Content Wears the Crown: Long-Form Content is Still King

You only have 8.25 seconds. 

With the average attention span shrinking by 25% between 2000 and 2015, humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish! This is a challenge to advertisers and marketers alike as they hustle to adapt to their audience. The importance of quality content, engaging visuals, and attention grabbers cannot be overstated. 

In this current digital landscape, content marketing acts as the backbone of successful digital marketing by driving engagement, establishing brand authority, and imprinting itself on the hearts and minds of your audience. 

While social media has pushed for shorter, bite-sized informational content blurbs, the reign of long-form content remains unchallenged! Long-form content continues to wear the crown and solidifies its position as the king in digital marketing. 

Audience

An advantage to long-form content is the ability to capture and immerse your audience in what you’re sharing. While shorter content is easily digestible and quick, long-form content allows for an in-depth exploration of a specific topic and can provide comprehensive insights, analysis, and takeaways. It works to satisfy the curiosity of your readers by answering their questions, problems, and gives them valuable insight to educate themselves. 

Ready to get more engagement, shares, and ROI for your content? When audiences find content that enriches their lives, they’re more likely to stick around for more. Long-form content establishes a narrative and incorporates storytelling elements, personal anecdotes, and real-life stories to create a connection with your audience through lived experiences. The emotional aspect of the story strengthens the trust and relatability between you and your readers. 

Authority and Expertise

Depending on your industry, the digital landscape is highly competitive. By using long-form content, your brand can establish credibility, authority, and expertise to build trust with your audience. When you present well-researched, informative, and comprehensive content, you position yourself as a thought leader in your industry and your brand becomes a reliable and trusted source.

Short-form content marketing trends including captions or blogs under 500 words that provide a nice overview of specific topics, but the extensive

 nature of long-form blogs, articles, and content allows you to dive into the nuances while offering a deeper level of insight. Here you can provide case studies, real-life examples, evidence, and research. When readers see a brand as knowledgeable, they’ll be more likely to turn to you for advice and solutions to their problems.

SEO and Website Traffic

As many business owners know, search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital aspect of marketing (and customers finding your business). Blogs, articles, and more long-form work play a role in improving and boosting your SEO rankings on Google as they value content that provides a good user experience. When you offer in-depth information and cover a wide range of related keywords, this content signals relevance and authority on the search engines and leads to better rankings.

And the longer that readers spend on your website consuming content, the lower your bounce rate which shows a positive user experience. Most times, long-form content encourages backlinks from other reputable websites for statistics, information, or further reading which further strengthens your website’s SEO.

Engage and Nurture

By creating resources like guides, whitepapers, tutorials, case studies, and more, you’re providing items that can attract customers. Readers will invest time and effort into consuming long-form written content, and they’ll develop a better connection with your brand (which leads to…leads!).

This is a great time to mention well-placed calls-to-action (CTAs) in your content. These links/buttons guide your readers toward the desired action (signing up for a webinar, a newsletter, downloading your guide, or making purchases). Adding these strategically throughout your writing can ultimately lead to increased conversations and long-term loyalty. 

Social Shares and Going Viral

To share and go viral, long-form content has the potential to perform excellently. In fact, research has shown that long-form content has 77% more backlinks than short-form and is more suitable for evergreen content that continues to perform. When these pieces of content give unique insights and thought-provoking ideas to your readers, it becomes highly shareable. After all, people will be more likely to share content they find valuable, entertaining, or informative regardless of how long it is.

Also, with content hosted on different platforms, you’ll be able to create visually appealing videos, social media snippets, and appealing infographics that are easily shared across your socials! These pieces of content serve as teasers and draw attention to your more in-depth content. Make social media your personal distribution channel, and you’ll be able to amplify its reach and increase your earning potential. 

Summary

Our fast-paced digital marketing world is ever-developingand changing, but one thing remains consistent: content, especially long-form, takes its rightful place on the throne. Its incredible ability to captivate audiences, establish authority in our respective industries, boost SEO efforts, engage leads, and even the potential to go viral is far above other content formats. 

If you invest your time, effort, and resources into creating high-quality content, you’ll see the fruits of your labor by unlocking the power to engage, convert, and attract high-quality leads while cementing yourself as an industry leader.

Embrace the crown, wear it proudly, and long may you rule with your content throughout the digital kingdom!