Here at Neil Walker Digital Group, longform content is our new favourite toy, and it’s one that’s producing amazing results not only for ourselves but also for our clients. We’re constantly altering our strategies, because we aim to never be seen as a one-trick pony. We’re championing ultra-longform content for all of our clients and it’s proving incredibly successful, but we have to ask the question – is longform the ideal option for your business?
When you look at the polar opposites of content creation, you’ll find longform and shortform. If you’re new to both of these concepts, here’s a quick rundown for you:
What is Longform Content?
- Over 2,000 words in length
- Video content which is over the average length of 10 minutes
- Longform infographics, such as this one
- Whitepapers
- Step-by-step guides
What is Shortform Content?
- Photos
- GIFs
- Vines
- Videos which are just a few minutes long
- Infographics
- Written content which is less than 100 words in length
Of course, you also get mid-length content, such as 500 word blogs, but for the purpose of this blog we’re only going to discuss longform and shortform.
What are the benefits of longform content?
There are lots of marketers out there that have well and truly embraced the idea of longform content. They’re dedicated to creating lengthy, chunky, get-your-teeth-into pieces of content (and they don’t just utilise the written word) every day, and you can guarantee they see success. Why? Because Google loves longform.
The average length of content on a page directly impacts on the overall ranking of said page, as discovered by serpIQ. They’ve conducted lots of insightful research into what makes websites successful, and they’ve found time and again that it’s longform that makes the world go round (so to speak).
In their study into the average content length of top ten results, it’s clear that more content equals better results:
Alongside this, Moz has found a correlation between the number of links a page accrues and the amount of content on it:
And their visualisation of links to content length:
What does this show? That creating content that’s lengthy and insightful makes excellent link bait, which naturally makes people want to share, link back to and shout about on their own time.
Social media is a hot topic when it comes to longform content, as social networking sites are, in their very nature, shortform. Microblogging websites such as Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine, Facebook and Google+ seem as though they’d be the most hostile environment imaginable for longform content, but this really isn’t the case.
In fact, Quicksprout.com found that content over 1,500 words is actually much more successful than shorter content:
Neil Patel explained:
If a post is greater than 1,500 words, on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes than a post that is under 1,500 words.
At Neil Walker Digital, we ran our own longform content trial before opening up this type of content creation to our clients. We began by extending our homepage from approximately 500 words, to 4,800 words. Alongside this, we also expanded the rest of our website to include 2,000+ words on each page, as well as creating new pages for some of our services.
But, turning to longform isn’t possible for everyone, and for some industries it shouldn’t even be considered.
What are the drawbacks of longform content?
We aren’t about to ignore the fact that there are a few drawbacks to longform content, as it’s important you enter into such a big strategy change with all the information.
For starters:
Longform content takes a long time to create
Unlike your average 500 word blog, which a good content writer can bash out in a half hour or less (assuming they know the subject well), longform content can take – you guessed it – a long time to write. From a couple of hours, to a full working day, to over a week, you could be sat tapping out a thoroughly insightful blog or whitepaper for a pretty hefty amount of time.
For some, this just doesn’t produce enough content overall. While the benefits of creating such an impressive piece of content can be incredible, allowing some of your clients to be thrown by the wayside simply because you now have too much work and too few hours in the day simply isn’t an option.
The answer to this conundrum leads us onto our next point.
Longform content can be expensive
The best way to produce more content is to get more hands on the keys. The only way you’ll do this, obviously, is to hire more content writers, which may not be financially possible for some companies. However, you should weigh up the potential benefits of doing this with the drawbacks of not going for it.
Can your company afford to allow the possibility of an increase in search traffic and, potentially as a result, conversions pass you by?
You can’t write crap content
The one obvious drawback of creating longform content is that you have to be a good writer. A 2,000 word blog-essay littered with grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and generally dodgy writing isn’t going to go down well, and it certainly won’t inspire people to keep reading. Of course, it isn’t just about your writing ability – the amount of research you put in will also determine how well-written your content ends up being.
If you’re not so hot on your research, you might want to consider pulling your socks up and getting stuck into finding out how to conduct online research.
What are the benefits of shortform content?
Shortform content, like longform content, isn’t something new, it’s just another content marketing tool that’s reappeared in everyone’s toolboxes recently.
There’s all kinds of shortform content to choose from, and one of the best things about this type of content is that it’s ideal for audiences that are constantly on-the-go. If your target market doesn’t have time to sit down and read a 2,000 word blog post, or if you want to double-up on your content marketing by offering both chunky and bite-sized content portions, it’d be ideal.
In terms of shortform video content, shortform ads (such as those annoying ones on YouTube) are much more successful than longform ads. AOL recently conducted a study into this very subject, and found that people were more likely to respond well to shorter ads.
They said:
Short-form video produced a 25 percent higher brand recall and a 42 percent higher purchase intent for the featured product or service
One of the best examples of shortform video content is Vine (although Instagram video has now surpassed it), which offers users just six seconds of video time. They’re most commonly used to create funny viral videos, but they’re also hugely successful for big brands.
In 2013, Honda made a massive splash with its live-Vine #WantNewCar Twitter campaign. In it, Honda’s social media team responded to tweets from unhappy customers with real-time Vines – all of which unfortunately appear to have been removed now.
However, what’s important is that Honda’s campaign exceeded their six-month average of 242 new Twitter followers by garnering a whopping 1,020 new followers. Along with this, they also received 2,292 mentions. That’s powerful stuff.
What makes Instagram the successor of Vine is the fact that it has 130 million users to Vine’s 13 million, and Instagram allows for 15 seconds of video time. Instagram videos can also be shared over Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, foursquare and via email, but Vines can just be shared over Facebook and Twitter (for now). We’re sure Vine will come back fighting, though.
In addition to all of this, you’ve also got the fact that shortform content is faster to produce. As a general rule, a blog post of a hundred words, a Vine video, a mini-video ad or a small infographic will take less time than a whopping longform post will.
What are the drawbacks of shortform content?
Shortform content, like longform, isn’t always perfect. You’ll always be able to poke holes in one or the other depending on which side you’re sitting on.
For example:
Shortform content can be less impactful
We hesitate to say this is an absolute truth, but you have to ask yourself how impactful a vine will be over the course of a year. A longform blog that sets you apart as a thought-leader in your industry, or a whitepaper with months of data and research, is likely to continue to produce traffic and conversions months down the line, whereas one little blog or video could be seen as a veritable drop in the online ocean.
You don’t have to be a genius to go shortform
Not that you need to be a brainiac to write 2,000 word blog posts, but it’s much harder to hide behind words when you have so many of them to write. Unfortunately, writing a 200 word post is always going to be mentally easier than writing a longer one, as you can simply skim the surface of a topic without ever getting into any real detail. Thus, you never really get to the heart of a matter, and you never have to show you real knowledge.
Shortform isn’t easy
A lot of marketeers are under the mistaken notion that shortform content is the easy route. Wrong.
Any content writer will be able to fill you in on the secret that writing 10 phenomenal words can often be a lot trickier than writing 1,000, because each word has to do its job perfectly.
Which is best, then?
Unfortunately, we can’t give you the answer to this question, because it all depends on what your marketing strategy requires. In all honesty though, we highly recommend a good combination of the two. The ratio of longform to shortform you choose to go with is entirely up to you though, as it depends on what your industry is and what you want your content to do.
No two companies will have completely the same marketing strategy (or at least they shouldn’t!), as it’s imperative that yours is wholly unique. You need to adapt your strategy to your brand, and your brand’s needs further down the line. Never box yourself in by choosing a strategy that’s difficult to change later on. This is something we’re incredibly adept at here at Neil Walker Digital – we’re strategy chameleons, and it’s working very well for us.
As a parting gift, we’d like to share this interesting content matrix from SmartInsights.com:
What do you think? Do you have a preferred content type? Let us know by telling us on Twitter. We look forward to chatting with you!