The NJSL Marketing team recently had the opportunity to attend the Digital Summit in Philadelphia. While we were there it became clear that the theme running through each session was how to cater to our audience’s ever-diminishing attention span.
It’s not breaking news that the introduction of smart phones and advancements in social media have drastically affected the attention span of an average person. If you take a minute to think about your own activities, you’ll quickly realize what a distracted society we are. We are rarely checking our phone in a quiet room by ourselves like we would check our email on a desktop computer in an office. We never go anywhere without our phones and that means we are constantly connected—while driving, watching a movie, out with friends, yes, even in the bathroom! Don’t deny it. We all do it.
It became clear throughout the conference that the magic number is 8. If you’re country folk, you might know bull riding as the most dangerous 8 seconds in sports. Well, here in the Wild Wild West of the Internet, we’re competing for the most eye-catching 8 seconds. The experts say that 8 seconds is the window of time we have to either capture your attention or lose it as you move onto the next shiny object. What follows are some tactics that we learned, that hopefully you’ll be able to implement into your library’s marketing plans.
The one good thing about a mobile way of life is that there is no longer a best time frame to send an email. Most of us check our emails constantly, glancing shamelessly at our phone as a notification pops up from when we wake up until we go to bed each night…sometimes even in the middle of the night if we can’t sleep. So, worry less about what time to send email communications and more about the content of your newsletter. It has been said by marketing gurus that 50% of email recipients spend 8 seconds or less on an email. The key takeaway here being: don’t make your emails crazy long because ain’t nobody got time for that! Here’s some other great tips we learned about emails from our masterclass with marketing leader Michael Barber.
- The sender address or “from” name in your email matters a lot! Make sure it’s an email address they can actually reply to should they have questions and it displays your contact info or library name accurately. Even better, make it personal by adding your name (whoever sends the email) like “Julia from NJSL.” People respond to familiarity and authenticity.
- Make sure your subject line is good. Length doesn’t matter as long as the copy is simple, uses the right language for your audience, has sentiment to it and poses as a good appetizer to the entrée that is your email.
- Try to be unique in your call-to-action wording in your email body. For example, use another phrase instead of “Learn More” as you link to more information. (This is something we’re guilty of and we’ll be working on as well.)
- Keep your layout slim and trim. In the small screen world, scrolling is the main tactic for consumption and single column layouts work best with this.
COPYWRITING
Our keynote speaker at the conference, Jon Youshaei, a former employee of Instagram and YouTube, focused on $0 marketing ideas, which should be music to every library’s ears! We learned a lot about the language we should be using in our marketing efforts. Although we may have patrons of varying ages and literacy levels, anything that we post should be at an 8th grade reading level. A great free tool called the Hemingway App allows users to input their copy and it will identify the reading level of the post so that it can be adjusted accordingly. Part of writing copy that gets your point across in a succinct way and is more digestible for your audience, is keeping it clear, confident and concise. Use simple terms, delete any words that undermine your authority, and clean up run-on sentences. Check out a chart of the Three C’s below:
This also applies to headlines. Writing eye catching headlines can feel overwhelming, but Jon provided a template for some of the foolproof formulas for creating a clickable headline.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is ever-changing with new platforms popping up all the time, but the constant across all platforms is connection, no matter how fleeting attention spans are. We learned from entrepreneur Carlos Gil that no matter how often you hear the phrase “content is king”, it’s actually community that is king on social media. People don’t want to be talked to or sold to, they want to be engaged with. Being human and relatable and creating a community on social media is far more important than your content. Address what your purpose is for being on social media and check in on that consistently to make sure you’re getting what you want out of your social media marketing.
Libraries know a thing or two about community and it’s important to focus on that through your social media platforms. Engage with your patrons, local businesses in your community, and other libraries. Share stories, photos, or articles that are relatable and relevant to those communities. Optimize what you’re sharing for each platform. Don’t just cookie cutter post the same thing to your Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram daily. Take the time to understand how your patrons interact with you on social media and cater your posting to that. Don’t be afraid to use humor. I think we can all agree that laughter is a much-needed release during these difficult times. Create levity when appropriate to break up the scrolling and earn those 8 seconds of attention. I guarantee your patrons will appreciate it!
