3 seconds is all you get

It used to be, according to the traditional rule of thumb, you could divide newspaper readers into three distinct groups based on how they read each page. This rule of thumb was called the 30:3:30 rule and was based on the theory that people read each page of a newspaper in 30 seconds, three minutes or 30 minutes.

The theory followed that in 30 seconds all you could read on each page would be the headlines, that in three minutes you would read both the headlines and the first paragraph of each piece and that finally, in 30 minutes, you could read every word in every story on the page.

Now, with internet penetration levels at their current highs and with wall to wall access to broadcast media; newspapers do not break news anymore. They can report it and they can add significantly more analysis and editorial than their broadcast competitors – but in simple terms the old rule of thumb doesn’t hold up so well anymore for print media, so how well does it apply to our uptake and use of social media?

The first problem with a rule which has 30 seconds as it’s lowest time parameter is that in social media, 30 seconds is a long time. Consider Twitter for example where 30 seconds to read a tweet is a lifetime. In 30 seconds you could conceivably have read a post, retweeted it and moved on to check the footie scores.

So, for social media there’s a new rule: the 3:30:3 principle or that someone will spend three seconds reading a tweet; 30 seconds reading a blog post; or finally and as a maximum say three minutes following a link, responding to a post or starting a conversation.

In its simplest form, this principle promotes that you have to use language that will capture someone’s imagination in three seconds, encouraging them to want to know more, follow you, digg you, join as a fan or even simply entertain.
There are apparently more new words added to the English language each year than existed when Shakespeare was alive and with only three seconds to make a lasting impact we may well need to keep creating them.