First, be sure your content tells a good story. But it's also important to keep your material succinct.
Content marketing is all the rage. What is it? Basically, it’s making sure your content tells a story. We all love a good story, so we all relate to content-driven marketing. The big trend for 2014? Content marketing will not only get better — it’ll get shorter.
If you want to jump on this trend, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a consumer who relies on a smartphone or tablet, is bombarded by more information than ever before, is active on social media, wants content that is more relevant and integrated into his/her life, and wants content that is easy to share.
Then, you can create content that isn’t just short, but meaningfully short. ‘Concise’ is really a better word. The more concise your content and message, the more easily integrated into a consumer’s everyday life it can be — which makes it more likely that a consumer will pay attention to what you have to say.
Short Is Sweet
Think about the content that exploded in 2013: Vine and Instagram Video give us clips that last about as long as it takes to read this sentence — and we love it. We at Infomedia were excited to see brands taking advantage of the new “micro-videos,” and we’ve seen some pretty creative results from brands that really embraced the format.
Heading into 2014, it’s likely that consumers will start to expect more of the same, not just from videos and graphics, but also from written content. Content needs to be not only shorter, but also more concise and more stimulating than before. Why?
Let’s break it down:
- Social media is growing both in use and importance, and social media rewards shorter content.
- Mobile usage will continue to grow and consumer attention spans will probably continue to shrink.
- Even more brands, publishers and advertisers will get into the game, and competition for audience will be steep.
- Native advertising (placing short pieces of branded content in published media) will continue to grow.
It’s Good News!
Creating good, concise content might be a change in direction at first, and it might even require an investment in developing quality content initially. But businesses that embrace this trend will be rewarded because concise content lets you create more content, and that leads to more consumer touch-points, which creates greater name recognition, leading to real growth for your company.
So get to the point. Make sure you’re saying something worth hearing, and don’t say anything more than you have to. And watch your business get bigger when your content stays short.
