Short form content is a style of content that typically takes place in less than 1000-1200 words. This content is ideal for high level flyovers of content compared to that of an in-depth review which may cover multiple pages. Short form content is more favourable for content being shared to an audience or customers. Customers don’t want to read a 3-page report when you could share a 1000-word infographic. The most common short form content is email newsletters. As someone who shops online regularly, I receive plenty of email newsletters on a regular basis. These emails can’t be too long otherwise there is a good chance that I wont even consider reading them. This is where short form content comes in, there’s a need for short content. I find that I would rather read a short email newsletter or a quick 3-4 paragraph article over a long format newsletter. There have been companies that send out huge monthly newsletters, I don’t read these since they take too long to read. The old saying quality over quantity comes into play here since we don’t need to read a 3-page newsletter when the same information could be sent by a short series of paragraphs.
The same idea comes into play with our blog posts. I could sit here and write a small essay each week to upload to the website. But let’s be honest, I’m sure you’d much rather read a quick summary of what we learned and how we can relate that to our daily lives than us doing a deep dive into every little detail that was shared throughout the class discussions. This also comes back to the KISS method of marketing, known as Keep It Simple Stupid. Customers ultimately won’t care about your content unless you are providing something of value to them. You may be providing value with a long format piece of content but the odds of them sticking it out to find out what it is becomes low. By flat-out explaining it right away there is a better chance of them following through and clicking the link to your website.
