SEO Marketing for Short Attention Spans
Posted by Beth Hrusch on Mon, Sep 13, 2010
Do you know people who can’t sit through a TV commercial much 
less a white paper? Sure you do! These are the same people who click away from sites after 5 seconds! Either they are master information absorbers, or they simply can’t focus for more than 5 seconds because their heads will explode from the pressure.
Let’s face it—we’re all a little bit attention-deficit in this fact-paced world. Companies face the dilemna on a daily basis: how to get people to read the stuff that they put so much time and effort into. Today’s savvy companies who are interested in SEO marketing have the right idea—reaching potential customers through well-written, updated content. However, many are still bridging the gap between traditional content vehicles and the new, more user-friendly (and thus more popular) types of content.
For example, for SEO marketing purposes, a blog is much easier for people to digest than a white paper. Something about a white paper reminds many of them of homework. Articles are much friendlier than ebooks. Although ebooks can be quite engaging, they take awhile to read (that’s why they’re called “books”), and people need to set aside time. Good luck with that.
We’ve been talking about the power of article marketing, blogging and other content marketing snippets for some time. In fact, I once called email newsletters “bite sized nuggets of fun”, which they are. But every once in a while it’s nice to hear an industry expert reiterate the obvious advantages of something you happen to believe in.
Take the time to read Ardath Albee’s blog “Embrace Articles for B2B Marketing”. For companies still stuck in the “more is better” mindset, this article will help clarify why it’s a really good idea to add a heavy dose of articles and blogging content to your SEO marketing mix.
The idea that you have to produce large volumes of “heavy duty” content like white papers, ebooks, webinars and manuals in order to become an authority is perhaps misguided. These content vehicles are certainly good to have, but they are expensive to produce and require a lot of resources. Consider spending more of your SEO marketing energy on producing smaller, cheaper forms of content for your site. Blogs, articles, press releases and email newsletters provide fresh content for your business on a regular basis and don’t take a lot of time to develop.
Plus, as Ardath points out, they can be repurposed into larger, meatier pieces later, when you decide that you want to pull together your resources and create a masterpiece of wisdom.
It’s like SEO marketing with little bite sized nuggets of fun! Sounds delicious.