What is Long-Form Content and Why Your Small Business Needs It

Want to know what long-form content is and why your small business needs it even with attention spans constantly being on the decrease? When marketing your business you want to have a mixture of long-form content and short-form content. Given the resources needed to create long-form content, it is easy to think it isn’t necessary, but by not using long-form content you are doing your business a disjustice. Keep on reading to find out what long-form content is and why your small business needs it.

 

 

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WHAT IS LONG-FORM CONTENT AND WHY DOES YOUR SMALL BUSINESS NEED IT?

What is long-form content?

If you asked five different marketers to share their definition of long-form content you’d get a different answer. The fact is there isn’t a universal answer for what long-form content is. However, it is fairly common for people to agree that for written content to be classed as long-form content it needs to be 1,000 words or more.Common long-form written content includes articles, blog posts, white papers and e-books.

 

But long-form content isn’t restricted to just written content. Long-form content applies to audio and video content too. A podcast episode or video that lasts over 10 minutes would also be classed long-form content.

 

Short-form content versus long-form content

The opposite of long-form content is short-form content and for your small business you should be using both.

 

As we’ve already discussed long-form content is usually 1,000+ (in the written form) or 10+ minutes (in audio or video form). The extended length of the content means the business is able to go into detail on a specific topic. Examples of long-from content would be:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• E-books
• White papers
• Guides
• YouTube videos
• Podcast episodes

 

Whereas short-form content is meant to be short and snappy. The aim to be able to quickly get a message across, usually a summary or top level message. Examples of short-form content would be:

• Emails
• Social media content
• Infographics
• Short blog posts and news updates (less than 1,000 words)

 

Both forms of content are valuable for different reasons and that is why using both in your business is a smart move.

 

LEARN HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY ADD  LONG-FORM CONTENT  INTO YOUR MARKETING BY JOINING SALES BEYOND SOCIAL.  Sales Beyond Social is a marketing accelerator where in just 6 weeks you’ll learn how to master using the content marketing trifecta (content, email and social) and have a multi-channel marketing approach that increase visibility, clients and total revenue. Click here to sign up or join the waitlist.

 

WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A LONG-TERM CONTENT STRATEGY

 

Why long-form content is good for small businesses?

Long-form content is good for businesses, regardless of the business’ size, for multiple reasons.

 

Enables you to demonstrate expertise and build authority in your industry / niche

One of the major advantages of creating long-form content is that it enables your business to be able to go into more detail and therefore really demonstrate that it has the expertise in a specific industry or niche. It’s easy to create a piece of short-form content on a topic, even if you aren’t necessarily an expert, but with long-form content it isn’t as easy to fake expertise (obviously this is changing now thanks to AI).

 

Rank higher in search engines and for more keywords

Another major advantages of creating long-form content for your small business is that it will help your business to rank in search engines. By committing to creating long-form content for your small business you’ll be putting your business in a position to rank higher in search engines and to rank for more keywords.

 

Search engines want to direct people to valuable content that answers their query. Some things can be answered with a short bit of information, but some need more detail. And that is where long-form content can be super powerful.

 

Also, if your business wants to rank for certain keywords you can create individual pieces of long-form content that are optimised specifically for that keyword.

 

Encourages social shares

Word of mouth has forever been a powerful form of marketing and the modern day equivalent is social shares. No one really wants to direct people to a business’ homepage or sales page. But by creating long-form content that is hosted on your business’ website you are creating the opportunity for more social shares. People like to share valuable content they’ve consumed on their social media. So create something that is shareworthy.

 

 

LEARN HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY ADD  LONG-FORM CONTENT  INTO YOUR MARKETING BY JOINING SALES BEYOND SOCIAL.  Sales Beyond Social is a marketing accelerator where in just 6 weeks you’ll learn how to master using the content marketing trifecta (content, email and social) and have a multi-channel marketing approach that increase visibility, clients and total revenue. Click here to sign up or join the waitlist.

 

Increases time on site

Long-form content in its nature takes a longer time to consume. So if you commit to create high-value long-form content then you’ll be to able increase the time visitors spend on your website.

 

Having a longer time on site will often help with lead generation. If people are spending a longer time consuming content you’ll have more opportunities to gather their email address (through for example pop-up banners or on page forms). And if people value what they are consuming they are also more likely to convert and provide an email address.

 

Link building opportunities (internal and external)

Having long-form content on your website is great for link building opportunities both internal and external. If you have valuable long-form content on a specific topic then there is a probability that other website will want to link to that content.

 

And internally when you focus on creating great long-form content you can look for opportunities across your website to link to it. By being strategic you can create cornerstone content that is aligned with your core services and then with future content you can link to the cornerstone content so continually making sure people are being directed to your services.

 

Shorten the buyer journey

Creating long-form content for your small business helps shorten the time it takes for someone to buy. Once you’ve got to the point where you have a bingeable bank of long-form content (You can find out more about creating a bingeable bank of content here)  people who might have just become aware of your business are able in a short period of time to consume numerous pieces of content. This means that quickly they are able to be sucked into your world. The know, like and trust factor can be built up at an accelerated pace and this enables people to go through the entire buyer journey and purchase faster.

 

That’s it! You now know what long-form content is and why your small business needs it.

 

Creating effective long-form content to market your business requires planning, time, energy and sometimes money. Hopefully having read this blog post you can now see why investing your resources into long-from content is worthwhile.

 

Let me know in the comments what your biggest take away has been.

 

 

WANT TO MAKE THE MOST OF LONG-FORM CONTENT, EMAIL MARKETING AND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING? JOIN SALES BEYOND SOCIAL.  Sales Beyond Social is a marketing accelerator where in just 6 weeks you’ll learn how to master using the content marketing trifecta (long-form content, email and social) and have a multi-channel marketing approach that increase visibility, clients and total revenue. Click here to sign up or join the waitlist.