Is your audience scrolling past all of your posts? Here’s how to write cannabis content that gets attention.

Is your audience scrolling past all of your posts? Here’s how to write cannabis content that gets attention.

In content writing by Nicole Flanigan

In today’s world of instant gratification, the average attention span is waaaaaaaay down (today it’s about 8 seconds. In 2000, it was about 12!)  which can really make content marketing tough. If you can’t hold on to a reader’s attention for more than 8 seconds without them saying “thank u, next” how on earth do you expect to make them interested and excited enough about your cannabis brand to buy from you? You need to capture their attention and keep them reading, but how? Luckily, there are several steps you can take to hook your readers and draw them in with your content.

Tips for Keeping Their Eyes on Your Prize

The success of your content marketing efforts lies in the balance between engaging your audience and making sure they keep reading your posts after that 8-second mark. If they’re looking at your posts for a second and you didn’t capture their full attention, odds are they’ll just leave the page and you will struggle to generate new leads, hit your sales goals and expand your audience. When you’re developing cannabis content, be sure to consider the following:

  • Double check your page formatting. Your page needs to be clean and easy to scan for relevant information, which is why you are writing content in the first place. It’s wise to use quality design, like headings, images, bullets, subheadings, and whitespace to make your content more approachable and digestible. Many readers try to avoid long-winded posts that look like a wall of text, so making your content pages visually striking and easy to read will make it more likely to hold on to your readers.
  • Use more interesting titles and headlines. You can’t just slap a generic title on a piece of content as an afterthought and call it done when every other cannabis company out there is crafting content too. If your title isn’t interesting enough, your readers WILL keep scrolling instead of clicking your link. As a member of today’s society, you’re conditioned to do the same. You don’t skip the headline and read the article anyway if it doesn’t sound interesting, and neither will your audience. Take time to craft a witty and interesting title and don’t publish until it’s perfect.
  • Keep your intro paragraphs short. Have you ever clicked on a new recipe to find out that whoever wrote it put like 2000 words of irrelevant material before the actual important stuff? Don’t be that guy with your content. Readers are impatient and it’s crucial that they understand what your content is about in just a few sentences. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to have a lot to say and to tell it like a story. Just make sure that comes later and people can tell what your post is about in a matter of 3 seconds.
  • Ask questions. While it seems tedious at times, questions DO engage your readers. Even if they just ponder how they will answer the question, it entices them to solve the problem, which your content will cover. You can stick questions wherever you want, but they do their best work in intro paragraphs. Interesting, huh?
  • Include a summary at the beginning of your post. There’s a reason the term “TL;DR” exists. People don’t read like they used to. A summary at the beginning of your post that explains what the content is about will either get the reader interested enough about the subject matter to keep reading, or it’ll help them find out more quickly if your content isn’t solving the problem they’re trying to solve. Either way, readers appreciate short, concise information and will appreciate having a snapshot preview of the material.
  • Use your voice. Many cannabis companies who put out content tend to sound a little cut and dry to try appeal to a huge audience. The thing is, readers prefer to listen to people, not brands. If you write as you speak, people can make more of a connection with you and want to keep reading your content. The thing with using a voice is that not everyone will like it, and that’s okay. The people that are reading will be more comfortable to engage with you.

Keep that momentum flowing

By utilizing these tips you can expect to see your readers checking back for more content more frequently. You want them to like your voice and your formatting and what you have to say so that by the time they get to the bottom of your post they ask “what comes after this?”

As the top cannabis marketing firm in Denver, the cannabis marketing professionals at Team Maryjane offer the whole enchilada when it comes to creating running and maintaining effective content marketing strategies. Shoot us a chat or give us a call today to get started on your very own audience of hungry readers!