Team Alpha 375

Selective Hearing And Social Media

Posted: 03 Apr 2012 12:43 PM PD

We’re all familiar with the term ‘selective hearing’. It essentially means you only hear what you want to hear. This means that anyone choosing to apply this concept to their lives has a sort of filter  blocking out the things that might annoy them, offend them or, even worse, bore them. This idea has been applied to every form of communication that has ever existed, and guess what???

Selective Hearing Applies To Social Media!

For the most part this isn’t literal in social media which is why I want to make a slight amendment to the term and call it “Selective Processing”. Your fans and customers are selectively choosing which messages they will process and they’re basing their decisions off more than just the content you’re providing.
There is very little original content online. What I mean by that is there will always be a similar blog post or tweet or Facebook update to yours, so your mission is to break through all of the selective processing filters people have up. Here are a few ways to do that.
1. Rely on visual obscurity  - Don’t default to generic stock photos. Make connections between your content and the visual you use but don’t be obvious about it. If you show someone what they expect to see they will skip right over you.
2. Brush up on your non-regional diction – There are a million ways to say almost anything so don’t just regurgitate a popular title to share an article. Come up with a unique combination of words to present your content in a more appealing way. Go for puns, alliteration and any other grammatical tools you can think of to really CRAFT your messages.
3. Be brutally honest -  This is a little tricky because people who don’t agree with your opinion might look right over you, or they might take the time to respond. Some people are scared about being confronted on social media but I recommend embracing a little confrontation from time to time. Maintain your civility, of course, and make solid points. Don’t ever tell someone that their opinion is wrong but don’t be afraid to stand by your opinions. These are sometimes the conversations that attract the most attention and inspire the most engagement.