How can you add emotion to your original ideas?

1 Know your audience

The first step to adding emotion to your original ideas is to know your audience. Who are they, what are their pain points, goals, values, and emotions? What are the emotional triggers that motivate them, or the emotional barriers that prevent them from taking action? How do they feel about your topic, industry, or solution? By understanding your audience's emotional profile, you can tailor your original ideas to resonate with them and address their needs and desires.

2 Choose your emotion

The second step to adding emotion to your original ideas is to choose the emotion you want to elicit in your audience. Do you want them to feel curious, excited, surprised, angry, sad, happy, or something else? Depending on your objective, you can choose an emotion that aligns with your message and supports your call to action. For example, if you want to educate your audience about a new trend or opportunity, you might want to spark curiosity and excitement. If you want to challenge their assumptions or beliefs, you might want to provoke surprise or anger. If you want to inspire them to take action, you might want to evoke sadness or happiness.

3 Use emotional language

The third step to adding emotion to your original ideas is to use emotional language. This means using words, phrases, metaphors, and stories that convey the emotion you want to elicit. For example, if you want to create curiosity, you might use words like "discover", "reveal", "secret", or "mystery". If you want to create excitement, you might use words like "amazing", "breakthrough", "revolutionary", or "wow". If you want to create surprise, you might use words like "shocking", "unexpected", "astonishing", or "mind-blowing". Emotional language can also include rhetorical devices like questions, contrasts, exaggerations, or humor.

4 Show, don't tell

The fourth step to adding emotion to your original ideas is to show, don't tell. This means using examples, anecdotes, case studies, testimonials, or images that illustrate the emotion you want to elicit, rather than just stating it. For example, if you want to create sadness, you might share a story of a customer who suffered a loss or a problem that could have been prevented by your solution. If you want to create happiness, you might share a story of a customer who achieved a success or a benefit thanks to your solution. Showing, rather than telling, can help your audience empathize with your original ideas and feel the emotion more deeply.

5 Balance emotion and logic

The fifth step to adding emotion to your original ideas is to balance emotion and logic. While emotion can be a powerful tool to capture attention, build trust, and influence behavior, it can also backfire if it is overdone, inconsistent, or irrelevant. To avoid this, you need to balance emotion with logic, by providing facts, data, evidence, or reasoning that support your original ideas and show their value and credibility. By balancing emotion and logic, you can appeal to both the heart and the mind of your audience, and persuade them to take action.

6 Test and refine

The sixth and final step to adding emotion to your original ideas is to test and refine them. No matter how good you think your original ideas are, you won't know how they affect your audience until you get feedback. You can test and refine your original ideas by conducting surveys, interviews, focus groups, or experiments with your target audience, and measuring their emotional responses, such as satisfaction, interest, engagement, or conversion. By testing and refining your original ideas, you can optimize them for maximum emotional impact and effectiveness.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?