Getting attention is easy and, more often than not, it takes a streak of good luck: a viral post, an article ranked ultra-high by search engines, a YouTube video that gets 100k views overnight, and so on.
Every digital entrepreneur I’ve ever met has at least one of these stories and it’s usually followed up by an endless struggle to replicate that one piece of content that got them $100k worth of attention.
But it’s often hard to do so.
Today, we’re exploring how to move from getting attention to retaining it.
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Why is getting attention easy?
Depending on the platform you’re on, there can be dozens of reasons why you suddenly find yourself in the spotlight:
- A social media algorithm took a liking to you and pushed your most recent post to (hundreds of) thousands of accounts.
- A big creator liked or engaged with your post, which resulted in the algorithm pushing it more than usual.
- You found a keyword gap and ranked a piece of content in search engine results pages.
- You inadvertently pushed “publish” at the very beginning of the day’s rush hour.
- You wrote something so scandalous and/or lewd that you sparked a ton of engagement.
- You coined a catchy phrase.
All of these reasons need an external lever to work, something you cannot control. Yes, witty phrases, pre-fab scandals, and contrarian opinions usually fare well on social media and in mainstream media.
But without a bit of intervention from your friendly algorithm, even the best piece of content gets buried.
This is exactly why you can rarely replicate attention-grabbing or viral content. There is no formula for it, just a few rules of thumb that come with no guarantee.
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You can, however, retain attention and that’s what matters because:
Getting attention isn’t the end goal of a business
Ephemeral attention works great for B2C influencers who need to pad their numbers to get better sponsorship rates. To some extent, this is important for B2B creators as well.
But it’s not the end goal, just a mere stepping stone.
The end goal for any business is retaining attention.
The attention economy thesis by Herbert A. Simon treats attention as a commodity, a currency of sorts: we all have a limited amount of it, so we have to be careful how we spend it. Simon defines attention as the “bottleneck of human thought, that limits both what we can perceive in stimulating environments and what we can do”.
Just like with any currency, the more you have, the richer you are. The more attention you get from your audience, the better your business.
You know you got someone’s attention when you see:
- Social media reach/web traffic
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
You know you retained that attention when you see:
- New followers
- New subscribers
- People who read/listen to/otherwise engage with your long-form content
- And, of course, buyers.
This is how attention is ranked: skimming a social media post costs next to nothing in terms of attention. Engaging with it, following the author, and then digging deeper into their content assets is retained attention.
It requires more effort from the user and it is therefore more precious. Without retaining attention, you can’t have buyers.
All this to say, an entrepreneur’s goal should never be the cheap dopamine that comes with a speck of attention on a social media platform. It should be retaining it and eventually converting it into revenue.
So,
How do you retain attention?
People get bored with everything. Last week, we spoke about the inevitable decay of all marketing channels. Your audience develops not just banner blindness but a blindness to everything they see too often.
This is why the oft-peddled advice “find out what’s working and double down on it” has a limited shelf-life, much like overused hooks and clickbait. Again, I’m talking about businesses here, not entertainment — there are different rules there.
In business, people eventually figure out they got hyped up for nothing, and that your content doesn’t have any real value to them, no matter how good your headline is.
To retain attention beyond a few seconds, do this:
Create content that’s relevant to THEM, not you
Use inspirational fluff sparingly and focus on information your audience can actually use. Make sure it’s data-backed, research-backed, and fact-checked.
Not sure what topics your audience is interested in? Ask them!
I came up with the idea to do the Audience Accelerator workshop because I surveyed my audience and the overwhelming majority said they were struggling with growing their audience.
I also wrote about building an audience, creating a fanocracy, and making sure that your audience is relevant to your goals — three evergreen pieces of content that my audience asked for and that I delivered.
By the way, the survey in question is still live, please fill it in if you want your topic featured in an upcoming issue of Ideas to Power Your Future.
Short-form content gets attention, long-form content retains it
Short-form content formats: social media posts, short videos (reels or YouTube shorts), ads, and so on.
Long-form content formats: newsletters, blog posts, eBooks, podcasts, long videos.
The approach here shouldn’t be either/or but a tiered one: start with short-form content to get attention and retain it with long-form content.
Give your audience something of real value, something that you could monetize but choose not to
A short eBook, a good lead magnet, free advice, templates, and spreadsheets — all of these are things you can offer them without asking for anything in return.
Resist the urge to give them crappy free content and save your best stuff to put behind paywalls.
My biggest win with this newsletter is comments like this, where people say it should be paywalled — I have at least five of them in the same vein.
The same goes for my lead magnet, The Audience Accelerator eBook. When people say it should be a paid product, I know I did something right and that I’ve retained attention.
Build psychological ownership into your products and your content
Springing new products and new directions on your audience is so last decade. Today, audiences want to be a part of your journey.
Don’t build new stuff in your secret cave, you’re not Batman. Build them together with your community because that’s how you create psychological ownership. When your audience is invested in everything you do, they stick around and they are more inclined to buy because they participated in the building process.
Save for my first product, the 5+1 email sequence, everything I ever launched was built together with my community:
- The 1:1 strategy session was demanded by a couple of followers before I even got a chance to create a landing page for it.
- The Guided Strategy Template was the result of several polls on LinkedIn and here. I wrote more about the exact process here.
- The Audience Accelerator workshop was also born out of your need to grow your audience.
This approach doesn’t just help you retain attention — of course, people pay attention when you create what they ask for! It also helps you make sure there will be someone to buy what you build.
Make your audience members feel like VIPs through exclusive offers and perks
It’s very common to feel tempted to push your best freebies to new audiences because you want to grow. But what about the audience whose attention you already have? Don’t they deserve more just for sticking with you for so long?
My recommendation is to strike a balance: if you want to make a freebie available to everyone, let your core audience in on it first. Give them first dibs, then make it public after a couple of days/weeks.
Here’s my approach to making sure you feel like a VIP [note: it’s not the only possible approach, there are hundreds of other options]:
- This newsletter is for your eyes only for 4 days until it goes live in my archive and on social media. This means I have to set every article up manually even though I have the option to automatically publish it everywhere else but, to me, it’s worth it.
- Discounts are not available outside my subscribers’ community. I don’t publish them on social media, only here, only for you. Yes, my revenue takes a hit. No, I’m not changing that. You deserve this exclusivity!
- Every new product I launch is announced via email at least 24 hours before it goes live everywhere else. You’ll always get first dibs!
You know who’s truly amazing at nurturing audiences and retaining attention? Taylor Swift!
Her business empire thrives because she knows how to make her fans feel special, heard, and a part of something bigger.
Don’t trade your credibility for pennies
This is the best piece of advice I can offer you: the lure of putting out half-baked content and half-assed products is huge.
Resist it!
Even retained attention can be lost and this is the fastest way to lose it.
While we’re at it, also resist the urge to join automated pods — they can be spotted a million miles away. And they chip at your credibility like nothing else.
This is how you future-proof your business: you acknowledge that your audience’s trust is more important than a couple hundred dollars.
That’s it from me today!
See you next week in your inbox.
Here to make you think,
Adriana
Need me in your corner? There are three ways I can help you:
- Boost your chances of success by 400%: document your strategy with The Guided Strategy Template.
- Get my product launch email templates that sell: 5+1 emails you can send to your list in 45 seconds.
- Book a 1:1 strategy session with me. Let’s unlock your growth in 60 mins!
