Basic Attention Hacks for Video
Attention is arguably the most valuable commodity on hand today. I’m not the first to say it and I certainly won’t be the last.
In a world of people and platforms competing for attention, it’s a valid subject of discussion for anyone who wants their voice to be heard amid all the noise.
In the spirit of lifting up our voices, I figured it might be useful to break down what drives attention for one specific medium: video, which I’m convinced is the most powerful tool for communication on offer at the moment (both because of its huge emotional capacity and wide distribution).
Emotion
The one constant in the competition for attention is emotion. If you’d like to take only one thing away from this piece remember that appealing to emotions is the key to an audience’s attention.
Getting and maintaining an emotional response should be at the root of any message you put out there. While theorists disagree on what exactly the basic emotions are, Plutchik’s 8 provide a solid foundation to start with:
1. Fear
2. Anger
3. Sadness
4. Joy
5. Disgust
6. Trust
7. Anticipation
8. Surprise
If you’re not playing to one of these in your video, you’re likely just playing with yourself.
Component Parts
With the right emotional trigger, you can grab anyone briefly, but for the purposes of communication, there are three component parts that should be considered: capturing, keeping, and capitalizing on attention (I’m thinking the alliteration might stick this in your head).
In video, you can think of the combination of these features as the differentiating factor between a viral hit that gets thousands or millions of views and a replicable model for highly engaging content that turns those views into a dedicated audience.
Capture It
It goes without saying that in order to keep someone’s attention, you have to get them to listen in the first place.
In capturing attention, the first rule of the game is context. Your hook will be different depending on the platform you’re using to spread your message. When talking about video, for example, a YouTube clip might require a clickbait thumbnail that sticks out in a sea of small rectangles whereas a successful Facebook video hits you with an opener that stops you mid-scroll.
For a bit more depth, take a look at how a publisher like NowThis (@NowThisNews) tackles Facebook, it’s main distribution platform. Facebook videos play automatically in the feed, without sound. To address this, in the opening of every video, NowThis pairs a strong visual with compelling text, often highlighting emotion-grabbing terms in bold color.
This tactic is being embraced by social media strategists of all sorts. For example, compare the latest ad campaign of Libertarian candidate for president Gary Johnson with almost any NowThis video:
When applying a hook strategy, remember the first thing your prospective audience sees is essentially your headline. Be sure the “headline” begs some sort of question or promises something further. No matter how good your visual is, telling people the answer or giving the payoff up front won’t get anyone to keep watching.
Keep It
To my mind, the art of keeping peoples’ attention stands on another trio of fundamental pillars: easily understood content, a compelling delivery, and a cohesive narrative.
Content
There are an infinite number of different topics you can cover and different ways to communicate, but one consistent factor among attention grabbing videos is that most compelling content is not complicated.
Generally, as human beings, we can’t handle too much abstraction. In order to hold the attention of your audience, it follows naturally that you should speak simply, even (or especially) when discussing something complicated. Wood Guthrie (viral musician of the 1930s and 40s) says it succinctly, “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
Once you have a clear and easily understood message, you can target the emotions of your audience more deftly. If we look at a candidate like Donald Trump (an attention-holding genius regardless of your feelings on his politics), we can see how he frames a highly complex issue very simply, e.g. “immigrants bring problems.” In doing so, he can play successfully to the fears of his audience without delving into rhetorically (boring) technicalities, truths, and obvious exceptions.
Delivery
If we’re not talking about a large production budget, chances are the person on the screen is you. Beyond getting dressed up and pulling together an appropriate set, your greatest asset is the way you speak.
Research suggests that using varied speech with a range of pitches and volumes can be a good way to hold your audience. To return to the example of the presidential race, if you’ve ever wondered what makes it so hard to look away from someone like Donald Trump, notice how volume and emphasis rise at the end of each statement and how the cadence is an unpredictable see-saw between fast and slow. It’s been described as a kind of hypnotism, which feels appropriate.
You can strengthen a varied tone by integrating the time worn rhetorical complement of repetition. In a seminal paper ambiguously titled ‘Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity’, Hasher, Goldstein, and Toppino famously found that, “the repetition of a plausible statement increases a person’s belief in [it]”. So if you’re looking to build trust with your audience, just say things (at least) twice.
The Narrative
The last element to mention in keeping attention is structure. Human beings are hard-wired to listen to stories. Theories even suggest that the common narrative structures of stories might be an evolutionary mechanism for retaining knowledge that once helped keep us alive.
Despite the association we might have with novels or Game of Thrones, stories are incredibly flexible and widely applicable. To receive the benefits of a good story (which include being up to 22x more memorable than facts), all you need is a cohesive tale with a beginning, middle, and end.
Strong template for your own narratives you can be drawn easily, and most effectively, from past works (there’s a reason we’ve been telling the same stories for thousands of years). In his book The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker groups all traditional storytelling into a set of general plots that you’re likely familiar with. Here summarized:
1. Overcoming the monster: hero defeats bad guy
2. Rags to riches: poor hero makes it, loses it, grows as a person
3. The Quest: hero overcomes problems to get a prize
4. Voyage and return: self-explanatory
5. Rebirth: important event forces the hero to change
6. Comedy: drama where the hero comes to a happy conclusion
7. Tragedy: hero makes a mistake, loses
Capitalize On It
Okay, here’s the optional bit, but one I think you’d be a remiss to pass up if you’ve gotten this far: the ask.
If you watch any YouTuber with a large following, chances are they will always ask the audience to subscribe (and likely comment) at the end of a video. Ultimately, this is the goal of their content; a larger audience = more views = more money and brand deals.
It may seem like common sense, but for you to convince people to do anything, chances are you’re going to have to ask for it directly — in marketing speak this is referred to as a Call to Action (CTA for short). The common adage (apparently from Nora Roberts) is: “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no”.
As usual, don’t forget to appeal to emotion, such as “Did you like this video? Please subscribe” or “Make sure you don’t miss out on …”, and you’ll be much more likely to get a result.
With that you should be all set! Now go out there and become a YouTube millionaire or better yet President of the United States.
