Emotions are powerful stuff. Whether you want to admit it or not, we are all very emotional, and it comes to light quite often. It happens not only in our relationships but also in our working environment and other areas of life where we think emotions don’t have any role whatsoever.
Sometimes, the influence of our feelings is so subtle so we won’t even notice it. Sometimes, others will manipulate us into doing something, and we won’t even realize. That is what marketing experts do with ads. More than once your emotions have been used to persuade you to buy a product, and you weren’t aware of the fact. More than once, your feelings made you share something on social media, just because you felt enraged by injustice, over the moon because of some good news or sad because of a true story you had just read. It is one example of how our emotions also influence our feed and how they can be used in social media marketing.
Experts also have this in mind when it comes to management of social media platforms, and they try to get the best of it to boost their visibility and number of shares and new followers. Also, everything is connected nowadays! Once you google something on your laptop, new ads will start appearing on your home page. If you’re feeling all emotional because you’re planning your wedding, you will probably click „like“ on every wedding dress page that comes up on your feed. You know it’s manipulation, but... aw, this dress looks perfect!
#Happiness tag on Instagram
Check out this hashtag on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media. It’s very popular. So far, researches have shown that the most shared content has to do with positive feelings, such as happiness, joy, amusement, hope, and excitement. That comes as no surprise because we already have enough stress in our everyday lives. Inspirational and happy content we see and share online makes us feel comforted at least for a little while.
Look at your profiles. Nothing makes you smile like those silly puppies your best friend has just posted, right? Just look at the number of the shares, likes, loves and comments that videos have. Engagement is only one of the things that make us happy and willing to decorate our profiles with it – cute animals and babies are definitely in the top ten. Also, who doesn’t like „faith in humanity: restored“ kind of stories? It is incredible how many good deeds happen every day all around the world, and we can learn about them thanks to the internet. These stories are inspirational and make us shed tears of joy from time to time. Also, share them on our feed as well! The good news in science and medicine are something that also gets shared faster and broader than some other topics.
It gives us hope, especially if we have been through a stressful experience ourselves. Inspirational achievements in these fields are significant and make us believe that the world can be a better place – we always want to share this type of content with as many people as possible. The last, but not the least thing we do like to share with everyone are jokes, memes, hidden camera videos and other things that make us laugh. We all know that laughter is the best exercise ever! So, the point of all of this is – if you want your followers to share your content and interact with your pages, give them something good to believe in, to hope for and to laugh and feel happy!
Sad tag story
We all feel sad now and then, sometimes even for no reason at all. Sometimes we feel like sharing that sorrow with our Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Autumn can make you feel depressed, especially if you check out news websites and see what’s happening in the world. Wars, hunger, disease, and similar topics aren’t something you’re keen on reading while you’re taking your morning coffee. However, it is there, and it is happening. It is real. Real sad stories are all around us, and sometimes we talk about them because we feel for the people going through all of that or we want to draw attention to the situations we can change. No animal loves to read about abandoned dogs, starving cats and so on, but sharing this kind of content can raise awareness and prevent bad things from happening. That means that sharing sad and emotional content can sometimes be helpful if it makes people think twice before they do something. They can realize they might regret it in the future and stop while it’s not too late. Although sad stories can make an impact on our lives and present something meaningful and inspiring once in a while; there are two main reasons you should be careful with sharing sad content. First of all, if you overuse sadness to provoke emotions in people, you can do precisely the opposite. Seeing too many sad stories can make people insensitive and indifferent! Second of all, if you don’t want your followers to create a permanent association of your brand with disturbing emotions, don’t overshare sad content and be careful not to use sorrow too often as a tool for making people emotional – remember than sadness performs worse than other feelings when it comes to social media.
Hell hath no fury
Anger is one of the most triggering and powerful feelings on the internet, but in social media marketing as well. We often find ourselves sharing content that made us feel angry or frustrated. Why do we do this? Because we want allies in our anger, we want to exchange comments with others who share the same opinion. Moreover, if they don’t, it becomes even worse. Online fights can last for days. The topics are usually the following: any discrimination, violence, war, even politics, or at least controversies related to politics. Sometimes, anger comes together with sadness, which is the case with fights all over the world. It makes us both, sad and angry at the same time because it makes us feel with the victims.
Emotions tags equals Engagement
So, these are strong emotions that can get you high activity on your pages. However, experts do warn social media marketing strategists about content that provokes anger because it can be risky and if you want to resort to violence as one of your marketing tools, you should do it wisely. Negative feelings, as we already said in part about sadness, can be permanently associated with your brand if you overdo it with angry. It would help if you were careful about what you share and how you share it when it comes to this emotion. What experienced marketers say you should do is always offer a possibility to turn the situation into something positive or try to figure out a solution, because people are known to leave, unfollow or unlike groups and pages if they get into a fight and can’t end it in a civilized way. It’s clear you don’t want to have that on your platforms. You can share a negative experience, but try to find a silver lining or something to be thankful for in your content. Too much negativity can hurt your image and ruin your social media marketing strategy.
The fear of missing out
It is a particular type of leverage, typical for modern age and it is a bit different from the previous ones. It doesn’t depend directly on the content you share on your social media platforms. It’s about something else. Has anyone ever told you that you spend too much time looking at your phone? Why are we always checking our social media accounts, our e-mails, or updating our apps, and so on? It is Because we are living in constant fear of missing out! We are afraid that we will be left out or miss on something unique and new if we spend five minutes offline! We feel like we wouldn’t have anything to talk about to our friends if we didn’t have social media profiles. That feeling is precisely what some experts use while they’re working on new marketing campaigns and ads. They keep us waiting for a big revelation, while we’re biting our nails and looking at our phones or laptops, because we want to be the first ones to see, to find out, to know. Sometimes, this fear becomes so unbearable that some social media users decide to take a break and deactivate all of their social media profiles, but it usually doesn’t last long – the fear is stronger than our wish to get some rest.
On the other hand, fear can have some positive impact, as some researchers have concluded. In this everchanging world, your brand can be the one thing that’s constant in the lives of your customers and followers. If you stick to your strategy and stay true to your principles, you can use your audience’s fear of change positively and build loyalty that will make them stay and lean on you when everyone else betrays them.
Raising Awareness
We are emotional beings, and this influences every part of our lives, whether we like it or not. Experts in social media and marketing know it, and they know how to use happiness, sadness, anger, and fear of getting high activity on different platforms and gaining more followers, clicks, and likes. We know for the fact that positive emotions work better than the negative ones – seeing joyful and cute things online often help us not lose hope, feel better about ourselves and get through the day. It’s completely normal in the world full of unfortunate events happening all around us. Still, content that makes us feel anger or fear can also raise awareness or have functional consequences in some cases. Using these in social media management can be risky, but with emotions, it’s just like in real life: measure your words, and everything else will follow!
