Scrolling… we spend quite a lot of our time doing it and a hell of a lot of our professional time hoping our content will make potential consumers stop doing it!
Peter H. Diamandis, a Greek-American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur, once pointed out that a Maasai warrior on a smartphone in the middle of Kenya today has more access to information than President Reagan did in office in the 1980s.
Whether it’s tweets, Snapchat, ads, memes, TikTok, stories, news – we’re constantly attacked with snippets of content (some experts estimate we see anything between 5,000 and 15,000 messages a day), so it’s no surprise we have acquired an in-built screening process that enables us to scroll and filter at lightning speed.
That’s great for us; it means our minds aren’t going into overdrive trying to gather and collate all the data that’s thrown our way. As marketers, though, it’s not so fabulous because it means we have to do something jaw-dropping to make the scrolling pause.
The truth is that you have no longer than 2 seconds to grasp someone’s attention…to stand out amongst the crowd and create an impact.
That impact could be anything from making them hit the read more button to clicking through to your website, making them laugh, and becoming part of your nurturing process.
That’s why the first thing you want to consider when you’re generating the content of any sort is to consider what your intention is for this piece.
Your intent will decide the tone you take, the language you use, the symbolism you add, the music that plays, and the stage you deliver it on. And, whichever platform you prefer, you have to put your ego aside and realise that you’re just one of many struggling for clicks, roars, and engagement. It’s not a case of creating a whole stack of content and chucking it about hoping that something will hold; you need to curate exceptional content to achieve recognition. And recognition is the first step to generating more clicks, saves, and paying consumers.
From attention to recognition, and this takes us back to those enchanting 2 seconds!
Given how much knowledge we digest daily, you must work hard to create something that triumphs and makes people pause.
It’s not (like we’ve been driven to believe) that content customers have attention spans shorter than a little goldfish; we’re just pickier about who and what we give our attention to.
So how do you go about it? Well, a quirky take on a story (look at the content that was created off the back of Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Meta’ unveiling), an unpopular or startling opinion, a funny hack, or a hilarious TikTok – it’s more about pleasing your customers’ sentiments than their rational brain.
However, you prefer to go about it; the first 2 seconds of your content need to pin someone in and tell them what’s to come and how? It matters to them.
These crucial seconds can win you a crowd of new fans or condemn you to live in the internet wilderness, just hoping for someone to move by and stop in a match of chance.
By taking the time to segment your viewers, you can personalize the content you carry out – not just in terms of suggestions but the language that you use when hitting up various audiences. You post your content out depending on where and when they will be more likely to engage with you.
If you’re a marriage planner, you’re less likely to get engagement posting an offer at 10 am on a Monday when your dream client is at work than you are at eight on a Sunday night when they’re sat down with a glassful of wine and are scrolling through Pinterest for motivation.
Researching what’s trending can take time you don’t have, so hop on the Google Trends bandwagon, find out what people are talking about, and hijack the communication with your post content.
Use description, headlines, engaging polls, etc., to cut into the custard, and off you go!
Get their attention now and begin nurturing an ongoing relationship that keeps people coming back for more, time and time over!