Page 67 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO). Tapping into this fear can also get people to
click and share.

Here’s an example of FOMO in action:19 Marc and Angel Chernoff have an
incredible blog at www.marcandangel.com. They publish inspiring content that
regularly spreads across social media, garnering thousands if not hundreds of
thousands of social shares. One of the most fascinating pieces they’ve written is
a post called “30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself” that received more than
500,000 Likes, 20,000 tweets, and several thousand shares on other social
networks.

They wrote a similar post, “30 Things to Start Doing for Yourself,” but the
more negative one, “30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself,” performed much
better. They said using negative words like “stop,” “avoid,” and “don’t” always
led to better performance. They reasoned that everyone wants to find out if
they’re missing out on something they should stop doing.

20. Help readers spread ideas to help others.
Here’s an insight from my favorite newspaper, The New York Times:20 In an
attempt to understand what’s buzzworthy, neuroscientists scanned the brains of
people while they were hearing about new ideas. Then, as these people told
others about what they had heard, the scientists observed which ideas spread and
which didn’t.

You might predict that people would pass along the most memorable ideas—
the ones that light up the brain regions associated with memories. But that’s not
what happened. The best predictors of buzz were in the brain regions associated
with social cognition—thoughts about other people. If those regions lit up when
something was heard, people were more likely to talk about the idea
enthusiastically, and the idea would keep spreading.

“You’d expect people to be most enthusiastic spreading ideas that they
themselves are excited about,” said researcher Dr. Emily Falk of the University
of Michigan. “But our research suggests that’s not the whole story. Thinking
about what appeals to others may be even more important.”

Abigail Posner, head of strategic planning for Google, described this urge as
an energy exchange:21 “When we see or create an image that enlivens us, we
send it to others to give them a bit of energy and effervescence. Every gift holds
the spirit of the gifter. Also, every image reminds us and others that we’re alive,
happy, and full of energy (even if we may not always feel that way). And when
we Like or comment on a picture or video sent to us, we’re sending a gift of
sorts back to the sender. We’re affirming them. But, most profoundly, this ‘gift’