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Capturing Attention in Social Media
While some studies state that getting a reader’s attention in social media is a marathon rather than a sprint such as Davis, G. (02/23/18). Others will agree that the truth is right the opposite. It is important to understand that there are two major steps in attracting readers: Capturing attention and Maintaining engagement. While the two sound dangerously similar, they are quite different.
Capturing attention is only the first step. This is the part that draws the audience to your post using means specific to the target audience that you intend to inform. This must happen immediately upon the reader seeing your post. According to Tan, D. (07/11/2012), if you do not capture the reader’s attention in the first few seconds, you message will be “drowned in the sea of updates”. This is the exact opposite of what you want to happen if you want the reader to continue reading and interacting with you and your post.
The time that you have to create this first impression with the reader is slowly dropping as well. At the beginning of the millennium, a study was conducted that discovered that the average attention span of a human was around 12 seconds and only 15 years later the same attention span was a mere 8 seconds as stated by Medenall, N. (07/10/2016). Microsoft believes that the Internet itself is to blame for the lowered attention span, however, this is the battle that we face if we want to be heard on social media. To combat this issue, we can take some steps to get the reader’s attention quickly:
1. Try to catch the reader’s attention with some sort of graphic that relates to the social group that you are targeting. For instance, since this blog would most likely appeal to individuals that are interested in research and studies, I used a graphic depicting none other than Sherlock Holmes. This will automatically target readers that are looking for study proven reasoning rather than readers that would be more interested in other types of information.
2. Use a catchy title to your post that introduces your post in a playful but “cliff hanging” way. This will let the reader know instantly what the post is regarding but will not give them the “punchline” without reading the post itself. This will draw the reader in so that the post can do the heavy lifting of keeping the reader interested.
3. Use colors and font appropriate for your targeted readers. If you are attempting to draw in a more artistic crowd, use technical imagery with alternative layouts. If you are looking to draw in a more playful crowd, use bright colors and graphical fonts. If you are looking to draw a more research driven crowd, such as this article, use a more hierarchal layout with modern business class fonts to give a sort of “no nonsense” feel to the article subconsciously.
You will notice that you can target and attract your targeted reader groups automatically with a little bit of research and customization, but this is only the first step. Now comes the fun part…
Maintaining Engagement in Social Media
Capturing the reader’s attention is the key to pulling them into your post, but maintaining this attention is where the author’s work must shine. This is where the author must get the reader engaged and looking for what comes next as stated by Merkel (01/15/2015). If you aren’t maintaining the interest of the reader, then your efforts are made in vain due to the fact that someone else’s post WILL gain their interest and they will continue to “flip by”, (Cramer, J.; 04/20/2017).
Therefore, reader engagement is so important. You must keep and build onto the attention that you get from the reader. Keep them wanting more and looking for the next step. As Fraso, S. (08/22/2019) declares, content is the basis of online sharing and if you aren’t doing this regularly then your online presence dissipates, and your readers feel that you have nothing to give that interests them. While this seems harsh, it is exactly how our minds process online content. There is an overwhelming amount of content online, and if the information that we are currently reading doesn’t speak to us or “offer” us something then we lose interest and seek similar content from additional sources. Readers need to be engaged and become part of the content to find value in the content, this is what is meant by “maintaining engagement”. Desreumaux, G. (03/23/2016) outlines 7 triggers that can help us achieve and maintain this engagement of our readers:
1. Automaticity – This is the “automatic” and immediate response that our subconscious minds have to the content. This is our instinct, so to speak. This is the effect of screeching brakes causing us to look for danger, our favorite song causing us to sing along, etc. This is used to engage the reader’s immediate response, so using known impacting elements to your targeted reader base creates an instant interest in the content that follows.
2. Framing – This is the next step in engagement. This is a conscious trigger that the reader chooses to follow. The content must immediately lead into some sort of attention-grabbing information that causes the reader to decide that they will gain something from the content, and they decide that the post is worth their time.
3. Disruption – This is how we break up the reader engagement in the content. If we use some sort of trigger to catch the reader off guard so that they “have” to look at what has disrupted them, then we have effectively gained their attention. This shouldn’t be an entirely new adventure for the reader to the extent that the reader forgets where they were in the content, but more of a “halftime show” type of aspect to the content to the reader’s interest piqued and their expectations in pursuit.
4. Reward – As stated multiple times in this article, it is our nature to expect some sort of value or payoff for giving our attention. This is no different for social media posts. We can maintain the reader’s engagement by offering them some sort of value for their attention, such as “follow me and I will follow you” type of payoff or even physical rewards such as “follow me for a discount on your next purchase” type of value. This is a sure-fire way to keep the user interested, by letting them know that they will be getting something in return for their efforts.
5. Reputation – This is one of the ultimate triggers that are used to keep readers engaged in social media. Since reputation and sense of purpose or belonging is one of the main reasons for online social media, what better way to interest readers than to give the sense that their reputation will increase by interacting with your content. This can be done by listing some role models or celebrities that have also interacted with your content or stating that others will gain an improved view of the reader in some way if they know that they have interacted with your content.
6. Mystery – This is another element that will keep your readers following along almost involuntarily. It is human nature to seek completeness in things that we do, and most people will get an instant uneasy feeling if they feel that they have not completed what they set out to do, or if they were not allowed to finish for some reason. Creating your content is some sort of order that is not complete until the end of the content will continue to “string the reader along” to the end. This keeps the reader from getting all that they want out of the content in the first few lines, so they must continue to interact with the content in order to get the full value.
7. Acknowledgement – And finally… acknowledgement. This trigger can be used to ensure that the reader will be acknowledged in some sort of way, that they are not “just another number” and their interaction with your content is valued by you, the author. You should find some way to recognize your readers and let them know that you know that they exist as humans. This is commonly done by way of automated response posts “Thank you reader’s name for reading my post. I would love your feedback!” These types of triggers will keep the reader returning for additional content due to the fact that they are being acknowledged and achieving some sort of validation from the author.
If we use these triggers along with the appropriate steps to capturing the attention of our readers, then our posts move from plain and ordinary to extraordinary. Otherwise, our online presence may suffer and diminish along with our reader base.
I hope you enjoyed this article, feel free to email me and let me know what you think and don’t forget to follow.
References
Cramer, J. (2017, April 20). ATTENTION PLEASE!!! Capturing attention in Social Media. Retrieved from https://medium.com/
@joecramer_34698/attention-please-capturing-attention-in-social-media-708a8957fa9f
Davis, G. (2018, February 23). How to capture attention in a world overflowing with content . Retrieved from https://
www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/marketing/2018/02/how-to-capture-attention-in-a-world-overflowing.html
Desreumaux, G. (2016, March 23). 7 Triggers To Capture Attention On Social Media And In Everyday Life. Retrieved from
https://wersm.com/7-triggers-to-capture-attention-on-social-media-and-in-everyday-life/
Frasco, S. (2019, August 22). 3 Ways To Make Your Social Media Posts Attract The Right Attention. Retrieved from https://
convertwithcontent.com/3-ways-to-make-your-social-media-posts-attract-the-right-attention/
Mendenhall, N. (2016, July 10). 4 Ways to Capture and Keep Your Target Audience's Attention. Retrieved from https://
www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/4-ways-capture-and-keep-your-target-audiences-attention
Merkel. (2018, January 15). HERE IT IS!! Capturing Attention in Social Media. Retrieved from https://medium.com/
@camerkel19/here-it-is-capturing-attention-in-social-media-b4cb10043d9c
Tan, D. (2012, July 11). 25 Tweaks To Capture Attention In Social Networks. Retrieved from http://socialmetricspro.com/socialmedia/
25-tweaks-to-capture-attention-in-social-networks-often-forgotten-tweaks/965/
