How to evoke strong emotions from social media audiences on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube that will make them want to share your videos and blog posts with their community of friends and followers? The obvious answer is to create quality content. But how? How do you create videos and blog posts that trigger an emotional response and connection with your viewers and readers? Where do you start?

We start at the beginning.

Any piece of content, long or short video, blog, Instagram, TikTok, or Reddit post its core, is a story. There are options on most social media platforms to post your 24-hour story, sort of your daily highlights. Start with stories. And, please, let’s agree on this truth, humans love stories.

We love to listen to stories, watch and tell stories. As a matter of fact, that is all we do. Even when there is no one around to listen, we tell stories to ourselves in our minds. We are all story junkies. And we love stories so much because they trigger emotions in us, help to change our point of view, and teach us something new or take us on an adventure.

So, let’s explore social media storytelling in the context of evoking emotions with stories to connect and engage your audiences.

Telling Stories

The key to creating content that emotionally connects with people is to tell great stories that evoke emotions. Good stories carry an emotional charge by default, thus, telling great, relatable stories can help you connect with your people and engage with them in discussions.

You can mentally make a story checklist or a doc to follow certain guidelines for your story structure and functional elements. Here are some concepts to consider for your list.

Using vivid imagery, visuals, and music in your content will help you to get more exposure. Show instead of telling. Describe the lemons vibrantly in your writing and help your readers see and smell those yellow lemons, help them taste the mouthwatering sourness of the fresh-cut lemon, and squint their eyes.

Visuals and music together can be powerful tools to evoke strong emotions and communicate messages. Bright, sunny, happy visuals of vacation spots in Hawaii and endless sounds of island ukulele music and sounds of the ocean surf will trigger that comfortable and optimistic feeling in your viewers, for example.

So, start with the story, ask yourself what emotion you want to trigger in your reader and viewer, and reverse engineer that story.

Powerful language triggers strong emotions, so use powerful language. Choose words that carry strong emotions. Use words that evoke feelings of joy, sadness, and anger. People love drama. Theater, television, and movies capture attention and entertain us through dramatic tools like lighting, high-resolution cameras, settings and props, costumes, music, sound effects, makeup, funny or surprising monologues, and great dialogue, you can add these to your checklist.  

You can also do an action skit with unexpected moves or dance with trendy choreography, using visual effects, voiceovers, and on-point editing.

Connecting and Engaging with Your Audience

Make sure to connect with your audience through stories they love and can relate to. If your audience is young folks who love comic books, talk about your favorite superheroes, the latest Marvel movies, and the newest anime and manga releases in your stories.

If your audience is music lovers and festival goers, talk about the latest charts and what happened in the desert during last season's Coachella. People follow other people who share their interests.

Engage with your audience. Ask questions and provide opportunities for your audience to share their thoughts and opinions.

You, too, can respond in comments in the posts of your favorite influencers in the industry you’re interested in. This will help you create a deeper emotional connection with people and make new friends. Keep in mind that what really works is being social, connecting, and engaging with people.

Share your content.

Once you have created content with the potential for emotional connection, share it with your audience. Please share it on all social media platforms relevant to your topics and delivery style. You need to have a presence on all the majors TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Reddit, Medium, and YouTube promote it through partnerships, influencers, and paid ads. Try different things for a couple of weeks, see what worked the best, regroup and do more of what yielded the best results.

Post at the Best Times

Do your research and find out when your target audience is most active on social media. That way, your content will be seen by more people.

Start by researching relevant industry reports and studies. Look for messages from industry associations, social media networks, and articles from blogs and news outlets on the topic. Use analytics from your social media accounts to look at user engagement data. Most networks offer analytics tools that tell you when your followers are most active.

Analyze your competitor’s social media accounts. Look for patterns regarding when their followers are most active and engaged. Set up Google Alerts for relevant keywords related to your target audience. This will help you stay on top of any changes in the industry. Use social media listening tools. These tools can track conversations on different networks and uncover insights about your target audience. Ask your target audience directly. Try running surveys or polls on social media to get feedback from your community, friends, and followers.

Make Use of Hashtags.

Hashtags can be used to reach a wider audience and to share content that resonates with people. Use hashtags that are relevant to your content and will help your audience find you.

Collaborate with Creators and Influencers

Collaborate with other digital creators and influencers. Tapping into the networks of influencers can help spread the word about your content quickly if they like your content and engage with it.

The way to do it is to identify the right creators and influencers and approach them. Research and identify the right influencers – those with the kind of audience you are looking to reach. Write a proposal email and a few more as follow-ups, and be professional on all levels. Busy people get irritated when people waste their time.

Work with the influencers to develop creative content that is accurate and engaging that resonates with their audience.

Set a written agreement. Set clear expectations and an agreement with the influencer on what you are expecting, how you will measure success, and how you will compensate them.

Monitor and measure your success. Monitor the success of the collaboration to ensure that the results meet your expectations. Measure the results and make adjustments as needed.

Provide feedback with the right tone. Provide feedback to the influencer to ensure that future collaborations are successful. Be clear in your communication, open and honest in your relationship with them, and trustworthy in your business dealings.

You can also run contests and giveaways. Contests and giveaways are a great way to engage your audience and drive more traffic to your content.

Always include CTA (call to action) in all your communications and stories. Encourage engagement. Ask questions, and encourage comments and reviews. Respond to any activity on your posts. This will help spark conversation and get more people involved.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and will be back for more by subscribing to our list with your email and following us on social media.

Let’s engage and be friends on social media.

Thanks for reading!

Hayk