Fun fact  Neuroimaging shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions rather than factual information. This is as true for brand-created content as it is for traditional advertising spots and banners.

We can see the power of emotional content at work in #marketing that went viral. Nike’s What Are Girls Made of?, and Apple’s Misunderstood campaigns both spring to mind.

But we’ve also seen how emotional content can go terribly awry. For content creators, using emotion can be an incredibly powerful #engagement tactic, but we must use it artfully. Let’s explore the science of emotion and how we can use it in an empathetic way to create more meaningful content.

Emotional #engagement is affected by scientific principles that directly impact content creation. Here are four key areas:

● Design

● Color

● Images

● Branding

Designs often fall into patterns of sameness around the latest trends. However, designs that evoke the greatest emotional response tend to involve something out of the norm. Elements of surprise can prevent your content from being filtered out by Broca’s area in the brain.

Additionally, introducing schema incongruity – information conflicting with an established schema – has the potential to increase interest, memorability, and persuasiveness in consumers.

Color can have a powerful impact on a viewer’s emotional response. Studies show visuals in color can increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%. Using specific colors can have a significant impact on mood; for example, red evokes strong emotions, while yellow can foster happy feelings, and blue creates a calm, trustworthy atmosphere.

Coca-Cola consistently uses red as its brand color. Red not only evokes a strong emotional response, it cultivates a positive, friendly energy that makes consumers want to participate.

A large body of research confirms the emotional power of visuals — Visual Teaching Alliance quotes David Hyerle’s field guide that says 90% of all information transmitted to the brain is visual. Images also evoke emotional responses. For example, photos of people have been shown to increase empathy, and photos of babies tend to be more engaging than other types of imagery.

In one case study, a South African financial institution sent 50,000 direct-mail pieces featuring an image of a person. In some, the person was the same gender as the recipient; in other cases, the person in the photo was the opposite gender. For male customers, using a photo of a female in the offer letter significantly increased response; the effect had about as much impact as if the bank offered a drop in the interest rate by 4.5 percentage points.

Knowing the science that impacts our audience’s emotional response is useful. However, it takes an artful approach to turn this science into impactful, engaging content. It’s all too easy for brands to misuse psychological levers in an attempt to make an impact on viewers or readers.

As content creators, how do we walk the line between good emotional #engagement and audience manipulation? It takes empathy, continuous refinement, and above all, a relevant story.

Bottom line

Emotion is the key to driving strong engagement with your content. Using the #science of emotional resonance and the #art of creativity, you can design stories that appeal to your audience in a meaningful, real way. These stories will inspire members of your audience to share and will keep them coming back for more.