Social media marketing is a difficult field to master. To truly master it, marketers must understand multiple fields of study.
People feel that social media marketing is simple to understand because everyone already uses social media. Sure, the concept is simple – be a good person, interact online, and monitor your brand.
The truth is that building a community is one thing, but getting them to do something is entirely a different story.
So what do smart marketers know that everyone else doesn’t? They know that understanding “marketing” by itself, means nothing. It’s when you bring together learnings and understanding from other fields do you fully master marketing.
Let’s explore a few important fields of study and just what they mean to a marketer…
Psychology: Why People Share
The idea that people share content online is a fundamental staple of social media. If people didn’t share things online, social media wouldn’t exist.
Understanding how and why people spread content means that social media marketers must learn the psychology of sharing. We have to know why things are shared and explore how to recreate results.
Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring underlying physiologicaland neurological processes. credit
Questions to Consider
- What drives people to share something?
- What kind of content will people share?
- How do consumers feel when they share content?
- How can a marketer generate a sharing atmosphere?
Anthropology – Understanding Culture Evolution
Social media didn’t appear out of the blue. It’s an cultural evolution and one that continues to change. Anthropologist explore how cultures and communities change. They want to know why cultures behave the way they do.
Anthropology’s basic concerns are “What defines Homo sapiens?”, “Who are the ancestors of modern Homo sapiens?”, “What are humans’ physical traits?”, “How do humans behave?”, “Why are there variations and differences among different groups of humans?”, “How has the evolutionary past of Homo sapiens influenced its social organization and culture?” and so forth. credit Bolds added by Samir
Questions to Consider
- What caused the growth of social media?
- How has the online culture evolved humanity?
- What can we expect from the future based on the current culture?
- What are the cultural norms when interacting online?
Sociology – Building Communities
Online networking and communities, definitely falls within the idea of sociology. It’s one of the most important understandings a social media marketer can have.
Learning how networks are created, how people interact within the network, and why they join in the first place defines the difference between a real marketer and one that’s just pretending.
Sociologist and good marketers are adept at collecting data, identifying trends, and analyzing outcomes.
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Subject matter ranges from the micro level of agency and interaction to themacro level of systems and social structures. credit
Questions to Consider
- Why do people create communities?
- How is influence gained within a community?
- Why does a node interact with a separate node?
- How do nodes connect within a society?
Neuroscience – The Drive to Buy
Marketers don’t need to be adept at neuroscience but instead need to understand the basics, especially when it relates to persuasion and buying.
The idea of neuromarketing isn’t a new one. Knowing what makes a person want to buy something or what kind of marketing works from a biological standpoint can be an important idea to understand.
The techniques used by neuroscientists have also expanded enormously, from biophysical and molecular studies of individual nerve cells to imaging of perceptual and motor tasks in the brain. Recent theoretical advances in neuroscience have also been aided by the study of neural networks. credit
Questions to Consider
- How does a brain react to good marketing?
- What does a person experience during the buying process?
- Which words or content will result in the best response?
- How can you maximize the sharing potential of your content?
Web Development – Building Hubs
If you’re an online marketer, you need to know the basics for coding HTML. You should also know your way around a cPanel, DNS, domain registration, and probably WordPress too. You don’t need a degree in computer science, but knowing how to setup a social media hub on your own domain is definitely an important skill to have.
Maximizing your branding potential means using your domain, hosting your own sites, and building blogs for brands. Learning the basics of web development means doing it yourself instead of having to outsource these simple tasks.
Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network) . This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development. credit
Questions to Consider
- How do I build and deploy a blog?
- How can I create a social media hub?
- What’s the process to installing WordPress?
- How do I register a domain and create a site?
English / Grammar – It’s All About Content
Content creation means writing and writing well. Even if you create video or audio content, proper grammar goes a long way. Social media success can depend on getting your point across in a way that is illustrative and compelling.
Marketers should at least know how to write in a distinct voice and without any major grammatical errors.
English grammar is the body of rules describing the properties of the English language. A language is such that its elements must be combined according to certain patterns. This article is concerned with (and restricted to) morphology, the building blocks of language; andsyntax, the construction of meaningful phrases, clauses and sentences with the use of morphemes and words. credit
Questions to Consider
- Does this article flow?
- Is our content voice exciting and humorous?
- Does this piece of content have any grammatical errors?
Final Thoughts
Social media marketing isn’t easy, it is not a simple medium to understand. Then again, marketing, as a field, isn’t simple to master. Each of the points outlined above are applicable to all marketers.
The barrier to entry is relatively low; anyone can become a social media marketer. The difficult part is mastering the marketing medium, recreating results, and evolving the strategy.
What do you think? Am I expecting too much from others? Did I miss a field of study that you think marketers should really understand? How do you keep up with learning everything? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
This was a really informative post. I would like to have more info on why people withhold info…
Have a great week!
What an interesting article! As a social media marketer at Bulbstorm, I often find myself wishing I had added a Psych major to my advertising degree. Understanding what motivates people is key to developing effective social media campaigns. Here’s an example of how we motivate people to interact with brands on Facebook by awarding them points for sharing ideas and participating: http://www.bulbstorm.com/blog/2010/so-you-want-to-build-a-100000-strong-facebook-fan-page-for-your-brand/
Great article. I totally agree! I wish I could go back to school and just learn the basics of all the majors I outlined above.
Thanks Linda. I totally agree. There were a few articles written this past week about how profit comes from giving information away. I’ll try and put together a wrap up post for you. Don’t forget to subscribe so you get the update once I write it.
Samir this was an excellent thought provoking post…as usual. Studying human behavior is just fascinating, I took some classes in Industrial psychology back in the day (87) at New School in New York City, and this brought back some great memories. Great discussions about what excites your clients. What drives people to share something? What kind of content will people share? etc. That’s the beauty of social media it’s constantly changing. The more I learn, the more things change and I have been drenched in it for over 20 years. I love it!
Marketing to clients hasn’t changed much, it’s just better now with Social media. It’s about the real life experiences people have around the product/services. Some things that can give you an edge is Credibility, Trust, Respect, Experience, Rapport, Influence, Connection, Social Proof, Reputation, Accountability, are some of the adjectives I would throw into the mix, which of course becomes the brand.
Thanks Gab! It’s so true, so much changes. It’s really crazy how in-depth marketing can be. People just don’t realize it.
I think this post does a really good job illustrating that social media isn’t just about making friends and talking up your business. Social Media isn’t just some “thing”, it’s a form of marketing and like traditional marketing it has a rhyme and reason to it. I like how your broke it up like this though. As internet marketers we often think of these things, but I don’t think we always break them apart and identify their purpose the way you have here. Great post Samir!
Thanks Mike! I agree people think about it all the time but never really outline it.
Hi Samir,
Thanks for sharing this informative piece of info.
Thanks Ken! I hope to update it and add more soon, definitely come back soon.