Successful people and businesses on Instagram appeal to their audiences’ emotions.
Connecting with people emotionally helps you to stand out from the millions of other profiles out there – most of which put more emphasis on getting content out there and gaining likes instead of focusing on storytelling and evoking emotion.
The thing is, content without connection doesn’t stick. To create a lasting and memorable place for yourself on Instagram, you need to evoke emotion.
“A real story evokes people’s emotions, which makes them truly invested in what’s being said. The thing that separates your social media from a scrapbook to a storybook is how well each post conveys palpable emotions.” – Like A Voss
Create a Sense of Belonging
One way to evoke an emotional connection between your Instagram profile and other people is for your content to create a sense of belonging.
Use your content to make them feel seen.
The question is, how?
According to AdEspresso, there are three major checkpoints that you should ensure you’re hitting in order to create a sense of belonging in your Instagram posts.
These three checkpoints are:
- Use characters your viewers can relate to
- Reflect in your characters’ expressions the emotions you want your viewers to feel
- Write a caption that echoes the tone of your image, pulling the composition together.
The most important thing to remember, though, is that you can’t only rely on a to-do list of things to make your posts evoke a sense of belonging. On top of that, you need to have a deep understanding of who your audience is if you want to be successful. Taking the time to learn about your audience is vital to create an emotional connection between them and your content.
Share the Highs and the Lows
The more social media and the digital world take over our lives, the more we crave authenticity from it. This is one of our core values at Like A Voss “show up with authenticity.”
“Everyone craves authenticity, and Instagram followers are no exception! After a while, people get tired of perfectly-crafted photoshoot perfection and want to see some grit and honesty. […] Enter sorrow and struggle. We all feel sorrow, and we all struggle — most of us every day. Those hard moments are sandwiched between our bursts of joy and coziness, which we love to share.” – Jumper Media
Finding and maintaining a balance between the highs and the lows on your Instagram makes you real and relatable – it’s people and companies that are real that have audiences that are truly emotionally connected to them.
If you’re having a rough week, let your followers know rather than faking some life-is-perfect posts and stories. If you’re celebrating achieving something that’s taken you a long time to reach, also share why it was so difficult to reach and the obstacles you had to overcome to achieve it. Struggles and obstacles are something everyone faces, something that makes you relatable and evokes your audiences’ emotions. No one can relate to perfect.
Inspire Your Audience
Often, when trying to evoke emotion on Instagram, people think that means making people feel happy or sad, but the feeling of inspiration is just as important. If something inspired you, you’re probably going to remember it. You might even want to go back to it once in a while. Don’t you want that from your audience?
So how do you make your audience feel inspired?
Here are just a few ways you can inspire them:
- Share your story – the struggles, the obstacles, the failures and all
- Ask your followers about their goals (such as in an Instagram story question) and engage with them about it
- Use inspirational Call-to-Actions
- Share and write inspirational quotes
- Share parts of your life (or your company’s) + what you had to overcome
Evoking emotion is essential on Instagram or any social media platform (to be honest). It draws people in and helps them connect to you/your company. People that feel connected are people that are going to turn into raving fans, engage, and share your story with the world (and become loyal clients/customers).
Need help evoking emotion on your Instagram? Contact us today to set up a FREE discovery session with our team – we’d love to help!
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