Three Ways to Thrive in the Age of Streams
The images above should strike fear in any one who seeks attention - be it a brand, a politician or an individual. They come from Nielsen. The first (87) is the number of domains the average American visits in a month. The second (2600) is the number of web pages the average American visits in a month.
This funnel is small when you think about the infinite choices we have today - an era of information abundance. And given that human attention doesn't scale, I anticipate these stats will remain stable. So how do you break through? Here are three steps I am considering in my work as a communicator ...
1) Limiting all writing to 400 words or less - that's what Leo Baubata is doing and I think he's on to something. (You can do the same with email.)
2) Doing more with visuals - most of my PowerPoint decks don't have bullet points and I am doing more with mindmapping. (According to the book Brain Rules, if information is presented just verbally orally, people only remember about 10 percent. This jumps to 65 percent if you add a picture.)
3) Embracing a hub and spoke approach - it's difficult to expect anyone to come to you. This is why I like Posterous. I can start something here and engage with it everywhere via their auto-posting feature
Is your message being heard? And if so, how are you coping
Comments 19 Comments
It seems we are all thinking about how to stay relevant and not get lost in a stream, or group. I have been mindmapping ideas out for years, and find it a valuable tool for visuals and idea generation.
I like your ideas...I am fan of small posts. However, I must say, some of the longer ones I've read, I've enjoyed much more than the small ones... I guess both have their place.
I was wondering because,now i have problem managing the information flow from twitter,google reader and friendfeed,not to mention facebook. Have twitter lists replaced your google reader subscriptions,just like robert said? And one more, why do we need Twitter lists when we had that option from Friendfeed ages ago? What is your view on this and how much time do you spend a day reading from what kind of sources? Last lifestream from you picture,showed friendfeed as a main source.Mine is Reader and FF right now
Thanks for these great tips and tricks. it is amazing how all the little ideas soon merge into a great big Aha.
Looking forward to setting up an posterous account.
Judy H. Wright aka Auntie Artichoke, family relationship author and speaker