9 Tips for Content Marketing in an ADD World

Distraction is constant in our technology and communication-fueled lives. Email alerts, Facebook replies, tweets, Google’s red box, …

Everything around us is competing for our attention. We may not have ADD, but we definitely act like it.

How can B2B content marketers, who are often marketing complex products and need to share a meaningful level of detail, be effective in this environment?

Be Brief

Attention spans are short, your content should be too.

  • Break it up. Turn it into multiple shorter pieces and let your audience decide what parts they want.
  • Get to the point. Do you really need an intro? If so, can it be shorter? Cut cut cut!
  • Make it skimmable. Use bullets, indexes, short paragraphs or formatting to make your content easy to skim.

Keep Attention

If being brief was enough, marketers would ditch traditional content and turn exclusively to social media. It takes more than brief to keep our attention.

  • Be bold. Have a strong point of view and let it shine through.
  • Entertain. The more entertaining and engaging your content is, the longer it will keep someone’s attention.
  • Add graphics, slides, audio or video. Use the format that presents the information clearly and concisely. But keep it brief!

Wrap It Up

Wrap up quickly while telling people how to learn more or what they should do next.

  • Summarize, don’t rehash. Finish with a short summary, particularly if your content was more than 2 or 3 minutes long.
  • Provide a path to more information. You strive to hold their attention, don’t let your content be a dead-end!
  • Include a call to action. Someone made it to the end, what should they do next? Your call to action provides the direction.

In Summary

Be Brief. Be Bold. And Wrap It Up!

Related Content:
Find Your Content Marketing Sweet Spot
Your Content Marketing Must Become Convenient

Your Turn

Without distractions, it would take less than 60 seconds to read this far. How many distractions did you face reading just one short article? What other advice do you have for content marketers in this ADD world?

Share your answer in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

Image Credit: distraction by underminingme on Flickr

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