Much of modern media is centred around content that can be “consumed” on the go –YouTube shorts and TikTok videos are among the most popular, and generally feature content that can be viewed in 60 seconds or less. In news and tabloids, even simple 5-minute articles often include an executive summary for time-crunched readers. Have attention spans truly shrunk so much that even a couple minutes is considered too much now? As marketers and copywriters, how do we appeal to audiences who have developed an appetite for bite-sized content? Join Wordsmith and let’s find out!
How convenience has conditioned us
Technology has made massive strides over the past 30 years. Remember when we had to use a dial-up modem to connect to the Internet at a painful 56 kilobytes/second? Remember when it was normal for a picture to take a couple of minutes to load? Today, most standard fibre optic broadband connection grant speeds anywhere from 200 megabytes to 1,000 mb per second – that means you can download a 4K ultra-HD edition of the movie Avatar (estimated to be about 100 gigabytes) in mere minutes!
A study by Professor Gloria Mark of the University of California (Irvine) on the human attention span found that the average attention span in 2004 to be 2.5 minutes on average. “Throughout the years, it became shorter…,” explains Mark. “And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds.”
However, the study was conducted with the subjects being actively engaged in some form of content. What about if they were blindly scrolling through articles online or on social media? The infamous Microsoft study of 2015 says 8 seconds (which is one second less than an average goldfish) – but did you know that most people need even less time to gauge an interest? Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group reported that of 59,573 page views, 10,163 views (17%) lasted less than 4 seconds – this means that it only takes audiences 4 seconds to consider whether a webpage is worth looking at.
“Snackifying” your content
Considering how attention spans have adapted to recent media trends, it makes sense that short videos are all the rage right now… but for those of us who neither specialise in social media nor video creation, does that mean we’re out of luck? How can we possibly attract audiences’ attention with just a scant few seconds?
If you thought modern short-form content was just limited to videos, then have we got good news for you. Omar El Bahr, chief communication officer at nandbox and Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor, points out that you’ve probably already seen many different kinds of short-form content just by browsing the Internet. This kind of content is dubbed “snackable content”.
“The word ‘snack’ refers to this content being straightforward and effortless to go through so that users can easily view it for hours and hours,” El Bahr writes. “Snackable content comes in any format, such as infographics, videos, GIFs, quizzes, memes, reels and so on.” As long as it doesn’t involve too much reading, it qualifies as snackable content – it’s why Buzzfeed is so great at keeping audiences “trapped” on their website (regardless how asinine some of the content may be).
El Bahr adds that snackable content is much friendlier for mobile devices as well. Indeed, considering how much we do on our phones, an infographic or video is much easier to take in compared to scrolling through a blob of text. Provided audiences see something that they like, they are more willing to stick around and check out your other material as a result. Furthermore, because bite-sized content is easy on the eyes and easy to absorb, it is much more likely to get shared by your audience – think of it as a flyer that gets passed between people repeatedly – it’s free marketing if you think about it!
Let’s focus on infographics, as these require a delicate balance between visual and copy. Although infographics are clearly visual-led, you need to consider what kind of story you want to tell first before you put together your visuals – the same way you would structure an article. Marketing guru Neil Patel shares a few handy tips for building an infographic:
· Once you have a topic (ideally one that is relevant to the article you are writing), you need points to support it
o Back up your points with statistics, facts and data – these are often key things to emphasise and give weight to your arguments
· Plan the flow and layout of your content – good infographics are designed so that each section naturally leads to the next – visuals, framing, colour coordination and subheads make for great dividers. Furthermore, use bullet points liberally, but avoid full sentences because they have the tendency make your layout too blocky
· Any visuals used should be relevant to the content (e.g. don’t use clip art of an airplane as the key visual if your infographic is about food sales. However, a plane might be relevant if you have a sub-section about tourist sales)
It’s easy for infographics to be snackable, but what about articles? We can’t possibly expect people to read an article in just 4 seconds! The key here is to temper expectations – we shouldn’t expect anyone (other than a machine) to be able to read so quickly – but what we can expect is for a visitor to read the headline, maybe the first sentence and to scroll through the article.
This means 3 things:
1. The headline needs to give an approximate idea of what the article is about. According to Mailchimp’s emailing best practices, the most effective headlines are no longer than 9 words (less than 60 characters) – the same applies to most online articles
a. For more casual articles, the Buzzfeed approach is great at arousing curiosity
b. If dealing with a more serious subject matter, give it to the audience straight like how a newspaper would
2. The hook (the opening paragraph) should clearly define your article’s topic and explain why readers should care about what you have to say – an easy way to do this is to anticipate problems that your audiences may be facing, then offer solution(s) via the points you cover. By being aware of their troubles, you not only show that you understand your audience, but that you are also empathetic
3. You need to plan out how your article will appear online. No matter how interesting your article may be, blocks of text are unappealing and will scare off some readers. Use pictures, videos (or any of the snackable content El Bahr mentions), subheads and styling to divide your content
There’s more to snackable content than just short videos. With how much media has evolved to cater to shortened attention spans, we’d be putting ourselves at a disadvantage if we didn’t also adapt our writing. Should you need help making your writing more snackable, Wordsmith’s kitchen is always open!