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There is an incredible misunderstanding of the biggest brands in the world where the consumer’s attention is, and how do you actually get to it in the form of advertising or organic behaviors. The biggest misconception or the biggest misstep that I see from everybody is they’re obsessed with yesterday, they’re curious and willing for tomorrow, but they’re missing the mark today.
Day Trading Attention
The main concept of day trading attention is trying to use the concept of day trading, which is really on-the-second, of-the-day trading, buying and trading stocks, second to second, buying a stock and selling it a couple minutes later. Very different than buying a stock and selling it a year later, day trading, trading day to day, and layering that on the concept of attention. So, the concept of where are the eyes and ears of society? More and more TikTok and Spotify, less and less the radio in your car and network television. By creating that framework: day trading attention, I’m able to give the thesis to everyone that I’m living in, which is the people in the world who most understand where the attention of people are, AKA these 10 to 15 social networks and streaming services that are eating up a vast majority of attention, and layering the ability to be good at it, day trading, AKA how do you make ads for it or content for it? And recognizing that it’s changing day to day, week to week, month to month. So, you can’t just have a good strategy today and then think it’s going work for the next year. And I think that people need to recognize how big the stakes are because the ones that don’t know how to day trade attention going forward will continue to lose market share.
Underpriced Attention
The thing that I have spent the last 15 years on every day is finding underpriced attention. Underpriced attention is exactly what it sounds like. It’s you’re getting more attention than the efforts you’re putting in or the money you’re putting in to achieve that attention against everything else you could do. So, for example, always in social media because of the way the algorithms work, there are opportunities for underpriced attention. At the moment of this recording, one of them is TikTok LIVE, not posting on TikTok, but going on TikTok LIVE. Because of the way that product works, which is the longer you’re on, more people discover you, the cost of that attention was zero in media dollars. Hence, that became underpriced attention, the organic reach of going live on TikTok. There are many versions of this. On LinkedIn for high value B2B clients, the media, even though it has a set floor of how much it costs, is still an underpriced attention ’cause the value of a B2B client is very high and the ads on LinkedIn, if you do LinkedIn ads well, to reach a B2B client is a very good deal versus buying a $100,000 booth at a trade show and trying to get those same clients. Basically, every single action a business does to get customers or a human does to get attention is either properly priced, overpriced, or underpriced. As you can imagine, it is my great obsession, both personally and for the clients I work with, to be great at underpriced, to stay away from overpriced, and to round out underpriced with appropriately priced.
Three Ways to Begin
There’s so many ways to attack this, and I know for a lot of you, it might even be the first time you’re grasping these concepts, and I think you take a step back and I actually think the first thing you need to do is focus on self-awareness. If you don’t know yourself, you’re going to probably struggle with this complex framework, meaning how do you find underpriced attention? How do you get good at day trading? Well, you have to first decide how are you judging it? So, before you see how many followers you get, or how much reach your posts get, or how many people buy your product, you have to make the leap yourself before the action, meaning you’re going to make the video or the picture and then the thing’s going to happen, so you’re not going to know.
Now, the question becomes do you think you’re good at judging this? If you’re not, that’s actually good. One of the tenets at being good at day trading attention is humility. I’ve been doing this my whole life and professionally for over 20 years and refined for 15. And yet, every day when I post, even though I look at all the math, all the quant, all the qualitative feedback, every day that I post, I know that I might not be right. And many of the posts on social or the ads that I write for my businesses, many of them don’t hit the mark. It’s the humility to know that’s okay and I can learn from it that is really the massive part of the strategy.
The other thing that’s at the centerpiece is creativity. Are you creative enough to have new, fresh ideas? And that’s where humility comes in. Don’t be scared of a wacky idea, or something that’s never been done before, or a sentence that’s never been uttered, those may be the exact things that unlock the opportunity. And then, more importantly, have you put in the hours to understand the craft? Do you understand the algorithms? Do you understand the best practices? The times to post, how long should the video be, thumbnails, things that I think more and more people can look into and are realizing are more important than maybe we realized in the past. And so, making a commitment to the craft, these are the real tenets to a good strategy.
Here’s the good news for everyone who’s scared by how hard and fast it is, a great story will still find its way. Even if you don’t know the best practices of how to post on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok, you’ll be stunned how much a story can find its audience if it’s just told from the heart in a pure form. However, and the reason I even wrote “Day Trading Attention,” if you’re actually good at the thumbnail, and the title, and with time to post, and the words, and all the best practices across all the different platforms, you will reach more people.