It’s not that we have shorter attention spans.
Many of us will sit and binge watch episodes of our favorite show. Play Candy Crush for hours on end. Or read a book from cover to cover. Watch video after video online of amazing things, or TED talks, or cat videos. Or obsessively focus on a project that we care about, working intently on it until it’s done.
No, it’s not that we can’t pay attention. It’s surely not that we won’t pay attention.
It’s that we have to be that much more vigilant now about what we pay attention to, because so many things are competing and we only have so much time.
We may have to have stronger filters, but our attention is as good as it’s ever been.
So if you give me something really compelling, if you tell me a story, if you give me some insight that I might not have had before, if you give me something really useful or helpful, you have my attention. And you have it for as long as you need it.
Keep telling yourself that short attention spans are the reason your content or your campaign isn’t successful.
Or get real, and realize that a limited attention span for your stuff means it’s missing the mark somewhere, or that it’s simply not good enough.
And then fix it.
Guy Kawasaki, in a recent interview about email marketing, said email messages must not be longer than five sentences without risking the recipient tuning out.
But you suggest a piece of content can be as long as necessary — as long as your attention is kept. Would you counter Guy and suggest a long email is OK under the right circumstances?
Yep.
You have a point. When creating content we need to put ourselves in others shoes and ask if what I have written is interesting enough for me to read till the end.