Two weeks ago I announced the release of my new book “I Don’t Suck & Neither Should You” on both Facebook and Instagram. The date of the release was April 1.
Yes, it was an April Fool’s Day Joke. I hope I would never write a book titled “I Don’t Suck” – even though I like to think that I don’t.
As if the title and the awfully cheesy photo were not hint enough that this was a joke – I added in a list of other hints and jabs that this was for satire only.
There was the “Self-Acclaimed Bestselling Author” in the cover as well as the “No Money Back Guarantee” in the copy of the post.
However, over the past two weeks I’ve had numerous e-mails, texts and even phone calls congratulating me on the release of my new book and how proud they were. Now I am not trying to criticize anyone in this post who thought this was a real book.
The reality is that we live in a society where the attention span of our audience is no more than an eye blink. Whether it was Facebook or Instagram – people saw this post which was a book cover, and briefly looked at the text, blinked and moved on.
Why this happens is because we are far too overwhelmed with a constant stream of content (posts, news, blogs, videos, tweets, status updates and so on). It would be impossible for us to absorb it all so we simply ignore most or only gloss over most.
This makes it incredibly hard to stand out. If you are reading this you are a modeling talent or a photographer perhaps and you are surrounded in a sea of noise fighting for people’s attention.
How does one combat this? The first thing is to focus on putting out the very best content possible. If all you are doing is adding noise to a very noisy medium – you won’t even receive an eye blink’s worth of attention. The second thing to do is find the right audience to share your content with. Finally, it is to deliver the content they want to see. That is how you earn attention with your social media channels (beyond likes – actual engagement), you blog and whatever venture you choose to invest your time into.
James Patrick
IG @Jpatrickphoto
jamespatrick.com
