Have we come full circle back to Morse Code?
Good question to ponder now that the world of Short Message Service (SMS) has become all the rage with text messaging. Twitter is based on the 140 character message that is rocketed out to your cell phone or email to keep you hyper connected.
Talk to a person under the age of 25 and their chosen platform of communication is SMS. My 14 year old daughter sent and received over 8,400 SMS text messages last month. Holy smokes!
Does “C U at 8″ mean anything to you?
How about “@analytixman loves the #nuggets win”?
If you are scratching your head at the two messages above, you may need to put away your 8 track tapes and tune into the world of Morse Code marketing and communications. You will need to learn the protocol and language. We live in the attention deficit disorder world (ADD) and people are now choosing short burst communications. Society has reverted back to Morse Code so to speak, except it’s us doing the tapping and we don’t have to go to the post office or train station to get the message, it follows us globally.
What does this mean for marketing and communication?
- You are going to need to be expert short burst content writers - if you only have 140 characters to get the communication going, you need to be good at getting your messages across fast.
- Your emails will need to be short too - Shorten our emails so that your entire message can be read in a single frame of a notebook computer screen or even better a hand-held device. You don’t want people to scroll to get your message.
- Communicate in a world of high volume short burst communications – I don’t think the Dan Kennedy world of dumping everything you know in one page and hoping people will have enough attention span to read it will fly anymore. You need a drip system and send short burst, effect communications frequently.
- Drop the graphics to the end of your message – Send out your wonderful graphics but they can not lead your communications. On my blackberry, I hate messages that have some huge image I have to scroll past to get the communication. Leave the pretty stuff at the bottom. No one loves your logo more than you.
A word of caution, shorting a crummy message and sending it more frequently will just make you become noise that is tuned out.
Re think your content; be concise, be relevant, be top of mind, hit the reticular activator.
The building and sustaining of Attention Connection™ is more important than ever.
Connect with U later.
