14 Jul When Bruce Lee Said, “We Need Emotional Content”, Don’t You Think ‘We’ Meant ‘Content Marketers’? LOL!
The popular concept ‘Emotional Content’ that Bruce Lee introduced to the world through his one of the best movies, ‘Enter the Dragon’ surely has nothing to do with content in the form of writing. However, this phrase well suits to needs of today’s content-rich world of content marketing.
When Bruce Lee said, “We need emotional content” in a scene from the movie, to us he sounded to be talking about the need of content marketing industry today.
Go to Google search; type anything you want to know about. You will come across a number of results. Are all of them relevant? Perhaps! Or perhaps not!
If you are a writer, blogger or content marketing company, content acts as everyday fodder for your audience.
Why would someone read your content, not someone else’s?
Is it this emotional content that we all need? Here is what we know about emotional content from the view of the content marketing industry.
Emotional content is like arousing emotions through an idea and word delivery. So why is it important? Unless you have not touched the hearts of your audience, it is difficult to stimulate their behaviours. Emotional content also has the ability to stay in our memory for long.
Even some scientists believe so. Researchers have found that people remember emotional experience better than unemotional. In a study, some scientists discovered that memory linked to emotional experience continued to exist 20 to 30 minutes after subjects were exposed to stimuli. It can be said that emotional content stays in audience’s mind for long.
Emotional content is most compelling
There are four basic emotions that influence every individual. They are happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Each of them has different significance at changing once behavior towards their environment. But if you know how to use these emotions to sell your content, you have already achieved half your goal.
A good content marketer views happiness as an emotion that triggers social media sharing. If a person wants to viral content, it is important to arouse happiness among its observers. It will be this happiness that will encourage them to share it with others. And next, you find yourself successful.
Sadness is one such emotion that leads to a feeling of empathy and compassion. A sad content can produce a hormone called oxytocin in readers’ body. Those who produce a great amount of this hormone are likely to act more out of emotional arousal. Similarly, the audience finds content infused with emotions such as fear and surprise more relatable on experiencing similar emotions.
Anger is one such emotion that if used with care has the power to cause mass physiological arousal. Anger is not always bad, it is a way to express negative feelings and motivate one to search for solutions to their problems. Anger is actually a secondary emotion aroused by other emotions. Anger used in content can trigger people to form a similar opinion as expressed through the text.
Go viral with emotions
All we want is to viral our content, but how to do that? It is emotions my friend that can take you along. Play with emotions in your content and see what difference it creates. If you think quality content can do the job for you, you may be wrong. If your audience can not relate themselves with your content and leave it half read, so quality isn’t something you need. Learn to couple up quality with emotions.
Make emotions part of your content marketing strategy, which starts with sharing an idea in form of written or graphical content. Then you need to next target emotions such that content is shared with more and more people. Create your content on a foundation of emotions that trigger readers to purchase a product or service.
Once you created a value for your content in your readers and customers’ mind, it is time to come up with even more emotional content. Now make use of more than basic emotions, try humor, fun, curiosity, pain, anxiety, excitement and inspiration. And wait to see the results.
Let me tell you about one more research that supports the idea of emotional content. In past, two Wharton researchers tried to study content that went viral. They were finding commonalities in viral contents. And the findings were surprising. They discovered that emotions such as positivity, shock, awe, anger, fear, and anxiety were expressed at the very beginning of the almost all content studied.
Emotional content build brands
A 2014 study revealed that 85% B2B marketing businesses filed to build a strong connection between content and business value. This resulted in loss of customers and brand value. Content marketing serves a powerful tool if used wisely.
So, why this happened? What might they be missing? Their marketing campaigns were not based on emotions. Marketing camping based on emotions angle is more impactful and make people feel that they care for their needs.
But before you start using this technique; first understand the emotional need of your audience. Put yourself in their shoes and embrace their feeling. One strategy is to always start your first paragraph with the need of your audience rather your product or service. As soon as you have captivated their attention, move to the next strategy of introducing your product as a savior to them.
People are encouraged to buy products from the companies they feel connected to. If you want to distinguish your content from the rest, make it emotional. From the beginning with discussing a problem of your audience to giving a solution in form of your product, you take your audience on an emotional roller-coaster.
These days content marketer is so busy experimenting with modern technology and SEO techniques that they ignore the fact that buying behavior is based 85% on emotion and just 15% on logic.
This is what’s making us repeat Bruce Lee’s famous phrase “we need emotional content”!
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