I recently re-read Agatha Christie’s ‘And then there were None’. The book has sold over 100 million copies since it was first printed in 1939. Only 5 other works of fiction share this accolade, and if you want to know which books they are, knock yourself out.
So, why did the book do so well? Despite the plot being clichéd (it was groundbreaking in 1939) and Agatha relying too heavily on adverbs, it still is an amazing whodunnit. Almost every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, making it difficult to put the book down. The stakes in the novel grow higher with every page, and just when you think you know who the murderer is, your suspect dies and you have to reexamine all your hypotheses.
But the real reason ‘And then there were None’ did so well is because it is exceptionally good at getting readers emotionally invested in the characters, and then using this to exploit the reader’s curiosity to find out what happens.
And the denouement is amazing.
“Nobody wants to read your shit”
This is the title of a book written by one of my favourite authors, Steven Pressfield. It was the first thing he learned when he started his career in advertising; that nobody wanted to read anything he put down on paper. And it’s a good lesson. Nobody wants to see or read an ad. People hate advertising.
So, advertising execs have no choice but to find ways to have you read or pay attention to what they have to say about their client’s brand or product.
Outside of advertising and the arts there are very few people who really understand that there truly isn’t anyone who wants to read what they have to say. This includes emails, novels, ads, blog posts, newsletters, posters, articles. Even graffiti is an effort, except if it’s behind the door of a public toilet and the battery on their mobile phone is dead – then you might be grateful for said graffiti. In the ad world, the guy on the loo is referred to as a ‘captive audience’.
The social media message
So, if you want people to read your stuff, what should you do? What is the secret to get people to engage with your message, to care about what we have to say? This is where we have a lot to learn from Agatha Christie and, ironically, social media.
Both social media and Agatha Christie understand what it takes to get people to start reading and then to keep reading. It all comes down to emotions, making people feel stuff. And from what I’ve witnessed, the more intense the emotion the more likely people are to stay and read more of whatever it is you’re spouting.
I wrote at length about how social media is designed to make it difficult for users to look away, to keep scrolling, to read the next post. It has to do with creating a feeling of disquiet. Agatha Christie created that feeling by making people care about her characters, and then killing them off, one-by-one.
Social media does the same thing, but creates the disquiet by exposing you to sentiments and messages you’ve engaged with in the past. And people are most likely to engage with content that makes them angry, that evokes outrage, that challenges their values. This strategy draws people in. It pushes them to defend their views and to seek validation. People who’s values have been challenged, in the end, just want to be reassured that they’re not wrong, alone or mad in their beliefs.
But outrage is only one emotion that will garner your content attention and get people to read your shit.
How to get more engagement online
There are thousands of online courses that will teach you how and what to write in order to get more followers on Twitter, more subscribers to your newsletter, paying subscribers to your Substack.
Shaan Puri is very open about what he believes gets people’s attention. He says any content you put out there has to evoke one of the following responses:
- LOL – that’s really funny
- WTF – that pisses me off
- AWW – that’s so cute
- WOW – that’s amazing
- NSFW – that’s crazy
- Aaahh – now I get it
- Finally! – someone said it
- Yay – that makes me happy – good news
So, the amazing insight here is that if you want people to engage with anything you do, make them feel something. Which is not the most amazing epiphany. Anyone who has spent any time working in advertising will tell you that the most effective ways to get people to take notice and remember who you are is to make them feel.
And while most of us don’t fully get this, yet. It’s clear that social media companies, influencers, content creators, basically anyone that shares anything online in the hopes of garnering an audience is waking up to this fact.
The battle for our attention starts with our emotions
It’s no longer story tellers, artists and musicians who want to make us feel things. Advertising jumped on the bandwagon in the late 1800’s. And then it was cinema started making us laugh and cry, charities joined the scrum somewhere in the middle, followed by self-help gurus and governments. Businesses learnt later than most. Most banks are still processing this knowledge. Terrorists came next and then social media algorithms became the new dog with an old trick. Today you can’t walk down the street without a coffee shop sign or a billboard on a bus hoarding trying to make you ‘feel’.
When I first considered this fact I was indignant. It angered me, the idea that people were jockeying for my attention by manipulating my emotions. I still am. I don’t like the idea that I’m just another one of the masses who can be made to cry by an International Committee of the Red Cross ad (warning, I’ve watched this ad twice, I don’t think I could watch it again for as long as I live). Or that Instagram can hold my attention for longer than I care to admit, or that the Blair Witch Project still gives me nightmares.
But I console myself with this thought, we want to feel because it let’s us know we’re alive. At least when you cry, laugh, wonder, question, scream, scroll, you can be sure you’re not dead. Our emotions are able to be manipulated because we’re quite open to experiencing them. Feelings are an important part of being human. However, where we get it wrong is when we confuse the feelings evoked by ads or on screens with reality.
The real emotions we crave are those that we share with other people. They’re intimate and shared. They’re sentiments that bloom out of connection instead of being crafted out of imagination. We should just be a little more aware that the noise out in the world is brimful of ‘fast food feelings’ and ’empty calorie emotions’. None of which will ever sate our hunger for connection.