Here is my second guide for people new to social media and marketing. In this deck we will be looking at how humans have evolved to want to share funny links with one another, why some things are more pleasurable for the brain to look at than others and how to put that all together to make some wonderful link-bait that drives up your click-through rates. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to fire them to me via Twitter @thecharmofbirds

1. Social Media Psychology for entry
level brands and absolute noobs

2. Why are people social anyway and not
loners like Mad Max or Amelie?
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Once upon a time when humans were new we
learned that by staying in groups we were less likely
to be destroyed by nature
This also enabled us to pool our skills and
knowledge and make life a bit better for everyone
else through selfless acts like providing food for
older or weak people who in return could babysit
when the younger folk went out to do drums and
eat peyote
Over time it became a trait of humans that no
matter how introverted you are or dislike every
other human, you function within a society in some
way or other because that’s the best way to ensure
your survival and happiness
It also became clear that some people were less likely to
get murdered by sabre-toothed tigers and more likely to
reproduce for one reason or another, so their
characteristics became things that others wanted to
imitate

3. Why do we copy more successful
and attractive people?
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Lots of creatures have a really good system where we
pass on experience and solid reasoning to one
another, often across generations. However, we have
become revisionist by nature because while experience
is great, it can sometimes guide us to make bad
decisions and by being adaptable you’re less likely to
die
Most humans learn from an early age that trying to pick
up fire is really harsh and that stays constant. We don’t
however know the social nuances about things like
public displays of emotion and when we are allowed to
punch people in the face. Even as adults we need to
observe and revise these things as we enter culturally
unfamiliar territory. We learn this through observation
We copy the behaviour identified as more attractive
because we want to be closer to the centre of the
social circle where the popular people are, because
evolution tells us they are more likely to be live long
Davey Beckman

4. How do these social circles look as
a cool visual graphic?
Cool people in
The Inner circle
Successful people
who share similar
key characteristics
Wasteoids

5. So how come we spend so much
time bitching about celebs?
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Aside from first hand experience, the best way to learn
how to avoid death and get pregnant is from other
people’s experiences
When people critique the behaviour of others they are
setting the scene, making a judgement and then
checking others to make sure that their understanding
of the situation was socially correct or acceptable
Negative stories are more attractive both when
discussing those close to us and celebrities because
there are often direct actionable lessons we can learn
from the consequences of other people’s wrongs
It’s a lot easier to say why someone lost their
husband/wife than to map out the thoughts and
actions involved in finding someone else to love forever
Through checking with our peers we can also gain an
understanding of when doing something normally seen
as wrong can be acceptable, or how forgiving we are to
people who’ve done those things

6. I’m lost, what does this have to do
with Facetweet?
Psychologists has identified that people often share stuff
on social media because of one of three main motivations:
Altruistic
• Helping others
• Displays of loyalty
• Things that they
find entertaining
• Awesome sales
Selfish
• Raising your
reputation
• Drawing attention
to yourself
• Replenishing low
self-esteem
Group norm
reassurance
• Testing what is acceptable
within your social group
• Checking boundaries for
self-censorship
• Stereotyping Chelsea fans

7. Do you have any examples of these
kinds of thing?
Altruistic

8. Do you have any examples of these
kinds of thing?
Selfish

9. Do you have any examples of these
kinds of thing?
Group norm

10. How does this help me sell tat to
strangers?
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It’s really important to remember that people are much more
likely to care about something or trust the recommendation
when it comes from a friend or family member than a paid
advert
If you know the triggers that make people share you can
develop content that presents things you want to draw traffic
to in such a way that people are more likely to share it with
people who are more likely to give care about your stuff
Once upon a time it was recognised by loads of people that it
was a great idea to promote regular discounts and/or
giveaways as a way to reach a broader audience for a lower
spend than other forms of advertising. However it’s become
clear that doing that only establishes a customer’s
relationship with you with your products at a diminished
value
This means they are likely to be pretty unresponsive to you
selling them something at twice the price to what they paid
for it, more so if they expect another sale to come up soon.
By being relevant you can establish a full price connection

11. How do I make things look better
through psychology?
Gestalt psychology is basically the idea that to understand human behaviour you
have to look beyond the little bits at the bigger picture. Yeah, I know that sounds
hard. But through the work of David Blaine and Derren Brown we now have a good
understanding of it.
The brain likes to organise things and do some decisions out the back of the shop so
it doesn’t get in the way of the important bits at the front like thinking about dinner
and watching football. Because of this it makes assumptions that you don’t even
recognise doing
Here are some really cool examples I will explain in the next couple of slides

12. What the hell is this Gestalt
psychology?
When you look at this you probably see a Dalmatian. What you
actually see is a bunch of lines and shapes. Your brain does this
because it likes to break down complex patterns into simple rules
If I asked you how this image would continue, you would probably
draw the same shape repeating rather than the top line turning
into a swirl and the bottom drawing Bart Simpson. This is because
the brain groups shapes together and aligns perceptual wholes to
the object

13. What the hell is this Gestalt
psychology?
Similarly to the picture you’d probably say this was a circle with
some bits missing rather than just some random lines. This is
because for closure your brain puts individual shapes together and
our perception fills in the gaps
Another of the grouping laws says that when we put a random
group of objects together we look for similarity and sort the ones
that match together. Here you probably see six lines of balls
formed together into a square. If we removed the two middle
lines you’d further see the remaining balls as columns because of
their proximity

14. How can I use this to make things
good?
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Look at the Olympic logo on the right and think about
everything that’s on the previous slides. It’s beautiful, non?
Now think about your logos and the way you display your
brand visually in communications, does it look as simple and
pretty?
You’re probably thinking “Well, no. Because we have text
and other junk” In that case look at how your text is
displayed and the fonts you use. You do have choice fonts
and a decent visual approach that follows through all your
communications, right?
Your header images, profile pictures and pictures used on
your social media pages probably won’t look like the Olympic
logo, but make sure you take into heart the principles of
making things not look awful
Hopefully this also gives you an idea of how if you present
things in a certain way the human brain thinks they are more
attractive and worthy of it’s time. This leads nicely to the
next section

15. Can psychology make my links
more clickable?
Number or
trigger
word
Adjective
Link key
words
Deliverable
promise
Killer link
bait
This is a really effective way of seducing people to click links. However, it is also
really, really horrible when written out properly and no doubt you see people using
this formula a dozen times or so a day in click-bait articles people share anyway.
You would be much better off by not treating your audience like dogs and working
on your own formula for increasing clicks by testing out ideas and learning from
what happens

16. How do trigger words and numbers
work? (“It’s not what you think!”)
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The human brain really likes direct communications or to put things in some kind of
order. This means that if you can use a trigger word that people find attractive, or
take the blog post your linking to and turn it into a numerical number of points rather
than four paragraphs of words, it catches the eye more
No doubt you see the same trigger words used over and over again, you may not
recognise them as such. Basically they are words that increase intrigue or promise
big pay-offs that everyone likes; be that time saving, something entertaining, etc
Secret
Amazing
Fun
Effortless
Weird
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Disgusting
Horrific
Mind-blowing
Shocking
Unbelievable
Incredible
Free
Cheap
Bizarre
Brilliant
“5 Amazing lifehacks my awesome product can do to save you time and money”
reads a lot better than “Here’s a link to my blog about how my product can help free
up your timetable”

17. Why do I need adjectives?
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Advertising companies often use and abuse adjectives to add
value to their brand in a way that is relevant for the audiences.
However certain key words were identified a long time ago that
carry significant weight but don’t usually help distinguish a brand
“New and improved” is a category of adjectives like this. People
generally like to know about new things and improvements made
to existing stuff. So as a result you’ll often see adjectives related
to these bundled about. Words like “fresh” also help convey that
something is at it’s best right now
“Market leading, better & best” are the type of adjectives used
to convey how amazing and good your thing is
These are the types of words you will use primarily in your link
bait. They add little to the brand, but catch eyes and that’s what
you want
Think of how M&S advertise their food with long lists of
adjectives that turn a pork sandwich into a “heart warming 90
day smoke cured, organic, wild Derbyshire boar, wind harvested
acorn fed life experience wrapped in bread.” That’s awesome as
far as brand goes and cool when it’s read out by someone on a
TV advert, but it doesn’t translate to social media links

18. What are my link’s key words?
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Look at where you’re sending people to and what values that has which translate
well into the wider messaging of your stuff
For example you wouldn't sell a link to your range of organic baby clothing with
“5 Unbelievable Things Children Who Didn’t Wear Organobabe Did To Get
Expelled!”
Sometimes being cleaver can work perfectly, however a lot of the time trying to
get witty can just result in confused consumers. For example this will probably
make you laugh, but I doubt anyone clicking would be looking for a guide to
making sure they were wearing the right sized bra
Disgusting! Real life situations where
poorly fitted underwear lead to mindblowing deaths!

19. What is a deliverable promise?
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If you’re going to promise someone the moon on a stick, you should make sure
that they get the moon on a stick
Don’t promise outrageous discounts and MEGA MASSIVE SALES if people clicking
through only find 3 items in your entire store discounted 10%. Similarly if you
promise to shock and amaze, make sure the content on the other end does
In a more general sense, if you’re going to ask people to click on something to go
somewhere else, try to make sure your content adds value to their lives.
Otherwise if you spend too much time hammering them with the poor stuff, they
probably won’t bother clicking the amazing ones you post later
“heart warming 90 day smoke
cured, organic, wild Derbyshire
boar, wind harvested acorn
fed, experience wrapped in bread.”

20. Want to enter my inner circle of
fame, money and sex?
http://baggsy.co.uk/
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