Recently, I decided to use Reddit as a marketing channel (goodbye all Reddit karma) while helping some friends craft their marketing strategy. I struggled with a few headlines until I finally came to an epiphany. As I was sorting through the top posts on AskReddit, I realized what should have been apparent from the start.
In just 5 minutes of analyzing what posts had received over 2,500 upvotes and which ones had not, I realized that the difference between the posts that went “viral” and those that did not was how much emotion it drew from the reader.
The top post read, “What do you hope to see in your lifetime.”
Mine read, “What’s the key to keeping a New Years Resolution?”
Is there a more powerful emotion in the world than hope? And coupled with the concept of an entire lifetime — it’s no wonder that post topped the leaderboard while mine quickly fell to the bottom.
As the reader read the headline about lifetime hopes, they probably imagined all the things they had written down in their internal bucketlists. When they read my headline, their subconscious was screaming, “WHO FUCKING CARES!” just as you and I would.
It doesn’t take the next Steve Jobs to recognize that most actions are driven by the simplest of human emotions — hopes and fears, love and hate, pleasure and annoyances— but the reality is that many of us forget this simple fact when we write copy or post a tweet.
Instead of focusing on the most important aspect of marketing, we often get lost in the technology. In the seemingly endless search for that viral equation, we often get caught up in the “clicks” and “tweets” instead of focusing on the human emotion.
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