Salience revisited

I have statistics listed among my majors. It’s an enduring source of fascination and particularly relevant to the field of branding. However just ‘having stats’ is not enough. My LinkedIn figures are telling in this context. I produce a weekly newsletter with approximately 900 subscribers. The issue that I have is that only about half of the 900 will be sent out as newsletters and half of that again will be opened. Impressions aren’t important to me. Newsletter and article reads are. I want you to read my newsletters and understand what I bring to the table, so that I can better help you.
So how should I reach you?

In the absence of virality and flawed newsletter reach, the answer has to lie in persistent messaging, spreading my information across multiple pieces of content, stated in different ways. Being persistently present should theoretically cover the gaps in my reach to you. If I am not heard, I will be a stranger to you. This is the root principle of salience.

However, just being present is not enough. I cannot expect to keep your interest if I repeat the exact same message time after time. I need to vary it so that it is restated in different ways or risk losing attention.

I have heard of this practice referred to as asymmetric social media posting, content that intentionally breaks the typical balance or uniformity seen in social media design and messaging.

This is challenging, particularly from the point of view of effort. You can see the repetition of the exact same messages across different social media platforms as communicators cave to pressure and take the east way ou. If they do not vary, there is no need to open a message on one platform if you have opened it on another platform.

The choice of media is important. People are different from one another and this reflects in their media choices. Certain types of media have their own forms. For instance, some call for depth and detail, like this lengthy piece, and others call for speed in the form of a quick view and a rapid, concise takeaway which is the realm of the reel or PDF.

Specialisation of media content is important. Media has generally low diversity in Namibia with news and business publications dominating. Other publications include tourism promoters and a smattering of lifestyle magazines. The point is to find a variety of audiences who have different interests.

I also need to talk about different topics within my field so that I don’t sound like a stuck record.

In the current climate of almost limitless media, gains to content are incremental.

If you ascribe to the idea that salience must be persistent and varied, you will find a solution in AI. Once the prompts are correct and the core message is established, AI can restate the message and it can also do so for various market segments. How effective this is, depends on your ability to specify using prompts. The language that AI produces is stilted and the message may miss the mark, so it is important to use it as an initial source of research, refine the prompts where insights are lacking or rewrite with your own insights and then rewrite to get around charmless messaging and specify clarity of the market segment. The same applies to AI-generated video and photography, As I think of it, it is essentially a very similar process to instructing a junior employee.

It also beats reading through 30 or 40 pages yielded by Google search results and trying to accurately extract relevant, trustworthy data.

The problems of salience and content saturation are unlikely to go away soon, barring a reform of email and permission marketing so for now brand managers need to deal with the issues in inventive ways.