WHY YOU SHOULD ADD LONG-FORM TO YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

As a marketer, you know it’s essential to keep your website content fresh by updating it frequently, often in the form of blogs. Most likely, you’re aware that the digital world of 280-character tweets, abbreviated text messages and emoji conversations is shortening our attention spans. Medical Daily writes that the human attention span has shortened from 12 seconds to eight seconds in recent years. Therefore, it makes sense to fill your marketing content strategy with shorter pieces of content that are easy for you to write and easy for your readers to digest.

However, data has shown that long-form content (pages that have a word count of up to 3,000 words) increase time on page − an important metric for SEO − and can garner more page views than a short blog post.

Short-Form Content

Characteristics

• 300-500 words
• Focused on one small topic (for example, this blog post is short-form)
• Easy to write and publish several pieces each month

Benefits

• Boosts SEO rankings by way of regular and frequent posts
• Readers get the gist of the content with a quick look
• Viewers are more likely to read the entire post since the total length is short
• Takes little time to write and minimal-to-no research (example: “insider tip” that your company already knows)

Long-Form Content

Characteristics

• Approximately 3,000 words
• Based on a larger, more complex topic that enables the writer to do a deeper dive
• Easy to think of or find content to write about since the topic is so broad

Benefits

• Sets your company up as a thought leader (read: expert) on the topics you blog about
• Increases viewer time on page, an important metric for SEO
• Users are likely to return to the page again and again as a reference guide
• Scoops up a ton of SEO long-tail keywords, meaning it will rank higher in search results and attract more visitors

Since each format provides unique benefits for both your writers and your readers, we recommend incorporating both into your content marketing strategy.

How To Write Good Long-Form Content

If it’s your first time trying long-form web content, the task may seem intimidating. Here are our top four tips for a smooth process:

1. Pick a very broad topic and narrow it to an audience. These two examples were created for our client Bionix Health at Home.
   1. Juvenile diabetes lifestyle checklist for people whose kids have been dealing with diabetes for a while
   2. Surrogate pregnancy tips to reduce challenges and decrease discomfort for women who have chosen to be surrogate mothers
2. Use sub-sections labelled with H2 and H3 headlines to make the content easily skimmable
3. If your resources allow, incorporate simple infographics and images to break up the text or illustrate a point
4. Anchor links on the page can be a plus if it is exceedingly long content

Want to read more? Download our Orange Paper with more tips on how to craft winning long-form content.

 Have you produced long-form content? What was your experience? Tell us and share a few good examples on the Thread Facebook page.