Facebook is a crazy tool. There is so much to see and do there daily, who really has time for work right? Well as a business it’s flat out ridiculous to keep up with, but it’s an amazing resource that if used properly allows us to engage with our audience in ways that our tiny little startup otherwise would struggle with. That’s where emotion comes into play.
I was recently featured in the Huffington Post link on this topic. Organic reach, meaning a post that we’re not paying for, can be increased with posts that elicit emotion. The post below is my personal favorite from a picture I took last year near my dad’s house in Kansas. My grandfather was taking his last breaths that week so it’s safe to say my emotions were a bit high were the sunset was extra special. It definitely hit my emotional chord. We posted this picture to our facebook page shortly after with the famous quote by John Muir, “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” Engagement on it has been through the roof and every time I see the numbers grow on this I wonder what everyone else sees, or more specifically what emotion it elicits.
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” John Muir
Our highest performing one caught me off guard. The words are beautiful, but I would have never imagined that it would trigger such a response. The post obviously touches on a variety of emotion like struggles, challenges, highs and lows, of life and sport. I personally look at this as a motivator, something to keep my head up when things are tough. Judging by the 12,444 shares, 19544 likes, 664,000 people that have seen it, 282 comments and more, I’d say it hit the emotional spot. Honestly reading the comments is inspiring to me. It’s a post with no call to action from Orange Mud and is only affiliated with our page. So in all reality paying to promote it shouldn’t have a good ROI. But seeing how this touched our audience in terms of action and comments, I keep it going since everyone could use a good nudge in the right direction from time to time.
My notes about emotion were recently featured in the Huffington Post here. Checkout the link to learn more about my idea, plus 11 more ideas to increase your social media reach.
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