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8 neuroscience lessons for creating
content that journalists want to share
Danny Ashton
Can you read the following in 3 seconds?
An unreasonable request…
... How about this?
Easy, right?
Hello! I’m Danny Ashton
We have spent the past 5 years trying
out different things with content
Over the years we got some great wins…
But results were still inconsistent
Recently, strange things started to happen…
After years of trying to convince journalists to feature
our work – now they are asking us for visual content.
8 neuroscience lessons
1. Triune brain theory.
2. Reptilian’s brain attention.
3. Hardwired for emotion.
4. Audience’s emotional response.
5. Limbic-focused content.
6. The Neomammalian brain.
7. 3-second test.
8. Human interaction.
Lesson 1 - The Triune Brain Theory
Lesson 2 - Getting the Reptilian’s brain attention
The issue with the reptilian approach
Brand reputation
Reptilian content aimed
at publishers can be done…
So… What’s the problem with creating
reptilian content aimed at publishers?
• Access: To win a break, you need to provide
content that is better than what the publishers
are currently creating.
• Resources: Tabloids are the major supplier of
reptilian content and they have more money
and experience.
• Budget: With a limited budget, it’s hard to make
an impression.
Lesson 3 - How we are all hardwired for emotion
Enter the Limbic System
Lesson 4 - The importance of knowing your
audience’s emotional response
Emotions and the parenting audience
Emotions and the gadget audience
But it’s not just positive emotions…
Emotions and the car enthusiast
Lesson 5 - The rise of limbic-focused content
Buzzfeed and Upworthy have been
built on this type of content
The “real” publishers are changing.
So where does the
Neomammalian Brain fit in?
Lesson 6 – Mind the Gatekeepers’
Neomammalian Brain
Journalists = Gatekeepers
What does this all mean?
• Versatility: Our content needs to have a
limbic (emotional) focus - but it also needs to
pass the neomammalian scrutiny of the
gatekeepers.
• Credibility: A journalist needs a good,
trustworthy source to write a fair and
balanced story. Every time that a journalist
uses a source, a decision has to be made on
credibility.
The science lecture is over
But first, a confession
“Creating purely reptilian content is
not our goal –but the reptilian brain
is something we can’t ignore.”
Lesson 7 - The golden 3-second test
Case Study 1
• Client:
Hosting Affiliate
• Target Audience:
General, Internet users.
• Relevancy scale:
Relevant to customers
and potential customers.
1. Limbic concerns
What is the emotional nature of our audience?
Fear/Paranoia — Lack of privacy/control
2. Digital PR potential assessment
Do publishers care?
3. Ideation & Content brainstorm
• Research: Content from
social networks and
publisher’s audience –
related to the
emotion/issues we want to
target.
• Final idea: Based on limbic
response of this particular
audience to the issues we
have identified.
Our idea » How To Disappear Online
4. Reptilian Concerns
• Images will be the
primary format – they
will pass a 3 second
scan.
• Title exploits
‘uncertainty’ by
promising a simple
solution, i.e. ‘How to…’
5. Neomammalian Concerns
(and a little “social proof” doesn’t hurt)
Results » Media coverage
Results » Placements galore
The real goal » Human interaction
Case Study 2:
“The Ultimate Towel Folding
Guide”
• Target Audience:
Pinterest users/Interior design
• Emotion/Limbic:
Playful content, which works
well with this audience
• Reptilian:
Quick, visual guide to
• Neomammalian:
The instructions actually work
Reptilian & Limbic concerns
Results » Media coverage & Social shares
413k views · 60+ placements · 2.6K+ social media shares
(but you can’t beat real human interaction!)
Lesson 8 - The power of human interaction
There is a problem with static visual content…
One solution: Interactive experiences
Results » Placements galore
Reactions » Neomammalian brain
Interactivity is not a magic bullet
Summary
For creating content that journalists want to share:
1. Identify the emotional hooks of your audience, and create
ideas using this research.
2. Fact-check/evaluate/invest/test your content so it will pass the
Neomammalian ‘gatekeeper’.
3. Seduce the reptilian brain by matching easy-to-digest content
with ‘uncertainty/solution’-powered titles.
Thanks for listening 
Continue the conversation and follow me on
Twitter: @dannyashton

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8 Neuroscience Lessons For Creating Content That Journalists Want To Share - Search Marketing Day

Notas do Editor

  1. To help explain what an infographic is, I want to give you a quick test. http://i.imgur.com/ikxoG8j.png
  2. Even with the ability of speed reading that request was hard on all of us in the room. I created this presentation and I still don’t remember what it said! Our brains digest text in a certain way and it’s pretty slow – because
  3. Now another test – again you have 3 seconds.
  4. Now that was far easier… many of you would have understand the meaning in less than a second. In fact our brain can make sense of an image in less than a 1/10 of a second. This is all because image processing is far older in evolutionary terms and our brains have had far longer to adapt to visuals. Our reptilian brain finds this easy so will let us continue to digest the information.
  5. In this presentation I will share with you some lessons of what we have learnt creating and promoting over 2000 pieces of visual conte.
  6. Our brain, whether at a conscious or unconscious level, controls every action that we take. So any framework we build needs to begin with the brain.
  7. 1. Reptilian brain: Instinctive. Interested in: sex and danger (prompting similar responses from most audiences).  porn and celeb content Content is plentiful – but covers a narrow range of subjects. 2. Limbic brain: Subconscious. Interested in: emotions (varies among audiences). Content covers broad subject matters – but evokes specific emotional states. 3. Neomammalian brain: Engaged. Interested in: intellectual ideas, planning, critical assessment. Content could cover the widest scope of interest – all human knowledge! …But it DOES NOT YET EXIST for most online content audiences.
  8. When we apply this triune brain theory to content consumption – we can create this diagram comparing % population consumption versus complexity of content. Looking at the diagram and if your goal is for the widest audience possible with the least complexity (which means cheap) then the logical step would be to target reptilian content…right?
  9. Look at any tabloid newsaper and you see that reptilian brain content certainly gets clicks and engagement. I mean who doesn’t want to look at a girl clobbering a rival in their head… or the terrifying moment a man is knocked down by a ghost. And yes all of these stories are just on day in the MailOnline.
  10. Brand/Reputation 2. Audience – a show of hands please.
  11. The first problem is the potential for backlash … brands tend to risk averse and the potential backlash of reptilian content is high.
  12. $10,000: cost of “content” Performed very well Impossible for majority of brands Not scalable Ethical issues
  13. As you can see from the quick video – our brains are hardwired from birth to relate to emotion. But in the next few slides we will see that different audience respond to different emotions.
  14. Looking back at our diagram we see that the limbic brain deals with the largest range of content with a range of complexity from the very simple to the more complex. So let’s take deeper look into how we humans consume emotional content.
  15. I have shown just a few example of successful emotional content but don’t just take my word – there has been a number of studies highlighting this. The above results are from a study from the US agency – Fractl who analysed the top shared images on reddit and found positive emotional content was most conducive to the amount of shares.
  16. It’s clear for this audience that nostalgia is emotional hook that works well.
  17. In another study by the New York Times – they analysed the emotions used when comparing content that was most emailed to other people. The thing to note from this study is that it’s the power of the emotion that is important – even “negative” but powerful emotions like Anxiety and Anger can trigger a sharing response.
  18. New publishers are taking advantage of how important the limbic brain is for the reception of content.
  19. New publishers have taken advantage of how important the limbic system brain is for content.
  20. The limbic focused content is what the vast majority of editorial content consumers are looking for. And thus it’s also what the publishers are looking for – so how do you get the publishers to publish your content. This is where the Neo mammalian brain comes in…
  21. New publishers have taken advantage of how important the limbic system brain is for content.
  22. Any content that is shared by these publishers will have be approved by a small number of human minds – the minds of the journalists/bloggers – We can call these people the gatekeepers. The job of the gatekeeper is to protect their limbic audience from inaccurate/poorly research content. If they post content that is found to be wrong/inaccurate then they suffer professional consequences– so they will engage their neomammalian parts of their brains to check/analyse and decide if this content is both a good fit and up to the standard of their publication.
  23. The theory is just a framework we can use when producing “human success” content in future. Coming up! Case studies to show how the triune brain theory works in practice.
  24. The reptilian brain is what initially attracts our attention and interest. And even though the substance of our content is directed at the limbic brain – we still need to engage with the reptilian brain up-front.
  25. Our reptilian brain works quickly. If we get the gist in 3 seconds, we’ll continue to digest the information – if not, we’re gone. This is why image-based content does so well.
  26. A quick check of Reddit – we can see over the past few months stories relating to NSA/Spying/Snowden and the majority of useful content taps into this “Fear”
  27. A quick look at buzzsumo and we see that the issue of privacy with the motion of fear/paranois is also important for a lot of top tier publishers with a large audience.
  28. Screenshots tell the story – which means we can relate/digest the information far quicker.
  29. Before we speak to any journalist gatekeepers – we test the content on imgur and see what the imgur/reddit audience says about our content. We can then make any edits/changes so that we are confident we know it will pass the neomammlian brain evaluation of the journalist gatekeepers when we go to the outreach stage.
  30. This test actually did very well and it allows us to use this “social proof” when we speak to the journalists/bloggers during outreach.
  31. Content campaigns are often evalauated on editorial placements and this content got everywhere from Time Magazine to Lifehacker.
  32. Content campaigns are often evalauated on editorial placements and this content got everywhere from Time Magazine to Lifehacker.
  33. But what we are seeing is that viewing the “human interaction” through social and comments is just as important. Looking at the top infographics on lifehacker through Buzzsumo we see that this infographic is the 2nd most shared infographic they have featured in the last 6 months. These shares then led to over 250k of visitors Looking at the Daily Mail we can also see the human response with over 450 comments..with my personal favourite being “I’ve deleted all my accounts this is the last comment from me..!” I really hope that is true 
  34. Using visuals rather than large amounts of means we our reptilian brain will see this as an easy solution to the very important uncertainty – that you don’t know how to make animals of out of towels. We used “cute” illustrations helps to engage the limbic response.
  35. It was great to see this content go down very well with it’s intended audience with re-pins across the site. Also large journalist gatekeepers allowed the content to be shared with their audience – Washington post/Design Taxi
  36. Hard for Gatekeepers to engage their neomammalian brains to evaluate static content – are these sources correct? Can I trust it? One solution we found was to only promote our own infographics and then having pages with sources – thus building trust and reputation over time – but this isn’t perfect and this is were interactive can help.
  37. When we produced our first infogrpahic we wanted to something that provided a solution to the problem of evaluation by gatekeepers. We did this by making all source links clickable as well as having anchors throughout the piece so any user could quickly find the source of where that information came from . We also included some buttons so users could tweet these stats – which reduces the barrier to sharing.
  38. Bear in mind that all we did with this interactive was improve upon the format –the results blew us away.
  39. Organic pick-up from the Havard Business Review – the ultimate in neomammalian brain using gatekeeper. Not the type of person you can outreach.
  40. You have to be sure not to add interactivity just for the sake of it.. Or it will just be self-indulgent and our neomammalian brains will quickly switch off. Interactivity is a great opportunity to make your infographic more effective —but the fundamentals need to be right first. Does your content still primarily engage the limbic system? Does it address the reptilian and neomammalian brains?