Cutting through the clutter of the online business environment is becoming more and more difficult. In fact, for your business to survive, you need to know how to engage your audience better than everyone else.
Simple, right? Sure, but hardly straightforward.
Well, let’s have a look at how you can do that.
First, though, some context.
The problem of paying attention
Let’s consider an average day.
You wake up and check the weather on your phone. But before you catch the forecast, you’re already notified of half a dozen trending news headlines.
You scroll your way through the news, but by then you’ve seen more than enough personalized ads for the day.
The daily online scenery is full of videos, photo ads, songs and jingles — it’s an information overload.
It’s no doubt that we, as modern human beings, have narrowed our attention spans. In 2013, a hashtag on Twitter stayed in the top 50 for an average of 17.5 hours. This gradually decreased to 11.9 hours in 2016, and it ain’t slowing down; we don’t need Einstein to do the math.
Of course, you don’t really need a study to see that attention spans are shrinking. You can feel it on a day-to-day basis — since when was a trip from the bedroom to the kitchen incomplete without our phones in our faces?
We’ve become accustomed to a sea of never-ending content.
So in the midst of the Netflix binges and YouTube wormholes that people dive into daily, how do we find room to engage with our audiences?
The situation may seem grim, but there’s a method to this. Think of it like this: it’s less of a situation to be stuck in, than it is a situation to work with. Here’s what you’ll want to think about.
Changing, not just shrinking
The common take on attention spans is that they’re shrinking. We’d like to suggest something else: they’re not only shrinking, they’re also becoming more specific.
With the plethora of content that’s available now, consumers’ tastes have been fine-tuned. When you go to a buffet, unless the cuisine is new, it’s unlikely you’re going to try every item. Instead, your preferences determine what goes on your plate.
The same goes with the content people are paying attention to. What they consume is becoming more selective and focused.
That’s important because it means that people know what they’re looking for. The product you’re selling? They’re already Googling it and comparing it to competitors’ products.
Playing the information game
If people are already researching before they spend money, it means that selling has to fall into the backdrop of your focus. Instead, sharing information has to come to the forefront. After all, they’re not looking to be sold to because they already know what they want. They’re looking for information.
The good news is that people are already looking for the product or service you provide. It’s just a matter of creating high-quality content that’ll grab and hold their attention!
Content
Now we can talk about engaging content. Content, in the form of text, audio, and mostly video, is a means of sharing information about your product or service. That’s how to engage your audience.
Good content is good storytelling. Storytelling is how you capture an audience — you don’t get people’s attentions with lectures.
Good storytelling is critical to the success of sharing a message. Check out this action-packed fight scene ad for a mattress company. It almost had nothing to do with mattresses, but it had clever storytelling. And wasn’t it engaging?
What’s also important is branding. Google makes note of E-A-T when evaluating websites. Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
You’ll want your content to show that you’re an expert at solving your customers’ problems, such as demonstrating that your brand has formal qualifications, or mentioning their keywords. You’ll want to show that you know what they want to know, and more.
You’ll want to show that you have authority to talk about what you know. Do you have a notable presence in the industry? Can your content help you build authority? People are more likely to listen to an authority in the field.
Trustworthiness. A huge factor in engaging content. Creating content is all for naught if people can’t trust your brand. And how does one earn trust? By being relatable.
Be relatable!
You’ll want to remind customers you’re more than just a business selling a product or service. Behind the business is a human being, or a team of human beings, trying to help others.
So when making your content, don’t get too lost in product details or selling the features of the latest model. Drop the technical jargon, and speak like you’re trying to help your audience.
Most content these days is in video format, which means it comes with audio, and inevitably, a voiceover.
Bringing in a human presence with a high-quality voiceover can do wonders for engaging with an audience. After all, voice has been used for storytelling for as long as humans have been around.
Voice123 offers an unequalled roster of professional and skilled voice actors who are ready to provide just the right voice to engage your audience. Take a listen at the samples available and you’ll instantly know how to engage your audience better than everyone else!