Important Content Marketing Tips To Combat The Declining Attention Span

If you’ve ever spent any significant amount of time with young children, or children of any age, you may have noticed their lack of attention span and propensity to flit from one thing to another. They never seem to engage in one activity for too long, and even if they are interested in something, they tend to be quite easily distracted. It’s simple to assume that this behavior is relegated only to children or those who have been diagnosed with something like ADHD. This, however, is in fact a false assumption.

The human attention span has actually decreased significantly in the past few decades. As Muck Rack discusses, the reasons behind this are varied and include too much information being presented to us at one time, the use of the internet decreasing our capacity to concentrate on single tasks and social media as a whole.

Whatever the cause, this decline in attention span is especially concerning for the content marketing field, as it increases the need for marketers to catch and keep the attention of their target audience within seconds. This article discusses the decline of the human attention span, how it affects content marketing and tips for how marketers can attract and hold the attention of their target audience.

The Decline Of The Human Attention Span

The human attention span is currently less than that of a goldfish. This makes a content marketer’s job very difficult.

Wyzowl discusses the decline of the human attention span in detail and how it relates to content marketing. There are a number of shocking statistics related to attention span, among them being:

• The average attention span used to be 12 seconds. It is now 8.25 seconds. For comparison, a goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds.
• 25% of teens forget major details of their close friends and family’s lives.
• 39% of Americans have forgotten one basic piece of information or lost one item in the past week.
• An office worker will check their email 30 times in one hour.
• The average user picks up their phone more than 1,500 times a week.
• On the average web page, users will read at most 28% of the words during a visit, and more realistically, 20%.
• The average page visit lasts less than a minute and is often just 10-20 seconds.

With statistics such as these, it would be easy for a content marketer to feel discouraged. How can you catch and hold the attention span of someone who has less of one than a goldfish? Thankfully, there are several strategies content marketers can employ to grab the attention of their target audience quickly and hold it long enough to get their point across.

Content Marketing Tips For Holding The Attention Of Your Target Audience

There are many things a content marketer can do to combat the declining attention span of consumers. Forbes discusses some general ways that a content marketer can seize the attention of their audience:

1. Share content that is useful, inspiring, entertaining or of value to your network.
2. Be authentic and original. Consumers will be able to tell if you are genuine or not.
3. Talk about something trending. This not only shows your audience you pay attention to what’s around you, but it is also inherently interesting to most people.
4. Have a sense of humor. People appreciate a business that knows it’s okay to be funny sometimes.
5. Target your audience. If you aren’t targeting the correct audience, chances are your social media posts will be largely ignored.
6. Start with a hook. If you catch your audience immediately, they’re more likely to continue reading.
7. Start on a personal level. Readers like to learn about what goes on behind the scenes of companies they follow. It humanizes your brand and builds trust.
8. Find an influencer in your space. Influencer marketing is very popular right now and can create great engagement for your brand.
9. Utilize a social media marketing expert. Having someone dedicated to creating posts for your company is a great strategy for catching and keeping the attention of your audience.
10. Focus on quality content. Quality over quantity will bring more followers and engagement.

These tips are incredibly helpful as a broad guide for what to focus on in your content marketing, but for those looking for more specific ideas on how to catch and hold the attention span of their target audience, there are some things you can utilize that are guaranteed to give you a better chance of overcoming the declining attention span hurdle.

Use Video In Your Content Marketing

Using video in your content marketing is one of the best ways to catch the attention of your audience.

One of the best ways to catch the attention of your audience is to use video in your content marketing. As Lee Baggesen-Jensen states in his Three Girls’ blog post, “The human attention span is shrinking faster than ever, and what better way to hold a users’ attention than with flashing images and entertaining sound that doesn’t require reading? When Facebook users scroll through their feeds, videos are more likely to make them pause to watch how the video content unfolds.”

Oberlo discusses video usage in content marketing at length, stating that:

• 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support.
• Videos are consumers’ favorite type of content to see on social media.
• Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year.
• 80% of people purchased a piece of software or an app after watching a brand’s video.
• Internet users spend an average of six hours and 48 minutes per week watching videos online.
• In 2022, 82% of global internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads.
• There are 244.4M digital video viewers in the U.S.

Social Media Content Marketing Tips To Engage Your Audience

Even with the decline in attention span, there are several social media content marketing tips to help you engage your audience.

Clearly the use of video in content marketing is an excellent choice for catching the attention span of your target audience. It is not, however, the only thing that a content marketer can do to increase their chance of piquing the interest of consumers. Outside of video marketing, content marketers can:

• Use statistics in their social media posts. Statistics are quick, easy to read and are likely to stick with your audience.
• Use infographics. Infographics are great for breaking down a large amount of information into something more digestible. As an added bonus, they are easy to share with others.
• Use images with faces. Posts with faces in them perform better than those without.
• Ensure that the most important information comes first. Given the short attention span of your audience, putting the essential information first makes sure that even if they don’t finish reading your post, they at least have read the most important piece.
• Know your audience and the platform you’re working on. If your post isn’t of interest to your audience, they will not take the time to read through it. Further, they may stop following your page altogether.
• Don’t be too predictable. Stay true to your brand, but don’t get in such a rut that no one reads your content anymore. If all of your posts look and sound the same, your audience will scroll right past them.
• Utilize the 80/20 rule. Your content should be 80% informational, and only 20% self-promotional. Consumers don’t want to feel like you’re always trying to sell to them.
• Ask your audience what they want to see in your social media posts. They are more likely to pay attention to information they are interested in and will appreciate the gesture.
• Interact with your audience. Responding to messages and communicating with your audience on social media goes a long way to show you are a brand that cares. This alone will make your posts something your audience wants to read.

Content Marketing Tips Specific To Blogging

The declining attention span doesn’t mean your blog is destined to be ignored. There are some tips to get people reading!

Social media posts tend to be much more concise than blog posts. How can a content marketer ensure that their blog posts catch and hold the attention of their audience, especially when dealing with long-form blog articles? While it may be more difficult to convince someone to read through 2,000 words or more, there are some strategies that you can employ to increase the chance of someone sticking it out through the whole post. These include:

• Make sure the important information comes first. Tell the reader what they will learn by reading the post within the first paragraph. If they can’t tell that your post has value by then, they will likely abandon it before they get to the first bullet point.
• Write about things of interest. No one wants to read a blog post that is only captivating to a small audience. Content marketers should make sure that their topic is applicable to as wide of an audience as possible.
• Include images in your post, especially those with faces in them. Just as with social media posts, blog posts with images in them perform better than those without.
• Include infographics. As with social media, using infographics helps readers digest information quickly and easily. With declining attention spans this is especially important.
• Avoid jargon. Even though you may think that using industry-specific words makes you sound more intelligent, it can actually turn people away from reading your post. While it may be necessary to include jargon at times, make sure to define anything that might not be known by a large amount of people.
• Make sure your post is easy to read. While this does also refer to the words you use, with this point I’m mostly speaking about the way the blog looks. Breaking up large paragraphs with spaces and using bullet points or numbers makes it easier to skim through information. If your content looks like it can be reviewed quickly, readers are more likely to devote time to it.

Though the decline of the human attention span does make a content marketer’s job more difficult, the situation is not hopeless. By using video in your content marketing and paying attention to the specific strategies mentioned above, you are likely to have a great chance of engaging your target audience.

Do You Need Help With Your Content Marketing?

With the decline of the human attention span, it can be easy for content marketers to feel discouraged and not know how to proceed with their content marketing. Three Girls Media can help alleviate this stress and create content marketing that will catch the eye of your target audience quickly. Contact us today for a complimentary, 30-minute consultation with our CEO, Erika Taylor Montgomery, to see what our team of experts can do for you and your business.

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Sign up for a complimentary consultation during December and receive an Annual Marketing Planning Guide valued at $475!  We offer a 30-minute phone consultation with our CEO, and can answer your questions and discuss your specific marketing needs - no strings attached. Call 408-218-2391 or contact us today to arrange your consultation!