We've covered what content is (and if you haven't read, come back to this after you do), but it's not enough to just create... you have to connect. At its core, emotional content marketing is simply the practice of appealing to a prospective customer’s feelings, values, and aspirations rather than just focusing on product features. It's like the old saying goes: sell the sizzle not the steak. Sell the vacation, not the flight. Why? 1. The Brain’s Emotional Wiring Research in neuroscience shows that humans make decisions based on emotions first and justify them with logic later. Think about it, whatever you believe to be true you look for signs of. You believe in your convictions because you have a certain emotional stronghold to them and feel 'triggered' or confused when it's contradicted. When your marketing activates an emotional response, it leaves a lasting imprint on the brain, making your brand more memorable. It may feel counterintuitive to narrow down based on emotions that may not resonate with EVERYONE, but it's better to resonate 100% with a group that may only make up 15% of the population than resonate only 15% with 100% of the population. 2. Trust and Loyalty Brands that connect emotionally are easier to trust, even if people haven't been introduced to you for a long period of time. There are a few cognitive biases we all fall prey to, bandwagon effect, familiarity bias, etc, building a brand that makes potential customers feel aligned with on a personal level will give you the upperhand. Even if a competitor offers a similar product at a lower price they aren't YOU. 3. Social Sharing Emotionally charged content is more likely to go viral. In this day and age virality = profitability. The algorithms of social channels are optimized for engagement. They want people to stay on the app for as long as possible so if they see something is getting a lot of shares, likes, and comments, the video will be boosted to more people and increase your visibility and probability of sales. 5 Key Emotional Triggers in Marketing To effectively harness emotional marketing, you need to tap into the right emotions. Here are five triggers that consistently yield results: 1. Happiness Joyful content often leads to social shares and positive associations. Campaigns that evoke happiness inspire a sense of community and optimism. Example:  Coca-Cola’s "Share a Coke" campaign personalized soda bottles with names, encouraging people to share a Coke (and a smile) with someone they care about. 2. Fear Fear can be a powerful motivator, especially when it highlights the consequences of inaction or danger. Example:  Security brands like Ring or ADT use fear-based messaging to emphasize safety and protection for loved ones. 3. Sadness Sadness creates empathy and connection. Brands often use it to tell stories that tug at heartstrings and encourage social change. Example:  The ASPCA’s tear-jerking ads about animal cruelty prompt donations by making viewers feel a deep sense of responsibility. 4. Anger Righteous anger can inspire people to take action or align with a cause. Example:  Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign sparked controversy, but it resonated deeply with its target audience, showcasing their commitment to social justice. 5. Surprise The element of surprise keeps audiences engaged and makes campaigns more memorable. Example:  Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” campaign shocked viewers with demonstrations of unlikely items (like an iPhone) being blended in their high-powered blenders. Steps to Harness Emotional Marketing 1. Understand Your Audience You can’t create an emotional connection without knowing your audience intimately. Research their: Pain points Aspirations Fears Core values Tip:  Use surveys, social media listening tools, and customer feedback to gather insights into your audience's emotional landscape. 2. Define Your Brand’s Core Values Your brand needs a strong emotional foundation. Ask yourself: What does my brand stand for? How do I want customers to feel when they interact with my product/service? What emotional values align with my brand mission? Example:  Patagonia positions itself as an eco-conscious brand, appealing to customers who care deeply about environmental sustainability. 3. Tell a Story Storytelling is at the heart of emotional marketing. Instead of showcasing your product, tell a story about how it impacts lives. Tips for Powerful Storytelling: Keep it relatable:  Show real people or situations your audience can identify with. Focus on a hero’s journey:  Narrate a transformation, with your product as a supporting tool. Use visuals and music:  Emotional cues like music, color schemes, and cinematic visuals amplify your story’s impact. 4. Use Visuals That Evoke Emotion Images and videos have the power to evoke emotions instantly. Select visuals that align with your message. Warm colors  (red, yellow) evoke passion and excitement. Cool colors  (blue, green) convey calm and trust. Authentic imagery of people fosters relatability and connection. 5. Incorporate Emotion-Driven Copywriting Your copy needs to align with the emotions you’re trying to evoke. Use language that is vivid, sensory, and conversational. Instead of:  “Our shoes are lightweight and durable.” Try:  “Feel the freedom of movement with shoes so light, you’ll forget you’re wearing them.” 6. Evoke Action with a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA) Emotion without action is wasted potential. End your campaigns with a CTA that converts feelings into tangible steps. Example:  “Join the movement,” “Donate today,” or “Share your story with us.” Whether you’re crafting an ad campaign, designing a website, or writing a social media post, always ask yourself: What do I want my audience to feel?   If you can answer that question and deliver on it, you’ll unlock the full potential of emotional marketing. Ready to create campaigns that truly connect?

We've all heard the advice 'create a content calendar' but why is it so important? A content calendar is like the ultimate accountability system that visually helps you plan what your daily actions are/should be, organize your ideas to decrease the potential for redundancy in posting, set deadlines for yourself if you're releasing a special LTO, and align your content with your marketing goals. Basically, it helps you compartmentalize your workload and keep you on track. Steps to Create an Effective Content Calendar Step 1: Define Your Goals Start with your overarching marketing objectives. Ask yourself: Are you aiming to increase brand awareness? Do you want to drive traffic, generate leads, or boost conversions? Is the goal to educate, entertain, or inspire your audience? Pro Tip:  Align your content themes with your brand's mission and tone to ensure consistency. Step 2: Audit Your Current Content Review your past content to identify what resonated with your audience and what didn’t. This is easy to track given Instgram's insights feature or by using certain analytics tools like Google Analytics. Key Metrics to Track: Engagement rates (likes, shares, comments) Website traffic from content Conversion rates for specific campaigns Step 3: Choose Your Channels and Frequency Decide which platforms to focus on (e.g., Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube) and how often to post. Tailor your strategy for each channel: Blog posts:  Weekly or biweekly Social media:  3–5 times per week Email newsletters:  Weekly or biweekly Step 4: Plan Content Themes and Pillars Develop recurring content pillars that align with your brand and audience. For example: Education:  Tutorials, how-tos, case studies Engagement:  Polls, quizzes, user-generated content Promotion:  Product launches, discounts Inspiration:  Stories, testimonials Step 5: Map Out a Monthly Calendar Use a monthly layout to visualize your content schedule, ensuring a balanced mix of themes and formats. For each day, specify: Topic/theme Content type (blog, video, infographic, etc.) Platform Goals (engagement, traffic, sales) Step 6: Incorporate AI Tools to Streamline the Process AI tools can help automate, optimize, and simplify your content calendar creation. Below are our top 5: 1. Notion What It Does:  Combines task management, content planning, and collaboration. How It Helps:  Create shareable calendars, assign tasks, and organize content pipelines. AI Features:  Uses AI to suggest ideas, improve writing, and streamline workflows. 2. Trello What It Does:  A kanban-style task management tool perfect for visualizing content workflows. How It Helps:  Create boards for different content categories, deadlines, and publishing schedules. AI Features:  Integrates with tools like Zapier to automate repetitive tasks. 3. Buffer What It Does:  A social media scheduling tool with built-in analytics. How It Helps:  Plan, schedule, and analyze posts across multiple platforms from one dashboard. AI Features:  Suggests optimal posting times and generates hashtags based on your content. 4. Grammarly Business What It Does:  Enhances content quality with advanced editing features. How It Helps:  Polishes copy before publishing, ensuring consistency in tone and voice. AI Features:  Analyzes writing for readability, emotion, and clarity, helping you refine your messaging. 5. Hootsuite What It Does:  A robust social media management platform. How It Helps:  Schedule posts, monitor analytics, and engage with your audience. AI Features:  Uses AI to recommend content ideas and optimize posting schedules. A Sample Content Calendar Template Here’s a quick example of how you might organize your calendar: Date Platform Content Type Theme Goal CTA Jan 1, 2024 Instagram Carousel Motivation Increase shares "Tag a friend!" Jan 3, 2024 Blog How-To Guide Education Drive traffic "Read more" Jan 5, 2024 LinkedIn Case Study Engagement Build authority "Join the convo" Final Thoughts A well-structured content calendar is more than just a schedule—it’s a powerful tool to keep your brand consistent, efficient, and impactful. By taking just a few minutes out of your day you can map out what your course of action is, make real-time adjustments as you receive data from released pieces, and make a literal note of what converts, what doesn't and leverage ALL of this along with AI to streamline your process. Hope this helps! Happy posting :)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become like saying Beetlejuice. It often feels quite daunting, but in reality it's nothing more than scary makeup parading around. All SEO truly is, is a way for you to reach more prospective customers by increasing your visibility. How can one achieve this? By ranking higher on search engines (like Google). Yea... that's pretty much it. The higher your site appears, the more likely people are to click, increasing traffic and conversions. Because, if we're being honest, who here actually scrolls through the 199 pages of Google when you search something? You scroll to the bottom of the 1st or 2nd and call it a day based on your options. SO, why does SEO matter? It helps with: Organic Traffic:  to attract qualified visitors without the use of paid ads. Credibility:  Websites on the first page of search results are perceived as more trustworthy by viewers. Long-Term ROI:  Unlike ads, SEO initiatives compound over time 10 Easy SEO Tips for Higher Rankings 1. Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions with KEYWORDS This is where the trigger word 'keywords' comes into play. By crafting compelling title tags (60 characters or less) that include keywords, frequently used words in searches, you can rank higher as you have more relatability to the search. Why It Matters:  These elements are the first things users see on SERPs, influencing click-through rates (CTR). Example: From: Title: “Easy Vegan Dinner Recipes" Meta: “These are some easy vegan dinner recipes you can make this week." To: Title: “10 Best Vegan Recipes for Beginners | Quick & Easy Meals” Meta: “Explore these beginner-friendly vegan recipes! From hearty breakfasts to quick dinners, you’ll love these plant-based dishes.” 2. Keyword Research In order to properly optimize your title and descriptions you need to properly identify what the truly impactful, and highest converting keywords are that your audience is searching for. It's best to choose keywords with high search volumes but low competition so you can increase your ranking when someone types the highly searched term. This looks like focusing on long-tail keywords (long-tail= more than 1-2 words) like “best vegan protein for athletes" to target this very specific search intent. Tools to help: Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs. 3. Improve Page Load Speed No one has any patience anymore. If your bounce rate (how quickly people leave your site) is high then you will rank lower and decrease the chances of connecting with potential customers. There are many factors that effect bounce rate and one is your page's loading speed (how long it takes for your site to look the way it should when someone clicks into it). You can help your speed by compressing images, enabling caching, and minimizing code. Why It Matters:  Google prioritizes UX, user experience, and slow sites often see higher bounce rates because no one likes waiting and will leave after a certain period of stagnancy. Tool to help: Google’s PageSpeed Insights to assess your site’s performance. 4. Use Internal Links Unless you're dating, very few people are in detective mode, and let's be real, when we are in detective mode, we like a quick mystery. Websites, to a degree, are a mystery to new customers. If you're selling a fragrance and have 50 tabs, that's going to feel overwhelming to the audience, no matter how helpful they are, because of the psychological phenomena known as the paradox of choice. However, if you properly implement useful links on your pages that easily guide customers through your site ( this is called internal linking), you can improve the UX and SEO. Example: Internal Link: “Learn more about vegan nutrition in our beginner’s guide to vegan diets .” 5. Optimize for Mobile A beautiful website on a laptop is fantastic when you find it, but if we're being honest, no one cares how beautiful your website could be if what they're seeing looks like trash. With over 50% of global web traffic now coming from mobile devices, it's crucial to ensure your website is mobile-friendly with a responsive design, and, you guessed it, Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing. Tip:  Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to evaluate your site and make adjustments from there. 6. Create High-Quality Content This one may seem like a no-brainer but you'd be surprised about how lazy some content feels. Focus on creating in-depth, evergreen content that remains relevant over time is no easy feat but it is, in essence, simple if you dedicate proper time and attention to its creation. You can do this easily by simply answering frequently asked questions (FAQs) from your customers, including visuals like images, infographics, or videos that are clean and related to the subject matter, easy to scan so someone in 'doomscrolling mode' is intrigued enough to stop and take a closer look. Why It Matters:  Valuable, shareable content attracts backlinks and keeps users engaged longer. Algorithms on social media platforms especially are designed to boost content that's being engaged with because it keeps people on the app for longer. The more relevant you seem, the more people you're shown to and the higher SEO rankings you can expect to have. 7. Optimize Images We're all about the aesthetics nowadays, even if we don't want to admit it. Beauty is only skin-deep, but we only see skin so it better be worth it. Compressing images to reduce load times, using descriptive file names (e.g., "vegan-lasagna-recipe.jpg"), adding alternative text (alt text) to every image, and incorporating keywords helps improve your images and, therefore, improve your SEO. Why:  Alt text improves accessibility and helps search engines understand your images, when people search for things like 'lasagna'. Your lasagna recipe is more likely to be featured if it's literally titled 'lasagna'. 8. Use Backlinks The trigger word back-linking sounds convoluted but it really boils down to your ability to connect with other sources that are reputable.  It's like if you're reading a newspaper about someone you've never heard of and you look them up. If all you can find are their social pages then you think of them as a regaulr person. But if you find news articles from People , USWeekly, Hello !, and Vogue then you'll think 'wow a celebrity'.... backlinks are like being featured. 9. Secure Your Website with HTTPS A secure website (https://) boosts rankings and builds user trust. Check your site’s SSL certificate status and upgrade if necessary. Tip:  Most hosting providers offer free SSL certificates. 10. Monitor and Update Old Content Don’t let old blog posts and pages collect dust. Refresh content with updated statistics, new insights, and better keywords. Why It Matters:  Updated content signals relevance to search engines and can quickly improve rankings. 4 Essential SEO Tools to Help You 1. Ahrefs What It Does:  Comprehensive tool for keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audits. How It Helps:  Uncover content gaps, identify top-performing keywords, and track competitor strategies. Key Feature:  Content Explorer to find popular topics in your niche. 2. SEMrush What It Does:  All-in-one marketing tool with advanced SEO capabilities. How It Helps:  Perform keyword research, analyze competitors, and monitor your rankings. Key Feature:  On-page SEO checker for detailed recommendations. 3. Yoast SEO What It Does:  A WordPress plugin that simplifies on-page SEO optimization. How It Helps:  Guides you in optimizing meta tags, content, and readability directly within your site editor. Key Feature:  Traffic light system for easy optimization (red, yellow, green indicators). 4. Google Search Console What It Does:  Free tool by Google to monitor your site’s performance in search results. How It Helps:  Identify indexing issues, track keywords, and measure traffic. Key Feature:  Search performance report to analyze click-through rates (CTR) and impressions. Final Thoughts: SEO Success Made Simple SEO doesn’t have to be complicated. The key is to start small, stay consistent, and continually adapt as you track your results.