The Goldfish Conundrum: How to Create Content for Short Attention Spans

People read less every day, they share texts that they didn’t even read. There are many pieces of advice on how to create content for those people who can’t focus on longer texts.

You already know that content creation is an integral part of the inbound marketing methodology.

As people are online almost 24 hours, they are scrolling through social media very fast, which minimizes attention to the content.

That is why news gets shorter every day. The investigation showed that only 8 seconds are needed to determine if a text is interesting or not.

This short attention span is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish. That is why it is important, that before starting writing, you meet your audiences capacities and expectations.

The content you create should be a matter of quality and not a matter of quantity. You should not spend time on people who are not interested in your offer and do not visit your site. Target your audience well.

The content marketing strategy should be geared towards those who may or may not already become your customers.

The focus here should be on providing valuable information to attract individuals, which will help them to better understand what you are writing about and what makes your products or services perfect for their interests.

WAYS OF CREATING CONTENT FOR SHORT ATTENTION SPANS

A good way to create content that your audience will want to read is to ask them what they want to read in the first place.

You can use social media surveys in order to do that.

Here are some things to keep your mind on when you create content:

• Quality of content – Analyze the ideas of your texts before writing them, for which you will need to investigate your industry and your buyers, to establish objective keywords. Create a style guide and editorial lines, so that each content meets the same standards.
• Think about what you write – don’t focus on only filling in the pages with whatever text. Think wider, deeper and more about the article. Really think!
• Insert visual content – Readers spend more time viewing images than words when they browse web pages. On the other hand, images are better established in memory than text.
• Meet your audience halfway – Treat your readers as you would like to be treated. Most people are constantly busy, and busy people jump through the content, without actually reading it at all.
• Publish your text via different media channels – One reason why your readers are probably not consulting your content is that they haven’t found it yet. This is when external content to your website becomes support. Digital audiences jump between channels and platforms, so your content is more likely to be discovered, and then read, if it is published in more places than just your blog.

If you want to win the content marketing game, make sure you develop a marketing strategy based on these suggestions.

Don’t just write about keywords and SEO; learn to understand your audience, give them everything they need to experience and let them consider your ideas as the right solution to their problems.

You have only 8 seconds to catch the attention of a reader.

What story do you have for him?

This question is the biggest problem for many content marketers and writers.

If it is to believe the investigations, you shouldn’t be reading this paragraph as your attention span has already expired. We trust you’re tougher than the mediocre reader though.

Usually, after the infamous 8 seconds, your brain is moving towards other things.

If, for some reason, your attention is still switched on, try to continue with reading, maybe you can find something you will be interested in.

Your brain must have found it subconsciously, that’s why you’re still at it.

Pay attention to titles – it is not important how correct your content is or how much effort you put in writing it, there is a big possibility that a reader will not pay attention to your article.

You need to attract their attention in five seconds unless you want them to leave and never come back. On many occasions, people click on the title. That works even if the content is terrible, but the title is promising.

Link – even if you try to be creative and original, Google rewards those who have sources embedded in their content. You are believed to be trustworthy and reliable.

Never end your story – try not to finish the content. People need dynamics. Call them for action. Making them subscribe to your newsletter is all about writing an engaging content so learn how to spin the wheel and not end it.

Call to action – Engage with your readers by literally addressing them and prompting their response.

Attention on the Content

The quality of content is what makes people read it, share it and return for more. Before the Internet, space for content marketing was very narrow.

Now, thanks to the development of the Internet and social media, you have unlimited space for advertising yourself.

“Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” –  Joe Pulizi, Content Marketing Institute.

Even though space is unlimited, it is harder to get the attention of others. There is a lot of content online, you need to make a point.

You are not fighting for space now, you are fighting for attention. This is the moment when your content and the quality of the same content hops into the story.

You always need to have a plan. Most of the content marketers fail because they start publishing without any idea about the powers to be.

You can start generating the content. The more content you have, the better, but the only way to succeed is to have a plan, be persistent and build up some continuity.

Every piece of content is an investment to your major goal. If you are consistent you are closer to achieving the objectives.

You will have enough content to help you attract more visitors to your website and delight them to become promoters of your brand.

Normally, content generating has a few steps. You have to PLAN, CREATE, DISTRIBUTE and ANALYZE. When you analyze everything, you can repeat this process and see what did you miss.

TREATING ATTENTION AS CURRENCY

Some attention spans are plummeting as we are on the verge of facing an attention economy.

Now, the way this is happening is by diversifying and dispersing attention which actually shortens the attention span.

The expansion of the information online naturally lead to the battle for attention. Everyone wants it. There’s a reason why you “pay attention” to something. Attention is literally a currency these days.

If you want to communicate with people than be clear, personal, reliable and get straight to the point. Take the risk, offer rich and moving content. Be interactive, create immersive content.

A clear and detailed plan is the key to content marketing and also the key to a successful business. Everyone can be a content marketer, but can everyone be a good content marketer?

The biggest problem is that there is not enough of researching and planning, after which some give up, as the results are not as expected. It is not a pearl of wisdom, only a lot of work and detailed reports.

A good content strategy that is needed has to:

• move – call for action
• promote
• engage

HOW LONG SHOULD THE POST BE SO AS NOT TO BORE THE READER?

The main purpose of an article should be to keep its readers informed and interested in the content offered by the Web page.

A long publication once a week could satisfy in the same way as a short post daily.

Source: orbitmedia.com

When you do research you should always aim to find some competition and see what the others are writing about, are they popular and why as well as what strategy are they using.

This way you can fill in the holes and find valuable information about your thesis. You can generate new content that will make you stand out from the crowd or you can use the thesis writing service where experts will help you make your work more attractive.”?.

SEO STRATEGIES FOR CATCHING ATTENTION OF YOUR AUDIENCE

One of the main issues that interest us al, when it comes to enunciating any service or product online, is how to spread the advertisements and offers, so that they are available to the greatest number of people.

Of course, your website must be positioned among the best results in Internet browsers.

Let’s say that this is why your goal is that, when a user searches for some concept by keywords, he finds your website among the first results offered.

To achieve this, it is necessary to prepare the appropriate SEO strategies, which cannot be achieved within a couple of days.

First of all, you must mention that the creation of these strategies can be done in two ways: paid or free.

Paid search implies the appearance of your website in the first results in the browser, after entering the keywords and after having paid a certain amount of money for your ad to appear.

This strategy is known under the name Pay per click (PPC).

However, your field of interest this time will focus on the free techniques that make the website relevant based on its content and quality.

This part of the optimization refers to the websites created in some of the content management systems (CMS), such as WordPress, Joomla, and others.

Some of the basic factors that influence high SEO positioning during the search are:

• Use of suitable materials
• Correct selection of HTML elements
• Proper image optimization
• Website speed

Of course, the materials that appear on your website should be relevant and related to the topic. Also, the published content must be authentic and original, causing positive feelings in website visitors.

However, you must take into account the other details that influence the establishment of a strong optimization, which will not require the use of any additional elements, such as paid ads, etc.

This also means and the proper optimization of the images, since people are more easily attracted to a good photo than a good text, at least this is the case during the first visit to the website.

It is important to keep in mind that browsers, to filter the relevant content, can compare the content of the website with the title we assign to the image.

Therefore, care must be taken to ensure that the image title and the image itself are adequate, that is, to match the text in which they are found.

Besides that, you have to choose the photo with the format, size, and resolution that will correspond to your website and the quality of it.

When someone selects the complete content, it is necessary to organize and define well the elements that represent the units that represent the site, which is achieved through the HTML elements.

Although browsers can display content that is not within any specific HTML tag, this practice should be avoided, since the content completely loses its semanticity, which causes the website to have a very low SEO performance.

Therefore, all HTML elements, headings, paragraphs, header, and footer, etc. must be adjusted. If all the “rules” for writing a good semantic code are met, your website will likely get better results when you search online.

Finally, the speed of the website is, according to Google, one of the very important factors for the effectiveness of the search and selection of the relevant web pages.

Some data indicate that more than 50% of users who wait more than 3 seconds to open the pages, close them immediately, which tells us about the poor quality of the content, which directly affects the ranking.

HOW TO RANK FIRST WITH ATTENTION SPAN FRIENDLY CONTENT

To start with the development of an appropriate strategy, the first thing you should do is inform yourself about the operation of each social network separately.

You can choose a network where you are going to start based on its particularities and features.

Of course, it will not be detrimental to have an account on every online network, but that does not always contribute to your promotion.

Therefore, define your expectations and objectives and then check where the best fit your visions.

Not all posts are suitable for uploading. In the beginning, you have to present yourself well to the public, so you should try to provide your publications with the original, useful and creative content so that followers realize your existence and become interested in your service.

Now when you have thought about it and created everything, it is time to develop the number of people who follow you online.

That is done with the action calls that guide users to all updates and innovations regarding your brand and web business.

Some of the most useful and basic calls to action are as follows: Learn more, Subscribe, Order now, etc.

All content submitted to the public should be accompanied by interesting photos or videos, which according to statistics can attract even 50% of potential readers.

Tell your story through audiovisual materials, accompanied by a topic relevant to your business, at least once a week, or more frequently, if you have valuable material.

It is good to form a calendar with the schedule of publications to better organize and structure all your activities.

Last but not least – communicate with your fans. Be interested in their opinion, user experience, and needs, to improve your services and product quality.

The criticisms and comments of the users can also influence the growth of the number of followers or the information that helps them get to know each other better with services and products that you offer.

Include them in the activities that appear on your profile, know them better and do everything possible to make them feel comfortable, important, that is, as members of a large family that continues to grow.

That way you will leave a good impression of your profile and in general of your work, what readers consider very important when choosing a material.

TRICKS TO WRITE GOOD CONTENT THAT WILL DRAW (SHORT SPANNED) ATTENTION

Visual content represents the basis of content marketing, especially in social networks.

The quality of the publications determines the number of followers, the popularity of the account, contributing greatly to your online business.

When preparing the content for social networks, we must take into account all aspects of a publication, which also includes the text that accompanies the photos.

These descriptions are the best representation of your business and your brand. If the text accompanies the visual content appropriately, the publication will have higher engagement, thanks to which the wider audience will be reached and the interaction is the followers.

Offer Context

If you decide to provide context to the uploaded image you will have the opportunity to approach the followers through words, gain their trust.

Therefore, share an interesting experience with them.

Adapt the context of the photo to your preferences and needs so that you can get involved in the concept of your brand and better understand your visions.

Use Captions

The first three or four lines of the text could be your opportunity to get attention and arouse the interest of followers.

Also, the text should be adapted to the content presented, without containing the remaining explanations.

On the contrary, it should attract the attention of the public and concord with the provided content.

Choose Appropriate Hashtags

It is very important to choose a couple of hashtags that will accompany the publication. When we say this we don’t mean a lot of rows full of meaningless labels.

Choose those concepts that are related to your publication and relevant to the content that defines your business in the most timely manner.

The use of the appropriate hashtag will highlight your brand to larger audiences.

Ask for Opinion

Encourage followers to share their own experiences. Thanks to opinions you can create new strategies and even improve the content presented to you.

Through the questions, users are linked to the content and dare to ask questions about your topic, so your publication will receive a higher engagement rate, compared to those photos whose captions contain only the statements.

Call to Action

Many strategies can be used when including a call to action in your online caption; For example, you can invite followers to act by clicking on the link in the bio, tagging a friend, etc.

With the use of call to action, you can increase the amount of time people spend watching the post, which contributes to the Google algorithm, important for the visibility and popularity of your account.

CONCLUSION

Creating good content may seem difficult, but in turn, it is very important for the success of your brand in the era of internet.

This act can change your participation, improve interaction with followers and present your account to the public more innovatively and professionally.

Now when you know how you should do it, get to work! If you need any advice, well, here we are.

Don’t forget, if someone’s attention span lasts only 8 seconds, it doesn’t mean that he is done with your text, he is always able to return and continue reading when his attention is on a good level, but for that, you have to offer him something in exchange.

Maybe this post didn’t comply with your expectations, but you managed to read more than 2000 words in one breath and that is something, isn’t it?