The #1 Reason Your Content Isn't Getting Attention

You're Creating Misunderstandings, Not Content

This is the biggest reason why your business might not be getting the attention it's looking for. The biggest mistake I have seen across all the brands I work with, and by now that's hundreds, thousands of them, is that they are creating content that actually creates misunderstandings.

Doctors, founders of software companies, financial advisors, people in technical niches. It's easy to get too technical for your target and forget that your audience doesn't understand what you're talking about. It happens to me too. Many times. And I have to catch myself and bring it down. I've been doing content for a decade, and this is a discipline you never stop practicing.

Think about it for a second. Have you ever started reading a book, science, mathematics, motivational, whatever it is, and you don't understand what the author is talking about? You immediately lose interest. That is exactly what happens with your content. If you open with words your audience doesn't know, that's the end of the journey. They swipe up and move on to the next piece of content.

The Rice and Beans Doctor

Let me tell you a story about my father. My father, Frank Suarez, wrote a book called The Power of Your Metabolism. That book sold millions of copies, in Spanish, in English, and in many other languages. The way he communicated was so powerful that people started calling him the rice and beans doctor. He wasn't a doctor. He would tell you in his book: I'm not a doctor. I'm somebody who struggled with weight loss problems and decided to take over that education so I could help myself and then help other people.

But the way he explained the subject was so simple to understand that his content took off, and he became basically the largest, most followed health educator across Latin America, with 52 million followers to date. He passed away in 2021. He was a special individual in many ways. But the thing that made him special in the social media world was his ability to take a subject that doctors explain in complicated ways, with laboratory tests and jargon nobody understands, and explain it in simple, digestible ways that anybody could understand.

And here's the part almost nobody does. Metabolism was his life. His channel was called MetabolismoTV. He did thousands of episodes on the subject. You know what he would still do, all the time? Define the word metabolism. He never assumed his audience knew it, never assumed they had watched an earlier video. And by doing that he became a superstar, because nobody was ever left behind. People tell me, I want to be the next Frank Suarez. Well, the number one thing you have to do is communicate in a way that speaks to everybody, not just to people who already understand your subject.

Use Their Words, Not Yours

Speak their language. Your audience doesn't say hormonal dysregulation. Your audience says, I'm exhausted all the time. I'm always tired. Your audience doesn't say predictive workflow automation. They say, my team is overwhelmed. When people see those industry words, they walk away and go watch another TikTok video that doesn't create that phenomenon in them.

You might feel like if you don't use complicated words, you won't come across as intelligent. Like you have to use language that shows you know what you're talking about. That is a mistake. I have clients with software companies, and I consider myself a pretty intelligent person, and I sit with them and think: I don't know what you're selling. I still don't know how you can help me solve my problems. And I happen to be smart.

Same thing in finance. I know great friends who are so knowledgeable about money, but when you sit down with them, you walk out feeling dumber than you did before. Confused by words, concepts, ideas. That doesn't get clients. Tax efficient asset allocation communicates nothing to a regular audience. The client's language is: I feel like I'm losing too much to taxes. So the better content title is: How to keep more of what you earn. Do you want to learn about tax efficient asset allocation, or do you want to learn how to keep more of what you earn? You see the difference.

How to Find Your Audience's Language

So how do you find their language? You look at comments on your posts. Direct messages and emails. Sales calls. Reviews. Reddit and public forums. And in this day and era, if you have a call center, that thing is gold, because you can record phone calls and listen to how your people actually talk about their problems.

Even better: take those recorded conversations, from GoHighLevel, RingCentral, whatever you use to talk with prospects, and dump them into AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. It will help you figure out exactly the language these people use to describe their problems and the things your products and services solve. Then you give that language back to them in your content. Write down those exact phrases. That is your content gold right there.

Then take your technical topic and ask yourself: how would my customers say this? How can I communicate in a way that captures their attention in the first five or ten seconds? Rewrite all your content in your customers' words. Industry language: hormonal dysregulation. Patient language: I'm exhausted all the time. Better content title: Why you're tired even when your labs look normal. Industry language: predictive workflow automation. Customer language: my team is overwhelmed, I'm drowning. Better content title: Stop wasting 10-plus hours on admin tasks. Now the content communicates to the regular human being, which at the end of the day is who you're trying to reach.

You Have Five Seconds

Here's why this matters so much. The attention span today is about 5 seconds. Ten years ago it was about 8 seconds. The more content gets put out there, the less attention you get, because it's easier for somebody to move to the next piece of content. It's just the law of supply and demand at scale. Social media is where 90 percent of the adult population in the United States, 80 percent worldwide, engages day in and day out. You only have a few seconds to earn their interest.

And when you genuinely have to use a technical word, because sometimes there's no other way, define it. Every single time. Don't assume that because somebody watched your earlier video they already know it. That was part of my father's power and his magic: whenever he suspected somebody might not understand a word, he immediately clarified it.

You can also use AI as a language filter. Before you publish, ask it: rewrite this using everyday language. Or: rewrite this the way a frustrated customer would say it. Give that a try. If it sounds human, you're getting closer.

The Engagement Check Before You Post

Before you post anything, stop for a second, forget everything you know, and ask yourself one question: does this sound like my customer, or does this sound like my industry? If it sounds like the industry, get back to the drawing board and fix it. It's not going to help. It's only going to hurt your brand. If it sounds like your customer, you have a winner. That's what you publish. Only things that sound like a customer.

The bottom line: your technical expertise, whether that's taxes, finance, real estate, marketing, investing, design, whatever knowledge you've worked really hard to acquire over years of study and practice, still has to be brought down to the everyday audience. Like they say, dumb it down. Sometimes those people eventually become very educated, and then you can talk to them in more sophisticated ways. But it's all part of the journey.

Speaking their language builds engagement. It gets you connected with people. And it generates more sales, more prospects, more leads, and overall more growth for your company. The more people understand you, the more they engage, and the more they eventually buy whatever you're trying to sell them. Now get in front of that camera and deliver a powerful message.