hacking attention
TRANSCRIPT
Hacking Attention
@ajkohn
@DFWSEM
#StateofSearch
My name is AJ Kohn
Pennsylvania
George Washington University
Advertising
Internet
Search
Blind Five Year Old Established 2007
Making the complex simple
I’ll be talking a lot about science
Content
May I have your attention please?
“You’re getting all hung up, all hung up on
imaginary problems.”
There are more hours of attention than
hours in a day http://bit.ly/activatetech2016
A huge amount of attention is up for grabs
Content about yarn bombing doesn’t
compete with content about fantasy football
week 11 sleepers
Content is produced for a specific audience
A lot of content out there is just … bad
The content apocalypse is a lie
Content is still important as ever
Content
Quality
This is the number one selling beer in America in 2014
Valuable
A collection of Anna Kendrick Tweets brings in over 1MM views
Emotional
There is no real formula for creating
‘great’ content
Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn
Memorable Content
Don’t you forget about ‘me’
We spend too much time
worrying about getting attention
and spend too little optimizing what to do with that attention
Now what?
Cognitive Fluency
“Anything that affects the feeling of the ease or difficulty of mental
processing can — and does— affect people’s judgments and decisions.”
People prefer things that are easy to think about and process
Don’t make me think!
Readability
The question isn’t ‘Can you read it?’
instead it’s ‘Do you want to read it?’
The Golden Ratio of Typography
http://bit.ly/fibonaccitypography
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Color Contrast Analyzer
http://bit.ly/contrastanalyzer
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
28%
Most users don’t read but skim and scan instead
http://bit.ly/usersdontread
First you looked here
Then here
A penny for a paragraph return
Mirroring
Keyword rich text and subheads allow users to
resume reading at any time
Keyword is not a four letter word
But what about user delight?
Could you not
Much of design is about impressing other designers
and not about users
Images
Powerful if they connect with your content and reader
But images can also backfire and distract
Why is this woman laughing
while eating salad?
Music
Music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other function
You’ll remember more if I can get you to access that part of your brain while reading my content
It’s not what you say
It’s how you present it
Memory
Memory is slippery
The average adult brain is able to store
between 5 to 9 “chunks” of
information in working memory
The brain sorts and files things away by category and how they relate to each other
Our brains are hardwired to take shortcuts
Roomnesia
Crossing a threshold purges our memory, freeing it up for what’s next
Gabriel Weinberg CEO, DuckDuckGo
“When people describe you or your company what is the first thing they say? What do they lead with? That's your
leading characteristic.”
That guy who writes about
Google patents
That guy who writes about
Google patents
That bald marketing
guy
That bald marketing
guy
#RCS
#RCS
Your content has to be cocktail party proof
Stop writing for people and start writing for
search engines http://bit.ly/focusedwriting
The Triangle of Memory
Site (on)
Author (by)
Topic (about)
Site (on)
Author (by)
Topic (about)
Pick Two
That post by _____ about _____
That piece about _____ on _____
That article by _____ on _____
It’s sort of like reverse keyword research
Get the user to click
Content is presented well
Content is cocktail party ready
Repetition
Watch any pro football this year?
Share your content multiple times
Promote your content in multiple places
Take advantage of remarketing
Consistency
It won’t happen overnight
Stay on target
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
- Aristotle
Over time, through repeated exposure, I know what to expect when I see
something from BuzzFeed
What else can we do to make sure people remember?
Sharing
This makes sense if you understand that people just want to feel like an
article is important enough to share
TL;DR subhead is
Consistent, branded and socially optimized
Social activity has an indirect impact on search
http://bit.ly/socialseomath
The act of sharing is a habit and helps cement memory
1000 True Fans http://bit.ly/grandtruefans
True fans mean your content gets instant attention
Fans will go out and infect others, trying to
steal and steer attention to your content
TL;DL
Leading Characteristic http://bit.ly/leadingcharacteristic
Roomnesia http://bit.ly/roomnesia
http://bit.ly/doorwayeffect
Cognitive Fluency http://bit.ly/fluencymatters
http://bit.ly/simplebetter
Readability http://bit.ly/howusersread
http://bit.ly/seoreadability
Memory http://bit.ly/organizereality
http://bit.ly/readingmyths
https://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html http://www.simpleandusable.com/
http://bit.ly/musiconthebrain