Exploring the line between persuasion and manipulation.
Facebook’s pages platform reaches only six percent of a brand’s followers; and it’s headed down to one to two percent.
If businesses want to make sure that people see their content, the best strategy is, and always has been, paid advertising.
Manipulation isn’t necessarily pejorative; it’s a very common and fairly benign tactic.
Typical manipulations to influence behavior include:
– Dropping the price
– Running a promotion
– Using fear Peer pressure
– Aspirational messages
– Promising innovation
The theory that people want to engage with brands online and share their enthusiasms with their friends and that their friends will share their enthusiasms with other friends through social media channels has turned out to be an infantile fantasy.
In fact, what social media sites are rapidly becoming is just one more channel for traditional paid advertising.
Email remains a more effective way to acquire customers than social media.
Nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.
When someone chooses to share your content, this demonstrates two things.
1) The reader has found enough value in your content to recommend it to the people he or she knows.
2) Now more people are likely to read your post. After all, at the end of the day, people would rather take recommendations from their friends, than from a brand.
Once you see your shares sky-rocketing, you’ll know you’re doing something right.
