Focus is becoming an essential marketing skill. Amid the many distractions facing knowledge workers, the ability to concentrate has become increasingly complicated.
We seem to have lost both focus and the ability to foster it.
We lost focus to the deluge email and a sizable helping of over-reliance. I’m convinced the automatic email preview is liable for a decade’s worth of misplaced messages…would you mind sending that to me again?
We lost focus to the open office, a well-intended, but a misguided ergonomic idea. A few years ago, businesses destroyed office walls and lowered cubicles in the name of collaboration but the evidence is mounting that it severely degrades efficiency.
We lost focus to the web, a splendid invention of hyperlinks engineered to capture our attention…and keep it. We might search the web with purpose, but get lost in the parade of pages. The popup, the slide-in, the call-to-action have paradoxically become both central to, and the bane of, marketing.
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The Psychology of More in Content Marketing and Social Media [UML]
We lost focus to social media, which has made interruption an art and science.
Active monthly users look good on an investor slide deck, but so too does time-on-page.
Many of the digital nudges by social media platforms aren’t things you need to know, but things the site wants to tell you; click here, look here, stay here, your friend likes…
The red alert icon, which once served as welcomed utility of notification, has been so overused by the social sites it is the algorithmic equivalent of crying wolf.
From meetings to conference calls to compliance training, the sheer deluge of interruptions in the modern office environment is a denouement waiting for critically acclaimed leadership.
Until then, focus remains an individual skill the modern marketer needs to work hard to hone.
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Marketing Strategy: The Looming Knowledge Crisis
Photo credit: Flickr, Nick Page, Busy Street Double Exposure (CC BY 2.0)
