Your Attention Please: How to Appeal to Today's Distracted, Disinterested, Disengaged, Disenchanted, and Busy Consumer

Getting your message across is becoming more difficult. People suffer an excess of information and clutter. Audiences are demanding and selective, and they vary widely in their needs and interests. That's why business writer Paul B. Brown and employee-communications consultant Alison Davis deserve a lot of credit for creating this handy, practical manual on basic communication skills for the Internet age. Their ideas may not be profound, but their fundamental lessons are highly applicable, as their examples and their blocky, jazzy layout attest. Their book offers the expected list of pitfalls, but it also provides great guidelines that can improve the practices of any communicator. getAbstract recommends it to anyone who needs to break through the tumult and get a message across to the public. Follow its advice and everyone, including the members of your audience, will benefit.

This amazingly compact book is packed with invaluable information and instruction on how to create writing that's clear, concise, and compelling. No matter what type of writing you do, it will teach you how to use words (or lack of them) to frame their intended meaning with brevity, less distraction and greater comprehension. Order it now. You won't be disappointed.

Quite simply, the most comprehensive look at the new procedures for trying to talk to prospective clients that I've read in the last couple of years. I bought 3 to hand out to past and hopefully future clients. It's practical and short and to the point, emulating what the book tells us to do.

A very intuitive yet refreshingly nuts and bolts book that cuts across all communication dynamics. As a professional (not in sales or marketing), I did not expect the book to be anything other than tangentially or anecdotally relevant. Boy was I wrong. As I read the book I began to envision myself effortlessly utilizing the insights, advice and techniques literally packed throughout the book in all sorts of everyday situations from new and existing client contacts to "simple" colleague communications. I even see scenarios where the techniques will come in quite handy in more...stressful situations. The book gingerly moves from lesson to hand-on examples that anyone can identify with, and is rich with (short) stories that lead you into the wilderness and out the other side, better-off for the experience. I recommend the book to anyone who has ever looked back on any communication opportunity of any nature, and thought "... I could have done that better..."

When I initially picked up the book I thought it was going to be about how you can keep a person's attention around a product or service. A marketing book of some sort. To my surprise it ended up being much more than just that. The book provided tips about how to write stories, articles and communication that will keep your audience engaged. This is the book I have been looking for. I found it on a little book store on my vacation and I will recommend it to everyone I know. A couple of things I learned in one day: 1. The audience is busy. Less than 600 words for short articles. 1200 words for long articles. This will make your writing more accessible to busy readers. 2. Write about stuff they want to read. It's about me and my time is limited. Too often we choose subjects that we ourselves find interesting but the reader just doesn't care. 3. Titles of articles should promise and benefit the audience. For Example - How to, Be a better, You can, Learn ways, Become a, Deliver on, Make more, Get more... 4. Be the audience. Try not to tell us things we already know or understand. Write about things we want to know. If you love the topic it will show through and your audience will be engaged. 5. Create high concepts when writing the excerpts. Titles should be no longer than six words. Excerpts should be no longer than 10-15 words. High concepts summarize the article and let's the reader decide if they need to invest the time. 6. Draw mental pictures of what you are writing about so the audience can visualize it. Illustrate the problem and communicate that by continuing to read this they will have the solution they seek. This is only the surface. Buy this book you won't be disappointed.