The Language Influence for Engaging Content
I came across this really engaging piece of work by ‘Knowledge at Wharton’ on understanding the influence of language for building ‘engaging’ content. We live in an increasingly digital-first world – where the content has to create an impact within the first 8.25 seconds (average human attention span) – in order to influence the whole perception of the messaging that is being delivered to us – good, bad or ugly. As I dug deeper into this solid piece of insight, I found out that there is enough for me to synthesize and curate into this piece of Outside In...
How can we craft content that’s more likely to hold the attention of whatever audience we’re trying to reach? Hope I will have grabbed your attention, with this engaging piece of work…
Context – Winning in the Attention Economy
It’s often said that we live in the attention economy, and we’re constantly trying to get and hold others’ attention. Everyone wants to hold their audience’s attention. Salespeople want prospects to listen to their pitch, and brands want consumers to watch their ads. Leaders want employees to read their emails, and teachers want students to listen to their lessons. Platforms want consumers to stay on their sites, and media companies want readers to consume more of their articles. But not all the things we share get attention. Attention is an “abysmally” limited resource and people can’t pay attention to seven different things at once. If audiences are paying attention to one thing, that means they’re paying less attention to something else. Whether we’re talking about the workplace, acquiring customers, or our personal lives, getting and holding attention is the key to success. The question then becomes: How do we win in this attention economy?
Identify Types of Engagement
Before examining why certain content holds attention, it is important to distinguish retaining attention from other Types of Engagement
Going beyond whether an article, advertisement, or other piece of content attracts attention, sustaining attention refers to whether that content holds attention. Holding attention involves retaining the attracted attention, keeping audiences engaged
The Language Influence for Engaging Content
New research from Wharton’s Jonah Berger shows that the right words/language can help captivate audiences and hold their attention – be it an e-mail, a presentation or an advertisement. This insight offers important takeaways for marketers, advertisers, influencers, and anyone who wants to craft more compelling written communication. It really isn’t enough to capture people’s attention — you have to sustain it
The further down a news story people read, the more advertising revenue that article generates. The longer audiences spend watching an influencer’s videos, the higher the rate the influencer can command from brands. And the more an advertisement, email, or any other piece of content holds attention, the more consumers will learn about the product, service, or issue discussed
What Holds Attention? Shaping Language to build Engaging Content
Language that is easier to process encourages continued reading, as does language that evokes emotion, but not all emotional language has the same impact. Instead, these effects are driven by the degree to which different discrete emotions evoke arousal and uncertainty
1) Processing Ease
The simplest way to think about processing ease is how easy it is to consume the content – how much cognitive effort is needed to process the content. The effort depends on the content itself. It’s not just feeling; the writing is creating that feeling. Just as objects are more likely to keep moving when there is less friction, the easier something is to do, the more likely people are to continue doing it
Using more familiar words make content easier to process. Take something really simple, like the word “car” versus “automobile.” Both are words that we know, but “car” is something we hear a lot more often than “automobile.” It’s just a more familiar word, and that familiarity makes it easier to process
Similarly, linguistic concreteness also makes things easier to read. Imagine saying that something is happening “soon,” versus something is happening “tomorrow.” “Tomorrow” is a much more concrete, specific word. Concreteness often relates to whether we can form a mental image of something, so there are ways of writing to make things more concrete
Let’s even look at something as simple as syntax. Sometimes when you read something, and there’s one type of structure in one sentence, and a different type of structure in the next sentence. That makes it more difficult to move through the content. Everything from the words used, the structure used, all of these things can shape how easy it is to consume the content and how likely people are to keep reading
The 4 key variables to gauge processing ease (and increase content consumption) are:
Shorter words or sentences
Syntactic simplicity
Linguistic familiarity
Linguistic concreteness
The key insight here is subtle shifts in writing can make it easier to move through the content, which makes people more likely to continue to pay attention
2) Emotional Language
When the language used makes people feel uneasy or uncertain, it actually engages their attention a little bit more. Certainty is about how much people know about what’s going to happen next. If someone is really certain that it’s going to rain, for example, they have a strong sense that that’s going to occur. If they’re uncertain about whether it’s going to rain, though, there are less clear about whether that outcome will occur. While certainty is good in some ways, it’s not so useful when trying to hold attention. When we use a lot of certainty in our language, people feel like the puzzle is already solved, and they don’t need to keep reading. They don’t need to keep paying attention
The Role of Uncertainty
Certain language can increase engagement. In the context of likes, comments, and shares, for example, it is found that brands whose social media posts use more certain words – like, “always,” “everything” –are liked, commented on, and shared more. Drawing on these findings, one might imagine that emotions associated with certainty might sustain attention
However, uncertainty can increase attention and processing as people try to resolve what will happen. It’s more like a mystery, or a curiosity gap, so people are more likely to keep consuming the content to figure out what happens. However it depends on what the goals are. If the idea is to get across a high-level idea, maybe one can put it in the title or the first paragraph, and that’s it. But if the idea is to keep people consuming a number of ideas to get to the big punch-line, then it cannot be given right away
Emotions vary in the degree to which they are characterized by uncertainty, or not knowing or being sure of something. While some emotions (e.g., anger, pride) tend to be characterized by certainty and lead people to feel certain about their environment, others (e.g., anxiety, hope, surprise) tend to be characterized by uncertainty and uncertainty reduction
Think about Anger versus Anxiety. Both are negative. Neither feels good. Both feeling angry and feeling anxious are negative feelings. But when feeling angry, it is usually known what one is angry about. There is anger about a very specific thing. “The airline canceled my flight, and I’m pissed off at them.” When there is anxiety, it’s a little bit more of a diffused state. There isn’t always certainty about the anxiety. When there is a feeling of anxiety, there is a feeling of uncertainty in part because one doesn’t know if something is going to happen. We’re anxious about whether our flight is going to be canceled, and that uncertainty leads you to pay attention to everything that’s going on. What announcement did the airline make? What is this flight attendant doing? We’re more likely to pay attention to resolve that uncertainty
The same on the positive side: Hope versus Excitement. If there is excitement about something, one knows what’s going to happen. If there is hope, one wants it to happen, but one is not sure. Subtle differences in how the content is written can be more likely to make people feel a little bit more uncertain and lead them to be more likely to pay attention
The Role of Arousal
Arousal is a state of being physiologically alert, awake, and attentive. Arousal basically means how fired up we are. A good way to think about this is to imagine walking in the woods, and seeing a big snake sliding right across your path. The pulse quickens and the heart beats faster. There is readiness to take an action. That’s the idea of physiological arousal. One is fired up. One is ready to take an action. One is ready to run. One is ready to take an action to do something
Some emotions, like anger and anxiety or excitement or humor, are high arousal. Other emotions, things like contentment or sadness, are low arousal. It is found that the more emotions associated with arousal keep people consuming content, similar to the idea of uncertainty. They’re a little more vigilant. They’re paying attention to figure out what’s going on. And they’re more likely to take action, continuing to consume the content
Language Impact Illustration – Article Completion Rates
Survey Participants of the Wharton Study (N=278, recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) completed an experiment as part of a larger group of studies. They were told that experimenters were interested in perceptions of content and that they would read the beginning of a news article and respond to some questions
First, they manipulated the language associated with specific emotions. All participants received a similar article about the stock market, but we manipulated whether part of the article used sad, anxious, or angry language. The [sad/anxious/angry] version said: Recent stock market performance has made investors really [sad/anxious/angry]. Most markets are down over 25%, the average American has lost tens of thousands of dollars, and many have [helplessly/nervously/furiously] watched as their retirement savings have dwindled. “I’m [heartbroken/worried/frustrated], said one New Jersey man, “my family is really [devastated/confused/bitter].”
The article portion was the same length and structure across conditions, and the only difference was the specific emotion words used. These words in particular were chosen based on their membership in specific emotion dictionaries (i.e., “helpless,” “heartbroken,” and “devastated” are all part of the sadness dictionary). A manipulation check (Web Appendix) showed that the manipulation worked as intended, reliably activating the intended emotions and not others
A second pretest further demonstrated that there was no difference between conditions on a variety of other measures (i.e., personal relevance, concreteness, extremity, or evoking hope – Processing Ease). Finally, they measured the hypothesized underlying processes: uncertainty and arousal. After reading the article portion, participants completed the dependent variable: choosing whether they wanted to continue reading the rest of the article or switch to something else
Results: Sustained Attention. As predicted, compared with using sad language (M =52%), anxious (80%) or angry (71%) language led people to choose to continue reading the article
Why Good Writing is Important
Linguistic features associated with processing ease (e.g., familiar language, concrete language) and emotional language (particularly emotions that evoke uncertainty and arousal) hold attention and keep audiences engaged
Subtle shifts in language can help sustain attention. Replacing abstract words with more concrete ones (e.g., replacing “product” with “phone,” describing a car in terms of its color), for example, or less familiar words with more familiar synonyms, should keep audiences engaged. Using the right emotional language should have similar effects. Rather than just relying on facts, for example, a non-profit focused on climate change might probably benefit from leveraging emotions that evoke uncertainty and arousal. Using exciting or hopeful language should help sustain attention
Sustaining Attention should be balanced against other outcomes. Increasing anxiety in advertising might sustain attention but hurt brand equity
Influence societal implications. Platforms can use measures of sustained attention to recommend future content, but this may lead readers to be served an endless stream of anxiety-producing information
Content consumption depends on more than just the topic alone. People often lament that it is easier to get audiences to attend to “frivolous” topics (e.g., celebrity gossip) than “weightier” ones (e.g., policy discussions, environmental appeals). But while topic certainly plays a role in holding attention, our results demonstrate that it is not the only factor. Even controlling for what content is about (i.e., its topics), how that topic was discussed (i.e., the language used) played an important role. While the topic itself may not be the most enthralling, writing about it in the right ways can hold readers’ attention. Writing style can compensate for topic
In Conclusion – The Impact of Language Insights on Content
They deepen understanding around “What Holds Attention” – Language sustains attention – beyond a catchy headline or word-of-mouth - and keeps people in consuming the content once they have started
They help improve Content Design. From Advertisers and Marketers to Publishers and Presenters, content creators don’t just want clicks or views, they want to hold the audience’s attention. Simple shifts in language can encourage sustained attention – even for less engaging topics
What holds attention is not always the same as what grabs attention or encourages word of mouth. While language that projects certainty can increase likes and shares, when it comes to sustaining attention, emotions that make people feel certain are actually detrimental. Similarly, while some have argued that content that requires more cognitive processing should increase clicks for holding attention, it is seen that content that requires more processing has the opposite effect. These differences highlight that retaining attention is a different type of engagement and that findings from one type of engagement may not necessarily carry over to others. Consequently, when developing content, managers should think carefully about which outcomes they care most about, and design with that in mind
In summary, marketplace actors must not just care about clicks and likes; they must care about whether people actually consume their content. Holding attention deepens brand relationships, encourages learning, and drives purchase and choice. Sustaining engagement increases opportunities to display ads and generate ad revenue
References and Sources
1) Knowledge at Wharton Podcast – How to Keep Audiences Engaged – Surviving the Attention Economy: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcast/knowledge-at-wharton-podcast/surviving-the-attention-economy-how-to-keep-audiences-engaged/
2) Journal of Marketing Paper: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00222429231152880
3) Average Attention Span Today: https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/average-human-attention-span