When you’re setting up content marketing campaigns and working to engage your consumers through social media, the primary focus is persuasion.  You want to persuade and influence your target audience to remain within your sales funnel and follow your content to a point where you can magnify that influence.  At a certain point down the road, conversion takes place.  It all starts with the right kind of persuasion.

The art & science of persuasive content marketing is generally discussed as though it’s as simple as changing the mind of a person with the right argument, the right tactic or a tone of voice.  True, effective influence (and thus persuasion) isn’t just about body language, pattering on, or other sneaky tactics.  It’s about understanding what motivates people so that you can leverage there position.

When you’re dealing with persuasion, there are 6 common techniques of influence that tend to find their way into most campaigns – these are generally quite effective at tapping into the goals of the visitor.

Liking:

It’s a lot easier to influence people that actually like you.  A person with strong persuasion or powerful influence will often flatter or uncover similarities in order to build the right amount of attraction.  That attraction builds a fair amount of trust in the influencer.

Social Proof:

Take a look around the web and social media, you’ll quickly see proof that people love to follow one another to make sure that they are attached to the next most interesting thing.  Influencers imply that the herd is moving in a specific direction, and people are often baited to follow.

Consistency:

People like to keep their word, no one likes to go back on something that they’ve promised because it doesn’t usually sit well.  If someone makes a commitment, especially if it’s been made known or it’s in writing, they’re more likely to keep it.  Influences often gain some kind of verbal or written commitment.

Scarcity:

Influencing interest can be done easily when there is a perceived sense of scarcity.  This is often done by marketers and agencies around products that – while companies still have warehouses full – is announced that there are limited offers due to low production or high demand.  Past events surrounding video-game launches and consoles shows that people get crazed for something they can’t have.  This works extremely well in content marketing where some people might feel like they’re getting the exclusive.

Authority:

This is why thought leadership works so well.  People are strongly and often easily influenced by experts.  A successful influencer can take a position on a given subject and give off an air of expertise.

Reciprocity:

Influencers do well to understand the “give and take” way of persuasion.  When you give something, you can get something.  If people feel like they are indebted to you, they’re more likely to listen, follow and agree with what you ask or want.  This feeling can come from something like a compliment given or free content that is extremely valuable.

There are certainly far more techniques, but these alone are the most commonly used in various content marketing and other marketing campaigns.  For each to work though, it’s important to engage the user and understand their motivations and needs.  Otherwise, it’s difficult to lead the user if you’re not sure how they react to the type of rope you’re carrying.