People have feelings that can be easily swayed given the right context and researching the effects of power words has made this obvious. A few of the right words in the right places and you can get your audience to feel whatever you want them to. This is where power words come into play.
You might be wondering, what are power words?
Power words, or smart marketing words, are influential, descriptive words that trigger emotional responses, either positive or negative. Every good marketer uses them in their writing or social media posts, including social media experts and Instagram influencers.
Today, we are going to give you the top 7 types of power words that will catch your readers’ attention on social media so, let’s get right into it!
7 Types of Power Words to Create Emotion
Language and interpretation can dictate how a person will react. There are a few categories of words that are the most influential to readers. The basis of these smart marketing words include:
- Self-indulgence
- Anxiety
- Security
- Desire
- Outrage
- Inspiration
- Mysterious
By appealing to readers with impactful words you can gain conversions almost immediately. Let’s get into what each segment would look like.
1. Self-indulgence
Self-indulgence-based power words entice consumers by appealing to their underlying hunger for something. Money, saving money, spending money, or anything implying that the consumer can earn or save elicits their interest.
When going for this, definitely use words like:
- Money Making
- Surge
- Wealth
- Jackpot
- Golden
A good tactic to gain more interactions is appealing to your audience’s underlying want for more things, like money.
2. Anxiety
Anxiety-inducing language will snatch your audience’s attention and keep it. Anxiety is a really easy way to connect with your readers.
Words like lurking, agony, peril and devastating are all anxious power words that you can almost immediately imagine just by reading them. These are useful for providing imagery.
3. Security
When inciting your readers with intense feelings, you still want them to feel secure. Customers should feel like they can trust your services/products being offered.
Things that are “proven”, “risk-free”, “science-based”, and “reliable” tend to create a reassuring atmosphere for the consumer.
4. Desire
People love love and topics that incite passion. Power words like “intoxicating” and “stimulating” pertain to pleasure and attract attention.
5. Outrage
You might be questioning why you would write to incite outrage. Well, it’s simple. Sometimes creating a temper is useful to get people passionate about important topics in our society. This emotion is quick to get people to take action as well.
6. Inspiration
At times people seek material to help put them in a better mindset. Using inspiring words is a sure way to uplift your readers.
Influential words like “life-changing” and “conquer” in an uplifting context can motivate someone to pursue the thing they’ve been yearning for.
7. Mysterious
Everyone likes to feel as if they’re in on a secret. And generally speaking, most people’s curiosity gets the best of them where they just have to know for the sake of knowing.
This urge of wanting to know the truth and the mystery is useful in captivating the audience.
You can pique people’s interest with hooks like, “never seen before” and “spoiler”. You can count on the reader not being able to help but further investigating.
Power Words and the Mental Psyche
All words regardless of the intent can slip into our being on a psychological level. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words most definitely can hurt.
It’s been proven that negative words release stress and anxiety hormones in the person on the receiving end. What’s even more intriguing is that this applies to words verbalized, heard, or even thought.
A mind exposed to more positive words tends to be more positive and thus, sees the world from a more positive perspective. Ever heard that our thoughts become our actions? Well, our thoughts also become the way we speak.
That being said, it is quite clear that words hold power. Therefore, a writer can effectively use powerful words to prompt psychological and emotional reactions to readers.
Choosing your words wisely is important because there are words that can deter an audience quickly.
A few things to avoid:
- Using outdated lingo can make a writer sound out of touch and corny
- Using overly promising words can take away from the believability
- “Selling” to readers, if they feel that the content is too sales-like then the writer loses a sense of credibility
- Avoid sounding lazy and using words that are already oversaturated in usage
