
In this episode, Amy Balliet of Killer Infographics explains what it takes to create content people will pay attention to for more than 8 seconds, and Larry Sivitz of Seattle 24x7 and SearchWrite Search Marketing helps us make sense of the wider world of what is known today as content marketing.
By the way, the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.

06_08_13.mp3 |
Information overload has been with us for some time now. But it sure feels like it’s getting worse lately, especially on the Internet.
The World Wide Web has always been about information, and when the Mosaic browser was introduced back in 1993, the online world took off with a proliferation of content -- the information, articles, stories -- and what have you -- that websites are made of.
Fast forward to 2011, when Google made the first of its Panda updates to their algorithm. With that change and many to follow, plus the explosion in social media, the Web has become more bloated than ever. Why? Because the new formula makes content, and engagement with that content, more important than the simple keyword tricks that have been used for years to gain high ranking in search results. In other words, you’ve got to create piles of material to even make it to the first three pages of Google for popular keywords. And, it’s becoming a lot harder to game the system.
Another trend making the online airwaves is “big data.” Our growing digital abilities are making it easier to collect information about, well, pretty much everything we do online and on our mobile devices. Combine the Internet overload problem with all the data we’re collecting, and there’s just no way for the average human to make sense of it all. So now we’re turning to pictures. Take Pinterest for example -- the social networking site made up almost entirely of shared images. Websites seem to finally be using pictures in bigger and better ways. Even the font sizes are getting larger. And now we have companies like Tableau -- a company with software for creating data visualizations. And Visual.ly -- a company that combines pictures and data into infographics.
My guests today are totally entrenched in this digital world of search, social and infographic marketing. They’re going to help us make sense of all the online detritus and share with us their ideas for staying afloat.