Short attention spans, content deficits, and disconnects

You have 1.3 seconds.

One. point. three.

That’s the length of Gen Z’s attention span according to a new global study.

The good news is you’ll get a few seconds more with older generations.

To clarify, this is about active attention spans regarding advertising.

But advertising is a form of messaging. A sliver of storytelling.

And it either grabs one’s attention or it doesn’t. It’s memorable or it’s not.

This is an age-old challenge for advertisers and marketers: How to grab that fast-fleeting attention for a few seconds. And then a few more. The stakes have been raised and there is pressure-cooked dilemma of attention deficit driven by social media scrolling.

But don’t worry. Your marketing team will creatively crack the code.

You’ve got bigger fish to fry. Like answering this question:

What will we say once we have their attention?

More than two decades of asking company leaders what they do, why they do it, why people should choose their product/service – and then asking their people the same question – and it’s pretty clear most orgs don’t have clear-cut answers.

Vague ones? Yes.

Succinct and consistent? Rarely.

1.3 seconds of cool may be just that — cool.

What it cannot do is convey your complex message, even when distilled to something simple.

However, creativity can point to your story that connects emotionally to an audience.

Of course you know your story, right?

The one your team knows inside and out?

That conveys your unique value and what you bring to the market?

That underscores why people – employees and customers alike – are all in on what you do?

Yes? Vaguely?

This takes more than 1.3 seconds.

So breathe.

And let your creative team be creative when it comes to grabbing attention.

Don’t let an audience attention deficit lead your business into a content deficit.

You still need to nail your story. Know your why. Clarify what makes you worth their time.

Remember that old-school metric about how an audience needs to see/hear your message nine times for before truly acknowledging it for the first time?

The same is true in a generation of scrollers.

Except today it’s going to take a lot more than nine times.

But once you grab their attention, it’s game on.

To keep their attention you need to make a meaningful connection.

And in case you need reminded, that is why your company exists in the first place.

Bigger. Better. Faster. More. Focus on the one that matters.

Every growth-minded organization’s aspirational and unsustainable spreadsheet dream.

Most people can sniff out the BBFM thread of language for what it really is:

• False or misleading marketing claims.

• Running to the beat of the corporate drum (which is typically the opposite of disruption and, in turn, true innovation).

• Unchecked hubris born of previous success.

• An undisciplined and insatiable desire for more.  

 (Those last two are part of the five stages of decline that Jim Collins outlined in his lesser-quoted book HOW THE MIGHTY FAIL)

Yet it doesn’t prevent businesses from believing in the false promises of this mantra. In time, and always sooner than desired, this will happen:

• Bigger becomes bloated.

• Faster needs to increase its speed.

• Yesterday’s version of more is not enough.

• Better is subjective and becomes a point of contention.

If we can sniff this out as consumers, then why is it that we, as businesspeople and leaders, apply this same misguided thinking and bake it into our systems and processes?

We know that bigger isn’t intuitively or explicitly better.

Faster doesn’t guarantee greater efficiency or effectiveness.

And more gets you more of everything – the bad along with any good.

Better is the only meaningful pursuit on this list.

Better, when articulated what it entails and how you’ll achieve it, will present nuanced versions of more that you, as a leader, get to decide if the pursuit is worthy of the effort.

And while better might remain subjective to the end customer, you get to define the terms of what better means to your organization.

It will be discovered in the metrics, the anecdotal, the company culture, as well as the hard to quantify.

It will be in the ability to recruit and the ability to retain your best people.

It will be proven over the long term. Not last quarter or next quarter.

It will reveal itself in a loyal base of customers, suppliers, and partners.

Better has a purpose. It has a definitive feel.

The pursuit of better is ongoing, just like business itself.

It will be written (literally) in your company’s DNA.

And you will know when you are going astray.

Because all of us want – and are looking for – better.

We’ll all take the upticks of bigger and more as they come (and inevitably go).

Which is why our aspiration should be to laser-focused on better.

Better is achievable, measurable, sustainable, and profitable…

as long as we aren’t derailed by short-term, fleeting promises of bigger, faster, and more.

Silence as a Strategic Advantage

I recently spent an entire week in complete silence.

No talking. No verbal communication whatsoever. Doctor’s orders.

Not exactly ideal for a communicator.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual for me. It marked the fifth time in 10 years this has been necessary: a surgery to address abnormalities with my vocal cords.

Previously I tried to work through my recovery – using hand gestures, mouthing the words, using a white board to convey thoughts in the moment, and staying fully connected as best I could.  

But this time was different.

This time I left town for a remote place assured of silence and a focus on healing.

I limited all screened time. I walked a lot.

I did tactile things – mostly painting. I read for pleasure.  

And this is where my brain did something unexpected.

Instead of shutting off or winding down, my brain accessed a gear that is rarely found amid the speed of daily life.

A week of recovery turned into a week of renewed ingenuity brimming with ideas, surprising connections, and new possibilities. Things that would not have happened had I been running on the proverbial treadmill of work.

To be clear, this was different from vacation, from necessary downtime.

It was a mandated stop of verbal communication and a self-imposed limit on digital communication.

That, I learned, was the key to unlocking the floodgate of possibilities.  

When you are not actively communicating you become an observer, a listener – a discerning captive to that still small voice from within that provides a way forward.

IMAGINE THIS:

You have a big project hanging in the balance or a must-win pitch on the horizon.

You could engage as you always do – brainstorm meetings, ideation sessions, check-ins, status updates, work reviews, more meetings – and then “sprint” to the finish line.

Or you could give your team some silence and space. A mandate to think rather than perform. Consider it the opposite of the groupthink brainstorm.

This doesn’t require extreme measures or a full week’s worth of quiet and processing.

But what if you provided the freedom, untouchable increments of time and some space to breathe, think, and ideate in silence away from scrutiny of performance, away from the tyranny of the urgent?

What fruit might that yield?

What might a collaborative session look like when unfettered thinking is brought back to the table, rather than expecting brilliance to strike during a planned 60-minute brainstorm?

You and your team likely won’t find that hidden gear under those circumstances.

It is not how the flood of creative problem-solving is unleashed. 

Every organization wants the breakthrough idea that accelerates the business. Few are willing to give it the time, space, and necessary silence to bubble up from the quiet depths to the surface.

NOW IMAGINE THIS:

Your competitive advantage isn’t about doing more, or grinding, or hustling, failing even faster, or cracking the whip on your team.

In fact, it might look a lot like doing nothing – or appear to be ignoring the elephant in the room.

But you know looks can be deceiving.

Because what you are doing is making space and clearing a path for the best thinking to emerge. To allow for strategic listening to occur and see how ideas begin morphing into solutions.

That’s not only good business, but it also reenergizes teams to think – and then perform – differently.

And it’s also what organizations seek for the good of their business and their people.

Find Joy in Doing the Work

A sketch or an idea isn't the work. It's the start of it.

A post isn't the work. It's the end of it, a summary of work.

Everything in-between is the work — the hard work, the unglamorous work, the I-screwed-up work, the nobody-will-lay-eyes-on-it work, all of the minute decisions that others will never know or appreciate.

To keep alive the dream of the work being worthy or accepted, we have to show up and do the work.

When we do, we might find that our work has the ability to scale walls we’ve constructed inside us, it can be used to tear down old walls, construct new ones, or perhaps become mounted on a wall deemed important. But to realize such a future requires us to do the work.

Too often we focus on the end goal — visualizing to a point of paralysis. We seem more interested in the finish line, the prize, and the accolades without the act of doing the work, regardless of what work we dabble in.

There can be dread at the beginning of the work. It can feel daunting. It can drain.

It can cause feelings of imposter syndrome, of not measuring up.

Which makes us ask — what are we doing this work for?

Why do we do this work?

If your aspirations are greater than your answer, don’t sell yourself short.

If you are “mailing it in” on your employer who believes you enjoy the work, stop.

We are called to work.

You should have a desire to do the work in which you are called.

There should be joy in doing the work.

(not always, but more often than not).

If that's not your experience, go seek it out.

And do that work.

The overlooked value of your unseen audience

How much anxiety does the fear of an unliked post bring?

Plenty.

Study after study confirms the anxiety and depression it wields, especially among young people — perhaps the same young people who are or soon will be running your social media.

And for what? The measurable love of the heart button and that thumbs-up prompt?

Yet we’re told not to get caught up in the “likes” metric.  

That it’s really about engagement — you know, that other metric.

Here’s the thing: I agree with part of that logic. And I agree it can be lonely out there.

But I don’t view any post as a success of failure based on the illuminated heart or thumb.

Nor should you.

Because there are too many factors outside your control once content goes public.

Knowing this, some people will go to extreme measures to avert a low number of likes.

Perhaps you’ve been asked to like posts (even though we’re not getting caught up in that metric, right?)

Maybe you’ve be confronted with this question from friends, colleagues, or even clients:

“Why don’t you ‘like’ my content?”

My answer is: “I see your content and quite often I enjoy it. It’s just not meant for my audience.”

That’s not a slight, it is a reality of navigating a messy, algorithmic socialsphere.

Because when you “like” something, some platforms are compelled to put that liked content in front of your audience, too. And no matter how good it is, it might not be right/ideal/appropriate for your audience.

This is often an overlooked, secondary level of your content strategy — being keenly aware of everything you are putting in front of your audience.

So, back to my response about seeing content, but not reacting to it publicly.

The practice is known as lurking — and it is the bane of analytics teams because it lacks helpful, actionable data. That can push some decision-makers down the slippery slope of “if we can’t measure it, we shouldn’t do it.”

This should be the “a-ha moment” for anyone creating and sharing content.

You can safely assume there could be hundreds of lurkers seeing what you share, who perhaps don’t want to click, get hunted down, or sign up for your finely crafted marketing material — as good as it is.

This isn’t permission to inflate data, but it is permission to accept that a wider viewership exists.

That some of them are thinking about it.

That maybe a few will react to it.

And that perhaps someone will reach out because of it.

If not now, then over time as you continue to provide value.

It is the opposite of instantaneous gratification; opposite of the dopamine hit these platforms reward and we’ve come to crave.

Ask yourself this: during your last scroll through social media are you likely to remember what you liked or who provided value or insight? (it also might’ve been a like).

Proof of the unseen audience

In my other life as a painter, I share my work frequently online.

The vast majority — 80 to 90 percent — of people who have reached out and eventually purchased my work were unknown to me.

They weren’t publicly liking the work.

They didn’t comment on what the read or saw.

And they didn’t sign up to take a voluntary slide down my sales funnel.  

Instead, they were simply paying attention, patiently waiting, lurking…

Until it was time to act (and yes, marketers hate this random waiting and not knowing).

And here’s your takeaway:

We’ve all been conditioned to measure, to be metric hungry.

But conversion – the metric that really matters – comes in ways we can’t always graph or add up on a spreadsheet.

Sometimes – perhaps most of the time – our work is about showing up when it appears nobody is paying any attention.

Show up anyway.

Do the work. Provide value. Repeat.  

Enjoy the likes if/when they come. Engage those people if it makes sense.

But also feed the lurkers by playing the long and often quiet game.

Because when your sales funnel fails to tell you where out-of-the-blue customers come from…

When you’re left to assume they arrived on your doorstep without seeing your carefully curated email drip campaign or gated downloadable content, ask:

Would I prefer this interest and potential to become a right-fit customer come from…

A Google search? (assuming you’ve got a good SEO game going)

A Referral?

The individual quietly lurking but paying attention?

Referral is obvious, but quietly lurking is a close second in my book.

It is unseen, below-the-surface interest before there’s actual engagement.

It is the quiet act of someone building knowledge and respect for what you offer long before there’s an offer on the table.  

Don’t get too caught up in the likes, engagement, and things you can neatly plot as told + sold in a social media playbook.  It’s complicated. And frankly, you have better things to do than play beat the algorithm.

Which is why we can all like and learn to embrace the idea that lurkers exist.

Lurkers, when moved to action, bring a lot more end value than likes.

And that’s a metric everyone can get behind — if you have the patience.