I recently brought up "the attention stream" concept in a brainstorming session with my private group, and I was asked to blog about it and go into more detail...
The Attention Stream is the content that crosses your screen that actually gets and/or keeps your attention.
Tweets, news, Facebook updates, emails, blog posts, instant messages, advertisements - and everything else in between.
Consider the amount of content you "see" on a daily basis. There is no possible way it can ALL engage us. And who would want it to? A big portion of that content is spam - or just plain irrelevant (to us, or at that exact moment, at least)...
Each of us has a mental filtering system, choosing what we will and will not give our full attention. We scan the streams and our eyes are drawn to those things that interest us most, for whatever reason they interest us.
Those things we are drawn to and choose to respond to, out of all the data in our content stream, are what make up our personal Attention Stream.
The Problem
The problem is that there is simply too much content for anyone to possibly consume, and so we miss things that ARE important or relevant to us. Prime example: I missed that one of my longest standing friends had a baby girl. Completely missed it! She happened into my Attention Stream this week, which is when I saw photos of her precious no-longer-a-baby girl. 😐
In the same way, we miss exciting events happening in our own back yard. We miss the window on awesome products or affiliate opportunities. We miss a great blog post we would have - and should have - shared with our list or our followers.
We miss a lot!
And guess what? As a marketer, as an online business owner, a huge portion of your target market is missing most of YOUR updates too.
The Solution
Social Media sites are making great efforts to keep our content streams relevant and interesting. Relevant and interesting to us personally, that is. Their objective is to keep us engaged on their site, to keep us using their service.
They do this by keeping us engaged in the content there. The minute the content stream becomes overwhelming or (majority) irrelevant, it loses our attention. And that site loses its appeal. And they lose us. In the same way that Google strives to serve relevant results to serve their target market: searchers.
How do they achieve this?
Twitter chose to filter conversations (tweets) out of our streams that our friends were having with people who are not also our friend. So if I am tweeting to Joe, and you are not following Joe, you don't see my tweet to Joe in your tweet stream. If you are friends with Joe, you'll see our conversation in your stream.
(I didn't care for this update personally, as that was one of the things I loved about Twitter in the beginning: seeing who's talking to who and about what. 😛 )
Google is playing psychic and trying to guess what you are going to search for before you even finish typing your search query.
Facebook now uses an algorithm to customize our main content stream. So instead of seeing all updates in chronological order like we used to, it shows us updates "based on relevance". What they deem relevant to us that day, that is.
Just following someone on Twitter won't make you privy to all of their conversations (tweets). Friending or Liking someone on Facebook doesn't necessarily mean you'll see every Status Update they make. So while you think you're selectively choosing the content you want to consume, it is filtered even further to the pieces of that content that are actually relevant to you.
They are not psychics of course, but their solutions and algorithms are definitely becoming more intuitive.
Marketing On The Intuitive Web
Ever heard the saying: "You are what you eat"? Well, somewhere in the very near future we may be saying: you are what you click.
If the web as a whole becomes more and more intuitive in the way it serves us content, what does this mean for content marketers?
It means that you have to figure out a way to be (and stay) active, relevant and popular. You need to keep your market engaged with your content - linking to it, commenting, liking, voting, sharing, etc.
That sounds like a no-brainer, right? I mean, people have been teaching that for years. We already know all that social media stuff.
My prediction is that what we see happening now... is only a taste of what is coming down the tube. It's inevitable. People's heads (or at least their mobile devices) are going to explode otherwise. Content needs to be filtered. We can't expect the public to subscribe responsibly. Or to even use the tools & filters they're offered.
Ultimately I see more filtering and streamlining as the solution. You'll be served what's popular among your friends, and perhaps the types of things you've responded to (clicked or shared) most in the past. Future algorithms may very well be a combination of popularity + personal history. Intuitive indeed.
And this is not so bad. On a typical day I'm a single mother of teens who has a dog and recently quit smoking that goes out for sushi almost weekly and travels a lot but does most of her shopping online. So yes! "Serve me" I say! Show me what's relevant, what my friends are excited about, what's local, what's going on that might actually interest me.
Except... things change. I might get married, get pregnant, start smoking again, rescue 8 kittens, become a vegetarian and actually go to Wal-Mart. Yes, in that order. No worries you say - the algorithms can keep up!
But I wonder. Does this leave us any room to grow, or to learn new things - or about new things? Only if it's popular with our friends (because then it will show up in our stream). But it begs the question - who will see it, to make it popular?
All this to come back around to the question of how to keep your market engaged. How to stay in their personal attention stream and keep them actively clicking, liking, commenting on and sharing your content.
This is important, even if the web never changes (um, it's constantly changing). The problem still exists: there is entirely too much content. Even without digital filtering systems, we'll always have our own personal mental filtering systems.
I think I'll open this up for discussion...
I'd love to hear your thoughts, and how you engage or interact with your market. How do you get, and keep, their attention? I'd also be interested to know how you came to be reading this post - a tweet, Facebook, email, a friend?
I'll share my own thoughts (and some strategic tips!) in my next post. 🙂
Best,
p.s. Thank you, Google- I needed that extra 12 seconds every day to hunt down my friends on Facebook that didn't appear in my stream, or to manually look up Tweet streams to see who's talking to who!
About Lynn Terry
I'm not a big fan of all of these recent changes. Some of my greatest "introductions" have come through eavesdropping on conversations in Twitter. What Facebook thinks is relevant to me rarely is. And don't even get me started with Google's latest Jedi Mind Tricks with trying to type faster than me in an attempt to read my mind. 🙂
My day now starts with taking the extra moments to click on the other Facebook feed, turn off Google Instant, etc. I find if I guess go with what they "think" I want, I miss out on extremely relevant information.
I carry on conversations on Twitter now by moving the @mention to somewhere other than the beginning. Then everyone can still see who I'm chatting with. One good thing that has come from it, I'm getting more involved in smaller communities.
P.S. I have your blog in Google Reader. That's how I found your post.
I'm flattered to be in your Reader! 😀
I go through the same motions as you. I'm not sure that everyone realized the @ update on Twitter, and may just miss those tweets altogether. But like you, I prevent that by not beginning a reply with the @ symbol. A good workaround when the reply is relevant or may be of interest to everyone following.
While those of us "in the biz" know & use all of these work-arounds, the general public does not. And so it becomes our mission to find ways to *stay* in their content stream, and ultimately in their Attention Stream if we can...
I agree with you Lynn and with Angie. I miss the days of eavesdropping on conversations on Twitter. I found a bunch of great people to follow that way. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that's where I found Lynn 🙂 I know it was on Twitter, and 99% sure it came from seeing an @ conversation.
I also totally agree with the basic premise of your post Lynn. The 'Attention Stream' is absolutely what we must learn to both deliver (as marketers) and manager (as consumers).
I think any filtering solution has to be totally controlled by the consumer. Whenever a tool or service tries to think for me, it inevitably ends up frustrating me. I'd like to see some of the social bookmarking services catch up. A great filter, as you mentioned, is what have my friends found and shared. Twitter is kind of like that, but the history gets buried so fast, you miss a lot. I hoped that the new version of Digg would give me some great solution but that looks to be a big fail in terms of execution.
Anyway, good food for thought. Thanks!
"I think any filtering solution has to be totally controlled by the consumer."
I totally agree with that. Twitter, thus far, seems terrible at the filtering game. I've been thinking for weeks that the new follow recommendations on the sidebar should be user adjustable/removable. The feature may be OK for new users, but I've been on Twitter for 3 years and most of the recommends are accounts I've either followed and have unfollowed or decided not to follow. The force-feed approach is a fail whale, Twitter.
Ironically, as I'm pondering this rant from last week 🙂 , I realize that it's marketers who have forced many of the very filters we (marketers) also complain about. Not us, of course. 😉 Wouldn't it be nice though if social bookmarking sites were used properly, so that we could share & learn from our peers...
Used properly, so many of these social sites would just be super cool. It's the "used properly" that's a problem for those sites, and then becomes a problem for us.
p.s. Doug- I'm glad we connected before eavesdropping got outlawed! 😉
Lol, I'd completely overlooked the FB Top News/Most Recent thing! Thanks for drawing our attention to it.
One positive side of the constant stream for me is that I've become *much* better at skimming down an article & stopping at the bits that interest me. And it's led to my going back to reading original webpages rather than thru a twitter app or thru Google Reader - because in my browser I see fewer tweets & can skim down until I see any that interest me (hello Twitter Continuous Scroll!) and I get my niche keyword alerts going straight into appropriate email folders & I just guess that the blog posts that I want to see will get tweeted by people I'm following anyway. If I miss some, then what the heck - I want a life! 🙂
I personally think(or at least hope)that any filtering as to who I really am is a long ways off (while I have a cell phone it is only for emergency's and am among so who feel that "texting" is a giant step backwards)
That's interesting. I've heard the same from others. But it's a different experience for different people, and I respect that. For me, it has opened up a whole new form of communication between me and my two teenagers. We're constantly in touch and I don't feel worried when they're out & about. Texting is a very non-intrusive way to check in on a teen, or for them to update mom (if I'm at a lunch or something). Plus we share photos and other cool things we couldn't otherwise. 🙂
I would rather filter my own tweets, updates. It's nice to have stuff recommended by google, etc., but I think I can monitor what i want. For example, I am watching how @jimkukral is brilliant at having his posts reach so many different places in his social network. I am learning from him by trying to make a "map" of how he connects in my mind and he is teaching me so much by just reading his posts, and how his posts relate to each other in the social network. I'd really dislike twitter, or facebook, or google deciding that this is not relevant in their algorithm, if I understand you, Lynn -
Me too. I'll have to check out Jim's stuff. I have not seen him cross my screen in forever, which is odd. I'm guessing he's been filtered out, or just lost in my stream. *sigh* 😛
An interesting discussion, as we can see both the consumer and marketer sides of this argument.
To check my own content isn't filtered (I hope) I am very careful not to facebook + email+ twitter everything I ever do. My mailing list get special content, facebook gets another set etc. I realise this is more time consuming but I want to add real value to those who follow me.
If I find I am getting reader feed, plus news alerts, plus twitters and emails all regarding the same content, then out they go!
I see this a lot Michelle, so I know what you mean. And you're right, not only is it more work to differentiate the content - it can be tough to know what to post where, and when. I'm working out a content publishing system as we speak that keeps things fresh across different channels, but also know that some people get it by one medium and some by another. Ultimately the goal should be to bring readers/visitors into your personal mailing list - so giving them something unique and read-worthy becomes especially important.
I actually dislike all these changes happening now with twitter and facebook. I actually enjoy reading other people's conversation. I think there's some sense of entertainment in it haha. I hope they realize thet they cannot predict what is going on in someone else's mind or thoughts. I think there's now a limit to the freedom we once enjoyed when browsing the net. They can't lead us to go to where they want us to go because we know what we want, we know what we like.
Very interesting discussion.Since I'm not very active on facebook, some of those changes were new to me.
My main strategy for staying in my prospects attention stream is to stay on topic. If they are expecting affiliate marketing tips, most of what I share around that. If they expect frugal recipes and money saving advice, they'll get that.
Other than that, I try to be out there on several social media sites that I know my prospects frequent and cross promote them with my blog and newsletter list.
When I first got on Twitter, you could still see those conversations you mentioned and it as great because you could easily discover people of interest (dare I say...relevant?), growing your presence and theirs quickly. And the eavesdropping felt a little naughty too. 🙂 Now the shift has been to receiving retweets from people I follow of people I don't, often lots of them and often confusing.
I suppose the whole intuitive approach is good as long as no one's tastes, habits, needs and interests never change. Then how would we tell Google, Twitter, Facebook et al?? Would there be some reverse engineering fix for that?
The Attention Stream could be tricky fishing if it goes too far in thinking for us.
One quick side note: Pass on rescuing 8 kittens. I did that with two, and that's more than enough!!
Dan
No worries on the kitties LOL 😀
"We miss a great blog post we would have – and should have – shared with our list or our followers." -- I can't even count the number of times that has happened to me and I've banged my head against the wall for missing it.
I'm sure your kids will be keen on rescuing 8 kittens, but Slim might not like it so much! LOL
Hahaha...I feel for everyone living the online social life at its fullest. I wonder when we all started to be that social? Also, I don't even see that reflecting on our offline interaction i.e at your local wallmart. Just serve quality content and you will be OK, everything else is just a filler easy to filter.
You might have kinda missed the point... a little bit. 🙂
Well Lynn, I came across your site because I'm on Mark Hendricks' as a member. I saw you were speaking at one of his events and decided to see who you were. Glad I did.
For me, I'm not a real fan of facebook. I know it'll be around forever, but it just took up too much of my time and it was too distracting. Maybe I'll get into again with a different approach, but for now I just don't use it.
I Tweet, but only to get links to my site. Most of the people I've seen on Twitter are screaming "buy my stuff!"
I simply blog about topics that my audience is interested in. How do I know they are interested in the stuff?
Because. If I could paint the perfect picture of my prospect online...it would be me. I blog about stuff that I, as a work from home dad, would enjoy. Typical going from blue collar worker to an online marketer and the stuff that dads do.
There's a lesson in that paragraph above. Something I picked up from Frank Kern and Dan Kennedy. Know your prospect. Know what makes then tick. Know their wants, desires, hates and so on. That way, you'll always be able to touch their emotional hot buttons.
Happy blogging folks.
Peace,
Shane
I agree. And also know if they've been sucked into Facebook - because if so, you should make sure you are there too. Engaging them in conversations *where* they are having them.
You're right that there's a lot of junk on Twitter and Facebook can be a major distraction. It definitely takes a disciplined system...
Maybe it will be like all things seem in life and come round in one big circle...think fashion, music, maybe we will be more reliant on offline methods to get attention online 🙂 I mean why should the internet be any different 🙂 just a funny instant thought!
I heard about you Lynn while googling something about Rosalind Gardner and have been reading your blog ever since and then became a happy member of your brainstorming group 🙂
Very cool- It's always interesting to know the path that brought people here! 😀
Interesting stuff Lynn. I think this throws up several issues, but what's interesting is that I think in the future, the search engines and social networks will tap into the changes in our focus. For example, if you've always liked and watched things related to one topic, then change your focus, the search engines/social sites will realise this. In the case of having to search for your friends, I think the social sites will start to realise that you're doing that extra bit of work and change their 'settings' for your search, so that those friends that you actively sought out start appearing in your feeds again.
As Mel said above, it is a circular process. I think it will move into this phase more and more, until something (the users probably) cause it to change. After all, the users are what make these platforms work so well.
Have we already reached the point of nostalgia? " Remember when Facebook was . . ." or "Back when Twitter did. . . ." 'Social' sites, like soda, need to change or become "classics" to be relevant, or they need to fade away.
Anyways, a good blog post, with good comments. Now I need to go and find Shane's blog, because it sounds cool--and maybe I'm a lot like him, so I'll find his content relevant, with a new perspective.
"might actually go to Wal-Mart."
Ah, I remember the days when you were talking about strolling through Wal-Mart in the middle of the night in your pajama's.
My how time flies!
I used to live really close to Wal-Mart too, Kirk. Like walking distance. LOL. And I still make my way over there occasionally 😉
Are blogs judged by the number of comments?
I want my readers to laugh.
I get on the e-mail list for blogs I especially enjoy.
Like the one you are reading.
At the moment, blogs (or any sites) are judged by the number and quality of inbound links. Links are like votes. The more links pointing to something, the more "votes" and therefore the higher it ranks for whatever it is. But who knows - comments may become a part of future algorithms.
Great post Lynn! Here's a question that applies to your question...
If we are to become much better at filtering and skimming through an increasingly world of online content, then what is it that stops us and makes us read in the first place?
Clearly it's not posts or articles spit out by a spinning machine or a $1.27 per hour ghost writer. It's something that's relevant BEYOND a snappy title. Content is valuable if it makes me think (which this post does) or helps me solve a problem or even entertains me for a bit.
But too much of what we see is simply trivial re-hashing of the obvious. I, myself, am not immune to the urge to 'get something out there' but the point of much of what is posted these days is about fooling search engines into thinking it's relevant. Not to actually being relevant.
So, to your question, we need filters that we interact with in such a way that they learn from us. Not just what keywords to search for but what we really like and think is interesting and important. And that continuously adapt to our own changing needs and tastes.
In this type of discussion I'm often reminded of a butler or assistant that 'knows me better than I know myself'. While there are some 'learning' filters out there, we're still years from them being effective and time/energy efficient.
In the meantime, keep on writing these good posts. I can assure you, they are NOT filtered out of my attention stream!
All the best,
Andy
Thank you Andy - and great addition to the topic! 😀
Hmmm. While I like the idea of filtering out a lot of the junk that makes its way into my in-box and my consciousness, I don't like the idea of some "big brother" deciding my wants and needs for me. I am a changing, quirky human being who's always looking outward for what I'm missing, and what new and interesting things I can bring to my audience.
There are sheep and there are shepherds. I try to be a shepherd.
I'm glad to see so many people who don't want to be over-filtered. The bottom line is humans are ultimately more complex than any formula--and the beautiful thing is that code can always be cracked enough to continually change algorhythms.
Day by day people are taking interest into internet lifestyle. People used to make social accounts, having chat and also make blogs for some earns. Nowadays people have started using the internet for personal uses and requirements. Glad and surprised by the change.
True. Even my plumber is an active twitter & facebook user. 😀
Interesting post and thread you got here Lynn... 😉
As a facebook user, ie, using it alot as well as having a fan page, and being on twitter and the rest I can see where you are coming from here Lynn, funny enough I saw this post in my greader, facebook, twitter, email inbox... 😀 the point is I won't rely on any one place for filtering stuff, if anything the only place you will get everything you wanted without any filtering is in RSS reader really.
Here's something of interest, maybe some of you commenters will find a use for it too... http://alpha.shyftr.com/filter/popular/ that's like a filter YOU can create using whatever you like, and it gives you an RSS feed for it. 😉 Neat thing really. 😀
While I can understand why facebook are "trying to decide" for us what we want to see, they don't do a good enough job of it yet for it to be a benefit.
They should concentrate on the fan pages and getting that sorted out, I know you have mentioned it as well Lynn, the fact we don't even get notifications on our own facebook fan pages. I think that may be changing though... 😉
This intuitive web is interesting, yet good and bad, only time will tell how it fares out. 😀
Looking forward to that post you mention now Lynn. 😀
Overall, the way you present your business to your audience/network will make them engage. It may be a clever 'title/headline' that offers something very useful things for free or a question that attracts commonness among like minded or the one who need your business/product. Talking about the filters, yes, users filters by doing multiple searches until they get satisfied result and again their satisfaction depends on their needs. So one of the best strategies we can employ to engage people/customers is to present our products/business in such way that meets your customers satisfaction. And again this requires certain research to find and understand their behaviors. 😉
This is a fascinating article, and one which I enjoyed so much I read it twice! Personally, I am very happy to know that Facebook are taking these steps and developing their algorithms further - I have recently de-friended a lot of people because I simply became sick of constantly hearing what they were up to, so if Facebook could make it so that I was only see the updates of the friends I regularly communicate with, for example, I would be very pleased. In a business sense, it is likely to help us as well, since it would mean your fan page etc was only being viewed by people who are genuinely interested in your product, and who visit/communicate with your page regularly. The power of Facebook in a marketing sense is undeniable, as articles like this prove http://explosivemlm.com/monavie-mlm-companies/monavie-leads/, however other articles suggest that people are becoming sick and tired of 'spammy' marketing material appearing on social media sites. In this respect, if we are able to further refine who we are aiming our content at, then the power of the social media sites in a marketing capacity is only going to increase.
I'm sick of spammy marketing material on social media sites myself. Specifically in my stream, which I always take care of right away (block user!). It's a great way to share resources, notify your groups of cool stuff, have conversations, etc. But so many people just blast out ad after ad after ad. As if that's "marketing"...
There's no doubt that keeping our attention is key and this is also the same reason, why social networks and search engines keep changing; to keep us on our toes.
As marketers I think it has always been key to do something different or be different in order to be relevant, but because of the info overload period we now live in, it has become ever more important. As in "live or die important" for your business.
You can't just do one thing, you have to mix it up. And creativity is at the helm of it all.
It's not easy, but it is doable. We HAVE to be different as a marketer, writer, publisher, affiliate marketer, etc. It's not optional anymore. Maybe never was.
Great points, Missy!
When I first started using Twitter I loved it. Then, as I followed more people it became a nightmare as this unrelenting stream of messages raced passed. At that time I was on slow dialup so couldn't use anything like Tweetdeck of Pluggio to get some control over my Twitter stream. In the end I actually deleted my Twitter account!
And all because I hadn't discovered the magic of Twitter lists. Now I use lists a lot and have tamed that raging torrent of Tweets to something that my attention span can comprehend.
And as to how I came to be reading this post - pointed here from another site.
Boy, if anyone deals in a lot of information I do . It is a growing problem. How do I do it? I skim. I look for keywords that I have an interest in. I am sure there is a lot I miss, and a part of me misses the days in which there was not so much information around. My advice is you have to pick and choose. computers are trying to think for us, that is becoming more and more apparent. Tis' frightening. You can still find conversations on twitter - by using other services. Its just harder.
Found you in my gmail Lynn. and of course on Internet Weekly (which it isn't thank heavens)
Hey Lynn-
Some great observations here. I have to say, of all the chatter and social media out there I rarely pay attention to much of it, but your blog is definitely something that is in my attention stream on a regular basis, so you practice what you preach girl and are a good one to write on this topic!
Heading over to read your more recent post now!
I agree.. You also need to put a different twist on things and keep your blog updated with current and interesting posts. Keep the readers interested in what you have to say, or your take on things and they will most certainly return and follow your blog.
I haven't felt the changes in Twitter or FB as I don't really use them (too busy), but I have found on a blog that I write, when I update my content more frequently and engage with my audience, via answering emails and comments, my opt in rate has increased. Sounds so simple but it took me a long time to get this point.
We have been in the "information explosion" stage for many many years now. and we have survived it (I suppose!) I believe the problem will be taken care of, at any stage as we develop. "Solutions" will be created to address the "problems" (which we created!).
Let me explain a bit further.. in the old days only programs like the IBM's CICS do they things we do with computer today, to only a few categories of people (e.g. bank tellers). And now we have every one on computer/internet and technologies have evolved to cater for our needs (or to get rid of our problems!)... twitters, facebook et al are the newest, but soon they will belong to the past like the IBM CICS program did.
I agree with what huang said... gone were the days but they do come back with similar pattern!