From Attention to Intention: How to Build a Digital Presence The Right People Can Actually Find

By Adam

When I first started Social Video, the answer to what I did was pretty simple. I made videos.

I had spent years developing my skills in video editing and content creation, and I was proud to tell people that I could help them craft stories through video. Over time, though, the problems businesses were asking me to solve started getting bigger.

They needed videos, but they also needed websites. They needed content, newsletters and landing pages. More importantly, they needed all of those things to work together so the right people could actually discover their business.

Today, when someone asks me what I do, my answer is quite different.

I help people & businesses get found online.

Attention Doesn't Always Equal Opportunity

One of the biggest misconceptions I see around digital marketing is the idea that visibility automatically leads to customers.

Businesses often tell us they want a viral video. I understand why. Millions of views sounds like success, and sometimes that attention can be incredibly valuable. But attention on its own doesn't necessarily give someone a reason to choose you.

I think about it like someone running down Swanston Street screaming at the top of their lungs. They're definitely going to get attention. People will look. Some might even film them. But how many people are going to stop and think, I'd really like to do business with that person?

That's the distinction I've started making between attention marketing and intention marketing.

Attention marketing asks how many people we can get to notice us. Intention marketing asks whether we can be found by the people who are already looking for what we do.

For me, that's where digital marketing becomes much more interesting.

What Do You Want to Be Found For?

Being found online starts with knowing what you actually want people to find you for.

If you're a chiropractor who specialises in treating shoulder problems, consistently talking about that area across your website, videos and social media starts creating a clear association between your name and that expertise. Over time, you're giving people and search platforms more information about what you do and where you fit.

Consistency is something I come back to a lot. You don't necessarily need to talk about everything your business could possibly do. Sometimes being specific makes it much easier for people to understand where your expertise sits.

It also means that when someone eventually has the intention to find that particular service, you've built a digital presence that gives you a better chance of appearing.

That person is in a very different position from someone who happened to scroll past a viral video. They already have a problem. They're looking for an answer.

Your job is to make that answer easier to find.

SEO Has Been Following Me for Longer Than I Realised

My relationship with SEO goes back much further than my professional career.

I first remember hearing about search engine optimisation when I was around 13 or 14. This was the early 2000s, when the internet looked completely different and Google wasn't even the dominant search engine it is today.

At that age, marketing wasn't exactly high on my list of interests. I was building websites and trying to get my Pokémon website into the top 100 Pokémon sites in the world. I peaked at #18 - not bad for a 13 year old competing with other pokémaniacs more experienced than me. That was my definition of online success.

A few years later, my mum invited me along to an SEO workshop she'd signed up for. That was probably the first time I properly understood what SEO was capable of: structuring and labelling information so search engines could understand it and, ultimately, help people find it.

SEO ended up becoming more significant to my life than I could have predicted. Years later, I worked in an SEO role for two years, and because there was demand for those skills in Melbourne, that work became part of my pathway from Malaysia back to Australia and eventually gaining permanent residency here.

So, in a strange way, learning how to help things get found online helped me find my own way here too.

Think of SEO Like an Internet Librarian

SEO can sound incredibly technical from the outside, but I tend to explain it using a relatable experience — the library.

Imagine walking into a library containing hundreds of thousands of books. The information you're looking for is probably in there somewhere, but without a system to categorise and index everything, finding the right book would be incredibly difficult.

The librarian helps connect your question with the information that answers it.

SEO works in a similar way. Your website might contain brilliant information, but that doesn't automatically mean a search engine understands what it's about or knows when to show it to someone. The way your pages are titled, structured, described and connected helps search engines make sense of that information.

That's also why I've changed the way I think about websites. When I first started building them as a kid, I was mostly interested in how they looked. Today, I'm thinking just as much about what information needs to be there and whether someone can actually find it.

A beautiful website has limited value if nobody discovers it.

Search Is Changing Again

The interesting thing is that being "found online" no longer means appearing in a traditional list of Google results.

People are increasingly asking questions directly through AI-powered search tools. They're looking for recommendations, checking whether businesses are legitimate and getting answers without necessarily visiting multiple websites themselves.

That makes your broader digital footprint even more important.

When someone discovers a business, they might look at its website, Google reviews, social media, videos and what other people are saying about it. Those different touchpoints build on each other. The more consistent the information is across them, the easier it becomes for someone to understand who you are and decide whether they trust you.

For businesses, I think that's an important shift. SEO is still foundational to getting your content structured and found, but the bigger goal is building enough useful, consistent information online that both people and the technology helping them search can understand what you're known for.

Build for Intention

After spending more than twenty years creating things online, I've watched the way we discover information change constantly.

I started with websites, moved heavily into video and YouTube, worked professionally in SEO and eventually built Social Video around helping businesses leverage their communication online. The platforms and tools have changed throughout that journey, and I'm sure they'll continue changing.

What has become clearer to me is that being visible just isn't usually enough.

You need to understand who you're trying to reach, what problem they're trying to solve and what you want to be known for. From there, your website, content, video, social media and SEO can start working together to build a digital presence around that intention.

Because millions of people noticing you for five seconds can certainly create attention.

But being there when the right person goes looking for exactly what you do?

That's where the real opportunity is. That’s intention marketing.