You may think that your audience fits the profile of the average American, the savvy entrepreneur, the mid-size business, or the retired baby boomer – but we have news for you: your audience members are goldfish. Yes, you heard us right – we compared your customers to the orange aqua dwellers with big eyes that live in glass bowls. Why would we say such a thing? According to a recent study by tech giant Microsoft, goldfish have been scientifically proven to have an attention span superior to the average human.
Goldfish have an attention span of nine seconds – while the average human has an attention span of only eight seconds. And the scary part is that this has not always been the reality; in 2000, the average human had an attention span of 12 seconds. Researchers blame the 40% percent decline on the constant barrage of stimulus that technology provides. And with the Internet Age showing no signs of a slowdown, humans may soon fall below the attention threshold of even the fruit fly.
What does it take to attract the attention of goldfish? A few flakes of fish food sprinkled on the water’s surface should do it. What about the more attention-challenged human members of your audience? A few flakes of interesting, relevant, unique content marketing are what you need!
See some of our past blogs for pointers on how to make your content marketing attention-arresting enough for not just goldfish, but humans too:
4 Factors Affecting Your Social Shares
Content: Why Quality Beats Quantity Every Time
Four Tried-and-True Blogging Strategies
So challenge yourself to spend more than eight seconds reading the highlights from the above articles. If you do, you’ll have the know-how and inspiration to sprinkle some interesting, relevant, unique content marketing tidbits into the waters of your website where your ‘goldfish’ dwell. The result will be engaged viewers that hopefully become loyal customers!