17 Proven Emotional Trigger Words
That Drive Curiosity

Man sitting in front of a laptop and tablet

It’s a word I hadn’t heard before, but one that seems perfectly fitting: Informavores.

That term refers to creatures that search for and digest information, just like carnivores hunt and eat meat.

The creatures are, of course, people.

And those people include the prospects you write to on behalf of your clients.

We all spend a heck of a lot of time looking for and consuming information online.

In the U.S. alone, the latest stats show that adults spent at least 470 minutes a day on digital media. That works out to 7 hours and 50 minutes of their time searching for information.

And that’s up from last year, which was 413 minutes. That’s a 13% increase in the amount of time people spend online.

They spend that time looking for information, listening to the news or music, browsing the internet, reading books or magazines, and more …

We do this because humans are curious beings. Famed American philosopher, historian, and psychologist William James once called curiosity “the impulse towards better cognition,” meaning that it is the desire to understand what you know that you do not.

The fact is, our brains are hardwired to be curious. It’s part of our evolution. Neuroimaging studies show that when people are curious about the answers to trivia questions or watch a blurry picture become clear, reward-related structures in their brain are activated.

Those reward-related structures are almost identical to the response that happens inside an animal’s brain when they seek the elements needed to survive, such as finding food.

So it’s no stretch to say that information stimulates our brains in the same manner as when we find food and shelter.

When it comes to your prospect’s need to seek out information, you can use certain trigger words that amp up their curiosity. Here are 17 emotional trigger words to use:

  1. Secret
  2. Banned
  3. Illegal
  4. Taboo
  5. Hidden
  6. Covert
  7. Exposed
  8. Undercover
  9. Censored
  10. Unbelievable
  11. Invitation-only
  12. Insider
  13. Private
  14. Members-only
  15. Exclusive
  16. Behind-the-scenes
  17. Classified

When you start putting trigger words in your copy, your prospect becomes more engaged. They’ll stay on the page longer. And the longer they spend reading what you write, the greater the odds they’ll hit the buy button.

This makes you a talented writer and your client so happy, that they’ll want you to write for them more frequently.

And as is often the case, one client can lead to more clients. As for finding those clients, there are so many ways to go about it. But one of the best and easiest is using LinkedIn.

That’s why AWAI put together a new online training program, which shows you how to use LinkedIn to find clients, how to speak to them about projects, how to land high-paying projects … even the best practices for pricing your writing services.

You can get the details here.

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Published: August 22, 2022

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