Are you more likely to share news of a job promotion or a break-up with your friends and acquaintances? Most people are like you and choose to share happy emotions with others. Extreme sadness and depression seeks solitude and anonymity whereas happiness seeks company.<\/p>\n
The emotions we feel can be categorized as positive or negative. Positive emotions would include happiness, love, compassion etc. and negative emotions would include depression, stress and anger. So what does this mean for Marketers? If you want your content to be shared and go viral focus on evoking emotions that people like to share. These are not necessarily positive emotions. \u00a0In some cases, for example, if you are marketing against child abuse, you may want to evoke the negative emotion of anger. This is because anger is a very sharable emotion and does mobilize people into action. However, this needs to be done very carefully so that the anger is channelized in the right direction and leads to a positive outcome. In this case you would channel the emotion of anger against abusers to protect innocent children. However, for everyday products and services, evoking positive emotions works better.<\/p>\n
Maslow\u2019s hierarchy puts the need for self-actualization as the highest in the pyramid of all needs felt by people. Marketing content that is genuinely helpful can fulfill this need for self-actualization. People will share your message when they genuinely believe that the information will help others. It is important to make people feel important and valued. For example, L\u2019Oreal\u2019s slogan of \u201cbecause you\u2019re worth it\u201d is popular because it raises people\u2019s self-esteem.<\/p>\n