You Ask, I Answer: Attention Spans and Content Marketing?

In today's episode, Jen asks, What is your take on the opinion that attention spans are getting shorter and people don't read long form content anymore? Alright. If that were true, Netflix would not have a business. Simply wouldn't. Wouldn't wouldn't be in business, right?

Uh no one would ever sit down to watch a bunch of shows in a row. Disney Plus would not exist. The uh uh binge watching itself wouldn't exist, right? If people had no attention spans, they wouldn't sit down and watch 28 episodes in a row of Game of Thrones. They just wouldn't do it.

But that's not the case. We see very clearly that is not the case. In fact, if anything, people have more attention than ever. People will play uh, you know, eight hour marathons of Call of Duty, uh or they'll play, you know, a a day's worth of Fortnite, or Dungeons and Dragons. There's absolutely no shortage of attention.

People have attention more than ever, actually. Because if you think about it, thanks to pandemics and things, right? This gateway is this is the gateway to people's attention. They can watch their favorite shows, they can listen to their favorite music, uh, they can uh comfort themselves when the world is literally on fire. So attention's not the problem.

I dislike this question or this perspective, because it's lazy. It's a lazy excuse for markers who frankly are cranking out crap content, right? Yes, attention spans for qu for bad quality content are getting shorter and shorter and shorter, and people have less and less tolerance for bad quality content. Why? Because they literally have the world's entertainment in their pocket.

They literally have everything they could possibly want on in the palm of their hand. You, as the marketer, have to compete for the same 24 hours that Netflix does, that Disney Plus does, that Hulu does, that Spotify does. You're competing. So the question is not attention span. The question is quality.

What quality is your entertainment? Right. Do you know? Do you measure? Do you see how long people stay engaged with your content?

Do you see where people bounce out? Do you have things like scroll depth tracking turned on in your Google Analytics to see how far down the page people get before they punch out? Attention span is a lazy excuse for marketers who don't want to invest the time or the money or the resources into creating high quality content. Simple question. Given a choice, would you rather watch an episode of something, your favorite show on Netflix, including ones you've already seen, or would you rather read your marketing content that you create for work?

If you yourself would prefer to watch your favorite show rather than read the content you created, that's a problem. That's a problem. That shows that you're even to you, the creator, the person who should like this stuff the most. If you're choosing somebody else's content over your own, you've got a problem. You're not creating high enough quality content.

I was really concerned the other day when um somebody said, Yeah, I you know, once I I do my podcast, I never listen to the episode, you know, I never watch my episodes. I'm like, why not? Like, if your stuff is not entertaining enough to entertain you again, it's not good enough. People say, Well, I I was there, I I I I did the episode, I know what I said. Well, yeah, but you also watch your say your favorite reruns on Netflix, right?

You know what's gonna happen. You don't have to re-watch it over and over again, but yet people do. So, what would it take to get you to binge rewatch your favorite episodes of your own podcast, of your own YouTube channel, of read your own blog over and over again, what would it take to get to that point where you're like, yeah, I would I would do that again. That's the benchmark for quality. If think about it, if you put up Netflix reruns versus your own content, and you still can't compete with reruns where there is no suspense, there is no um drama because you've seen it already, then your content really kind of doesn't make the mark, right?

Remember the 3L rule of content. If when you're creating it and then when you reconsume it, if you don't laugh, if you don't love it so much that you're talking to a significant other about it, even if they don't really care, or you didn't learn something, it's not good content. Right? That's the benchmark. It's not good content.

Content has to be engaging, it has to be educational, it has to be uh emotionally driven. And if it's not, it's never gonna stand a chance against what Disney has to offer, right? For sure, when like your favorite episode, like the you know, new episodes of The Mandalorian come out, for sure, your content's probably gonna lose to that, right? Because new stuff that is highly engaging people are gonna watch that. But if you can't even beat the reruns, you got a problem.

So, attention spans are not getting shorter at all. Attention spans for crap quality content are getting shorter and shorter and shorter because no one has to tolerate it, no one has to put up with it. No one has to say, yeah, I will suffer through this. Do a poll of your staff. Right?

If you have a team or if you have a Slack community or whatever, just do a poll and say, Hey, does anybody watch my stuff? Does anybody read my stuff? If you do, how much? How often? You know, if you're publishing uh YouTube videos, you know, fairly frequently ask people, hey, have you watched this?

Or just look at your view counts, right? Compare it to your competitors, and then compare it to what your audience, what else your audience likes, right? If you go into Google Analytics, you know, in market segments or affinity uh interests, you can see what else people like. Look at the videos in that category. Chances are you're gonna not be super happy.

Um, and so the question is what can you do to increase the emotional appeal or the uh engagement or the educational aspect of the content you're creating in order to beat the reruns. So that's my take on the opinion about it. Attention spans. If you can't beat the reruns, you're your your quality is crap. You have follow-up questions, leave them in the comments box below.

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