Short Form or Long Form Content?
Content marketing is a vital factor in driving your strategy to success. It can help to grow your audience, as well as engage with them – all contributing to maintaining customers, too.
With your content, you can push a call-to-action that encourages users to visit your website, and through storytelling you can also increase your brand awareness. These are both necessary elements required for growth.
Of course, a key part of planning your content marketing strategy is deciding on what type of content you will be sharing with your customers, and this involves whether it will be short form or long form content.
So, what is the difference between short form and long form content?
Short form content
Content can come in various forms, and for short form content, this can include short blogs posts, news articles, infographics, social content, and emails.
Typically, this content is fewer than 1,200 words, and doesn’t go too in-depth into the topic at hand. As it suggests, it is shorter, less overwhelming content that prioritises being quick to consume.
Long form content
As the title implies, long form content is usually lengthier, more detailed content, often over 1,200 words.
It can come in the form of blog posts, evergreen pages, guides and tutorials, whitepapers and ebooks, all offering educational and informative content.
Ensuring you choose the right form of content is important so that it reflects your brand and your customers’ wants and needs, and then providing them with high-quality content is another vital aspect of your digital output.
With the help of professionals such as our content team, we can provide you with the most appropriate content strategy for your brand.
Why choose short form content?
Short form content can offer various benefits to your results, with a variety of reasons why it could be the ideal content form for your marketing strategy.
Due to its more concise nature, it is quicker to consume than long form content, meaning it is usually much easier to absorb. This also means that the time commitment required from your audience is reduced, often making it a much more appealing form of content.
This would suggest that the time needed to create the content would also be reduced, meaning it is less resource intensive for your business.
With its more simplistic nature, it is also a better way in which to fight through a cluttered online environment and capture your audience’s attention – especially with lowering attention spans and the need for instant information.
Another aspect to consider is the user journey, and this is often continued with short form content, meaning engagement is encouraged after consumption. This is because it encourages users to share the content afterwards – making it particularly effective on social media.
Now, people are often consuming content on their mobile phones, and with shorter, more bite sized content, it is much easier to make mobile friendly to allow for more accessibility.
With so many opportunities with the use of short form content, it can seem like the obvious choice, but let’s look at the advantages of long form content...
Why choose long form content?
Alternatively, long form content is a style that can encourage improved results from organic searches – and this isn’t just because of the word count.
Often, people are searching for something that provides a detailed response, and with long form content, its nature means it goes into more depth on a topic, often offering the best results.
And, through this more detailed approach, it is likely that you can earn more backlinks – links on a website that direct you to another website – which can boost the page’s performance. In fact, a study shared that content over 3,000 words often earn 3.5 times more links that those below 1,200 words – demonstrating the strength of long form content.
Another way in which long form content can perform well is due to being able to use more keywords in the content, pushing your website higher up in search engine results pages (SERPs) to encourage increased traffic.
Content is a key method with which your business can tell a story, allowing you to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Through long form content, you can provide the educational, useful information that presents you as an expert, building authority and trust in your brand.
Which should you choose?
Knowing which form of content to choose can seem like a difficult decision, especially with a variety of pros and cons for both.
Ideally, a successful marketing strategy would balance both long and short form content, providing content that appeals to its audience’s range of preferences.
You must also consider what your competitors are doing, either capitalising on any gaps in the market or ensuring you're providing content that performs stronger than their own.
From your research, you can also gather whether your audience reacts to and engages more with more entertaining or educational content.
However, there is no right or wrong answer for deciding on which content is best for your business, and if you can, creating both forms will significantly elevate your brand’s offering to your audience.
Are you in need of an updated content marketing strategy?
With experts to write and create high quality content, your website and social media platforms can expect nothing but success with a bespoke content strategy to build brand awareness, drive traffic and increase sales.
Get in touch and our team will be on hand to discuss your content needs.
Wondering where to distribute your content?
As a growth partner with a full-service suite, we can ensure your content is being shared in all of the best places that are sure to generate results for your business.
Take a look at our service offering, whether you’re looking for a PR team to distribute your content, or require further services across the digital sphere, we have the resources to assist you.