Tips 12-16: Emotional hooks

An emotional connection turns your words into a powerful mental image

#12 Metaphors

Did you know we use some form of metaphor every 25 words? They're so embedded in our language that most people aren't aware of their frequency, but they hook emotion by helping people envisage your ideas.

A Stanford study on narrative and metaphors gave participants two versions of the same text on crime in a hypothetical city. One version described crime as a “virus infecting” the city and the other as a “beast preying” on the city. Everything else remained the same. The participants were then asked to come up with solutions for punishment, Results showed the framing of the crime affected which was perceived as worse. The “beast” metaphor readers opted for punitive punishment, whereas those with the “virus” metaphor chose reformative measures.

Here’s legendary copywriter Eddie Shleyner on using metaphors to improve your writing.

#13 Talk about people

Statistics are a marketer's best friend when it comes to emphasizing the importance of an issue. But, swapping out your percentages for people-centric terms can help encourage your readers to think of how the issue might affect real people.

Instead of writing 90% of people, try 9 out of 10 people.

Slovic, Monahan, and MacGregor studied how the framing of statistics affects behavior. They took two different framings and presented them to two groups of clinicians.

Frame 1: Patients similar to Mr. Jones are estimated to have a 20% chance of committing an act of violence.

Frame 2: 20 out of 100 patients similar to Mr. Jones are estimated to commit an act of violence.

While both frames have essentially the same meaning, double the amount of clinicians refused to discharge the patient after reading frame 2.

#14 Tangible savings

When you're talking about cost savings or numerical benefits that you offer, you can help readers visualize what that could mean for them in tangible terms. This means taking a term like "You'll save $100 a year" and changing it to "You'll save $100 a year that can go towards your next vacation". This boosts the value of your offer as it helps them visualize the experience.

A series of studies concluded it's better to emphasize specific uses for leftover cash: “Firms may better promote low-price products by cueing consumers to think about the leftover cash and possible attractive uses for it. For example, Volkswagen could emphasize the economy of purchasing their vehicle in terms of the new wardrobe of clothes one would then be able to afford...”

#15 Pain points

Your audience’s troubles, woes and blockers should be the backbone of your content. After all, they’re who you’re writing for.

Talk to customers. Interview them, survey them and read what they’re reading. Become a salesperson and sit in on pitches, demos and read the feedback emails. Team up with sales and customer success and learn about customers together.

Ben Goodey is an SEO expert who interviews some of the most impressive people working in content today. Here’s a webinar showing what successful audience, customer and keyword research looks like.

#16 Law of 250

The Law of 250 is an idea that every person has 250 people in their lives who would attend their wedding or funeral.

It was coined byJoe Girard, a car salesman who realized that if
he was liked by a customer, he could earn 250 new customers,
but if he was disliked, he would lose 250 potential customers.

When you're writing in your brand's voice, you control how
likable your brand is.

Robert Cialdini is a psychology and marketing professor who wrote Influence. One of Cialdini’s 7 Principles of Influence is being liked.

The full seven, for interest are: reciprocity, commitment or consistency, consensus or social proof, authority, liking, scarcity, and unity.

So how do we go about becoming liked? Cialdini suggests a great ‘About Us’ page highlighting people as individuals by humanizing descriptors with relatable personal or fun interests.

Up the game by focusing on shared interests with your audience, using in-house subject matter experts in your blogs and always adding headshots of authors.