Our Attention Spans Are Now Shorter than that of a Goldfish

I’m going to make this brief. Our attention spans are now shorter than that of a goldfish, clocking in at just eight seconds long. Yes, you’re herring me right. That’s one second shorter than what’s swimming around the glass bowl in your living room. But, don’t beat yourself up over it because all of the goldfish I’ve seen have some pretty simple decisions to make during the day. According to reports, we can mostly blame our ever-shortening attention spans on our obsessions with smartphones and multiple screens.

As a marketer, how do you respond to this? Instead of going into panic mode (as you’re checking your text messages,) you should own this opportunity! While your competitors are still debating the merits of sharing a five-minute long video on Facebook, you can focus on optimization. Here’s how.

Focus on SEO

A search engine’s job is to provide high-quality results in an instant. If your website wasn’t developed and written with search optimization in mind, you’re going to pay the price. When’s the last time you bothered to hit page two at the bottom of your search results? At a minimum, make sure you:

• Have a meta description for every page
• Use alt text for images
• Use relevant keywords throughout your page
• Ensure all links are working
• Ensure your site is responsive, or mobile-first
• Get rid of duplicate content

Those are just the beginning. Dive deeper into this topic here.

Prioritize UX and UI

Simply put, to keep people on your site it has look right and work right. In the most basic of terms, UX refers to how a website functions and UI refers to how it looks.

• For UX optimization you want to ensure the website is easy to navigate. Does it flow well and is it intuitive? What would a visitor’s journey through your site look like?
• For UI, consider the styles of typeface and the color palate used. Is the content fresh and timely? Have you chosen high-quality images that fall in line with your brand?

Both of these elements go hand-in-hand and will help ensure you hold your visitors’ attention spans. Dive deeper into UX and UI here.

Pay attention to analytics

Website analytics are a given, so I’m going to discuss social analytics for this one. Are you just posting content and hoping for the best? Yes, there is an algorithm for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but even without that inside information, you should still be focusing on the right content at the right time. Pay attention to:

• Your audience demographics. Are you sharing relevant content?
• When they’re most active with your page
• How you’re sharing content. Are you mixing in videos, photos and outside articles?
• Does the content you’re sharing make sense for your brand?

Get up to speed on developing a social strategy here.

Cut the video short(er)

It’s no secret that video is driving engagement on social media and websites. On average, there are 8 billion video views daily on Facebook. Add another 5 billion daily views on Youtube. It’s going to take more than just sharing video to maximize those attention spans, you must pay attention to the duration. Keep this in mind: since a large portion of internet traffic is mobile, can you expect viewers to stick around for a six-minute long video? Next time you share a video, take a look at your engagement and at what duration you started losing your audience. That’ll help guide you. I usually tell people they’ve got about one to two minutes, max. If the video warrants being longer, you can always edit it down for social and push people to your website where the full version will live.

Regardless if goldfish have us beat or not, we are in a world full of snap decisions and micro-moments. To find marketing success, know what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to and identify what you want them to do with the information. Once you mullet all over and are ready to take the next steps in defining a marketing strategy, let us know. We have a team of experts ready to help and we promise you’ll have our full attention.

Updated: Apr 13, 2022