you can use in your every day Internet marketing. Here are a few ideas to ”psych” your visitors into spending more time on your website and your blog.
1) Social proof is king
In real life, “social proof” is the trappings of society that impart influence. A person’s height, a fancy car, a diploma … all help determine influence, subconsciously. Since we don’t have those physical clues in the online world, we look to “badges” like Twitter followers and Klout scores to provide a shortcut assessment.
With the density of information in today’s world, these badges are more important than ever. In fact they may be even more important than your real knowledge, experience and accomplishments. Strange but true. Think about your favorite blogger. I’ll bet you notice some of their badges like followers, AdAge rank, or tweets on a blog post, before you investigate their education or level of professional experience.
We make the same assessments about websites and blogs. If you see a lot of tweets and comments, testimonies and awards, you assume something good is going on there.
Another way to accomplish this on a website is product reviews and ratings. Make sure ratings and reviews are clearly displayed on your site or product pages. Allow users to include information about themselves such as their gender, name, location and occupation. This makes the reviews even more compelling since it can create a connection to the demographics of your site visitors.
2) Give web tourists a reason to become residents
In the first few seconds you have a visitor on your site, are you giving them a reason to stay a little longer to learn about you? This is commonly called a “call to action.” On my website, you can click to see free materials, download an eBook, watch videos, read case studies, listen to a podcast, read my blog … basically I give people lots of reasons to hang around by providing valuable material that would interest my target customer.
On my blog one of the most effective devices I have to help people stick around is the “Linked Within” app at the bottom of each post suggesting further reading. This dramatically increases time on the site and increases page views on my blog by about 8 percent.
3) Put the most important action at the top
When you’re plotting out your call to actions, put your most important one first. The idea behind this is simple: what comes first is unconsciously regarded as the best. I’ve been experimenting with this myself. One other consideration — if you’re stacking your calls to action down the right side of your page, keep in mind that the top right corner of your website is a blind spot. This is spooky but it really is true.
One time I was offering a free download at the upper right corner of my site. I was in a meeting with a web designer and was talking about the problem in front of a huge display screen of my website. I said “Without looking at the screen, can you tell me if I have a free download offer on my landing page?” Although we had been looking at the page all morning, he completely missed this element. So, highlight your best offers first, but watch where you place them!
4) Provide instant gratification
When deciding to make a purchase, we are often influenced by how fast we can have the product. Reduce or eliminate fields required to purchase or engage. The other day I was required to register to comment on a blog. FAIL!
In a famous experiment participants were asked to choose between getting $5 now or $40 at a later date. MRI scans showed that when people thought about getting the money right away, the mid brain, or emotional center of the brain fired up. Even if you’re not selling something, use words like “instantly” or immediately in your content and headlines.
5) Illusion of scarcity
When something has a limited amount to it, its assumed value increases. We will want it even more. Make your product/offering limited by showing a limited stock quantity or limited time frame. This is a common tactic that most Internet marketers and offline/online retailers use. And it works. Because we feel good when we gain objects of value.
6) Build reciprocity
Reciprocity is a big deal on the social web. I’m not sure it created influence, but adding up all these little low-impact “likes” and “tweets” can certainly create leverage over time. This is one of the oldest sales tricks in the book. When you give something away on your web site, it triggers a sensation of indebtedness in your visitor’s mind. You can give away things like free product add-ons, guidebooks, content, downloads, free shipping etc.
Studies show visitors are twice as likely to complete a survey form after they were given access to free useful information.
7. Be sexy
Sex sells. Always has. Always will. Even Zappos the online shoe store is using pictures of naked people in their ads. This is a powerful human motivator but I haven’t quite mastered this on my website! I’m not sure sex is what comes to mind when you read my blog. If it does, please let me know. I’d like to hear about that!
8. Speak to your visitor by using the word ‘You’
Let’s compare this simple website copy:
“This new web service has many built-in features that allow for photos to be uploaded, organized, and stored. Photos can be searched for with only a few steps.”
“You can upload your photos quickly, organize them any way you want to, and then store them so that they are easy to share with your friends. You can find any photo with only a few steps.”
Write as if you’re talking to a person sitting right next to you. She is your prospective customer. She is your blog reader. And she is your friend. Don’t be afraid to use slang or community lingo to connect to their thought processes. Communicate about what she needs, not what you sell. There’s a difference.
9) Get your visitors to make a commitment
Your goal is to drive people to take some action: buy, download, register, etc. And to do that, you need to convert visitors from lurkers to engaged participants. Even the simple act of writing, typing or signing something strengthens commitment to your website/company/brand. The more public the commitment, the stronger it will be.
Getting your visitors to commit to your website can be as easy as getting them to comment on your blog. Polls and surveys work equally well too because they make your visitors interact with you.
10) Use images that demonstrate similarity and attractiveness
Use images of attractive people who are similar to your target market’s demographic profile. People are most influenced by people they deem to be both attractive and similar to them. The brain is unconsciously sizing up people you see and their attractiveness can rub off on your website itself, much like how an attractive person in a cellphone ad makes the cellphone look more enticing.
This doesn’t just apply to images. Most Internet marketers know that in order to appeal to a certain group of people, you need a human face that will be the focal point of their empathy and connection. Hence, the widespread use of marketing personas.
I hope you’ve benefited from these ideas. If the article made you think, please consider sharing it with others and commenting below. Thanks!
The evolution of social media power and influence
Aug 14th
I was recently interviewed about Klout and social influence by Vinícius Cherobino of Galileu, a scientific magazine in Brazil. I thought his questions were especially good and wanted to share this content with you:
Galileu: How do you view the rankings and people’s influence score published on the Internet (such as Klout or Peer Index)? What are the main consequences of this process?
Schaefer: There are two quite interesting implications of this development. First, many people are upset over the fact that they are being publicly rated, evaluated and compared. The debates on this topic can be quite emotional! On the other hand, this is a historically important development for marketers. It’s certainly not a perfect system, but we are taking the first steps toward quantifying influence, or at least a small slice of it. Companies like Klout are in the silent movie stage. Let’s give them time to see how it works out.
We are currently seeing many companies creating their own influence rankings with their own methodology. How do you think this will evolve? Will it be a market with many players or only a few?
I think it will develop in several ways. Although in most industries there are frequently 2-3 strong competitors, on the Internet, typically just one company dominates a niche. We like to have companies compete for our money, but we don’t like it when they compete for our attention. Humans have limited time and attention and usually we focus on one platform over time. So I think a leading company will emerge. However, I think several niches could emerge too. The entry barriers are relatively low. So why wouldn’t we have applications rating teens, people in geographic regions, or single people?
After the evolution of influence scores, do you think it is possible to imagine every Internet user being judged by their position in the influence score (from possible employers to retail chains)?
There are limitless opportunities to use these scores. I heard of an interesting use where a company is looking at how connecting to people with high influence scores can affect the sentiment toward a company. It’s mashing up two fields. Learning who true influencers are is an incredibly useful tool for many companies in almost any industry.
You mentioned the beginnings of a caste system in the Internet through the scores. How deep can this system can be? Do you think that a regular user will be able to defend him/herself of that?
This is a development that I think will drive some crazy, and unfortunate, behavior. People who have high influence scores will get lots of valuable gifts, even trips and vacations. People with low scores will get nothing. What do you think will happen? The people who get nothing will try any crazy scheme possible to get something or they will become resentful of those who are getting the gifts. I recommend that people stay centered and just be themselves. However, I don’t think many people will follow that advice!
Some critics claimed that this kind of “influence ranking” tends to foster even more inequality on the web (VIPs have everything, regular users have nothing). How do you see this kind of critique?
Life is unequal. So it’s no surprise that the web is unequal. But here is another way to look at it. Today, only the famous celebrities get free vacations, cars and endorsement deals. But now lots of normal people who just happen to be an expert and influential in something can experience a little celebrity too. It’s a way for hard working people to get noticed and rewarded for their work too! Not everybody can be a movie star, but everybody can be influential in something and work hard to show it.
On the other hand, some defend the idea of democratization of influence. Not only politicians and actors, for instance, but regular users can fight for influence. What is your opinion?
I think this is definitely true. We are in the era of the citizen influencer. Everybody can have a voice. There are many common working people who can now be recognized for their authority. I think even I am an example of that. I’m not a pro athlete or celebrity. But I do work hard on my blog {grow} and it is making a difference in people’s lives. So, yes, I am a common person but I have influence too.
Apparently, there is a gap between online influence and offline influence. Will the technology be able to bridge this? Or do you think this will remain in separate arenas?
This is really the core of the online influence debate. As far as I can see into the future, I think there will always be some disconnect between offline and online behavior. However, with geo-location applications it is becoming more possible to tie online behaviors with say, going to a store or eating at a restaurant. This is being recorded and connected to conversations. Augmented reality will take us even further in that direction. So there will be a bigger online-offline connection than people can imagine, I think. The technology is moving us toward that connection, not away from it.
How can the users’ influence be combined with other types of data mining from social network sites? Could this mean more privacy concerns?
For the most part, the scores are being determined through public information like tweets and status updates. So it is aggregating and sorting information you are volunteering any way. In that respect I don’t think there will be additional privacy concerns but I do think the profiling that will occur is going to startle people. But that is occurring everywhere. If I type an email in Google, moments later ads related to the subject of my email appear. That sort of profiling is at the heart of these advertising models and it will just get much more detailed and granular.
This could be another step of celebrity culture developing into the internet?
I think people make celebrities into celebrities, not the Internet! We are already in a celebrity culture. The Internet simply amplifies it.
What do you think? How is power and influence being re-defined on the Internet? Are you more influential online or offline?
Social media gold lies in the inner circle
Aug 10th
By Neicole Crepeau, Contributing {grow} Columnist
As content marketing grows up one thing is becoming apparent: the real gold is in getting your post to the inner circle. Back in March, I blogged about the value of the content curator as a way to reach the smaller networks where friends share with friends. Recent research only validates the importance of getting your content into those smaller, close networks of friends and family.
Let’s look at the facts.
A recent AOL-Nielsen study showed that 23% of social media messages include content. 60% of that content is shared as a link back to a published piece. Another 36% is embedded in the share. In other words, people share content a lot, and the majority of the time they share it as a link.
What may surprise you, though, is that “overwhelmingly, people prefer to share content with friends and family.” Most of the sharing that people do isn’t to the public at large, but to their own smaller network of family and friends. (Though, a good quarter of people do share with colleagues regularly.)
In other words, most of the sharing that average folk do involves sharing to a limited set of relatively close friends and family.
Another study of sharing via apps on Facebook showed that auto-generated “broadcast” messages that appear in users’ social streams massively drive up user adoption of the application. When users added a personal message (like “Check out this cool app I found!”), adoption increased by another 98%. Messages in the users’ stream are 10 times more effective than banner ads for gaining adoption.
Again, content shared in the inner circle carries greater influence, especially if accompanied by a personal message.
The challenge is how to get your content into that inner circle? Most of us share our content with as large an audience as we can garner, or we share with influencers who have large audiences. We hope that enough of the audience will pass our content on so that, eventually, it gets shared by individuals with their close friends, family, or colleagues, increasing the chances that the content will actually be seen by our target customers.
It’s a pretty inefficient approach.
There are a couple of other factors, though, that change the picture.
People want to share information from people they trust. 38% of people say that this is the type of content they want to share the most. (That’s true of industry-specific content, too, by the way.) People are also more likely to click on links shared by someone they know. If that link is reshared to people who don’t know the original sharer, the click-through rate drops.
At the same time, when established influencers share links, they get far higher clickthrough rates than average users do (400% higher). If these influencers add a personal message, the rate is another 20% greater. These perceived experts are trusted, and garner results because of it.
People tend to share and click links in specific categories or genres, too. This study of Facebook sharing showed that “frequent linkers on Facebook have distinctive genre, topic and source patterns particular to their interests.” TechCrunch reports on another study that indicated, “When it comes to sharing, 80 percent of people share only one category of links and more than 70 percent will only ever click on one category, whether that is business, politics, or entertainment.“
So, the real strategy to get content into those valuable inner circles? Become a trusted source for content on specific topics, i.e., a content curator. Being a good content curator gives you a better chance of buying entry into the inner circles of large numbers of your target customers—and increases the likelihood that users will read the content that you share.
Neicole Crepeau is a partner in Coherent Interactive, which specializes in web, mobile, and social media design and implementation for small and mid-size businesses. You can read more of her original material at her blog, Coherent Social Media or on Twitter where she is @neicolec. This month, Neicole’s company will be releasing a new tool to help you become a better content curator. Called CurateXpress, our product will help you share better content, and get more value and a larger audience from it. So, follow @CurateXpress on Twitter or sign-up on our CurateXpress website to be notified when we launch the beta!
Illustration courtesy http://designmoo.com/
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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