How To Craft Emotionally Evoking Content

(Excuse the pink bubbles above. It was the best "emotional" I could get from iStock, and I kind of liked it. But, excuse it. I wanted to put that disclaimer here because this post goes a lot deeper than pink bubbles.)

Why Emotional Connection In Your Content Is Huge

If you're a business owner managing a steady content flow for quite some time now, you may already be fully aware of the fact that quality writing with a high level of emotional appeal represents the pillar that supports your uninterrupted communication with your audience.

But how can you actually make your voice heard when you’re dealing with a number of challenges, including market saturation, a whole bunch of misguided, overly genetic or irrelevant marketing messages that fail to reach their target and consumer apathy? The key to success is to craft transparent, emotion-rich content designed to strengthen the ties with your audience. How do you use emotions to drive people to take action after they read your web content?

6 Ways To Master the Power of Emotional Writing

Here are 6 excellent practices that you could employ to master the power of emotions in your writing.

1. Go Beyond Pretty Words. If you think that stylistic adornments can help you step up your game while trying to convey a meaningful message to your audience, now would be a good time to reconsider. As a small business owner trying to communicate with a large pool of individuals in the most effective manner, you have to go beyond empty embellishments and clichés and use emotion-rich content relevant to your niche to keep your audience engaged, informed and entertained. According to Content Marketing Institute, the most powerful types of visuals that support your marketing efforts, leading to a more successful transfer of emotions from content creators to readers, are the following ones:

• Images
• Videos
• Slideshows
• Infographics
• Memes

Factors such as relevancy, distribution and quality can influence the way in which these elements are being perceived and assimilated by your audience. For instance, professional images that illustrate and enhance your message will always be more effective than plain stock photos that do not always manage to portray or individualize your brand. A meme (represented by a familiar image or a video accompanied by text/caption) could offer you the perfect opportunity to express your creativity and put your company into the spotlight, especially once you share it on some of the most popular social media platforms. Memes let you unleash a diverse palette of emotions in an unconventional manner; this is precisely why you should study the message that you’re trying to send through this type of content very carefully to avoid accidental damage that could impact your credibility and reputation.

2. Evoke an Amalgam of Positive Feelings Through Your Content. Have you ever wondered what separates the brands, products or services that we just can’t live without from the ones that fail to impress us in any way? Here’s the simplest answer to your question: successful companies make us happy though their branded content. Using the right combination of words and visuals as a part of their content marketing strategy, they know how to capture our attention, seduce us and keep us coming back for more. Some of the most popular brands, like J. Crew for instance, sell more than high-class products. They actually sell the promise of a luxurious lifestyle that we would all like to embrace, gravitating around fancy brunches in Soho, vacations in The Hamptons and classy wine tastings in Napa Valley.

3. Create a Compelling Story That People Would Like to Be a Part of. Generally speaking, people want to be a part of something much bigger than themselves. This is why they join humanitarian campaigns, support their favorite band or artist during concerts and become a part of a big community on social media platforms. The secret is to craft content that allows you to build such an active and supportive community around your brand, service or product. Several giant companies, such as Red bull or Coca Cola have already employed this strategy, proving that it always works, regardless of its scale and context. Redbull has gained the appreciation of its adrenaline-junky followers by taking its content marketing plan to the extreme. On the other hand, Coca Cola promises to add significance and value to its consumers’ lives by telling relatable, interesting stories and provoking new conversations. What do these two huge corporations have in common? They know how to put their prospects first and do a great job at sending high-impact, emotional messages through their viral content.

4. Explore an Element of Surprise in Each Content Piece. Let’s face it: people love innovators. They are very fond of thought leaders who always manage to think outside the box. Your readers are probably also following and praising content creators who do a great job at pulling a rabbit out of their hat. This actually makes sense: would you click on a page that only presents dull, random facts that you can read on hundreds of other mediocre websites? Of course you wouldn’t, mostly because you select your sources very carefully and value your time a great deal. Whether we like it or not, surprise is the vital element that makes a content piece go viral. Is that ugly dress blue and black or white and gold? At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the famous gown has succeeded in generating an unexpected case of mass hysteria: “What do you mean it’s not black and blue? Are you colorblind?” In this case, #TheDress debate that made us quarrel with our friends, relatives and coworkers relied on a little bit of controversy to generate a mix of frustration, amusement, understanding and acceptance and relief (“Oh, so I’m not colorblind after all-Whew!”), which kept it on the front page of some of the most prestigious sources of information for days in a row.

5. Positive Vs. Negative Emotions: Why Choose When You Can Have Both? What would a superhero be without a villain whose actions trigger a certain type of disruption? In our daily lives, we need to experience the bad to be able to appreciate the good. The same rule applies when it comes to evoking emotions through our content pieces. According to Buffer, web content requires the highest level of emotional complexity to become viral and memorable. The same source reveals that viral visuals usually activate a wider range of emotions, compared to their non-viral counterparts. This fact leads to a very simple conclusion: content that is more likely to be loved and shared to death by its readers has the ability to stir a complex network of emotional reactions- both negative and positive. After all, as Daily Mail indicates, scientists have concluded that there is a very fine line between love and hate, and most people often swing between these diametrically opposed feelings. While crossing this line could be risky, you should strive to achieve the perfect balance between positive and negative emotions that will capture the attention of your visitors.

6. Rely on Exceptional Design to Convey the Right Message. When it comes to delivering a powerful message to your audience, you just have to find the right words, right? Wrong. Things are actually a bit more complicated than this. The way in which your content is being perceived, filtered and digested by your audience depends on a complex network of factors, including your website design. In this case, content creation can be associated with the process of constructing a house. The design of your website is the foundation, and the words and images that you use to reach your audience represent the walls. Without a solid foundation, your walls would crumble and fall in no time. Therefore, before pursuing any aesthetic ambitions, you should make sure that your website is user-friendly enough to keep visitors on your page. According to Smashing Magazine, in order to be able to connect with your readers on an emotional level you should succeed in understanding their needs and designing a website that is both pleasurable and usable at the same time. Donald A. Norman describes the three levels of visual design, revealing the link between the attributes of product design and the user experience that it generates.

Visceral Level: this level enables you to assess the quality of your website based on the first reaction that your readers have after visualizing your web content. A great visceral design should make your readers feel (at least) something.
Behavioral Level: this level reflects the users’ emotions related to a certain website, triggered by the way in which we interact with it. For example, bad behavioral design can automatically lead to frustration and confusion. On the other hand, good behavioral design shows that the website owner is familiar with the needs of a certain audience; this type of design generates positive emotions, due to its ease of use and practicality.

Reflective Level: this level represents the peak of the cognitive process and enables visitors to analyze an amalgam of feelings and emotions to determine whether or not a certain type of product design (in this case, a website) is worthy of their time and attention.

The three levels can and should actually be combined to make your website design appealing, effective, memorable and pleasurable and, implicitly, boost the emotional value of your content.

Achieving Emotional Balance Is the Key

Keeping powerful emotions under control can be quite a challenge, experienced by both writers and readers. According to Copyblogger, overplaying the anticipated emotional responses of your public represents a big mistake that could cause a certain level of discomfort and make your visitors bounce off your page. This is only one pitfall that may threaten your success, when it comes to crafting high-impact web content. Writing with an exacerbated emotional appeal can turn a credible and coherent sales offer into a manipulative sales pitch that emphasizes hyperbolized claims, exploits emotions and lacks credibility. Clearly, in this case, too much of a good thing can lead to a negative user experience.

The smartest thing that you can do is to leave those exaggerated claims at the door and make sure that your copy evokes a well-dosed mix of emotions in a natural manner.

By tapping into the experiences of your audience you would be able to deliver solutions to their daily problems and challenges without exposing yourself to the dangers triggered by a potential emotional overkill. If you think that your writing fails to convey the right message or doesn’t do a great job at evoking the right mix of feelings and emotions, choose to hire a team of professional writers who could give wings to your content strategy while balancing the emotional appeal of your writing to help you stay in sync with your public.