I wrote this week’s newsletter about the difference between long-form and short-form content. Aside from the number of words, the most important difference between the two is your intended audience, channel, and goals. In other words, strategic intention is critical to the success of your marketing content.
What is Intention?
I love this definition of intention.
“An intention is an idea that you plan (or intend) to carry out. If you mean something, it’s an intention. Your goal, purpose, or aim is your intention. It’s something you mean to do, whether you pull it off or not.” In other words, you can’t just publish marketing content and expect it to succeed without making an intentional plan to reach the people who will see value in it. Your lack of intention is intention. You intend failure. Let’s not do that.
Always think through what your goal for a piece of content. Who do you want to read it and what do you want them to do once they do. What is your message? How will you measure success? All of these questions, can help you establish your intentions for content. Those intentions will help you understand the strategies and tactics that will make your content successful.
The One Content Rule
No matter your intention or your content, there is one rule that will always factor into success or failure. That rule is this. It should always provide value to the audience. That means your content plan should always start with understanding your target market. You can’t provide value if you don’t know what is valuable to the intended reader.
Let’s talk about what you want your readers to feel and do when consuming your content and which channels/content is most applicable for those results.
Best Intentions for Short-Form Content
Generally speaking, if you want to generate a first impression, initial awareness, or quick real-time engagement, short form content is more effective. Use short form content to promote a sale or discount, generate new leads, drive traffic to your blog, website or some other form of long-form content, and create a quick buzz about an event or promotion. The channels to use include your social media channels, email, text messaging, and landing pages on your website. The intent of short form marketing content is to quickly communicate key messages, build brand recognition and create initial engagement with your audience, laying the groundwork for deeper engagement and conversion in the future.
You can measure these intentions through several KPIs including social media impressions, video views, link clicks, and engagement rates. You can also track web traffic clicks, downloads, and contact form submissions.
Best Intentions for Long-Form Content
Long-form content usually requires a higher level of investment and attention from your audience, and hopefully results in deeper engagement and retention of your message. The intent of long-form content is often to provide in-depth and valuable information on a specific topic that is important to your audience. I use long-form content to educate an audience, build a consistent brand identity, establish thought leadership, and rank for SEO. CTAs on long-form content can include schedule a demonstration, call for more information, download another piece of content, subscribe to a newsletter, or make a purchase.
Intentions matter. It’s not enough to just produce great content. You must create a strategy behind every piece based on solid thinking around your goals and audience. I’d love to help you build an effective content marketing strategy for your business. Call me today and let’s get started.
