A Guide to Creating Content that Uses Emotion to Drive Exposure.
We like to believe our everyday decisions are based off of rational analysis, but our emotions are what ultimately drive us to reach these decisions. For consumers, making a decision on a purchase is more than just seeing, liking and buying. Whether we like to admit it or not, emotions somehow weave themselves into the framework of our decision making process. For businesses, this means you have to ensure that an emotional connection is present in order to further drive the consumer towards the end goal (buying your product, seeking your services, calling you for more information, etc). Your website’s content is a huge–and very simple–way to establish an emotional connection with your audience.
Here are some reasons why your business should take advantage of emotional content writing, as well as how you can ensure your content incorporates emotion to drive your internet marketing efforts.
What Emotion Produces the Most Engagement?
In order to write emotional content that engages your target viewers, you’ll first have to know which emotions yield the results you’re looking for. Research reveals that positive posts yield the best results on social media, which makes sense because reading a post that invokes happiness will trigger us to want to share that happiness with others. Sad posts, however, tend to trigger empathy, which is also a strong motivator for engagement. This occurs because sadness triggers our bodies to produce a hormone called oxytocin, which stimulates compassion. Case in point: ever seen those reaaally sad ASPCA infomercials with the cartoon-ish eyed puppies and kittens and feel compelled to pick up the phone and adopt them all?
Yeah. Me too.
Use Power Words.
Certain words invoke significant emotions when we read them, which pushes us to take action; these are called power words. Incorporating power words into your content is a crucial step in establishing an emotional connection with your audience. Here are some power words you can use to increase the emotional value of your content:
A Storytelling Approach Helps Your Audience Relate.
What better way to persuade your audience to trust you than to show them you’ve walked in their shoes? Empathy is a huge selling factor when writing emotional content. It shows your audience that you’re not just spewing facts and business perks without understanding their point of view. So, instead of limiting your blog posts or articles to cold,hard facts (which, of course, we as consumers appreciate), provide a brief anecdote. Tell a story where characters A and B have experienced certain pain points (the ones that would persuade us to seek your business for help) and what they did to overcome them.
Point of View matters.
Emotionally driven content also includes words like “you”, “your”, “our”, etc. This adds to the air of relatability and shows your audience that you’re right there with them. Of course, while there are certain kinds of content that limit the use of an informal tone, use your judgement and incorporate this approach whenever the time calls for it (like in a blog post, for example).
Create a Powerful Headline.
Every awesome blog post starts with an even more awesome headline. After all, your headline can either make-or-break the performance of your content. As readers, we’ve perfected the art of at-a-glance reading. If a headline doesn’t attract our attention at first glance, we’ll simply skip it and move on to the next one. The reality is that you can create the most in-depth, informative content in your industry, but a weak headline can flush your potential down the drain.
For those who have trouble creating a captivating headline, I always like to recommend tools like CoSchedule’s Blog Post Headline Analyzer and the Advanced Marketing Institute’s EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) analyzer for help. While both tools ultimately provide feedback on the emotional quality of your headline, each one lends a separate benefit.
CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer breaks down your headline’s word usage into 4 categories (common, uncommon, emotional and power) and scores your headline based on these categories. You can establish a healthy balance of all 4 categories by seeing which categories your headline is thriving in (and which categories you’re lacking in). Since I’d rather show you how it works than tell you, I entered the headline of this blog post into the Headline Analyzer and received the following results:
The Emotional Marketing Value Analyzer looks at your headline slightly differently, but is still an awesome tool to use. It scores your headline based on 3 categories: intellectual, empathetic and spiritual. I took the above analyzed headline and plug it into the EMV tool:
Need More Content Writing Tips? We’ve Got You Covered.
There you have it, folks. Before you hit “post” on that next blog, ask yourself the following:
- Am I using the right point of view throughout my post?
- Did I include at least one story or personal anecdote to establish empathy?
- Is my headline captivating enough to get viewers to engage my post at first glance?
If you’ve answered “yes” to these, you’re on the right path to creating quality, emotional content. Subscribe to Clicc Media Inc below for more tips on how to boost your content writing skills.