Tap emotional hot buttons to make your content go viral

“We discovered that the top positive emotions evoked by viral images are amusement, interest, surprise, happiness, delight, pleasure, joy, hope and affection,” says Kerry Jones, inbound marketing manager at Fractl. “But negative emotions also play a role, especially when they evoke feelings of anticipation and surprise.”

Here are three tips for tapping into these emotional hot buttons to increase virality:

1. Use contrasting emotions to increase your content’s impact. The common trait shared by most viral content is the ability to produce a complex emotional reaction from an audience. Fractl found that the most viral images elicit a range of emotions, rather than a single emotional response.

“Contrasting emotions are especially effective for moving people to share content,” says Jones. “Content that elicits a mix of negative and positive emotions, plus an element of surprise, is the ultimate recipe for viral success.”

Achieving virality requires not only that you create an emotional response, but also that the emotional response is one that will drive people to share content.