Reader attention and reader relevance are often confused, which can result in bad decisions.
Marketers, SEO consultants, writers, and others like discussing how to produce content that attracts attention. They promote “secrets” to grab the attention of readers, promising that organizations can control what people notice.
The relevance of that content to readers is given far less attention than whether their content attracts attention. Ensuring relevance isn’t about controlling readers but being responsible to them.
Yet, in the minds of many content professionals, attention and relevance are synonymous. People will pay attention to content that’s relevant to them, and relevant content will attract attention.
Unfortunately, this relationship, while ideally true, is more often untrue.
Attention can be irrelevant
The fallacy of equating attention and relevance is evident when we consider how much attention is wasted on irrelevant content.
People look through content that promises to be relevant but isn’t. They overlook content they should notice but don’t see or read. One manifestation of this phenomenon is known as the “streetlight effect.”
We need to dispel the myth that if people “view” or “engage” with content, it is necessarily relevant to them. Breaking these assumptions is challenging because the foundations of content analytics and measurements are predicated on these metrics. It’s easy to measure clicks but harder to measure what people are thinking or wanting.
Toward a taxonomy of relevance
Once we consider all the circumstances in which readers might view irrelevant content, we begin to see how uncommon relevant content is in practice. Sometimes, content is irrelevant to users unintentionally, but other times that irrelevance is intentional.
Let’s enumerate different variations of content relevance:
- Matched relevance is when the content matches what the reader needs at the time they are seeking it. It’s great when we have this, but it is rarer than we think.
- Misleading relevance is when the content suggests it will be about a topic relevant to the reader but is, in fact, about another topic. The content leads with something of interest but switches to the publisher’s alternative agenda, often to sell you something you weren’t looking to buy. Alternatively, the content might imply it is relevant to a certain reader but isn’t. Headlines mentioning “you” are notorious examples. Readers expect the content to be about “me” but find it isn’t.
- Spurious relevance is when content isn’t about what it purports to be. Much content represents itself as objective but reflects the bias of its publisher, who is selective in the information they highlight or downplays their role in commissioning content developed by others. Content cloaking occurs with misleading product demos, testimonials, and vagueness in claims.
- Overgeneralized relevance occurs when the content is so broad that the reader has difficulty seeing what specifically they need to know and consider. Content that promises to offer “everything you need to know” is a prime example of this genre, but it’s prevalent in content that makes less sweeping claims, such as user manuals.
- Hidden relevance is when something that would be relevant to the reader is buried in the content to obscure finding it. This situation arises through poor content planning, such as mixing too many topics in a single item or trying to address audiences with divergent interests. In addition to confusion arising from poor execution, sometimes relevance is intentional. Organizations like to bury bad news. They will invite customers to read their updated terms and conditions but make it difficult to see what has changed that could impact the customer.
- Mistimed relevance happens when content is provided too early to be relevant because the reader isn’t considering the topic or isn’t ready to make a decision. Alternatively, the content may be communicated after it is immediately useful. Organizations offer “more of the same” information because a customer has previously made a similar one-off decision. While mistimed relevance generally leads to attention avoidance, it sometimes sparks confusion concerning the referent, such as an email “concerning your recent purchase” that’s actually a pitch to get you to buy more.
Noisy attention-mongering triggers wariness
Attention is squandered when relevance isn’t established. Customers become cynical and don’t take statements at face value.
The relevance of content depends on the trust it elicits.
–Michael Andrews