We talk a lot at Copyblogger about the combination of meaning and
fascination, and that's an important element of attention.
You have to make yourself useful, that's the meaning part.
You have to talk about topics that your audience cares about,
and you have to solve problems that they care about solving with your content.
So it can be anything from nutritional advice,
to information about a surgical procedure,
to fashion tips on how to wear clothes that make you look better.
It doesn't have to be serious.
When I say it solves a problem they care about,
not all the problems we care about are serious.
A lot of them are frivolous.
But the audience has to care about it, and
you pair that meaning with some fascination.
That's what I was getting out with that curiosity element,
you taste things a little bit.
So you have a solution, and you have conveyed that you have a solution to
something they cared about, but they don't know what the solution is.
Or they don't know how it works, or there's a little known resource that you
found that can help them out, or there's a mistake they might be making.
So there's that element of curiosity and fascination, something that makes us
want to poke in and learn more, but it's always paired with usefulness.
And remember, the question of what is useful, or what is meaningful,
does not confirm you as the marketer, and
it doesn't come from your organization, it comes from the audience.
If it's meaningful to them, then it's meaningful.
A few other elements that are very important to capturing audience attention,
one them is images.
Images are incredibly powerful.
They work very quickly in the human brain.
We have an emotional immediate response to images that works much faster
than words can start to trickle through the system.
So pairing your content with a great image can be really,
really effective and really important.
And of course, anybody who spends time on social media knows that the prevalence of
memes is just growing and growing, and that's a powerful image, typically.
Some kind of image that evokes an emotional reaction,
often a humorous reaction, but it doesn't necessarily need to be.
Do be mindful of using images that are really graphic.