SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hey everyone, Marissa here. Have you ever scratched your head wondering how do I get my audience's attention? Because we know we live in a distracted world, and studies show that most people have about an eight-second attention span. So what do we do when we want to promote our content or we want people to download our resource? That's exactly what we're going to talk about today on the Resilient Faith Online Show.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me in my private Facebook group, go to MarissaShedrick.com forward slash community.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Hello, hello. How is everyone doing today? We have a really good topic today. I've titled it Attract an Audience Even in a Distracted World. Yes, we are all distracted, aren't we? And there's been a big, big focus on focused work, trying to stay focused. And I know I work hard on trying to batch my work and stay focused. But regardless, distraction is part of life. We can't completely eliminate it, but we can understand it a little more. And when we understand it, we can communicate a little better with our audience so we can streamline them toward our content. There really is a way to do that. And you don't have to be a huge expert in writing to do that. You just have to understand a few things and implement it. And when you write, you write as if you're writing to someone sitting across the kitchen table. So we're going to talk about a little bit about distractions and we're going to talk a little bit about attracting the audience and see if we can unpack this topic and provide you today with some simple strategies to be able to attract your people. Yes, I want to attract my people, and I'm sure you want to attract your people because that's the way we can help them. So studies show that our attention has decreased throughout the years. It used to be around 12 seconds, and now they're saying that it's more like eight seconds and continues to decline. So in a world that is completely distracted, and in a world where the attention span is so short, how do we get them to see our stuff, right? So I'm going to talk about attention and I'm going to give you a little story about a dog that I had named Charlie so that you can understand attention. So Charlie was an amazing yellow lab. I just loved him. He was about 100 pounds. I had to keep him on a diet because he could easily get into 110, 115 pounds. He looked adorable when he was overweight, but it wasn't good for him. So we kept him at about just under 100 pounds. And he was my boy. He was my baby. And we'd go on walks and do all kinds of stuff. And I trained him for six months when he was a puppy. So he's really, really smart. Well, he had sustained attention, he had selective attention, and he had divided attention. So let me explain what these were. Sustained attention for Charlie would be when he had a new bone. He had sustained attention and he was completely focused on that bone. You couldn't distract him with anything. The doorbell would ring, somebody would open a chip bag. It didn't matter what was going on. He had sustained attention and he was going to chew that bone until it was gone. That is sustained attention. But he also had selective attention. So much so that I often wondered if he was hard of hearing, especially when he was on the couch. When I wanted him to get off the couch, it was selective attention. He would pretend like he didn't hear me because he was quite comfortable and had no reason to get off the couch. That was his spot. So he had sustained attention and he had selective attention when it came to laying on the couch. But Charlie also had divided attention. When we went on walks, when I lived in Northern California, it was really beautiful. We had rivers, lots of trees, grass, there was a lot of walking trails, you know, it was just beautiful. But with that comes the critters. You have squirrels and birds, and you have even skunks and cats roaming around. And so Charlie, even though he was trained on a leash and knew how to walk on a leash really, really well, if he saw something in the bushes or he saw a squirrel, his attention was divided. And it took all of me to hold him back because he was ready to take off and chase that squirrel or chase that cat. So his attention got divided. But the funny thing about this sustained attention, selective attention, and divided attention, we see it all the time in people, right? Sustained attention for my husband would be when he's golfing. He's totally focused on golfing, right? Selective attention is sometimes when he's doing something and I'm talking to him. And you know what it's like? You can tell when somebody's listening to you or not. You can tell. Especially if you say, now what did I say? Well, yeah, I no, I agree. Well, what did I say? You know he has no idea what I was talking about. Drives me crazy. But that's selective attention when someone chooses to pay attention more to something else rather to maybe someone that's speaking or maybe something that they're supposed to be focused on. That's selective attention. And that's where a lot of our procrastination comes in, too, because sometimes we can be our own distraction too. And we can select to pay attention to something else because we're avoiding some type of job or something that we need to do that we don't want to do. So we can often distract ourselves, and that could be the result of procrastination as well. So we exercise selective attention. Yeah, I got to write that blog post, or yeah, I got to record that podcast. But there's this other stuff I could be doing, and we practice selective attention as well. The last one, divided attention. Now you're very familiar with this one. This is multitasking. Believe it or not, back in the day, I'm old enough to say this that multitasking used to be a positive thing. If someone could multitask and do different things, not anymore. I think we've become older and wiser and realized that multitasking is not beneficial for us. So in a world full of distractions and when we have a short attention span, we have to realize that like Charlie, we have sustained attention, selective attention, and we have divided attention. So how do we navigate through all of this, right? Because when we're online, we don't want to be a distraction. We want to attract. So let's look at the word distraction. Distraction has the word traction in it. There's distraction and there's traction. And what we want to do is create some traction with the reader. So distraction pulls you away from some type of goal or something you want to do. There's no intended target, right? And you know how what that feels like when you're distracted and you you feel out of sorts, right? You feel like you've wasted time. But people online are there because they have an intended target or intended reason. Oftentimes people are searching for something, they're searching for an answer to a problem. They're searching, maybe they're researching. I do a lot of research and I'm looking for things, right? Most people aren't just there for entertainment, they're looking for things, but they're also enjoying social media and other stuff. What we're trying to do online is leverage traction within distraction and help people to achieve their intended goal. So let me explain how traction in a world of distraction works. I'm gonna tell you another little story because these help for you to understand this. Gals, I'm gonna speak to you specifically because you know that this is true. When you're out shopping or you're even in a public restroom, hey, what do you do when you go into the stall? All you have to look at when you're in there are people's shoes, right? You're looking at people's shoes and certain shoes that you like will attract you. You may just strike up a conversation when you're at the sink and ask them where they bought those shoes. Or if you're at a conference or at an airport, you notice things, you notice outfits, you notice hairstyles, you notice stuff. That's what we do. That's what gals do, right? So I was at the airport last week. I went to a conference, and in the airport, you know, you we do what we do, right? We pull up our iPad or our laptop or our phone and we start taking care of some stuff and looking at emails, but you can only do so much, and you got to be at the airport so early, right? Well, I was looking around and I noticed this gal with this cotton shirt that I really liked. And I like nice light-fitted cotton shirts with buttons in the front, not all the way down, but like, you know, five, seven buttons in the front, kind of V-necked, and she was wearing that style of shirt that I like. Plus, it was the color that I like. It was turquoise, which is my favorite color. And this particular shirt had some lace from like the elbow down to the wrist, and I really liked it. And then come to find out when they called us to board, I was right next to her. And of course, I couldn't resist. I had to ask her where she got that shirt because I really liked it. And she told me that she got it on Amazon. And I go, Great, because I buy stuff on Amazon all the time. Now, let me ask you this in this scenario, was she selling shirts? No. Did she do anything to attract me to her shirt? No, she was just there, right? Did she say anything to persuade me to buy a shirt like hers? No. But guess what I did? When I got home, I bought four of those types of shirts in different colors. You know, they're Amazon's really inexpensive. So I spent like 80 bucks for like these four shirts that I really like. It's a style I like, plus, I like that extra lace from the elbow to the wrist. Really like them. And so she didn't do anything to get me to buy these shirts when I came home. Now, what caused that? Now, there's something that goes on because I'm always looking for these type of shirts, and I'm always looking for turquoise because I can never find turquoise, and it's my favorite color. So, what caused this that all of a sudden my eyes just are magnetically just, you know, focused on her shirt, right? There is something within our brain that does this. So we need to be aware of this and be aware of it when we're wording our content. So there are newer transmitters in the reticular activating system. Reticular activating system is just something that happens within our brain when we are thinking about something and focused on something that we want. And all of a sudden, we see a lot of it everywhere. If we're looking to buy a new car and maybe we want to buy a red Honda, when we go out, we are going to notice all of the red Hondas. Or if it's a specific type of truck, like a Toyota tundra, we're going to notice those on the road because our mind has been thinking about that and we're going to notice it. It's actually a thing. It's called the reticular activating system. So here's the beauty of it. Like that shirt that I saw, it was already on my mind because I'm always my my radar is always up for nice shirts that I can wear for work, and I can also wear it, you know, when I'm not working, that has a dual purpose. That was already on my mind. And when I saw that, I was attracted, and there was traction within the distraction of all the noise and all the things that were going on at the airport. And I had an opportunity to ask her where she bought the shirt. Now, one of the things about the reticular activating system, some of those neurotransmitters, some of those include things like dopamine, the feel-good hormones. So when we spot something that we've been looking for, it makes us feel good. So that's why when you write content, if you're very, very ultra specific, it will make people feel good to see something aligned with what they've been looking for. Don't miss this because it's important. If you write content in a way and you know your audience's pain point, you know what wording they use, those words will attract them simply because they're already looking for that solution. And when you're ultra specific, you're gonna help them be attracted and it's gonna make them feel good that they found something that was related to what they were looking for. So let's unpack ultra specific. What does that mean? Well, obviously, we want to do some market research, we want to do audience research, we want to do all that and really understand their story so we can use specific words that will resonate with them, but really it's all about this one thing, and the one thing is relevance. Your content has to be relevant, and when it's relevant, it's going to be like that gal at the airport. I was drawn, I was attracted to that particular product, and then when I went home, I bought four of them. You see how that works? Now, here's the benefits of relevance. Relevance hooks your audience. That shirt was relevant to me. Maybe not to you or to someone else, but to me it was relevant and it hooked me. I wanted to find out where she bought it. So it hooks your audience and it also creates curiosity and interest. I was interested and I was curious, where did you get that shirt? To the point where I wasn't stalking her, but I made sure I was like close to her in line so that I can ask her, right? So it does create curiosity. And the last benefit of relevance is that it builds trust because when I started the conversation with her, she started telling me how much she liked the shirt, how comfortable it was, and it was really soft and it wears well, and that she bought three of them and she liked that style. She volunteered a whole lot of information. She was selling simply because she was sharing. So you hear that? She was just sharing the benefits that she found, and I was sold even more so. So you see how when we sell, it's really about sharing some goodness to people, and it's going to be to the people that are already looking for those types of solutions and answers, and it's going to be more effortless and more genuine and more authentic. Is it easy? No. We have to really start with market research and understand our audience. And we have things like the reticular activating system working in our favor because when people are searching or looking for something and you write words that articulate their need, it makes them feel good. The dopamine is triggered, and they're going to be attracted in the midst of all the distractions in there. It's the way that you can gain traction in a distracted world. Now, the other thing we have to realize when we're trying to attract an audience, even in a distracted world, is once we attract them, that's not enough. That's not the end of it. Because attracting them is just the beginning. Then we want them to continue to read. And if they do opt into something that you're offering, something free or some type of lead magnet, it's going to allow them to enter into your world. And then we need to what you have heard many say nurture. But all we're really doing is we're helping them not forget because we forget. We forget. Even in the Bible, how many times did God have to remind his people? Because as soon as he did something miraculous, what would happen? They would forget. And sometimes it needed to be the next generation to carry out what God had intended for them because people would forget. And they even had customs where they had the stones of remembrance because they would forget. We forget. And so when we bring people into our community, we don't want them to forget. That's happened to you. You subscribe to something and then you get an email and you go, Who's this person again? Why did I sign up for this? Because they forget. And so it's all part of the process of building that relationship and reminding them, you know, why they subscribed and reminding them why they subscribed and making sure that your emails, the welcome series, makes sense to them. I had to go back and edit some of mine. You know, I know better. And I went back and I thought, man, I must have done these in a hurry because they're terrible. And I had to fix some of them. Sometimes, sometimes we're just in a hurry. And I get it, we've got a lot of stuff to do, but we got to realize that we're talking to people human to human. So when we provide something that really resonates with them, because they're already looking for it, they're looking for that solution. We're gonna have a better chance of attracting an audience, even in a distracted world. I hope that was helpful today. I know it can be very frustrating when you feel invisible online, and oftentimes people just say, Well, just do this or just do that. And it's not a gimmick or a trick to try to attract, it's really about being relevant and being able to use the words that make sense to your audience because they're already looking for things. And when they see a headline or they see something you're offering that is in line with what they're looking for, hey, the dopamine is going to kick in. And then the rest of the text needs to be just as compelling to keep them reading. And then once they're part of your community, you need to remind them so they don't forget why they joined and continue to provide content that resonates with them. So that's what I have for you today. If you want more of this type of copy training, because that's what this was today, copy training 101. I have a free training that you can sign up for, and you'll hear all about it at the end of this podcast. And I'll also have a link in the show notes where I walk you through three copy secrets, and you can sign up and check it out. It's gonna have some of these stories in it as well. So you'll be able to hear it. Not the one from the airport because that just happened last week. But I can't wait to get my Amazon shirts. They're coming in today, so I can't wait to get them. So, anyway, you have a fabulous, fabulous week, and thanks for putting up with me. I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.