• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Social Media Examiner

Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

  • 🔥 Free Newsletter
  • ⭐ FREE Web3 Course
  • 🗓️ Our Events
    • Social Media Marketing World (Mar 13-15)
    • Other Industry Events
  • 💡 Society
  • ⚙️ Tools
  • 🎙️ Podcasts
    • Social Media Marketing Podcast
    • Social Media Marketing Talk Show
    • Web3 Business Podcast
    • Our YouTube Channel
  • 🎯 Partner With Us
    • Podcast Sponsorship
    • Email Sponsorship
      • Email Newsletter
      • Dedicated Email Blast
    • Event Sponsorship
      • Social Media Marketing World
    • Tools Sponsorship
  • 👋 About Us
    • Our Story
    • Articles
      • Web3
      • Instagram Marketing
      • Facebook Marketing
      • YouTube Marketing
      • LinkedIn Marketing
      • TikTok Marketing
      • Expert Interviews
  • Search
  • Social Media Marketing World10th annual. Biggest industry event. Get the recordings!IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING

    6 Ways to Improve Twitter Engagement With Psychology Principles

    by Beth Gladstone / November 6, 2014

    social media how to

    Want to discover how to engage more users on Twitter?

    Have you considered using psychology techniques?

    Using some psychology tips in your tweets can make your Twitter feed more interesting and your followers will be more likely to engage with you.

    In this article I'll share six psychology tips you can use to create tweets that'll engage your audience.

    use psychology to improve twitter engagement
    Learn 6 ways use psychology to improve twitter engagement.

    Listen to this article:

    Where to subscribe: Apple Podcast | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

    You can also subscribe via RSS, Stitcher and iTunes. How to subscribe/review on iPhone.

    Why?

    The methods used to construct language and motivate customers often stem back to basic psychology, which is something used to persuade, engage and influence buyers.

    For example, using rhetorical questions at the start of Twitter ads or general “sales” tweets might work well for you. The tweets will engage users and make them consider how your product or service could benefit them.

    Here's how you can improve brand recognition, catch the attention of more users and increase the number of clicks, retweets and favorites that your tweets receive.

    #1: Take Advantage of the Bandwagon Effect

    Humans are innately social beings; we're born with a powerful psychological need to belong. This dates back to our ancestors who lived at a time when it was best to live in groups to ensure a higher chance of survival. Although society is different now, identification with and a sense of belonging to a group or organization are paramount to our well-being.

    Psychologists say that there are three primary groups that people aim to associate with: groups to which they'd like to belong (aspirational), groups that share the same ideas and values (associative) and groups to which they don't want to belong (dissociative).

    The language you use within your tweets can help users identify with one of the three primary groups. As a result, they're more likely to respond.

    yorkhornets tweet
    York Hornets used an aspirational tweet to encourage followers to become part of their team.

    In the aspirational tweet above, a cheer team recognized that some of their followers might want to try out for their team. It uses that desire to influence them to join their Facebook group.

    3 Days of World-Class Training—Zero Travel!

    Social Media Marketing World

    Travel to Social Media Marketing World off the table? Get all of the great content at a fraction of the price with an On-Demand ticket.

    That’s full access to recordings of every keynote, workshop, and session—the ones people travel thousands of miles to see. Don't wait. Get your On-Demand ticket and enjoy actionable content that you can watch anytime, anywhere.

    GET YOUR ON-DEMAND TICKET NOW

    The tweet below from the Huffington Post uses the values of association to engage users and encourage them to respond to an article. The tweet asks if followers agree with a strong statement. Users will reply, retweet and click through, as they try to decide which side they are on.

    huffpostuk tweet
    This controversial tweet uses the value of association to encourage followers to respond.

    The language used within tweets can also help customers make a dissociative connection to a competitor, and as a result, a better association with your brand. Technology companies often compare their product to a competitor's spec or an older product, and receive excellent engagement.

    samsung tweet
    In an attempt to gain customers Samsung compared two products, showing its product as the better choice.

    Anyone viewing the above image from Samsung would want to associate themselves with the newer camera and improved image, rather than the old one.

    Key Takeaway: Use Twitter to link your products and services to the three primary groups that customers respond to: aspirational, associative and dissociative. This will promote higher engagement, as well as cultivate users who have an affinity for your brand.

    #2: Use Image Psychology

    Many marketing and advertising studies have been conducted to see what type of images have the highest conversion or click-through rates. In nearly all studies, an image of a person, particularly a close-up of his or her face, increased the success of the ad or the web page.

    Apply this research to your Twitter strategy. Tweet images with faces. And be sure to have a nice headshot on your Twitter profile.

    37 Signals conducted a test that looked at different variations of the Highrise home page to see which one converted the most visitors to paying customers. They found that a page where they included an image of a person created a 102.5% increase in signups.

    landing page comparison
    The landing page on the right, which used a person's image in the design, increased signups by over 100%.

    Jakob Nielsen, an expert in user interface design, explains that “a huge percentage of the human brain is dedicated to remembering and recognizing faces. For many, faces work better than names.”

    To make your brand more recognizable to your Twitter audience, head up your profile image with the face of the company, such as the CEO or founder. This will make that person more recognizable to the audience, which is an especially important tactic for a new company.

    Even for a SaaS company, where there is no obvious “person” to sell, it's useful to include images of happy customers within individual tweets, particularly those linking to blog posts or case studies. The effectiveness doesn't really come from who is in the image, it's more about what the image conveys to the reader.

    Key Takeaway: Wherever possible, use an image in your profile picture to help users relate to the brand on a personal level. Also include images of users, customers or staff members within tweets and articles.

    Tools Resource Guide

    Looking for something to make your life easier?

    Discover the tools we recommend to drive engagement, save you time, and boost sales across your entire marketing funnel or business.

    Whether you need help planning content, organizing social posts, or developing your strategy, you’ll find something for every situation.

    FIND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE TOOL

    #3: Employ Self-Perception Theory

    Self-perception theory is how people develop attitudes based on their own behavior. For example, if you go to a few baseball games, you'll probably decide that you're a baseball fan. Then, you'll act in a way that reinforces your identity as a baseball fan. You'll buy baseball memorabilia and/or engage in conversation with other baseball fans.

    On Twitter users will retweet or favorite a tweet that they feel is consistent with their self-perception. For example, people who work in customer service or ecommerce would retweet or favorite the tweet below from KISSmetrics, because it fits in with how they perceive themselves and reinforces their identity on Twitter.

    kissmetrics tweet
    KISSmetrics used the self-perception theory in this tweet as a way to identify with their audience.

    Key Takeaway: Determine how your customers identify themselves and create tweets that are consistent with that vision. For example, provide marketing tips for marketers or development resources and tools for developers. This type of tweet will increase engagement and sharing.

    #4: Keep It Simple

    If there's one thing all great advertisers know, it's to keep messages simple. The wonderful thing about Twitter is that you don't really have a choice. A message has to be succinct to make sense and still fit into 140 characters.

    To increase engagement even more, try the short paragraph trick. Twitter allows you to create line breaks within your tweet, as shown below.

    tweet with a line break
    Line breaks are an effective way of drawing your reader's eye to your tweet.

    When you use short paragraphs, it moves your reader's eye down the page. This quickens the pace at which they read, makes your tweet look exciting and encourages a higher number of click-throughs to the article or image.

    The short paragraph approach can also be used to create humor and show a more human side of your brand. Take a look at what General Electric did when Twitter first released line breaks.

    generalelectric tweet
    Humor can be a great way to identify with your audience.

    Another simple trick is to repeat the language you use within your tweets to create a narrative that users can follow. Business-card designer Moo identified with and engaged users who have a side business through their hashtag campaign: #bynightiam.

    moo tweet
    Moo's #bynightiam campaign is an excellent example of repetition done well.

    Key Takeaway: Use short paragraphs to build suspense and gain more click-throughs on your articles. Also, come up with hashtags or certain phrases and repeat them throughout a series of tweets or for a specific time span to increase brand recognition. One only needs to think of hashtags like #throwbackthursday and #flashbackfriday to see how well a campaign like this can work.

    #5: Use Reverse Psychology

    While big companies often try to tell customers what to do or think, some of the most successful advertisers are those who do the opposite through the form of reverse psychology.

    HubSpot is one B2B brand that utilizes this trick when tweeting links to their blog posts such as the one below.

    hubspot tweet
    Reverse psychology can be a great way to attract readers.

    When you tell people not to read something, it's likely that many more will be enticed to click through, regardless of whether they fit the criteria told to read it or not. Note: Don't use this tactic too often or else you may be accused of click-baiting (giving the readers too little information in an attempt to get them to click).

    Key Takeaway: When used sparingly, reverse psychology can be a great tactic to increase click-throughs and engage users.

    #6: Use Initial Caps for Readability

    According to a study by Conductor, when given a variety of ad headlines from which to choose, ranging from all caps to all lowercase to sentence case, 64% of users favored sentence case. (The study defines sentence case as where the first letter of each primary word is capitalized. It's commonly known as initial caps or title case.)

    conductor study data
    Users prefer ad headlines that are in sentence case (initial caps), as opposed to all caps or all lowercase.

    Buffer uses initial caps each time they send a tweet that promotes one of their blog articles, and it seems to work well for them.

    buffer tweet
    To engage readers, Buffer employs initial caps when they tweet blog articles.

    The use of initial caps is also said to increase reading speed, so a user needs less time to take in your tweet. This is backed by a series of studies by James Cattell, in which letter and word examples were given to study participants for a very brief amount of time (less than 10 milliseconds). From this, he found that the participants could accurately recognize the words more than the individual letters, a phenomenon he named the “word superiority effect.”

    Key Takeaway: Use initial caps in your tweet, particularly if the tweet is promoting the headline of a blog article. This helps attract more readers and improves the speed at which your audience can digest the headline.

    Conclusion

    It's easy to always create the same type of tweets without thinking about why a user may click or retweet them. It's more effective to take the time to formulate a Twitter marketing strategy and create tweets that speak to your users.

    What do you think? With what types of tweets do you get the best response? Have you used any advertising tricks to improve your tweets? What are your best Twitter tips? Comment below and let us know.

    Get Your FREE Course: Web3 for Beginners

    Web 3 for Beginners

    Curious about Web3, but don't know where to start or who to trust?

    Introducing Web3 for Beginners, a course taught by Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Examiner.

    Learn the basics of Web3 and apply it to your business with this FREE comprehensive course.


    CLICK HERE TO GET FREE ACCESS

    Tags: Twitter, Twitter Ads

    About the authorBeth Gladstone

    Beth is Marketing Manager at Twilert, a Twitter monitoring tool that sends you realtime alerts when your keywords are mentioned on Twitter. Follow them on Twitter @twilert
    Other posts by Beth Gladstone Âť

    Get Social Media Examiner’s Future Articles in Your Inbox!

    Get our latest articles delivered to your email inbox and get the FREE Social Media Marketing Industry Report (39 pages, 50+ charts)!

    Industry Report Cover

    Worth Exploring:

    Facebook

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Instagram

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    YouTube

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Linkedin

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Web3

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Social Media Marketing Industry Report

    Get Free Report →

    Social Marketing Trends

    The data you've been missing!

    Need a new plan? Discover how marketers plan to change their social activities in the 14th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It reveals what marketers have planned for their social activities, content marketing, and more! Get this free report now and never miss another great article from us. Join more than 400,000 marketers!

    Enter your email to get
    our free report:


    Footer

    Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
    Copyright © 2023 Social Media ExaminerÂŽ
    All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.

    Helpful Links

    • About us
    • Our content via email
    • Our podcasts
    • Our YouTube channel
    • Our live show
    • Our industry report
    • Sponsorship opportunities
    • RSS
    • Accessibility