Capturing the mobile device user has always been a rather tricky thing and it looks to get a whole lot trickier. Recent research at Microsoft and elsewhere suggests that the human attention span has shrunk to just slightly more than eight seconds and it is largely due to mobile device usage especially cell phones. Attention spans, especially in the Millennial generation, has fallen nearly 35% in the last decade. Because of this, your SEO marketing just got harder because it turns out that a goldfish has a longer attention span that most humans these days. A goldfish’s attention span has been measured at nine seconds.
Shifting to scatterbrain mode
Marketers these days who wish to pound home their brand need to take a new strategic approach. Smart phones, and a misplaced belief that multi tasking is a good thing, has led most people, especially many under the age of 40, to become rather scatterbrained. Also, mobile phone usage has become nearly 90% in most first world countries so that establishing your brand and driving traffic will become a lot harder.
The major challenge with regard to shifting your SEO marketing focus to scatterbrain mode is that research reveals that most advertising and marketing methods have reflected the decade’s long addiction to television. This passive, drug like, method of taking in data and information is undergoing a tremendous upheaval right now. The old methods simply will not work. There simply isn’t the time anymore.
Mobile had begun to dominate screen time
Further current research has also uncovered that screen time these days is dominated by cell phones with 52 minutes of every hour. This compares with desktops and laptops being used an average of 21 minutes in an hour and television consuming an average of 27 minutes of every hours spent in front of a screen.
Marketers have yet to adapt to this reality as the research further shows that nearly 60% of the money spent for SEO marketing and brand building is being thrown into television. Because of this unfocused and scattered attention span situation, marketers need to begin to creating the fifteen and thirty second commercials as well as keeping video to less than three minutes and rarely, if ever, more than six seconds or so.
So, what to do…
- The new SEO strategy needs to be seizing the attention of the user immediately. You don’t have time to develop a clever story line or try and use now out of date methods like the hard sell.
- Keep your mobile material, like video, confined to some manner of auto-play so that there need not be any interaction on the user end.
- You have less than ten seconds to get your message out there and paid attention to. Begin to craft new ways of seizing those small attention spans.
- Text will be a huge help especially if you are using graphics and video. Use subtitles that are easily readable because most mobile users don’t have the sound on when accessing their device.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
SearchPro Systems
2024