S1 Ep11 Why nobody is listening

You post often that people remember nothing, not because they are lazy, not because the algorithm hates you, because their brain has already decided your message isn't worth processing. Today we are unpacking selective attention, why most messages get filtered out, and how to earn attention before asking for action. If your marketing is visible but not landing, this one matters. Welcome to ThinkShift, the podcast where neuroscience meets business. Brilliant, how you going? Cool, what's going on with your forage? I was wearing a hat and it created a dint in my forage. So that's kind of it? It has a dint. It does. And that we've talked about, we can move on. Can I just ask what hat? Well, I have my new design hat. I mean, it's a really nice hat, so it's worth getting the dint I reckon. It's not just that hat causes the dint. It has caused dints on my head, so I don't know what it is, but anyway. Everyone wants to have a look at Clint's dint. Have a look at the video. You're wearing something way more interesting now. You've got a newer design scar. I know, check it out. It's got our flagship coral color. Our accent color. Is that actually a color? In our last episode. Yes, and I've got that tied around my neck with a love shirt on, because I thought we want to give me a design lot of love. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, it's nice. Looking good. Looking very good. All right, so today, let's talk a little bit about the science behind selective attention. Okay. You can post every day, you can run ads. You can send emails, but if the brain decides your message is irrelevant, it never really lands. So, what is selective attention in plain language? It's whatever is important to us. So, the brain filters out what we think, or what it thinks, is not important. It's a hierarchy of information. So, what do we have time to listen to? What do we have time to read? What is it that's important? What's not important? And we are actually selective. I mean, we talk about as a joke selective hearing, right? Like when I say to Chris, my husband, can you empty the dishwasher? All of a sudden, it's got selective hearing. It's similar. It's actually similar. So much. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, they heard it, but in this instance, it's actually that we haven't actually paid attention to it. We actually haven't the brain filters it before it reaches us. And so, whatever is significant, whatever is relevant, whatever is important at the time, is what it gets filtered in. And that's what selective attention is. So, what does the brain filter so much out? Because there's so much going on. Is it the noise? Oh, it's. If we. I mean, we've talked about, you know, 35,000 decisions a day, and 11 million bits per second is, you know, how fast the brain operates. 32,000 for me. Yeah, that's right. So, we're trying to keep 3,000 spare. Spare for the calendar. For the calendar. Yeah. That's right. That was on a previous. everybody's interested what we're talking about. So, we can't handle everything. The brain can't handle everything. It's too busy. It's too busy. It needs to pick and choose. And what is relevant. So, you and I, for instance, could have. We could be looking or reading something, and it's the same. But what I take from a. Or what's relative and what I select to filter in could be quite different to what you select to filter in. It also depends on what's going on in your day, what's going on in your life, the decisions you've made, whether you're tired or not. What types. How many tabs you have open? How many tabs you have open, literally. Whether, yeah, what time of day? If it's a morning, we filter things differently, different times of the day, depending on expectations and what we're actually doing. What our calendar says as well. And, you know, sometimes we feel that mental fatigue. Oh my God, I just. I don't have the capacity anymore. That is trying to brain, trying to filter out and filter in the bare minimum. Because that's all we are able to do at that time. Interesting you mentioned time. So, LinkedIn posts that go out at a certain time are received better and shared or commented on depending on the time of day. In fact, I think it was you who told me in a good time of day was to post early morning around 830. Is that 830? Why is that? Well, firstly, and also depends. So, geography comes into a two. So, for the stream. So, you've got to remember, in the US market, it will be night time for them. So, it's. But if we're in the Australian market all within the. If you're listening in the US, it'll be obviously morning for you guys. What happens is we. I call them MIT. So, our most important tasks tend to get done in the morning. Because we are fresher. We haven't got as much cognitive load. Our working capacity of the brain is broader and more open and more vast. And also, we have a bituation. So, you know, have it of checking our social media in the morning. So, on the train going into work or when we're at the bus stop or on the bus or obviously whilst you are not driving into work. But while you are, you know, before you leave in the morning, when you get to work whatever it is, obviously before you start work, don't want to get anyone in trouble. But we tend to do that. So, the. And different platforms are different. And you can find those analytics and that data when if you use like a scheduling tool, it will give. All I have said that I have found my personal experience that is not always right. So, for instance, we linked in. And again, it depends on your audience. It depends on who you want to see and what kind of business you have. But linked in often says in a particular platform that I use. Really good scheduling platform that I use. Around midday or like between 10 to 12. So, I thought, "Okay, I'll try that." Got nowhere near as many as much engagement. And eyeballs, they call it impressions, obviously on LinkedIn. Then I did, I do 8am in the morning. It's interesting that around LinkedIn, I'm really perplexed by a lot of LinkedIn behaviour. One post will get 5 impressions, the next one will get 20,000. And there's no kind of consistency around it. Similarly with your post, you know, a promotion for this podcast. And you'll get tarnic comments. I'll do the same post on mine. I'll get none. Two likes. What's going on? Well. Why? Because I'm more popular. No. No. Why is it work like that? Well. I still have 5,000 followers. You still do, yeah. And you have 5,000. I mean, no disrespect by my audiences is broader. But what time of day do you post? Same. Oh, okay. I just feel like two things here. One, it could be, obviously you have a larger reach. But it could be quality of follower as well. Maybe they are not my demographic. They want to listen to what I have to say. Maybe they just followed one day and now they're no longer relevant. Well, secondly, in the more cynical side of me thinks maybe because I'm not a paid LinkedIn user and you are, you're getting more love by the algorithm. Yes, because I have the premium. Yeah. So I stopped using premium. Right. Just to see what would happen. Right. And now that I'm not a premium member, my engagement is not going off. So you've noticed a difference. So when you were a premium, yeah. But the other thing too, having said that, there are tools that you don't get when you, when you aren't a premium user, you don't have the creator tabs or the creator tabs. Or the creator license that you can add other things. So you are limited with the functionality anyway. Yeah. So because of that, that probably, you know, it implicates, yeah, a lower engagement reach because you don't have all the tools. But potentially it could be, I mean the algorithm works in weird and wonderful ways. We've linked in the algorithm generally changes every 10 weeks. And we do see some differences. The one thing that LinkedIn did say at the beginning of 2026 when they came out with that their report was that they favor and will be rewarding thought leadership. So they articles is great or newsletters, which I do have. I have the scoop and I have brainy bites that is that's the newsletters that you can subscribe to on LinkedIn. You do. I also write and publish an article every fortnight on LinkedIn. So I'm trying to feed the algorithm with the content that are what that yeah, that are wants. However, it's not just gobblygook. Like it's good, you know, well, I think it's good stuff and it's information and, and, you know, and it's valuable. I believe what I've been told and you don't know. Not me. No, you would never know. I know. Yeah, it's always constructive. It's any constructive criticism from you. You still got the dent on your head. No, it hasn't gone. So it's, but that's what that's what LinkedIn said that they were looking for. However, you don't just pluck. And this is where selective attention comes in. You don't just pluck any random topic out of the air and start talking about it. It needs to be relevant to what you're doing. So LinkedIn, if I started talking about, you know, being a, changing an engine in a car or being a car mechanic or plumbing or something, you know, being, you know, a plumber, they're going to go, what? Leanne normally talks about, you know, behavioral science, behavioral economic neuroscience and business sales conversions, marketing, you know, you know, marketing and now she's talking about plumbing. Okay, something's not right here. So bang, I get penalized. But also my audience would read it and go, well, that doesn't make sense. It's not relevant to the end. I'm actually not going to pay attention. Their brains won't give it the attention, even though it's for me, because it's not relevant. It gets filtered out. It gets filtered out by the algorithm of LinkedIn. It also gets filtered out by the human algorithm of the brain of the followers and potential eyeballs that I want on my post. My concern is that the algorithm is shaping itself based on behaviors of a one-off post, as in I post about ThinkShift, and it gets very little engagement. So the algorithm is going to go, I won't go on an engagement. It's not relevant. We won't serve that up again. That's my concern on that. It's a sense of the past. It's like progressing forward with behaviors that. To get premium. To get premium. To help it. I know we're going down LinkedIn, but I hope that we just look back out. We can talk about that. But a lot of our listeners and our viewers are on LinkedIn. They are. They should be. Absolutely. I get questions often around what we say on ThinkShift on LinkedIn as well. It is an important platform for serious business owners and entrepreneurs. Let's go back to the science behind selective attention from now. What makes a message feel worth noticing? There has to be something that I connect with. There needs to be an alignment and needs to be clear and not complex. There needs to be a clear outcome. Also, if we're providing information and often we talk about outcomes and we talk about, you know, what's in it for me? So if I'm going to give my very valuable and limited attention as something, not that I'm being selfish, but what's in it for me? There needs to be a certain relevancy. I need to make an impact. It needs to be something that I'm going to learn. It needs to help solve a problem that I've got. It needs to go, "Oh, that's. Make me stand up and go, "That's really interesting." Timings are important. Timings important. It needs to be important. Lengths of what your reading is important as well. Scanability. Scanability and even from a design perspective with your graphics. Yeah. Eye catching, you know, 55% of, you know, which is over half of the attention that you get or the selective attention is by our visual and by graphics. So you can capture someone's attention by your graphic first. Yeah. Not saying that text only posts on, you know, LinkedIn aren't worth it. But in these days, because we are so visual, we will favor and we will filter in visual posts and filter out non-visual posts. Okay. That's interesting. The next thing is on repetition and why does it alone fail? What is the story with that? Yeah. So you're repeating the same message over and over and then getting nowhere. And this is where the marketing perspective. I'm just going to put a marketing hat on where a lot can get lost. You know, you read and you hear about, "Oh, you need 14 touch points to resonate with a person or you need to send so many EDMs." Ram it down this round. Oh my God. I mean, how many EDM are marked? In boxes are full of EDMs. I mean, I'm subscribing. I'm writing. Yeah. A lot. You know, and, geez, you know, being put on, you know, which is illegal by the way, being put on people's databases and lists without permission. But that's happening because I know that I haven't subscribed to certain things and I'm getting an EDM in my inbox. So, you know, there's all these touch points and we need to stop thinking. It's about relevancy. So we may only need one, two, maybe not one, two, three, four touch points if it's relevant and if it is solving a problem that the person has. So this nonsense, and I'm saying nonsense around, you know, 14 touch points and, you know, 15, 16 touch points or we need more touch points now is actually because the message that you're sending out there is isn't actually relevant. It's not resonating with the person. So what happens is when it's not and we see it over and over and over again, not only there's a brain filter it out, but we actually get quite angry and frustrated. Yeah. So we start saying, well, you lose credibility because you're sending me something that I'm not interested in. You're sending me something again that I'm not interested in and then here it comes again. On subscribe. We tend to unsubscribe unfortunately though, there would have been something in there that would have been good at some point. And we've now missed that. Yeah. So again, coming back to patterns, patterns, you know, the brain loves patterns and we are a creature of habit, but the habit has to be the right habit. It has to be something that we like and something we enjoy and it has to be something that we are going to filter in rather than filtering out. But unfortunately most of the time we need to filter it out because it's too much. There also is a point where we are, the repetition is way too much. So we shouldn't be relying on the number of touch points. We should be relying on the creativity and the relevance and the impact of the content that we're sending out. Relevance is the key to that. It needs to be relevant. Yeah. Okay. Before we continue, don't forget to like and subscribe to ThinkShift on all the socials so you can be kept up to date with what shift is coming up next. Let's now talk about why marketing gets ignored. So most marketing is an ignored because people are busy. It's ignored because it asks for attention before earning it. I think that's a really key point of difference there. What are the most common reasons do you think land business messages get ignored? Yeah, we don't ask permission. We actually don't ask permission to land in people's worlds. People often were added to lists without saying, I want to be put on that. That's exactly right. Yeah. And which was just saying before, he's actually technically it's in breach of very marketing actually. It's illegal actually. Yeah, breach of marketing. Often the message is too vague. It's not clear. All the outcome. What do you want the person to do? It's not clear. It's not clear. There's no direct call to action. What am I going to learn from this or get from this? And why am I being sent this? So the brain is very, obviously it's very clever. It keeps us alive right. But the brain is very clever and has to make us a viable, has to make a quick decision as to whether this is going to be is important for you and keep you safe or is irrelevant and could potentially harm. Now, I'm not saying that marketing goes out there. It's going to harm you. But what it does is it creates a cognitive load that we don't need. So it's creating a mental harm. So it will then filter out. So a lot of it gets missed because we are blank and we hear that we send out blanket emails or blanket EDMs or blanket posts. That's actually detrimental. So if you've got to think about what you're sending it and everyone's different. Everyone is different depends on even the cadence of posting is different. If you're sending our posts every single day, seven days a week, but it's nonsense, you can't expect this because we're like, I post seven days a week. Who cares? You could post one, two, three times a week with really great content with really great visuals and be much more of an impact. It's like with, you know, you know, tell your marketing and all this sort of stuff. You know, I'm going to make a hundred calls hoping that one person bites. That's 1%. Yeah. And the clients will come to me. So if I send all this out and hopefully someone, you know, it's like throwing out a fishing rod and hoping something's going to bite, I say no, I want you to send something out to 10 people and I want eight of them to respond. So we've got to stop playing this numbers game because it's actually hurting our businesses. We're not actually thriving from this. Sure. And we're going to talk about relevancy in the next episode we're going to be doing. But another important thing is that the business comes in with a message and then it's all about them and not about the consumer. So they're just, yeah, features and benefits. Yeah. We do this. We do this. We do that. So how are you solving my problem? I'd ignore. The other thing I wanted to mention as well was that we are becoming so attuned to spotting AI written messaging that we will throw out immediately, particularly I'll see this on LinkedIn. Go back to LinkedIn again. When are they posted as written in a specific format, which is usually it's not this. Or why this matters or there's some real key phrases that are instantly recognized by AI. Yeah, it works. Foster. It's happy streak. Yeah. There's certain key words and phrases that spot them. Absolutely. So when you see even a couple of those words littered in the way that they're supposed to structure it in line, break line, break line, break, you go, I'm not reading the rest of that. I'd say aye. So that's an instant. You know, it is and it's a shame because I actually write like that because I often write how the reader wants to read. And I use M dashes and I got destroyed. Yeah. I know. But M dashes are still, I mean, I generally do dot dot dot, but M dot ellipses. But M again, it creates a pause. That's how we read the brain's ready to pause. And often when we do a line and then, yeah, he returned or a line, I still I actually continue with that. I know that's something that I do it because I'm writing for how the brain wants to read. So you've got to, you've got to look at it. It's cognitive load again though, right? Like chunking. Because we're less likely to read a big paragraph, but we will read a sentence. We will. Many sentence rather than a big paragraph. Yeah, and it gets impact. And so what does this? I mean, even in our intros for things shifted and so does this. Or you fill this and you're going to get this. It's how the brain actually interprets. It's easy for the listener, easy for the reader. And that's important. AI knows that's what we want. It knows the pattern, which is why it uses it. And unfortunately, it's everywhere. It's a structuring. Not to use it. It just needs to be done properly. It's structuring the post similarly to the point where the beginning of each sentence is what is the tell. Like I say, it's the why this matters. As soon as I read down and it says why this matters am I instantly why this matters as a giveaway. And there's other ones as well. Interesting. Okay. So that leads me to clever messaging. Why does clever messaging often fail? Well, we can be too clever. Right. What's too clever? Well, we can be the two vague two mysterious. Yeah. Yeah. Two vague two unique. No. The point was the points lost. The points lost. And I had a client once that said to me, I was trying to simplify the simplify their messaging and simplifying even their positioning statement of how they represented themselves to the audience and to their clients. And this person came back and said, you know, I'm an intelligent person. I want to come across as clever. And I said, well, unfortunately, that will work against you. Yeah. You remember we're reading very quickly. So being clever and being over clever can work against you in a big way. So I'm not saying simplify what you do, but make it clear and obviously concise compelling. Remove the jargon, remove the acronyms. And I mentioned this in previous podcasts around, it's very easy for me to get caught up in acronyms, particularly in scopes of work. And you're just assuming your client knows what UX is or, you know, UI or everyone should know what that is. Actually, no, no one knows what that is. Yeah. Maybe they do. Assume they don't make the language more simple. Yeah. So then everyone understands. I've even had people ask me what a CTA is. Oh, that's why I keep saying cool to access. Yeah. And it's because if you're not in that world, you don't know. And it's not a silly question. No, at all. I always say the only silly question is the question that's not asked. So the silly question, if you know, ask the question, when are asked questions, I always say ask my questions. And so I was like, cool to ask you know, I shouldn't say that. But not everyone knows. That's right. Yeah. That's right. So why does a clear solution beat a clever headline? Yeah. Well, unless you can hook someone or get their attention with clarity, you know, it's it could be, it could be a, and everyone talks about, you know, the headline and it needs to be quirky and sure. But if you're not going to get a clear message from a headline, why would you bother reading anymore? Why would you rather go any further? So it's more about the essence of what you're trying to say rather than, you know, being unique and and being quirky and alternative that will get people guessing. I think it's as well like seeing, seeing yourself in the message. So leading me with a solution rather than we do this, it's like, now how do you solve my problem? And I've got some really good examples here. So instead of we help businesses grow, it's your leads are coming in, but they're not converting. Right? Instead of premium solutions for modern teams, the message would be your team is wasting hours fixing the same broken process. Instead of award winning design agency, which we see a lot of, we have, your website looks good to people still aren't buying. So just really good changes to pointing at the, we understand your problem and we can solve for it, putting the customer in the message. Yeah. And quantify it. Yeah. So in my accreditation course, we talk about how people will learn how to increase conversions. I don't just say you're going to learn how to increase conversions. I'll say you can increase conversions to 80%. So give people, and if you can't stand by, that don't say it. Yeah, that sounds fluffy. Yeah, that do. So increase, okay, so what? What from one to two, no, from one to two, what is that? And you know, someone's increased, they might want 10 or one might 20 or some businesses too either, okay. So give it, give it quantifying it and making it very substantial. And you know, give it some meat that people can actually understand and go, right, this has got substance to it. It's going to be something that's important or that I will filter in. I'll select in rather than select out. Okay. So the key takeaway here of God is attention starts when the audience recognizes themselves. Yeah. Right. So let's now talk about as a business, how to earn attention. Yeah. So the goal isn't louder marketing. It's faster relevance. And again, we're going to talk about relevancy in another podcast, but what should businesses do before writing any message besides hiring you and I? Is there anything other than hire you and I? No, seriously, it has to be something that people already care about or can take, can message that they can take home. So if there is a problem, address it. Don't talk about features and benefits. I mean, I talk about often with clients, I'll say stop feature and benefit selling. People go, what do you mean? We've got to talk about what it does. What it does that? No. No. Yeah. Well, it's too soon. You haven't actually seen the right. So we talk about earning attention. You haven't earned the right to talk about the features and benefits. Firstly, what problem does it solve? What are people? How are people going to feel? That's the other thing. Is it a salesperson or a marketer? How are you making people feel? It's the feeling first. We're selling or marketing to humans. What a feeling is evoking first. So what feeling do you want? And then what is the outcome that they're going to achieve? Is it then something that is suitable for them? Then if it is, then we earn the right to talk about the features and benefits. Right. Okay. How can you think, Lea? How can teams make content easier to notice instead of designing everything bigger headlines, 50 colors? Yeah. So, understanding the pain points, the customer's attention, that the attention points or the triggers. We talk about a psychological trigger. We talk about what is it like when it comes to awareness or when it's in desire, the first two phases of a customer journey, awareness and desire. What's the psychological trigger behind it? What is going to make someone go, "Oh, yeah, I need that." Sometimes we have not just recognized needs, but unrecognized needs. So what is it that's going to make someone say, "Hey, that's interesting or hey, I've got that problem or hey, I've heard about that or you've identified me." Almost like, "Oh, you're speaking directly to me, without speaking directly to me." So having understanding what the pain points are, understanding, and pain points is used a lot, and I'm even sick of that term, but unfortunately we need to identify that because if we don't identify what the problem is, how do we solve it? We humans, we're social creatures and we're natural critical thinkers and problem solvers, some people better than others. Let's solve the problem. So for some reason, we don't. We don't. We think we get credibility and authority by talking about how good we are. No, it's about what we can do to help you. And that's what teams need to understand better. I've got three really good ones here actually, using specific language, like be specific, the vague fluffiness. Yeah, it's about about 80% conversion, not just we're going to help convert. We're just going to help you convert, which, yeah. We're going to make you more visible. Okay. No, we're going to 10x your engagement or visibility. What is it that we've got to do? Specific. Reduce competing ideas, which is why I have to deal with all the time. Let's throw all these in here. We have so many things we want to talk about. Let's just put them all in. So it doesn't work like that. It's like throwing darts in the dark and hoping, you know, you get the target. Just reduce it down to the lowest hanging fruit idea. What is the one idea that's going to capture the attention and result in a conversion? Focus on that. And the last one I've got is using visual hierarchy. Like, it's a really clear and obvious one. It's like guiding the user into a decision and a quarter action. Okay. What should teams stop doing? The one of the biggest things is stop saying everything at once. Yeah. Just concentrate on one point or one problem. If you've got a lot of messages altogether, you've got no message. Yes. So let's concentrate on one message. Let's, you know, if everything stands out, nothing stands out. It stands out. That's right. Yeah. You need to, and make sure that that's the right message, you know, using the language that's correct for the audience and for the customer. Stop posting. Just to maintain frequency. Oh, so we talked about that earlier. You know, I post seven days a week. Great. And it's the same thing written five different ways. And it doesn't matter. It needs to, you want, you know, it's quantity, equality over quantity. Yes. Again, an overused term, but very relevant in this space. It's around, yeah, how we can, you know, get a response from someone that we want to get a response from, it doesn't have to be posting continually. And I get it that the algorithm loves posting. So the more you post, the more visible you are in the outskirts. I get that however, especially in a LinkedIn platform, which I've just explained earlier in the episode, it has to be relevant, it has to be a thought, round of thought, leadership framework, otherwise, you will be penalized. So you're better off doing twice a week with good stuff. Yes, and just on the last thing here around measuring, right, there's a way to measure this stuff and it's easy to get caught up in vanity, vanity, vanity, metrics, ways to measure saves and shares, clear ones, because there's been an actual interaction. It's required a little bit of effort, someone to do that, so you know, they're engaged. Watch the time and the drop off, really important, particularly in watching video on your site or landing on a page and leaving immediately, I guess checking your analytics to make sure that they're arriving and staying and reading message before departing, heat mapping is another thing, which we've spoken about in other episodes as well to know what users are doing, what they're clicking and what they're seeing before leaving, and then replies and direct inquiries. So are you getting any inquiries from the messaging on your landing pages, are your forms resulting in feedback? Are you getting emails, things of that nature, and the click through from the right audience, so checking to make sure that when you're looking at your analytics, making sure the audience arriving is your intended audience and you're not engaging the wrong people arriving and going, I don't need hair volumizing cream, I don't have hair, so really? Why don't I choose that example? I don't know, or bringing hair back, also speaking of your head, the dent is going. It's going over time, it's taken 35 minutes. Imagine that, imagine you opening up a picture of this, imagine opening up a text or get even an EDM and getting from a headress about volumizing conditioning shampoo. I would be shocked to pull embarrassing answers, but you know what this happens, I know where it's all laughing, no offense, I know we're giggling at the content, but it happens and you're crying into it, but it happens right seriously, yeah. Here's the shift, attention isn't something people owe you, it's something your message has to earn, the brain filters out what feels generic, effortful or irrelevant, so if your audience isn't listening, the answer isn't always more content, it might be sharper relevance. One action for the listener this week, pick one post email or homepage headline, ask would voluminean snow this is for them in three seconds, if not, rewrite it. That's think shift, I'm Clint, I'm Leanne, one idea one shift in 30 minutes, if this changes how you think, send it to someone who makes decisions before living. And follow think shift on all the socials, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss what shift is coming up next. See you in the next episode. See ya. Bye. This is a much made media production.