-Emotions: One of the hardest to learn but if you are able to master it, it will be the most powerful skill in your belt. What you have to do is trigger emotions with your content. But not any emotion, you have to trigger the right emotions, and this are the ones that cause “physiological arousal”

What is this? It’s easy emotions can either stimulate action or inhibit it. If you think about it, there are emotions that make you want to do something (joy, passion, fear) and emotions that make you want to stay put (sadness).

So what you want to do is stimulate these emotions that provoke physiological arousal. It is also important to elicit positive emotions, but negative emotions can also do the trick, the most essential part is that they make you want to do something.

The most important emotions to elicit are:

-Awe: This is the feeling of something remarkable. Sometimes something is so awesome that you can’t keep yourself from talking about it.

-Anger: disturbing people and making them angry is a powerful way to make people talk about you, if they want to criticize you they have to talk about you and share your content. Although I don’t suggest you start pissing people of as a habit, it may be effective in the short run, but in the long run you are just going to seem like an asshole. But controversy sells if you don’t believe me ask Dan Brown or Eminem. So start defying assumptions, believes and world views, but I will also advice you that you have reasons to back up your opinions if you don’t, you are going to seem stupid.

-Anxiety: This is a good emotion to trigger it makes people buy a lot (ask the pharmaceutical industry), obviously you have to create that anxiety and in the end give them a way to relive it. Don’t let them feeling anxious. They will not only buy what you are selling, but also they will share it because you have relieved them from that anxiety.

-Fear: We all know that fear is one of the most powerful motivators, in this case the fear of losing an opportunity, or the fear of being the last at something. We all have heard some horror tale about an epidemic or something like that that spreads like wildfire even though it isn’t true.

-Joy: People are good in nature if you make someone feel happy he or she is going to want to make other people feel happy. Something funny or joyful is going to spread really well. People love to be the first one sharing a joke.

-Passion: Probably one of the hardest to achieve with just one piece of content, usually you are going to need more but if you are able to make people feel passionate about whatever it is you are talking about or selling they are going to share it like crazy. We all have some friend that is passionate about her pet and won’t shut up about it (even though nobody cares). If you achieve this, it is extremely powerful.

-Surprise: I have mentioned it already, but I will say it again because is powerful and unlike some of the other emotions it is easy to trigger. If you can surprise somebody with a turn of events, defying an assumption, telling some surprising news they will share it immediately.

These are the main emotions I will explain, but it is not limited to these. Any emotion you can think that triggers action in a person can be a good way to make your content more viral.