Long-form, short-form: Which is best?

When it comes to writing copy, you might be wondering what’s best — short-form or long-form copywriting.

Over the past few years, marketers continue to debate which is best.

What’s short-form content?

Short-form content is just that — short. If it’s a blog post, it’s usually around 400-600 words, and can be read in a couple of minutes. Other examples include listicles, videos (provided they’re under two minutes), tweets, and infographics. Facebook posts are also forms of short-form content.

What’s long-form content

As its name suggests, long-form content is — well, long. Blog posts are on average 2,000 words (although some can be a lot longer). These articles are usually very well-written, highly researched and offer valuable insights. Long-form content requires more from the user in terms of time and concentration levels. Other examples of long-form content include whitepapers, e-books, videos and webinars.

Short-form versus long-form

Short-form content has widely been accepted as the preferred, given that most of are scrollers, scanners and skimmers. We scroll through our social media feed, we skim through the headlines, and if we click on an article, we usually skim through the content.

After all, we’re all busy. And with so much content out there vying for our attention — well, there’s only so much time we can spend looking at it.

However, over the past few years, with inbound marketing increasing, content saturation and competition has increased. Search engines were clogged with short-form articles trying to rank for keyword searches. And most of the content was pretty poor.

So, Google changed its algorithms to bring quality content to the top of the search rankings. And so now, long-form content is favoured over short-form — meaning long-form content appears higher up the Google search rankings.

Long-form content also gets more shares, increases your conversion rates, and positions your brand as an authority.

What’s best?

Sounds like long-form content is the way to go, right?

Not so fast.

The best content is that which engages your audience. All businesses are different and have different target audiences. For example, organisations that tailor content to young people (with shorter attention spans), may elect to focus more on shorter-form pieces.

Quality always trumps quantity

The key to a successful marketing strategy is to combine the two types of content and tailor them to appeal to your target audience. Use short-form pieces to engage, and long-form to educate and inform.

Ensure your content is of high-quality and provides value. And if you’re going to put together some longer content, only do so if your writing skills are up to the task. If not, consider outsourcing this to someone who can do a great job for you.

If you’d like help developing content for your business, contact me for an obligation-free chat. I’d love to work with you.

Cheers
Nerissa