Sometimes strategic communications pros are gatekeepers. With a high profile client or company, the job is often to respond to inquiries, manage information, and look for strategic opportunities to get the client’s message delivered. For these pros, attention is a constant and decisions are driven by strategic considerations of how to get the right message to the right people.
He’s only got three seconds to be interested.
But for pros with clients who haven’t yet achieved such status, attention isn’t a given. Much of the work is the attempt to introduce people to your client and their message, and gain interest and attention from who don’t yet know what value your client holds for them. On this side of the communications divide the work has more in common with sales people – venturing out to generate attention – than with gatekeepers trying to manage it.
There’s a lot that strategic communications pros can learn from sales pros, who spend their days trying to woo potential customers. The entrepreneur’s resource Mixergy has some excellent tips on cold-emailing from one such sales pro. What stands out from this advice is the mantra that you have exactly three seconds to catch someone’s attention.
Although that mantra arises from tips on emailing – and indeed it’s an extremely valuable insight for crafting a pitch – it has applicability to all aspects of a strategic communication pro’s work. In whatever form you’re attempting to reach your audience with your message, you must form your message to grab attention as quickly as possible, or you risk losing it.
Whether it’s an email, a tweet, a landing page, or even a blog post, catching attention means leading with your most compelling, most essential point first. Think about your most prominent differentiating factor, or the piece of your message most likely to make people perk up their ears and pick up their eyes. There can be time to explain in greater detail later, but you won’t get that opportunity if you can’t grab their attention in the three seconds you have from initial contact.
