Shrinking attention spans and your public relations

Shrinking attention spans and your public relations

People are paying less attention to what you say. It’s not because what you are saying is not important. It is because what you have to say must compete in a rapidly changing, communications environment that is shortening people’s attention.

That means in today’s overcrowded communications landscape, you need to convey your ideas in an instant.

Online media is rapidly becoming the most important messenger

Step back for a moment and remind yourself how information consumption is undergoing significant change.

Newspapers and magazines are morphing into websites. Over-the-air television is turning into streaming as a means of presenting information.

Online communications have stepped to the forefront in terms of how people are looking for information.

According to Cision, a comprehensive communications platform that top PR firms, (including Wellons Communications) rely upon, “Journalists’ concerns about audiences’ changing media consumption behaviors are top of mind in 2025. More than 2 in 5 reporters (42%) named this as one of the biggest challenges for journalism in the last 12 months.”

Not only is media consumption changing, so are attention spans

 The average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds today.

That’s shorter than the attention span of a goldfish.

To get a greater appreciation of what’s happening with attention spans, take a listen to what Gloria Mark, PhD, the chancellor’s professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, has to say here.

So, what does this have to do with your public relations? 

First off, it means that you have to adjust to how communications are changing, not only in how information is projected, but in how it is received.

And that’s where Wellons Communications enters the picture.

We recognize the changes media are undergoing, and we know how to adjust your public relations and publicity program to keep pace with how communications are changing.

We use up-to-date distribution services to target who is receiving your publicity communiques and add our own know-how to bolster these services.

We advocate for the use of high-impact visuals to cut through the communications clutter and get your idea across in an instant.

And for media, who are overloaded with pitches from folks like us, we make it as easy as possible for them to recognize the news value of your story and how to tell your story as concisely and clearly as possible.

In short, call us and we’ll start cutting through short attention spans

We recognize the challenge telling your story with brevity and how to package and distribute your story in a way that is useful for what media want and need.

Call us at 407-339-0879 or email us at will@wellonscommunications.com and let’s start getting past those short attention spans.