The Narcissistic Principle

There’s a nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple behind all social shares.

I’ll exam­ine why we share on social media in this blog post.

I’ll also demon­strate why brands should think dif­fer­ently about social media copy.

Here we go:

The Narcissistic Principle

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

When we share on social media, we share for a reas­on. And that reas­on typ­ic­ally has some­thing to do with… ourselves:

It’s the nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple behind why we share on social media.

The nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple = when we share or engage on social media, we mainly share aspects of ourselves — because that’s what we care about most. ¹Silfwer, J. (2012, July 16). The Narcissistic Principle. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​n​a​r​c​i​s​s​i​s​t​i​c​-​p​r​i​n​c​i​p​le/

If you can get social media to work for you, great.
Make the most of it. 

However, we should all be mind­ful not to let the “online pres­sure cook­er” get the bet­ter of us.

“A status update with no likes (or a clev­er tweet without retweets) becomes the equi­val­ent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewrit­ten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to con­form to the opin­ions of those around us.”
— Neil Strauss, Wall Street Journal

Learn more: The Narcissistic Principle

Prompts for Self-Expression

Look at this tweet where I’ve replied:

I’m being manip­u­lated by the nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple here. The ori­gin­al tweet is bait­ing people to reply. I’m try­ing to sig­nal that I’m smart here, but that’s not the case.

The tweet is most likely sent out by a Russian bot aim­ing to ignite divi­sion. Like a noob, I reacted, try­ing to be funny.

The psy­cho­lo­gic­al power of tweets like these is how they’re designed to be prompts for self-expres­sion. Brand updates in social media prac­tic­ally nev­er do this.

The kick­er is that most brand updates are miss­ing the point of this nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple. They use up all the oxy­gen, so there’s noth­ing left for any­one to add.

Leave Room for “Ego Reactions”

So, we rarely share cor­por­ate mes­sages on our social net­works. Not because brands have noth­ing inter­est­ing to say but because they’re doing a good job ensur­ing everything is being said.

To run a DIY exper­i­ment, I col­lec­ted 100 social media updates re-shared by a user. Out of these, 86 updates included shared com­ments where the users expressed some­thing about them­selves — “ego reactions.”

I then col­lec­ted a smal­ler sample of branded social media updates without shares. I tried to think of my share com­ment — if I were to share these tweets. Nothing came to mind.

So, what to do?

Look at your brand’s social media copy. If someone were to share your update in their feeds, would it be easy to instantly add share com­ments to express themselves? 

THANKS FOR READING.
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Social Media Mechanics

• Social Media — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Social Media Algorithms and How They Rule Our Lives
• The Silent Switch — A Stealthy Death for the Social Graph
• Dark Social: The Online Interaction We Can’t See

Social Media Psychology

• Social Media Naturals
• The Narcissistic Principle
• The Selfie Generation
• Emotional Maturity and Social Media (to be published)
• Attention Spans in the Social Media Age

Social Media Management

• The Follower Contract
• A Community Manager’s Job Description
• No Brand Community for You
• Critical Mass: How Many Social Media Followers Do You Need?

Social Media Issues

• The List of Social Media Issues
• How Ghost Followers Destroy Your Social Accounts
• Social Media Myths in PR
• Facebook Zero: Your First Fix Was Free

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