Introduction

Societal, environmental, and political issues are calling for your undivided attention everyday.

If it’s not eye-grabbing, it’s instantaneously background noise. Easily tuned out. Filtered out of our consciousness. Are you apathetic, or just busy?

Sometimes, the internet is in an uproar over some event that impacts the world while other events barely make front page news. Filtering things out is a survival mechanism. We need to focus on only the salient points and ignore the rest, even if it’s important people or organizations who need our attention. But why? How do some social media, tweets, blog posts or videos nudge us out of our apathy and get us to care?

1. How to get people to care when they have short attention spans

Our attention reaches its limit pretty quickly. To get people to care, don’t test their patience.

Sometimes paragraphs have to be limited to a few sentences, and sentences have to be limited to a few words. You have mere seconds to catch their attention, so don’t waste those precious seconds.

Don’t meander like you’re taking a leisurely stroll around the block. Get to the point fast.

2. Do not lose your audience within the first fifteen seconds

Ever had the experience of drumming up business for your company or pitching to a client, but they don’t engage your services right away? How many times have you been rejected, or told, “Sorry, I don’t have the time, I’m too busy”?

Getting people on board with your projects or services, and getting them to care, is an art that you have to perfect. Those first fifteen seconds, maybe less, are crucial. You want to start off with a bang and keep the momentum going. So make sure you have a hook in your introduction and don’t lose the momentum.

3. How to make your cause their priority

People have to prioritize and if it’s not going to impact their today, their tomorrow, they will likely not pay attention. So how do you make your cause their priority? Rely on empathy to make someone care.

As you know, it takes effort to sort out your priorities. You choose the most important items on your agenda and throw out the rest.

To stop others from putting your cause in the trash pile, give them a reason to care. This starts with making your message relatable. Convey deep emotions to trigger a response from them. Then use that to push them into taking action.

4. Be mindful of their time by making it worth their time

Ever had meetings where at the end, you are wondering “so what?”

Sometimes your intended audience won’t listen to you or pay attention to you because if it doesn’t serve their purpose. Or it doesn’t help them in some way. Stop your message from collecting dust. You want your message to be seen and heard. So don’t take up too much of their time. Make sure that every word counts. If it’s not worth their time, think twice about saying it.

5. Show passion and enthusiasm. It’s infectious

Have we gotten complacent?

Sometimes, we’re desensitized to flashing images and loud sounds. Sometimes we have to tune out just to stay sane and not overwhelmed by it all.

It’s difficult to make people care. So much so that you wonder if what you’re doing has a purpose. Maybe you have a project, a cause, that you’re passionate about. But you’re baffled when everyone else doesn’t have the same passion as you do.

Rather than resorting to shouting louder than our neighbours just to get your audience’s attention, motivate them to be enthusiastic about your cause. Get them fired up about it as you are.

Get them to find the same passion and enthusiasm to care deeply about what you are saying.

Conclusion

Our lives are saturated with bright technicolour images, text, and video. Everything must be louder, shinier, brighter, more colourful, and more clever to have an impact. The list goes on. You really have to outdo yourself each time you post a new piece of content.

Sometimes, your target audience’s time is taken up with a lot of distractions and busy-ness without getting anything done. Inefficiency and being distracted are ways of coping with stress. To care more, they have to make time for it, and time is a rare resource.

Not everyone can muster up the interest to care about societal problems, the planet, their health. They can’t sit up and pay attention because they’re not thinking about the future. They tend to block out anything else except for the here and the now, and what can give them instant gratification. Most of the time, they want to care, but their lives and the busy-ness of work, family, and relationships, prevent them from engaging and taking action. It can be disheartening.

So be brief. Every word has to have an impact. Think about it for a while before you start posting or speaking. This way, you are more conscientious of how you use your words. Competition is really a numbers game. You have to throw a lot of darts before you hit the bull’s eye. Once you’re on target, you’ll find easier ways to grab their attention.