If You Don't Understand Psychology, You Don't Understand Social Media

If you want your content to perform better, all you have to understand is human psychology. This is the number one thing that separates the great creators from everyone else. And if you can learn this one thing, there is absolutely zero chance you will fail in the content game.

So, in this video, I'm going to walk through exactly how to use psychology to hack a viewer's brain into watching your videos. Now, there are eight main psychology principles when it comes to content. I'm going to break down each one, how it works, why it works, and the exact tactics for how you can use it for yourself.

By the way, if you don't know me, I'm Callaway. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views.

And if there's one thing that helped me grow super fast on both social media and YouTube, it's understanding psychology. All right. Now, the first psychology principle is called desire mapping.

And this really is the foundational piece for how all of human psychology works. All right. Here it is.

Every human has base desires. Typically, these desires map back to money, time, health, and status. I call these the four horsemen of desires.

Typically, this is the root of what everyone wants. Now, human behavior is wired to make you take actions that unlock those desires. For example, if I want more money, I'm going to figure out what actions I need to take so I can make more money.

This is how base human behavior works. Now, the main actions a human can take to unlock those desires are to spend time or to spend money. Those are the two main inputs.

So, really, most human behavior boils down to this. spending time or money to try to get more time, more money, more health, or more status. And now, that sounds pretty obvious, but that fundamental equation is critical to understanding exactly how human behavior really works.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with getting people to watch your content? When a viewer watches something, they're paying with their time. This video is free, so it doesn't cost any dollars, but you're paying with your time and attention.

So, the question really is, why do you ever spend any time watching any educational content? And the answer is you do it because you believe that time investment will help you unlock one of those four desires. The truth is you're watching this video right now because you believe it will help you learn how to get more views on your content.

And if you do that, you'll grow a following. And if you grow a following, you'll eventually unlock influence and make more money. That is why you're watching, whether you realize it consciously or not.

And this really is the psychology secret for why anyone watches any educational content ever. They believe that time in will eventually equal skills and desires out. Now, because I know this is how your brain works, I've engineered the title, the thumbnail, the intro, and the storytelling to specifically trigger that desire loop.

In other words, I've manipulated you into watching because I already know what you want. And that is desire [music] mapping. I figured out what you desire and then frame my content in the optimal way so that it makes you opt in to thinking it will help you get it.

And that's the big psychology trick happening in content, especially with anything that's educational. All you have to do is get someone to trust that if they keep watching, they will get closer to their desired outcome. But here's where it all breaks.

As soon as they feel like spending more time watching will not get them closer, they're going to bounce immediately. It's not that they get bored, it's that they lose trust that the rest of the video is actually going to help them. So, in that spirit, for the rest of this video, I'm going to walk through seven more psychology tactics that will get viewers to trust your content will help unlock their desires.

Because if you can get them to trust that, they will be watching forever. All right. Now, the second psychology tactic is called the light bulb effect.

And here it is. The more someone understands what you're saying, the faster they will trust you. And this is because when people understand things, they feel smart.

And when they feel smart, they also think you're smart because you're the one that made them feel that way. It turns out people hate feeling dumb. and they don't trust people that they can't understand.

And so for you in your content, if you're trying to maximize speed to trust, you need to increase the viewer's absorption rate of the words you're saying. Literally, what percentage of the words you say does the viewer actually understand and comprehend? The higher this rate, the smarter they'll feel and the faster they'll trust you.

Now, here's why I call this the light bulb effect. The faster you can get a viewer to think, "Ah, I get it now. That makes so much sense.

" the sooner they will trust you and keep watching because they'll want to feel more of those light bulb moments. And as soon as you can get them to two light bulb moments in the video, you've got them hooked, line, and sinker forever. Now, tactically, here are the four things you need to do in your content to make those light bulb moments happen sooner.

First, talk at a fifth grade reading level. No big words, short, simple sentences, simple phrasing. Don't over complicate it unnecessarily.

And I say this all the time in my videos when I'm talking about clarity and comprehension because this really is the most important thing. If they can't understand your words, then they can't understand the meaning and so they won't extract what you're trying to teach. All right.

Second, talk in comparisons. You want to relate the new thing you're talking about to an existing thing they already understand. This will make it way easier for them to comprehend what you're saying because of relative understanding.

Have you ever wondered why those A versus B bodybuilding ads with the pre and post always work so well? It's because everybody already understands what A feels like. That's what they're living today.

So when you show A versus B, they don't need to dream up what A feels like. They know. And so B is the future that they want.

I'm telling you, relative understanding is a cheat code for explaining anything. Third, remove all the fluff in the intro and beginning so you can reduce the time to aha. You don't get extra points for being the one with the most details.

So cut everything that does not matter. And fourth, use visuals to support the words you're saying. All these graphics we make, we do this for a reason.

It's so that they can help improve your understanding of the words as I say them. Words by themselves are very hard to comprehend in a long piece of content. The brain can only absorb so many words at once.

But words plus visuals are way easier to digest for much longer. Just remember this, it's not sexy, but clarity is the ultimate psychology hack because it means the viewer actually understands the words you're saying enough to be influenced by them. All right, psychology hack number three is called emulation.

I also call this one the mirroring effect. And here it is. People trust you faster when you look, dress, sound, and act like the person that they want to become.

In other words, they want to emulate your exact action path so that they can become a version of you. Now, emulation is a subconscious psychological trigger, but it's really effective at getting someone to trust you and watch for longer. And I'll admit, it seems kind of silly to think your visual representation matters more than the words you're actually saying.

But you would be shocked at how influential this can be. And here's why. When someone sees you, they take in everything they can see and instantly form a snap judgment of who you are and if they want to be like you.

Now, if they don't want to be like you or don't really like your vibe, they'll put a much more rigorous filter on the information you share, almost looking for a reason to churn or stop watching. But if they do want to be like you, they will give you a much longer leash of attention. Essentially, the bar for them to turn off your content is much, much lower.

And this is because your visual presentation or visual vibe signals who you really are. and it often gives off a representation that your methods or teachings have been effective. For example, if you have a super crisp camera and a really clean setup, it signals that you care enough about this to invest the money in upgrading the quality and that you're serious on it.

If you're wearing a $50,000 Rolex in the video, it signals that you've been successful in some way, shape, or form. It's visual proof in a way. So tactically, it can be extremely helpful to look, dress, sound, and act like the end state of what your ideal viewer or ideal customer wants to be.

And it's simple. If your target audience is aspiring designers, then you want to look like what an aspiring designer wants to be 10 or 20 years in the future. In this example, I think of my friend Orin, who is targeting designers, and I think of what he wears and how his set looks on his videos, and it maps perfectly to this visual aesthetic or visual vibe.

Now, if you make content about crypto, you need to look and act and talk the way someone that was in deep crypto would look. So, don't shower, sit in the dark, don't make eye contact with the camera. I'm just kidding.

That was a joke. One joke per video. That was a pretty good one.

All right. Now, I will say one thing. When it comes to building this visual persona, one word of caution.

I would recommend that instead of playing a character that is not representative of who you actually are, lean into your true self really all the way into the things that actually represent you. Because if you play a character that you have to lie to embody, eventually it will come back to bite you when you can't keep up the charade. The point is, it can be an extremely helpful exercise to map out what the visual representation of the end state for your ideal audience wants to be.

And then try to emulate those characteristics in your content. things like what you wear, how you act, how you talk, the brands you reference, the slang you use, it all helps influence subconscious liability, and will send trust signals to people that want to [music] be like that. Also, before I go on, if you want to learn more about psychology and how to use it in content so you can grow faster on social media and YouTube, you should definitely join Wavy World.

It's a completely free community that I built specifically for business owners and entrepreneurs trying to improve their content. There's a bunch of other video lessons in there on psychology as well as all the other pieces of the content stack, [music] ideas, strategy, tools, everything. There's 36,000 other entrepreneurs in there and it's completely free.

I've got a link in the description if you want to join. All right, the next psychology trick that really holds attention is called personalization. The more you make it feel like your content is personalized to the viewer, the more they're going to trust that it will solve their specific problem.

Now, why is this the case? People trust generic solutions less because they realize they're going to have to both learn the information and translate it for their specific use case. But personalized solutions for them are ready to go off the shelf.

They're already skinned for the use case you have. For example, let's say I ran a marketing agency and I was making content about social media growth. If my advice in the content was generic and surface level, then a clothing brand founder would have to both learn the tactics and try to figure out what exactly applies for him.

This is much less compelling than if I were to make a video saying, "Here's how to grow on social media if you're a clothing brand. " Now, obviously, this advice to go more personal and more specific sounds counterintuitive if you're optimizing for max views. Because the more specific you get with your content, the fewer people it's going to apply to and the less views you'll get.

But if you're running a business, it isn't really about pure views. It's about ontarget views from your target buyers. So, my suggestion here would be to experiment with much more personalized and targeted content and be willing to trade off pure views in exchange for precision targeting.

To do this, you can start packaging or introing your videos specifically by calling out the group that you're making it for. For example, if you're building a clothing brand, here are three social media growth strategies you should study. Or, these are the best three clothing brands growing on social media right now.

Because I hear time and time again from business owners that they're getting views on their content, but it's not converting into actual customers. And this is because when you make broad content optimized for max views, most of the viewers are not in your buyer avatar. Now, another way to infuse personalization into your content that is a lot less limiting is to use the words you and your as much as you possibly can.

When someone hears the word you in the content, it feels like you're talking directly to them. And this has a subconscious psychological effect that the content is more personalized for them. So the guidance really is this.

Think about who your ideal buyer is and personalize your content so it speaks directly to them. And this will drive total views down but it will bring ontarget views up which will increase overall trust with the people that are watching. All right, the next psychology hack is pretty obvious but it matters so much it's worth going over and that is proof and hit rate.

People will trust you way faster if you actually have proof that what you're talking about has worked for someone like them. And they'll trust you even faster if you have a high hit rate with proof across multiple different types of customers over and over. Now, why is this?

Outside proof is the ultimate signal that your knowledge works regardless of who implements it. Because the truth is, most viewers will stop watching once they get the feeling that the information is too custom for them to be able to implement it themselves. But if you have proof that this has already worked for somebody else, especially if that person kind of seems like them, well, they're going to stay because they expect you to be able to explain it in a way they can use.

I cannot overstate how critical it is to signal this proof as early as possible in the video. Now, you have two ways to communicate proof, direct and indirect. If you actually have proof yourself, you should say it ASAP.

This is direct. So, for example, when I make videos, I always say in the intro, "By the way, I'm Callaway. I have a million followers.

I've done billions of views. And content is all I do all day long. I say that every single time and sometimes I even add I've helped hundreds of business owners solve their content problems or some version of that.

This is me signaling that I have tons of proof myself and that my lessons have worked for literally hundreds of others just like the people watching. But what do you do if you don't have direct proof yet? You're more of a beginner and you haven't yet established direct proof.

The indirect proof way would be to piggyback off of someone that does have direct proof. So, instead of saying, "These are the six best viral hooks," and then making someone guess if they can trust you or not, you could say something like, "I've studied Callaway. He has a million followers and a billion views, and these are the six best hooks that he says work amazingly.

" And then you could break down what I say with your own perspective. What you've done here is offloaded some of the proof requirement onto my personal brand so that you don't have to carry the full proof yourself. Now, obviously, this is going to be less effective than direct proof because some of the credit's going to go to me in the viewer's eyes, but this is a great way to get some proof rather than none.

If there's one thing you can do to get people to trust you faster, it's proof. This is why every company in the world has case studies, public metrics, and testimonials all over their site. Proof is the easiest way to build instant trust.

All right, the next psychology hack to use in your content is familiarity. And this builds on the point before about indirect proof. People will trust your content more if you show faces or visuals that they already recognize.

This is why you see smaller channels on YouTube use famous creators or entrepreneurs faces in their thumbnails. This is why you see unknown creators using famous names in their titles. This is why you see visuals of well-known people in the intro of most videos.

We even use famous creators and entrepreneurs in our intros. And we do it because giving viewers something they're already familiar with and recognize is a cheat code in getting them to trust you faster. And here's why this works from a psychology perspective.

The brain is a pattern matching machine. It releases dopamine when it sees something it recognized. So when you show someone something they've already seen before, they get that familiarity recognition and they implicitly trust it more.

And this goes back to both the clarity point and the proof. They're going to get more clarity when you show them visuals of something they already recognize. So they'll understand the point you're making more.

And they're going to trust you faster because they're going to associate some portion of that point to the expert that they already know. When you're small and relatively unknown, the most important thing is to find points of familiarity so you can build common ground of trust with the viewer. And over time, as you get more credible, that's when you start infusing the visuals of yourself.

All right, psychology tip number seven really is my secret weapon. This is the thing I figured out that really moves the needle when it comes to speed to trust. And I call it one standard deviation.

The key with content is getting a viewer to opt in that they actually have some pain point or blocker without their BS detector going off. Because if you come right out in the intro or the title or the thumbnail and you say, "If you want to make more money, do this. " It often triggers their BS detector and they dismiss you immediately.

And this happens because viewers hear that, "If you want more money," and they think, "It really can't be that easy, so there must be some snake oil thing going on. " And they dismiss it. And this is all happening subconsciously in their mind because of psychology.

They've been trained to see so many of these internet scams that the warning bells go off when something seems too good to be true. Now, once that BS detector is tripped, like a bank robber tripping the wire, it's over. They don't trust you.

They're going to bounce and they're never going to come back. So, this is where the one standard deviation tactic comes in when you're either packaging your video, writing the intro, or kind of getting into the story. Now, I call it one standard deviation because sometimes it can be easier to package your content one standard deviation away from the desire the person actually wants and let them make the leap themselves.

So, for example, let's take a piece of content about growing on social media. Most people want to grow on social media because they think it'll make them more money. They don't actually want to spend 40 hours per week making videos.

They just want more money. That's the desire they're targeting. But the beauty is most people already believe that if they grow on social media, they will make money.

They think of it as the same thing. It's a proxy. So, if I target with my content that they're not growing their social channels fast enough and that there are faster ways, they will associate this with the money desire that they want.

And when they hear not growing faster on social media, they make the leap and opt in. It doesn't trigger the BS detector. And to prove this is so effective, if you look at my videos, anytime I reference money, the videos just don't do that well.

And I think this is what's happening subconsciously. But anytime I reference a specific, very clear content painoint that is a proxy for growing on social media, which will lead to money, the videos always crush. And this isn't an accident.

It's just psychology. people are tripping the red wire when you talk about the desire directly. But if you go one standard deviation away, they won't.

So the specific tactic is this. Figure out which of the four horsemen desires you're targeting and then go one standard deviation away to package your content and make topics about things that are proxies for those desires in the viewer's mind. All right, guys.

That's all I've got for this video. As a recap, we covered eight psychology tactics to help you build trust with viewers faster so that they watch your content for longer. And when they trust you and believe your content will help them unlock their desires, they're going to keep watching for a long time.

As a reminder, if you're a business owner and you're trying to get better at content and you like the way I explain things, you should join Wavy World. It's completely free and we have over 36,000 other entrepreneurs that are all working together to help each other. If you want to do that, there's a link in the description where you can join.

All right, we will see you guys on the next one. Peace.