Constantly appearing on social media? Does it really pay off?

Be everywhere. Constantly post on social media. Continuously write online articles. Add cool material to your personal website. Does it pay off?

Of course, you’d say. If your social media posts add appealing content for potential buyers, it could help build credibility and trust.

Alright. Now let’s make the argument more interesting. What if you didn’t even say anything meaningful? What if you didn’t say anything at all? No valuable content. No fancy posts. Simple appearance. Just a happy face, a big smile, and a nicely photoshopped forehead with no wrinkles. Would it still pay off?

Intriguingly enough, it might. I have lived in Los Angeles for quite some years now. There is something oddly unique about this city. Freeways are forests of billboards of accident attorneys distracting your driving and actually making it easier for you to cause the very accident for which they’d want you to call. The curious thing is that there is rarely any sales message justifying the reason why you should choose them over others. Just their face, a catchy visual, and their phone number. I always wondered why anyone would choose to call solely on the basis of their face.

Introducing the mere-exposure effect, one of the most fascinating theories in psychology. Originally developed by Robert Zajonc in the 60s, in his experiments, he exposed participants to complete nonsense words. People would associate favorable judgments with the words they were exposed to multiple times. Oddly, they would do so even if they were not remembering at all what they had been exposed to. 

The mere-exposure effect theory posits that familiarity breeds preference. Just exposing someone multiple times to your face will create a favorable attitude. Even when there is no unique merit or differentiation advantage associated with what you say.

The reason? In ancestral times, when we were living in caves, every new stimulus was initially associated with a threat. You go into the forest and see something unfamiliar. You had to be wary because it could be a trap or a predator hiding behind a bush. So our brains have learned to be cautious of new stimuli. Our brain loves things that are easy to understand and familiar. Familiarity becomes a powerful heuristic. Familiarity is a beautiful mental shortcut to infer trust and quality without having to waste energy deeply analyzing things. And it’s not that we explicitly think “Oh, I have no time to analyze. I’ve seen this person multiple times, so he must be good.” No, it’s fascinating that all this happens unconsciously. You perceive something as more favorable without thinking at all.

So yes, there is some reason behind the merit of constantly appearing on social media. But you have to be careful. On social media, people seek quick dopamine hits from exposure to interesting content. Lack of relevance will frustrate viewers, and they might mute you, unfollow you, or simply gloss over your posts. So, content remains crucial. 

But don’t forget appearance. It matters more than we believe!

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