If you want to leverage your social media presence to find more leads, it's important to remember your leads are human beings. Your leads have their own lives, thoughts, feelings and motivations, just like you have yours. It might seem transparent, but acknowledging the humanity of your audience is essential to social media success.
So, how do we take what we know of human behavior and combine it with our social media strategies? Among myriad psychological theories, social learning theory is a simple place to start.
Social learning theory: Seeing & doing
Social learning theory, also known as social cognitive theory, began with Albert Bandura in 1977. He proposed that when it comes to human social learning, there are some specific factors present in the learning process. According to Bandura's social learning theory, most human behavior happens through observation, imitation and motivation.
In short, humans learn by observing and imitating other humans. While not quite as simple as "copycat behavior," this trifecta of concepts can be extremely helpful in online social interactions.
The human behavior of your audience
How can we use what we know about human learning to strengthen our business strategies and find more leads? Bandura argued it's not enough to simply observe something. Focused attention on the subject and the ability to retain the information are essential to learning.
In social media terms: it doesn't matter what you post if it isn't attention-grabbing and memorable.
The next step in the learning process, according to Bandura, is imitation or reproduction of the observed behavior. This could translate to something simple like retweeting, sharing or using a trending hashtag. We observe social media behavior and reproduce it ourselves.
From the marketing perspective, imitation and reproduction are an important goal in your social media strategy. After all, engagement rate is calculated through data on impressions and interactions with your online activity. However, those likes and shares won't happen if your audience isn't motivated to do so.
The question becomes: how do you motivate your audience? You must find a way to encourage mere observers to engage and eventually do business with you.
Learning from positive behavior on social media
Think about your own experience on social media. How does your personal desire to do business with a brand or individual depend on their online behavior? Do you get a good feeling from their Tweets, their LinkedIn posts and their Instagram stories?
When applying Bandura's social learning theory to social media interactions, you can encourage and predict a person's behavior based on your own. Simply put, the more positive behaviors you exhibit online (like sharing quality content or starting conversations) the more likely your audience will want to join you.
This not only helps you get more leads, it helps you get more qualified leads. An audience member who has learned from your behavior is more likely to stay engaged with you and your business.
Putting it all together
You don't have to be a social psychologist to excel in your social media strategies. You do, however, have to remember to interact with your audience as a fellow human being. By remembering these concepts of observational learning, you can gain a better insight into your audience's social media behavior - and turn your insight into quality leads.
