Facebook’s Creepy Psychology Study and Implications for Marketing

While Facebook’s recent psychology study on 700,000 of its users feels “creepy,” it does offer a couple of takeaways for businesses and groups looking to use the social network for marketing…

Facebook found that the emotion in posts is contagious. Those who saw positive content were, on average, more positive and less negative with their Facebook activity in the days that followed. The reverse was true for those who were tested with more negative postings in their News Feed.

via Facebook Reveals Huge Psychology Experiment on Users.

Specifically, if you’re using Facebook to promote your business, group, church, or organization, you need to take into account the ability of texts and postings to shape an interaction.

Facebook users, like most users of web services, zip through content at a fast rate and increasingly on mobile devices. You have a very short amount of time to make your mark, even if the user came to your page or post intentionally (it’s even less time if you’re trying to “grab attention”).

Make your posts positive, helpful, engaging, cheery, and (most importantly) personable. If you do run Facebook ads, try not to use generic language or phrases that we so often associate with marketing to our own detriment.