Did that headline catch your attention? Good. Now bear with me.
“Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems.”
The late media critic Neil Postman said that. He argued that as technology advances, we become overwhelmed with an increasing amount of information.
“We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.”
Postman published those words in 1992, a couple of years before people began hearing about a new thing called the Web.
He had a good point. The longer humans are around for, the more information we create. It can indeed become overwhelming if you don’t filter it, especially when it comes to social media.
That filtering process means that it’s more important than ever to know how to get your content recognized. People scroll through their newsfeed quickly, and if what you’re putting out there doesn’t catch their attention, they simply won’t read it. So how do you capture that attention?
Here are a few strategies that work for me.
Use a provocative image. This is easier than it sounds. The image you choose doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Even putting a simple coloured filter on an otherwise average photo can spice things up and catch the eye.
Make sure your headline isn’t self-evident. Yes, innovation is important. Technology is getting more advanced. People have concerns. Don’t tell people something they already know. Tell them WHAT innovations are needed. How is a technology advancing? Why are people concerned about that thing? In other words, make your content useful to them.
Make your content special. Special how? Make it something people can’t get anywhere else. That might sound hard to accomplish, but it’s easier than you think. You are unique and have the ability to put your own unique spin on the content you produce. Think of what makes you special and put that into your content.