Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less
In 1986 Milo Frank wrote a short book called, “How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less.” This idea applies to articles as well as to speeches and other presentations.
That’s not to say everything needs be communicated in that 30 seconds, but the key concept, justification and call to action, can and should be.
Below this article you will find a link to Amazon where you can buy the book if you want to read his justification and suggested techniques to accomplish this seemingly extravagant goal.
I want you to consider applying the idea to your articles, starting today, because you need to if you are going to get your message across before your reader skips past your article and goes on to the next.
Already, 10-20% of the people who started to read this article have stopped and gone elsewhere. This is particularly easy to do online.
Even “hot” media like videos get clicked past at an alarmingly fast rate. Tube Mogul, the video service which makes its business by monitoring and quantifying video viewers behavior, indicates that fully 50% or more of video viewers click away from the average video within 30 seconds. Twelve percent are gone in the first ten seconds.
The attention span of the general public has been short for a long time. No wonder politics is done in 10 second sound bites. And that reality applies to you and your articles as well.
That doesn’t mean you can’t take the time to develop your thoughts in detail. It just means that you need to grab their attention and tell them what you are going to tell them and what they should do about it in your introduction up front. And don’t be too disappointed if a lot of people don’t read your entire article.
Just imagine how many more have left the written word in the same amount of time compared to a video presentation. Now some of that is probably because the viewer discovered that the video was not relevant to their interests and or needs.
As such, maybe we shouldn’t get too upset that they left before we get around to our point. But it could be that they made a mistake. Had they waited they may have discovered our cleverly designed plot to draw them into our proposition was just what they needed. If only they would have waited to see or read our sales pitch and dynamite close.
If you really want your readers to get your point, make it upfront and quick. Elaborate and explain id depth later to those hangers on who are interested in more detail.
How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less
Bestselling Marketing Books on Amazon
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Prices are accurate as of May 17, 2012 1:51 am. Product prices and available are subject to change. Any price and availablility information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of any products.
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Tagged with: Introductions • Milo Frank
Filed under: Article Writing Tips
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Doug Champigny
Lonnie Minton
Luca Di Nicola
Joel Osborne
Brett McEllhiney
Fred Lotgering
says:
You’ve made a very valid point, Earl – people are bombarded wih so mny messages a day – TV, Radio, Billboards, newspapers, phones, faxes – and even more online with e-mails, instant messaging, websites, blogs, videos, audios, etc – and any message you put out there has to compete with all of that. And the trick to it all really is to hook them in that first 8 seconds. David Ogilvy proved that in offline advertising in the 1960′s – he used the headline and a photo to catch readers’ attention, and found they’d read any amoint of long copy as long as you caught them and got them hooked right off the bat.
Yes making the big promise to hook people very quickly is so important. It gives people a reason to spend the time to fully read whether it be an article, blog post or even videos.