IQ Magazine Issue 20

iQ advice
Social Media
Marketing Mistakes
Kim Morrison, who runs www.morrisonsocialmedia.co.uk, looks at
content marketing and how it must be tailored to suit your audience
A study a couple of years ago by Microsoft revealed that
the human attention span had supposedly dropped from
12 seconds in 2002 to only eight seconds in 2013. This
is a second shorter than that of a goldfish! On the good
news side, the study found that our ability to multitask had
improved. Also that those who use social media heavily
had more “intermittent bursts of high attention” and that
they were “better at identifying what they want/don’t want
to engage with”.
The problem with short attention spans and content
marketing is that usually it takes more than eight seconds
for the user to click through to the content and start
reading. But, there are ways to fight back and conquer
marketing to people with short attention spans – which is
nearly everyone.
If you only have eight seconds or less, that means you
have to greatly shorten whatever it is that you are doing to
market to your audience, or you need to do something new
every eight seconds to grab their attention again. That’s
why some public speakers can speak for over an hour and
keep the audience’s attention while others put everyone to
sleep after the first eight seconds. Which type of marketer
are you?
Boil It All Down
• What are your objectives? - What is the overarching
thing that your business needs to accomplish? You can
include an objective from each sector of your business.
• What are your goals? - Describe in concrete terms
what the above means in terms of measurable results.
• What are your strategies? - Describe for each of the
goals, in one or two points, what will be done to meet the
objectives.
• How will you measure results? - Describe, using the
goals, how you’ll measure those results. What tools will be
used, and when will it be done?
Try to answer each question in only one or two sentences.
The idea is to keep it short, succinct and to the point. If
you can’t keep it to the point now, it will be hard for you to
do so when you’re creating your marketing campaign.
Things to Remember
• You can focus on one objective at a time.
• You can focus on one goal at a time.
• You can choose one strategy at a time.
You can make a list of each and create a series of
advertisements that all fit together to answer the first list
of objectives and goals that you created, all in seven- or
eight-second increments. But, start with just one. Get one
completed, launched, and measured before moving on to
the next. In this way you can ensure that you are on the
right track and gauge how you’re keeping the attention of
your audience by the metrics you are choosing to measure,
which are based on your clear and specific goals.
Once you have everything spelled out, it will be a lot easier
to follow and succeed in marketing to people with short
attention spans. You’re going to find that using this method
will help market to all sorts of people, whether they have
short attention spans or not. It’s probably better to assume
that 99.9 percent of your audience has a short attention
span and work from there!
Of course, if you do have a short attention span you
probably won’t have read to the end of this article!
issue 20 | page 40
More Information
For more information call 01284 799505
www.morrisonsocialmedia.co.uk