Principles of Brain-friendly Content

Even the best services and products need equally excellent content to communicate the brand value proposition well. There is a ton of content across the web, and more is added daily. This makes it more challenging for the brands to stand out and boost their visibility. 

Attracting the right audience is just the tip of the iceberg. As the landscape continues to evolve and the market becomes more dynamic, knowing what will entice your audience the most can be challenging. There's only one approach, and it's rooted in science: a design for how people think. 

Using principles based on neuroscience, behavioral science, and psychology research will make your content brain food for your fans and helpful for new visitors.

Victoria Matey (Consultant and Co-founder of Matey Events) shared some secrets and science-backed methods to create content with us. Let's dig into the key insights. 

The "SEAMS” model of creating content

Senses

The "S" in SEAMS stands for senses, which play a pivotal role in how your audience perceives your content. 

Remember the last time you bought a couch? What drove your purchase decision? Seating capacity, color, looks, comfort, material? If you're anything like us, it's all these, and that's how our senses impact our purchase decisions. 

Multi-sensory experience helps you take your event experience to the next level by striking a chord with your target audience in an emotional way. Engaging various senses enables you to amplify your reach and ensure your content sticks. Here are three ways to do it:

• Diversify the content formats to appeal to different senses
• Consider how content delivery affects the senses
• Use sensory language in your copy

Ease

No one wants to sit with a dictionary or constantly scan through a Google search to understand what your content is trying to convey. Making your content unnecessarily difficult only removes the "wow” factor. 

Simplifying your content helps you achieve your goals more efficiently and make your content more engaging. Try for more straightforward language and images that are more functional than abstract. You may have a lot of information to deliver, but if you want to make an impact, break it down into chunks of interactive content. 

Read and Learn: How to Add Energy, Impact, and Results at Every Stage of Your Webinar

Attention

The decreasing attention span has been the talk of the town for so many years now. But that's not an entirely accurate take on what's happening. 

Victoria says, "Anytime someone says attention span is decreasing, run! Three hundred sixty-one thousand people watched the entire second series of Stranger Things on the day it was released. All you need to do is create content your audience doesn't mind paying attention to."

This is what she suggests you can do to boost the "attention-grabbing" factor:

• Surprise your audience: Surprise is a positive and strong emotion that works excellent for focus and memory.
• Make it salient: Our brains are wired to avoid cognitive effort, and paying attention is a cognitive effort, so we cannot focus on everything all the time. 
• Personalize your content: When reading content tailored to our interests and needs, the audience feels more in control, making the whole experience more enjoyable. It keeps us from getting overwhelmed because we consume precisely what we want.

Memory

What makes your content stick? That's a common challenge for every presenter.

Memory is a complex thing. It feels great to know your attendees are walking away from the event full of the insights and ideas you shared. However, if you don't take measures to refresh your audience's memories, the shelf life of this content will decrease, and all that effort and time will go to waste. Thankfully, you can solve this:

• Space it out: It's best to have plenty of time gaps between the sessions, but you can revisit the content regularly after the event.
• Add interactivity and personalization: Spacing out interactivity and personalization throughout your talk can help make your event content more memorable. 
• Make use of emotions: Strike an emotional chord with your audience by telling a story they can relate to, sharing your own experiences, or talking about perspective.

Social listening

With more and more conversations happening online and specifically on social media, social listening is critical to your event's success. It helps you get the pulse of your audience and increases the shelf life of your content. Integrating peer-to-peer learning formats is a great way to do it. Everyone wants to show their expertise, and it is always important to offer your audience a platform to do so. 

For even more insights, visit Hubilo Insiders for the complete webinar, and check out the many more we have planned for event marketers and sales professionals like you.