Digital Marketing In The Age Of Short Attention Spans
Prashant Hebbar, a former business journalist, talks about the myths surrounding digital marketing.
Prasant Hebbar addressing students of National School of Journalism
By NSoJ Bureau
"Journalists look down upon marketing, is a myth," said Prashant Hebbar, founder-director of Knobly consulting and the former business editor of The Times Of India. He was addressing the students of the National School of Journalism on October 18, about the need for digital marketing in an organisation.
In the days before the Internet, there was no need to market articles printed in a newspaper, however, with the huge amount of content on the Internet, digital marketing is more important than ever to reach your target audience. "An average person picks up their phone 97 times in an hour, more than the minutes in the hour. So, what is our average attention span? One-third of a minute," Mr Hebbar pointed out. "Would you watch a 45-minute video?" he asked the students and went on to talk about how digital marketers need to capture their audiences’ attention within the span of 15 to 20 seconds. For this reason, articles need to be curated with the use of keywords, hashtags, and other such tools, he said. These days, it is not just about writing an article but also, about optimising it. On the other hand, having an oft-used phrase as a headline without related keywords in the article would lead to the piece being flagged as plagiarised. Mr Hebbar said: "If you use relevant keywords or synonyms of those keywords, your article will likewise, rank higher on the search engine."
The lifecycle of digital marketing
Mr Hebbar explained the various processes involved in digital marketing, from having a web presence to creating content that reaches and retains customers. "For a company, digital marketing is important... It is harder than scaling Mt.Everest," he said. The worth of an article is determined by the number of eyeballs reading it, he added.
If you want people to read your article, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital. However, the use of unnecessary keywords must be avoided. Mr Hebbar then went on to explain how search engines view websites and content by analysing the NSoJ website. He concluded his presentation by saying that digital marketing is a form of hacking into human behaviour.
During the interactive session, Anuj Rayate, a first-year undergraduate student, asked: "Will digital marketing compromise journalistic integrity?" To this, Mr Hebbar replied: “That is a very thin line and yes, sometimes, it could be crossed. Journalists are human after all.”
