Brain Rules for Bloggers: Attention, Attention!

Continuing the shameless twisting of John Medina’s Brain Rules for my own nefarious purposes, I proudly present:

Brain Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things (so don’t be a boring blogger)

Getting a reader’s attention is crucial for a blogger - keeping it is even more important. But with a gazillion bits of competing information whirling around in their heads, what makes a reader stay focused on YOUR blog post instead of the 3 dozen others cued up in their feed-reader? Learn to apply the basics of the brain’s attention span, and make your blog “sticky”.

In Ten Minutes or Less

The average human brain has about a 10 minute attention span. Even in the best conditions, with few distractions and a desire to focus - attention falters every 9.5 minutes. To keep someone’s attention beyond that, they need to be actively engaged, re-hooked, so to speak.

But how long is ten minutes, in blog terms? Everyone reads at a different pace, and blog conditions are never as distraction free as a lecture hall. That means you’ll need to engage your audience very quickly (usually within a few sentences) and then re-engage them before their attention starts to drift else where.

To keep your readers’ brains from being too bored, try breaking your material up with subheadings, graphics and stories that give the brain a refreshing break, and/or serve as interest-hooks.

Bait A Hook, Snag Attention

To snag interest in a random reader’s brain, you need demonstrate what’s in it for their brain, the brain gives priority to things that it sees as related to survival: food, threats, relationships, and… sex.

Yepp, sex and relationships are tied into human survival - our social structure is responsible for much of our success as a species. Sex doesn’t just sell; it hooks us by the base of our brain, and reels in our attention - for survival reasons, don’t ya know!

Luckily, getting the attention of the ol’ grey matter is pretty easy, and a few of the basic attention hooks outlined by Medina will do the trick.

Offer Meaning, Before Details: Before slogging through a blog post, the brain wants to know what it all means - how it relates, what the point of it all is. Whether you offer a full summary upfront or just a teaser is up to you, but a good post should quickly relate meaning to the reader, so their attention will be held through the details.

Trigger an Emotion: Emotions serve as a sort of big red ALERT button to the brain - they mean something important and relevant is going on. Any old emotion will do - Fear, disbelief, laughter, jealousy, disgust, joy, concern, or (you guessed it) sexual arousal. Tell a story, a joke, use an evocative image. Involving emotions is the most powerful impact you can have on a reader’s attention.

Use the Element of Surprise: The brain doesn’t pay attention to the mundane and ordinary - the known and expected elements of life can be dealt with on autopilot. Challenge yourself to be creative, rather than cliched, and wake up your reader’s brains.

Make it Relevant: While any old emotion will do, you can’t just toss in any old anecdote or joke. The emotional hook needs to be relevant to the information you’re trying to convey, or your reader’s brains will just dismiss the “alert” as a false alarm, and may even become annoyed at feeling manipulated.

Make it Social: Humans evolved as social creatures, using our social networks for a survival edge, so our brains evolved to place special attention on what other people pay attention to. So those little embedded icons that display a hundred Diggs, and widgets that display thousands of RSS readers? They’re great hooks, and will snare a many a reader’s attention. But keep in mind that the opposite is true, as well… displaying zero or low may actually reduce attention.

Place it for Impact: Usually, hooks will work best in the beginning of a post, where it will grab the reader’s attention right off the bat, and set the stage for the information that follows. But hooks also work at the close of a post, to bring drifting attention back, and create interest in your next post… or in the opening/closing of sections of a longer post, to re-engage your reader.

Speaking of placement, about all those flashing, enticing gizmos in your sidebars, stop surrounding your content with encouragements to multitask. Why? Because…

The Brain Can’t Multi-Task - not with awareness.

Oh, sure, our brains keep our hearts beating and lungs pumping even while engaged in deep intellectual debate - a multi-tasking of sorts. But when we need to actually pay attention to something, we can only focus on one thing at a time.

What does that mean to bloggers? Well, for one thing, you probably shouldn’t be Twittering or watching the newsfeed from CNN while you’re writing that post! ; )

But in terms of readers and their brains, try to minimize the potential for split attention. If you want your readers to focus on the content (and you do) avoid busy, flashing elements in your sidebar and header. Those constantly updating, twirling-whirling twitter feeds, music players, snap pages… they look neat, but they entice your reader’s attention away from your content.

So consider dumping those popup previews you embedded in your text. Don’t set music or videos to autoplay, and use them only when they add to your message. And avoid those attention stealing talking, moving ads. Oh, they’re great for the adverstisers, and you may earn a buck or two off of the clicks, but keep your readers focused while your blog grows, and you’ll earn a lot more, in the long run.

So to summarize Brain Rule #4 for Bloggers?

To engage your readers’ attention: Use hooks that grab the brain where it hurts - those primal bits of matter tuned into survival. Use emotions, stories, anecdotes, social pressure and the unexpected to send a “This could be important, pay attention!” message to the brain. And minimize the temptation for distractions - your ads, widgets and gadgets may be doing more harm than good.

To keep your own attention focused: Remember the 10 minute rule. If you’re having trouble writing a post, try working for 10 minutes, then breaking for five, and repeating. Make sure your brain is emotionally engaged in your writing - if it isn’t interesting to you, its not likely to interest your readers.

And minimize your multi-tasking. Make researching a separate task from writing. Make writing a separate task from editing, and turn off Twitter and MSN and news feeds while you work.

Mind you, I’m not entirely sure that I managed to apply this rule to this particular post, so if I lost your attention back there somewhere? Consider it an example of what NOT to do! Next up in the Brain Rules For Bloggers series? Memory, The Long And Short Of It. See you then!

If you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure and visit the Brain Rules website for multimedia content that’s WAY more attention grabbing than I can manage! And if you’re looking for rules 1-3, you can find them here.