The amount of content being created is increasing exponentially, whereas the amount of human attention is finite.
The consequence? Every day, we are all faced with a barrage of blog posts and articles that we feel we ‘need’ to read. Often we don’t – but we share them anyway. Even though we’ve only read the first two paragraphs, and maybe skimmed the next few.
The entire second half of this post could be complete nonsense, but people will still share it; perhaps just to create the impression that they are smart and read a lot, or perhaps because – to build their own ‘personal brand’ – they feel they need their own steady stream of content.
The reality is, no one nowadays can be on top of everything. Let’s face it, there is just too much content out there.
There are two reasons for this.
First, the content created by professional content creators is now available to the whole world, not just to those in the country of origin.
In the UK, I used to read The Guardian every day. I simply had no access to other quality publications such as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.
Today, in Australia, not only do I have access to all of the content being produced in Australia, but I have access to every newspaper and magazine being produced worldwide. Plus of course, all the new online publications that have sprung up.
Secondly, there is of course a huge amount of content being created and shared by individuals. A few stats: 350 million photos a day are being posted to Facebook. 130,000 articles a week are being written on LinkedIn. Over 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
What this means is that to get noticed, your content has to be truly excellent. It’s that simple… and that difficult.
Content that is mundane simply won’t get read, and won’t get shared. Although, going back to what I said at the beginning of this post, it is also possible that, with a snappy headline, it will get shared, even though it wasn’t read.
Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking study from 2008 indicated that less than 20% of the text content is actually read on an average web page. And research by Upworthy carried out last year showed that while most sharing was by those who had read the whole article, the second most was by people who had read only 25% of it.
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Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
Congratulations! Here’s an Easter egg. Nom nom nom.