Trending: Keeping Your Digital Marketing Strategy Afloat in Today’s Distracted Society
May 30, 2019
Time reported in 2015 that the average attention span of a human is eight seconds, according to a study from Microsoft Corp. This is one second less than the average attention span of a goldfish, and four seconds down from the average human attention span in 2000.
Simply put, humans are easily distracted. In fact, research shows that an office worker, on average, will check their email inboxes 30 times every hour. The average user picks up their cell phone more than 1,500 times a week. The average page visit lasts less than a minute and users often leave web pages in just 10-20 seconds.
While brands have certainly evolved to accommodate today’s digital-driven age, human interest and attention remain short. However, this isn’t all bad news for brands and marketers. Being clear in your messaging, keeping it short and sweet and appealing to consumers through stories are just a few ways to extend those short eight seconds. These facts reinforce how important it is to work smart, always have your audience in mind and keep it simple when it comes to crafting a digital marketing strategy.
One way to achieve this across your digital marketing platforms, while gaining the most mileage out of your content, is through “micro content.” Essentially, micro content is written copy, imagery and/or video that can be consumed in 10-30 seconds or less. It is small, bite-sized and easily digested, perfect for attention spans that are smaller than those of goldfish. Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur, author, speaker and internet personality, recently discussed the mindset behind crafting a content strategy in 2019 and the use of micro content in a blog posted to his personal website.
Based on a “reverse pyramid” model, this strategy starts with a piece of “pillar content” – a daily vlog, keynote, Q&A show, etc. From this content, his team is able to repurpose that one piece into dozens of smaller pieces of content, keeping in mind the context of the different platforms used. With this strategy, it’s important to remember that not all platforms and their audiences are alike, thus your message must be tailored to fit the platform.
What are the results? Vaynerchuk explains that through this strategy, he is able to grow his brand by constantly creating and posting as much content as possible, taking one long-form piece and turning it into smaller bits of content (memes, images, quotes, stories, etc.) and effectively distributing them across all his platforms. In a presentation attached to the blog, Vaynerchuk shows how his team took one of his keynotes, repurposed it into 30+ pieces of content, and generated over 35,000,000 total views from distributing that content.
Bottom line, there are plenty of factors and moving parts to take into account when crafting a digital marketing strategy – keeping it simple and truly making the most of the content you have are keys to adding some serious value and ROI.
