Another resilient morning in the office: You've already done your Content Audit but have come to the conclusion that for some reason your chosen platform isn't grabbing your audience's attention anymore. Was it a Cataclysmic event? Are they being held at gun point by your competitors? Have your employees begun to produce lack luster content?  At this point your paranoia might've concluded that your sharp shooters in Content Production and Managment have dulled and its time to send them back to school, but I assure you, it's much simpler than that. The answer is much closer than it appears in your cross-hairs.

Lets take a small little scientific detour to explain what might be the source of your poor aiming skills. According to a 2017 article from BBC, "They say that the average attention span is down from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to eight seconds now." You might be asking how this 2017 finding has maintained resiliency in 2018, well realistically, the trend has continued. Amidst the glorification and conditioning of instant gratification, mediums especially on social media, have begun to really size down their content into digestible chunks that cater to this simple finding.


Examples:

Platforms like Twitter has long since upped their word count to 280 words, but still catered to small bite sized bursts, Snapchat is still snapping their 10 second video buckshots, shoot, even Baymard Institute recommends having 50-60 character per line in order to maintain ease of attention span retention.


Most likely that make-shift mote that's preventing you from gaining better conversion or audience retention lies within your content format. Give them too much and they will be overwhelmed with content that is too rich, Give them too little and they will feel as though you aren't making good on your promises. Its all about finding that sweet spot whether your audience can enjoy the meat of your content, without giving them too little or too much sauce.

You remember those days of trying to digest large scale paragraphs in your text books while trying to cram for your classes? Well unless you're audience is reading an E-book, an case study, or a doctorate level essay, no one wants to be overwhelmed by how grand the length of your paragraphs are.

Chances are your audience is there for leisure, or their own particular need for uses and gratification.
Do yourself a favor and declutter your platforms and curate your content keeping in their attention span in mind. It'll do wonders. Check out the video below to see what Seeker has to say about how the internet and social media is affecting our attention spans.



Realistically, we can't exactly rescind the particular events that have Terra-formed our way of ingesting content. We as Content Gunslingers can only change, adapt, and continue perfecting our shooting skills as the times progress.

Keep your focus with the times, maintain relevancy, and make sure you keep in mind your user experience and personas.

We'll make a sharpshooter out of you yet!


Interested in finding out more about the topics listed? Check out the links below:

https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/07/technology/twitter-280-character-limit/
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snapchat-60-seconds-android-ios-app-how-to-record-longer-videos-multi-snap-a8017096.html
https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability
https://thevisualera.com/how-to-beat-short-attention-span-crisis/
https://www.seeker.com/

Or you can go out and do your own investigating on the multi-platforms. Search for the hashtags before to see first hand how others are capitalizing off this knowledge: 

#Attentionspan
#Twitter
#Instagram
#Content
#blogger
#marketing
#Seeker
#Toomuchsauce
#BBC