The Hidden Psychology of Social Networks: How Brands Create Authentic Engagement by Understanding What Motivates Us

From the former Head of Brand Strategy at Reddit comes a proven and thought-provoking approach to the digital economy and how brands can create authentic engagement that is rooted in the fundamental motivations behind human psychology

Leading marketing practitioner and thought leader Joe Federer draws on evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroanatomy, and psychology, as well as more than a decade of hands-on experience, to explain why people act so differently in various online spaces and what they are seeking from participating in each one. With a framework based on Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego model of the human psyche, he demonstrates how the internet is a digital reflection of the collective human psyche and how different social networks correspond to different mindsets: platforms like Reddit to the unfiltered Id, Facebook and Twitter to the managed Ego, and Instagram to the ideal Superego.

In the same way you behave differently when you're home alone, out with friends, communicating with family, or interacting with coworkers, people act and express themselves differently in these various online spaces. Context matters. Understanding this will enable you to develop and execute effective engagement strategies to reach your target audiences on each social network. Learn:

• how to create content that drives sharing and word-of-mouth
• how brands can fit natively into different types of social channels
• how to balance branded social presences across different networks
• why authenticity will only grow in importance to consumers

Fascinating and deeply compelling, The Hidden Psychology of Social Networks will equip you to make vastly more efficient use of your media buys, establish more thoughtful strategies, develop better creative, and, in the end, deliver more effective marketing that provides value.

About author(s):Joe Federer is the former Head of Brand Strategy at Reddit, where he helped reposition the platform's narrative to the larger world of advertising and drove revenue growth of over 10X in its first year in market. Prior to joining Reddit, he worked at leading PR and advertising agencies, where his campaigns performed in the top 95th percentile of advertiser studies on Facebook, and where he led the launch of Pinterest and Instagram ads for some of the world's most important brands. Joe has developed numerous successful content strategies for Google, Amazon, McDonald's, Bud Light, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Audi, Charles Schwab, and S.C. Johnson, among others. He thrives at finding the intersection between what brands stand for and what social media users are interested in seeing.