How do you make something go viral? What's the difference between the campaigns that succeed and the campaigns that fail? Here we examine the human brain and discuss why emotional content is contagious.

1. LESSON 3

2. WHY THINGS GO VIRAL: Studying
the Neuroscience of Engagement
CODE OF CONTENT

3. Before you can create killer content, you
need to understand how the brain works.

4. There are two main aspects of the brain.

5. The rational brain handles
things like thinking, logic,
information-processing,
and language.

6. While the emotional
brain handles things like
fight or flight, hunger,
sex, and emotions.

7. The emotional brain has the
power to override the rational
brain and does so at will.

8. Think of it like a spoiled toddler that always gets
his way. It doesn’t think, but acts on impulses and
is driven by automatic instinctive responses.

9. Marketers have been
targeting this part of
the brain for decades.

10. Websites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed may catch a lot of
flak for their shameless headlines, but the truth is that
these companies have mastered something very
powerful: how to create emotionally compelling content.

11. They also teach us something else. That
creating highly shareable content is a
skill. Something that can be learned,
honed, and strategically put to use.

12. It’s not magic,
it’s science.

13. Recent research has proven that emotions hold
the secret to viral content on the Internet.

14. Studies have shown that content that
evokes emotion has a far greater viral
potential than neutral content.

15. Things spread so quickly because human
emotion is contagious. People can “catch” the
emotions of people around them through
expressions, tones, gestures, and language.

16. But formulaic advertisements appeal to
our rational brain. Factual information
doesn’t get past our brains filter and is
easy to tune out, ignore, and forget.

17. There are 6
main emotions
that cause us to
share things.

18. AWE

19. Awe is something remarkable. Something inspiring.
Something that people naturally want to be a part of.
This content usually motivates people and makes
them a better person for consuming it.

20. Example:Felix
Baumgartner's
supersonic
freefall from
space presented
by Red Bull.

21. ANGER

22. Anger is a powerful motivator. When people are
mad, they have to be heard. And they’ll go to
extreme lengths to seek justice. To trigger anger,
you’ll need to evoke some sort of disbelief. But play
into it too much and you’ll do more harm than good.

23. Example: The
Black Fish
documentary
that highlighted
the injustice of
having intelligent
animals in a
confined space.

24. FEAR

25. Fear might be the most powerful of all the emotions.
Often you can trigger this emotion by playing into
people's fear of missing out. Some studies estimate
the fear of missing out can be twice as powerful
compared to the joy of gaining something.

26. Example:Anonymous videos playing
into the fears of the American public.

27. LUST

28. Lust is anything that you want. It could be money,
a job, knowledge, sex, or anything aspirational. If
you can tap into your audience's inner desires and
help them become a better version of themselves,
you’ll have a viral monster on your hands.

29. Example:GoPro’s
1st person action
videos inspiring
extreme athletes
to try new stunts.

30. JOY

31. Joy is powerful. And as
Jonah Berger found,
content that triggers
joy is most likely to go
viral. If you can inspire,
entertain, make
people laugh, or solve
a problem they had
been struggling with
you can set yourself up
for massive success.

32. Example: A video of a dog enthusiastically
greeting a soldier after a long term.

33. SURPRISE

34. One of the best ways to get your audience’s attention
is to challenge their assumptions or enlighten them
with new, surprising information. In a time where we’re
inundated with copycat content, when you can bring
something new to light, you can seriously move people.

35. Example: Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video
enlightening people about Joseph Kony
kidnapping children and forcing them to fight.

36. Forget about facts and statistics. Good content is
all about evoking the audience’s emotions. If you
can touch any of the above emotions, you’ll set
your content up to be shared like never before.

37. In Lesson 4, I’ll dive
a bit deeper into
how things go viral
and reveal the social
reasons of why
people share things.