The tremendous power of emotional tone in all the media you consume is difficult to overstate. Marketers have long known that tapping into people’s emotions not only gets their attention, it gets them to engage and act on that content as well. Let’s take a closer look.
Whenever you have too much time on your hands, you might browse the trending tab on your favourite social media. Next time, notice that a lot of incendiary words are being used in the title. Someone was “DESTROYED!” or was “SO EMBARRASSED.” It’s like they have too many capitalized letters and exclamation points lying around and they want to use them up.
The images that accompany that headline can be pretty spicy as well.
Content creators know that if you feel something powerful; sad, happy, angry, excited; you’re much more likely to engage with that content. Give it a like, comment, or share it. The more emotion they create, the more engagements they get. That is the tremendous power of emotional tone.
All too often, the intensity of the headline or image in no way matches the content of the article. And all too often we just read the headline, feel something powerful, and share it with friends. Without even a glance to the actual content of the article. A big no no for excellent digital citizens like us, right!?
A big part of media literacy is social-emotional learning (SEL) and a good digital citizen is an informed one. When you understand how content creators are trying to reach you through your emotions you will be a more responsible consumer of that content. We can do it together!
Kermode Can Help
Kermode looks at elements like emotional tone and does a sentiment analysis when you use our app. The sentiment analysis can give you feedback on the positive or negative tone of the article you’re analyzing by looking for over 5000 keywords. Contact us today for a free demo.
