Ever since social media has overbearingly entered people’s daily lives, every brand has been forced to measure itself against a challenge that is both bloody daunting and extremely stimulating, on which the company’s fortunes may even depend in the medium and long term.
We’re talking about the ability to create relevant content, capable of locking the user’s attention and focusing it for a few minutes on the advertising message or post in question, thus depositing in his or her soul definite traces that at the right moment will become clearly perceptible, creating positive associations that could even lead to a purchase.
But nowadays, in the chaotic and globalized society in which we find ourselves living, people have become accustomed to consulting social media (and also all other media, such as online and print newspapers) in an extremely superficial way, paying very little attention to what is in front of their eyes. It is no coincidence that the attention levels of human beings, partly due to the network and excessive use of social media, have dropped dramatically, almost irretrievably, even falling below the attention levels recorded in goldfish.
Under these conditions, the match for online relevance becomesand even more complex, even more difficult, as brands find themselves in the need to create content for people accustomed to quickly scrolling through their social media walls, almost completely ignoring 90 percent of the content and dwelling only on those postings that, for some reason, have managed to stop their attention, blocking it for a few seconds.
Think for a moment about yourself and your attitude as you browse the walls of your favorite social media sites, like TikTok, or as you browse through the hundreds of posts that are shown to you every day on the various platforms. Most of the time, like everyone else, you will just absentmindedly scroll down, paying very little attention to content-especially written content-and focusing solely on those videos or photos that immediately catch your eye, almost independently of your will.
Try to note down what kinds of content are able to stop your attention, and try to identify the characteristics that they have in common. One of them, almost certainly, will be immediacy, that is, that silent force contained in images or videos with a high emotional impact, or those short films in which moving elements irresistibly catch your eye.
Quality and immediacy
It is no longer just a matter of creating quality content, marked by a perfect combination of textual and visual elements and certain structural features that always guarantee a certain amount of success.
To capture people’s attention nowadays, you have to focus on immediacy. Content must be able to act on the brain in a fraction of a second, even before the mind registers the basic information contained in the post or publication they are viewing, thus triggering an instinctive mechanism that will hold the person’s attention for a few seconds longer than is usually reserved for other publications. It is not necessary for all corporate content to have these characteristics of immediacy, as this would be too complex a task to be repeated on a regular, daily basis for ordinary publications on the company’s official channels, on LinkedIn, or for an email marketing strategy.
Immediate content should be treated as rare gems to be shown to your audience only on special occasions, perhaps during a particular communication campaign, at the launch of a new product, or as the central pivot of a broader communication plan that also includes precise conversion targets.
With content based on immediacy, the brand can count on top-level firepower, capable of simultaneously achieving the main objectives of any marketing and communication campaign. The originality of the content will contribute decisively to increasing awareness and consideration among specific audiences, and its effectiveness will also have direct repercussions in terms of conversions, and sales, thus also greatly affecting business performance in the short and medium term.
When the audience has then become accustomed to associating all these positive feelings with the brand, the game will be over, and in one fell swoop, they will have won the trust of existing customers and the loyalty of new ones, who will surely have been impressed by the quality and level of branded content.
Visual impact
Of the various ways in which immediacy can be achieved, those related to the color palette and moving elements are undoubtedly among the most effective. Certain color combinations, such as those arising from the combination of black and white, are able to strike people much more effectively than others since they are characterized by a disarming simplicity that leaves most users speechless.
In this sense, the content of a minimalist nature with a large space devoted to black and white tones, with a solitary figure or object in an off-center position, could have a truly striking effect.
A very similar, and equally instantaneous, effect is triggered by the moving elements that appear on our bulletin boards, of whatever nature they may be, which possess the ability to attract every glance within fractions of a second. Instead, for their ordinary communication, brands should prefer visual and textual content that can capture the interest of users, including those who wish to explore a certain topic in depth or those who are looking for a solution to a certain problem.
This is a strategy already successfully exploited by some brands specializing in online gambling like ArabianBetting, which for some time now have begun to enrich their offerings with useful guides and high-level online casino reviews, capable of solving players’ practical problems and easily directing them to the experience they are looking for.
In addition to offering an endless variety of online casino games and bonuses, which are easily accessible and extremely intuitive, these portals also provide textual content marked by a high level of practical usefulness, which could help all players to familiarize themselves with the world of online entertainment.
To get to the heart of your future customers, you will need to focus on the excitement, quality, and immediacy of the content posted online.
