Maximizing the Micro-Moment
By: Merrill Wasser
Tags: Attention, Audience Engagement, Content Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Maximizing the Micro-Moment

Audiences consume over 12 hours of media each day — but few publishers tailor content to meet “always-on” demands

Sixty percent of people who share a post on social media do so without reading the story. Many have written off these so-called “blind sharers” as poorly engaged audiences, but these sharers aren’t unintelligent or lazy — they are a reality of audience’s busy lives, and their habits play a key role in how ideas and information spread today.

For publishers to better understand how the blind share affects distribution, they have to understand how audiences confront their daily content avalanche through what we call “micro-moments.” These are short periods throughout the day when global audiences encounter content such as:

Taken together, these “micro-moments” make up a significant percentage of audiences’ content consumption and thus a significant percentage of publishers’ daily traffic.

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017 found that some of the most popular places for reading news on a smartphone were in bed, on public transport, and in the bathroom.

Maximizing the Micro-Moment

To maximize these micro-moments, publishers have to create content that is at once digestible and resonant, no matter how much time a reader can give. This means creating substantive content for all levels of engagement: the blind sharer, the busy consumer, and the long-reader.

For the blind sharer (the person with 30 seconds):

Publishers should think of this content as a social “artifact” — something that can travel across social media independent of a full article. This is content for audiences that have a mere 30 seconds to grasp its value. Social artifacts can include infographics, stats, graphs, quotes, or visuals — any content that is snackable, concrete, and memorable. Consider the following Facebook post from The Atlantic.

One minute after the stat was posted, the first commenter responded by tagging a friend. That commenter only had time to see the stat in their News Feed and tap out a quick message, but the text of the comment — “beans power ☀️” — suggests they still grasped the value of The Atlantic’s piece within those few seconds.

2. For the busy consumer (the person with 6 minutes):

Content that manages to distill the value of a full narrative in a highly compelling and visual format will draw in readers who can spend a few dedicated, but still brief minutes. The video that accompanies the social post above dives into the research featured in the full Atlantic article in a way that’s quick — about 3 minutes — and easy for audiences to synthesize while they are standing in line for their morning coffee or waiting for a friend to meet them for brunch.

Stills from “What if Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef?” a short video from The Atlantic’s series You Are Here, hosted by James Hamblin.

3. For the user who likes to unwind before bed (the person with 15 minutes or longer):

Publishers should still produce formats for audiences who want to spend time absorbing content and considering its implications.

Screenshot of the original article written by James Hamblin in August 2017

The article, “If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef” provides a complete picture of the original research on substituting beans for beef, touching on everything from a brief history of climate change legislation to the American Psychological Association’s definition of “ecoanxiety.”

Customized, Not Diminished

In each of the pieces above, The Atlantic did not oversimplify or water down its content. Nor did it think that the research behind the article was only meant to be read by academics with access to scientific journals. Instead, it created multiple entry points to expose audiences to these big ideas, eventually leading to over 380,000 interactions on social media.

The goal for any piece of content, no matter its length, is to start a larger conversation that enables an idea to travel and take hold. This happens not only when an article is first published, but when the publisher makes that content available in many forms for different moments and different types of readers.