Writing Strategies for Distracted Readers [SKIL] Traditional marketing approach

This famous "Man in the chair" advertisement from McGraw-Hill illustrate the problem salesman face

In the last post, the issue of distracted readers was introduced. It's not an idea which we talk about when writers and editors gather together. Most writers want to believe in their ability to get attention no matter what the situation. Yet in business, we need to be realistic (and effective.) It is simply a fact, not all readers are going to be paying full attention all the time. So what do we do to "make them read"? (or listen, watch?) Sounds like a line from an evil character in a bad B movie... Not really. It may seem silly to want to "make" anyone do anything on the internet. But we can still try to help more readers understand something.

Marketers and writers are not new to writing attractive alluring copy. Getting attention from people is been a slippery task, probably for as long as people have been promoting (or even buying) products. For most products, the problem of getting attention and an then keeping this interest is a hard one. In general, hot new products, like today's smart phones and mobile applications, get attention (writing in mid-2014). While either complex, abstract, or unattractive products, enterprise cloud programming tools and industrial solvents, stay unnoticed. People simply can't pay attention to everything. Even at the things people need, when they are interested, attention is not always at 100% level. To help people get interested, traditional marketers developed techniques and formats. One of the best technique used today is to "format" or "style" a message in a standard form. These are familiar to readers and usually help in getting attention. In the technology world today, some popular formats are:

• Features, qualities, attributes, or elements important to the reader.
• Examples, case studies, familiar users (industry leaders).
• How the products is used, intended purpose, design intention.
• Benefits, advantages, capabilities, complementary uses (unintended).
• Typical users, strategic and tactical users, industry sectors & verticals.
• Industry trends & news, leading products, industry leaders & organizations.
• Ecosystem and social group (network) information and knowledge.
• Reference, training, experience, technique and professional knowledge.

These are not just formats, they are essentially topic categories. These format categories are presented in different media style. From simple text, logos and tag lines. All the way to videos and interactive training classes. All this structure and styling is "pushed" into what we call channels. Media channels, from advertising networks (i.e. Google AdWords), to social media sites (in the past called social networks, i.e. Facebook, YouTube), to industry niche sites such as blogs and magazine sites. There is a continuous change in the channel format as internet use is growing and spreading into new sectors. The latest use trend is the mobile connected world (i.e. mobile apps). Yet as we have seen in the past, this is just a temporary trend. No matter what trend is popular today, there will be another one in the near future. There is so much creativity and innovation, trends simply come in a steady stream.

This article introduced some techniques (i.e. formats, channels, trends) used by content creators to attract and keep readers. Your ability to captivate and involve a distracted reader is a vital skill in creating useful marketing content. Content marketing is adopting both traditional and new innovative techniques to enable marketers to benefit from the internet's vast free and open publishing capability and expanding use. Stay tuned, more techniques, trends and actionable ideas about content marketing to come.