Our attention spans seem to be shrinking as rapidly as the latest hi-tech gadgets. Increasingly, we like to graze – chomp on one piece of content before moving on to something a little juicier.
Long conversation and prolonged human concentration is rapidly moving into extinction territory (although conservation work is taking place on Google+).
In a world where we are constantly pressed for time, the trend for brevity perhaps comes as no surprise. Twitter updates are limited to 140 characters, looped clips on Vine are limited to six seconds and a recent Nielsen report found that a 10-20 second video is most likely to engage viewers.
It’s all about hooking interest immediately and getting your message across in an entertaining, useful and relevant manner shortly after that. Dilly dally and you risk browsers clicking away. It is, as our Co-Founder and Publishing Director, Dale Lovell, has recently defined for Econsultancy Fast Moving Consumer Content. He defines it as:
“Fast-moving consumer content (FMCC) is content that is created quickly. It is content primarily created for online consumption that can and is shared fast. Examples include online news content, blog posts, Tweets, Facebook updates, G+ posts, videos, infographics, photographs and audio.
“Though the creation of such content can be done quickly the absolute reach of the content, when it is shared and promoted via online channels, can lead to the potential impact of an individual piece of content reaching global significance. The return on invest therefore from this type of content creation can far exceed any initial expectation and cost.”
Here are a few tips on creating bitesize content.
Blog posts
Don’t scare your readers away with a menacing wall of text. Eyes and brains often can’t cope with gargantuan chunks of writing – especially early in the morning – so break it up with short paragraphs and subtitles. Reel readers in with a killer headline and a tantalising introduction, and draw attention to key pieces of information rather than burying it in a tangled mass of sentences.
Videos
Teaser clips are a good shout, especially when clips are limited to 15 seconds on platforms like Instagram. Build up anticipation for a product release with promotional teaser videos or give viewers inside access by going ‘behind the scenes’ at your company.
Infographics
Teaming text with graphics means that infographics present information in an easily digestible format, allowing brands to communicate an important message in just seconds. This makes them very shareable, so embed infographics in your own blog posts and make it easy for people to include them on their websites by supplying an embed code.
