Most authors these days can call themselves entrepreneurs. There's a lot that goes into the business of writing besides storytelling. If you're looking to make writing a regular thing, especially when it comes to building and maintaining your writin...
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First impressions matter! If you were looking at two advertisements—one that simply talked about products, and one that made you laugh or cry—which would have the most impact? The second one, right?
Emotional Marketing uses emotions to provoke your audience into noticing, remembering, sharing, and buying. This is one of the best methods for connecting with your audience and keeping their attention in a crowded landscape. They are readers and writers like you, so this type of marketing, when done right, does more than sell books—it inspires, it spurs action, and it puts people at the center of a conversation.
But before you jump in and start tugging at your audience's heart strings, you need to do some research. Emotional marketing hinges on understanding the issues, concerns, and sources of pride for your audience. Let's explore.
Do Your Research
Knowing what your audience is searching for online can give you tremendous insight into who they are and what they're looking for. And one of the best ways to understand an audience is through keyword research.
What is keyword research? It is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. By researching keywords based on popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can learn what most people in your audience want answers to.
Tools like BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and Ahrefs provide detailed results on relevant keyword searches, related terms, news articles and influencers, giving you a better sense of where a brand stands in the current culture.
For example, if you want to create content related to Christmas, a quick search in BuzzSumo's Questions feature reveals a variety of emotions associated with the holiday:
Stress over keeping the Christmas ham from drying out - Loneliness after losing a loved one - Worry about making small talk at an office party - Excitement over buying the perfect gift
You don't have to use a paid platform to do your own online keyword research. There are free tools as well, such as Wordstream and Wordtracker. Here are some steps you can take to optimize your strategy:
1. Make a list of important topics based on your business and separate these into relevant buckets. For example, a Beach Reads bucket might include cozy mystery, chicklit, quick reads, summer romance.
2. Look at the related search terms that appear when you plug a keyword into your search engine. When you type in your word or phrase and scroll to the bottom of your search results, related suggestions will appear, which can spark ideas for other keywords.
3. Consider the searcher's intent when doing keyword research. For example, researching how to write an engaging blog post is different than creating a blog website.
