Creating A Social Media Marketing Explosion – Principle #3

In order for you to make a sale, you must first convince your prospects and/or customers to give you their ATTENTION.

Ignoring this principle will cost you more than you can imagine.

Attention:

Nearly every principle that rings true in life has a dramatically oversized twin online. For every Casino there are thousands of gambling websites. For every newspaper stand cluttering the subway entrance there are hundreds of thousands of online news feeds, blog posts, and social media updates bringing us news faster than we can read them. And for every billboard and sign dotting our local boulevards, there are millions of online ads, campaigns, and strategies screaming for our attention and ultimately our money.

The internet has become one gigantic flea market. Millions of products to look at and buy. There we are: one little booth, overloaded with gimmicks and shiny colors, squeezed between  other overloaded and gimmicky booths all competing to catch the attention of the online shopper. All squeezed into our little booths, easily searchable, well optimized, well designed, all 15 billion of us. 15 billion web pages and counting… all competing forATTENTION.

If the world were a fair place, your great company and superior product would automatically attract tons of online attention.

The problem is this: the world is NOT a fair place. And as we have learned, the un-fairness of the world is exponentially greater in the online marketplace.

Answering the questions of well optimized, well designed, and strategically priced doesn’t matter as much as they once did.

One of the major questions you have to answer in creating a Social Marketing Explosion is this:

How do I capture ATTENTION?

Attention is hard to capture in an online society where we have developed  continuous partial attention disorder (a.k.a Online A.D.D.) as we balance our emails, feeds, blogs, social utilities, entertainment, news, and shopping. We’ve become focused on a little bit of everything, making it nearly impossible for a single advertisement to completely capture our attention.  As consumers we see and ignore thousands of advertisements every day.  Why? We aren’t interested, don’t like it, or don’t trust them. They seem impersonal and gimmicky. We don’t buy because we feel like we’re being sold.

Look at your current marketplace and ask the question: “Who is getting the most attention right now? Why?” If your industry is like the majority of others, that company/product/person has figured out how to get PEOPLE talking. They have figured out how to get PEOPLE blogging, IM’ing, Twittering, and talking about them over coffee. They’re getting the most attention because social media has given them the vehicle that advertising dollars no longer can – HUMAN INTERACTION ATTENTION.

Social Media today can literally be defined as “Online Human Interaction Attention.” Creating a Social Marketing Explosion will require you to create an atmosphere whereOnline Human Interaction Attention (OHIA) is achieved.  As seen in rapidly expanding social utilities, being a part of an online community and something bigger than ourselves has become more than a trend, it has become THE industry standard.

If you’re going to get Attention online you have to effectively identify, engage, and execute proper tactics and strategies to get attention.

Four things to remember when capturing Online Human Interaction Attention – they are:

1.       Attention is more valuable than money.

2.       People give attention to people they trust.

3.       Most people don’t trust marketers. Be careful how you construct your marketing messages.

4.       People trust people who have demonstrated that are here to help them.

If you know how to get attention and how to harness its power, it can lift your business and drive you towards your success goals faster than you can possibly imagine.

In my upcoming Social Marketing Explosion System – How to Harness the power of Social Media, I will unveil tactics and strategies that you can use to explode yourself/company to the next level.

My next post will be out within a few days – Principle #4.

What has been your experience engaging your audience online? What have you tried? What have you heard about that you wanted to try? How do you feel you’re doing capturing Online Human Attention? Leave a quick comment – I’d personally love to hear about how you’re doing.