What It Takes To Produce Holy Smokes!

Think of the stories, videos or posts you’ve shared or commented on in the last 24 hours. You can even scroll back through your Facebook activity feed to see which ones caught your eye. (Find it by going to http://www.facebook.com/username/allactivity where “username” is your username.)

Now do a quick gut-check analysis of the topics, headlines or reasons you clicked, shared or commented. What do they all have in common?

Unless you’ve got the personality of plywood, the common thread was that each triggered an emotional response. Consider this from my weekend:

• I liked a photo of a co-worker dancing with his daughter at a Father-Daughter dance
• I uploaded a photo of a friend’s daughter’s dance team captured from ESPN’s broadcast
• I liked a photo of a bottle of bourbon reviewed by a fellow aficionado
• I commented on a story of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s death
• I liked a status update of a high school friend congratulating another high school friend for his basketball team’s victory on Saturday
• I watched a video of bad translations for NFL sideline videos
• I liked a status update of a friend complaining of the high estrogen levels in his household (he has three daughters)
• I clicked on an Upworthy headline about an ad the NFL would never allow on the Super Bowl (Below … worth a watch.)
• I commented on a status update from my friend who is awaiting a liver transplant
• I liked a photo of two friends announcing with pink balloons they were pregnant with a girl

Holy Smokes! content elicits an emotional response so profound you have to do something besides consume it

All of those actions elected a response from me because they triggered an emotion. When my friends share their family news, I’m proud or happy for them. When someone reviews a bourbon, I’m interested and inquisitive. When someone jokes about having too many women around, I can relate (raised by a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother much of my childhood).

But that’s limited to Facebook where my intent and purpose is to engage with friends. On Twitter, my purpose for being is to find and share good content, mostly focused on the world of marketing and communications. So I do things like:

• Share links to blog posts about public relations
• Retweet links to blog posts about marketing
• Comment or respond to people debating issues around PR or marketing
• Tell jokes

While more closely defined around a profession, I’m still responding and reacting and sharing content that elicits and emotional response. It might be that emotion is just curiosity or intrigue. But it may also be that it is outrage or elation. Either way, the content is strong enough to push me to share it with others.

This is what Holy Smokes! Content is. It is content that elicits an emotional response in an audience so profound they have to do something else besides consume it.

• Holy Smokes! That’s interesting!
• Holy Smokes! That’s funny!
• Holy Smokes! That’s true!
• Holy Smokes! That’s sad!
• Holy Smokes! I have to share this with others!

If you are a marketer of any sort these days, producing that response from your content is your job.

Now get to work.

And here’s the video tied to the Upworthy video I clicked on. It’s well worth the watch.

Visit the site to learn more at www.changethemascot.org.