A Psychological Strategy of Effective Blog Content

[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series.]

One of the most amazing things about blogging and creating blog content is that you’re never quite sure what’s going to “work” and what won’t – there’s just this X factor that exists with little rhyme nor reason to it.

That’s why you see such random viral videos and think to yourself, “Why in the world did that get 30 million views?!?” – it’s because the internet is a fickle and strange place. I know this empirically as I’ve seen some blog posts do terrible in terms of traffic and engagement while others completely blow up leaving me scratching (or shaking) my head.

With that being said you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that you really have only a small bit of control when it comes to the success of any given blog post (and perhaps your blog for a good bit). Sure, you can follow a lot of the strategies outlined in our SEO Guide for Bloggers but it’ll only go so far besides creating amazing and effective blog content – and you’re already a pro if you’ve made it this far through the series, right?

But for many it leaves too much of a gap to chance, to fate, to luck, and to that I say “Too bad.” – there’s nothing much more you can do! You create great content, optimize your blog through search engine strategies, choose your right tools, WordPress Plugins, a WordPress Theme, and create a consistent and focused content development strategy and then you hit the “Publish” button and you’re off to the races.

But here’s one element that I feel is fairly consistent – an element (strategy if you will) that seems to make sense over and over again when it comes to the big “success” of many bloggers – it won’t surprise you but it may challenge you to consistently think about it as you generate content and strategize your campaigns for growth.

We Are Human and Humans are Emotional

There’s just something powerful about emotion – you know this firsthand as the things that move you really, well, move you. It’s different for every person and sometimes there’s not a sufficient way to describe them or the reasons why we are moved.

Emotions are powerful tools and vehicles for communicating. The challenge in written form is your ability to express them well enough to solicit a response.

Just think of all the more famous viral videos and mega-shared pieces of content that you’ve seen just in the past week: They probably solicited some sort of emotion, perhaps anger (over the financial crises), sadness (global disasters), confusion (Casey Anthony), or laughter (pick any viral video that includes babies, cats, or epic fails).

Right? There’s something about content that touches our emotion in a striking and response-worthy way that forces us to click the share-button, “liking” it on Facebook, the retweet button, or simply emailing/forwarding it through to our friends.

The question is whether your blog content (and your blog at large) solicits emotion in such a way that demands an audience, a response, an engagement? I think this is an element of psychological strategy of blog content that I think the more successful bloggers tap into, either explicitly or by chance or luck.

I could give tons of examples and tons of suggestions but I think you can take it from here – go on and create amazing and emotionally-engaging content that hooks people, begs them to share it, and then do it again, and again, and again.

And no – what you had for breakfast was not emotionally stimulating. Sorry, but’s it’s the truth.

[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series.]