Do you suffer from boring social media syndrome?

You know what I mean – your social media channels have the odd drip of one or two random comments, a handful of likes, and little to no sales conversions, and you would almost literally give an arm and a leg for even a hint of social media activity. 

What you need to do is spice things up. And one of the best ways to do this is through psychology.

Obviously, using psychology to improve your marketing is not a new concept: the intentional use of psychological theories to improve marketing was pioneered by Edward Bernays, otherwise known as the “father of public relations”. The nephew of popular psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Bernays realized that by applying his knowledge of psychology his marketing campaigns would be far more successful.

Since then, some things have changed. We have moved from advertising on old transistor radio sets and fuzzy tv channels Tweeting, Instagramming, and Snapping.

But what hasn’t changed is the use of basic psychological principles to market various products on services, even if it is contained in a short video on Vine or 140 characters on Twitter.

Here are ten examples of social media campaigns that used psychology to attract customers and increase sales, along with some advice on how you too can use the same principles in your own social media marketing to improve your business: