When crafting your next social media post, it’s essential to consider factors that will resonate with your audience. Different industries and audiences have varying preferences for content length. Generally, audiences lean towards either short-form or long-form content. Long-form content typically exceeds 900 words or three minutes in video length, while short-form content is under 900 words or three minutes long. Let’s discuss the benefits of utilizing both forms of content.
Long Form Content:
Building a Rapport
Building rapport with your audience is crucial for any business. It boosts your credibility and deepens your audience’s connection with your brand. This, in turn, allows you to better understand their preferences and deliver content that truly resonates with them.
Allotting Time to Weave Together a Great Story
Long-form content allows creators to craft a compelling story in detail. By investing time in a well-developed narrative, you can capture your audience’s interest. For example, longer videos enable your company to share its story, values and client relationships, helping to reach diverse audiences and provide a deeper insight into your business.
Allows More Keywords to be Used for SEO
Long-form content is usually very detailed and includes more thorough information and examples, providing more opportunities in searches for keywords to come up in searches. Typically, long-form content also cites other third-party resources and studies that allow visitors to deep dive into a specific subtopic. From that, it ranks for more keywords for SEO, therefore your content would be more discoverable.
Short Form Content:
Shorter Attention Spans
In recent years, attention spans have increasingly diminished. The national average attention span is 8.25 seconds, which explains why sometimes short form content is more desirable. Do you ever find yourself skipping over longer videos after a day of work because you don’t want to sit through a five-minute video? Exactly. We’ve all done it, and we will continue to do so, if our attention spans continue the trend of declining as they have been for the past several years.
Easier to Consume
Long videos can be divided into shorter segments to make them more digestible for audiences. For the trades, using brief product videos and testimonials can maintain or increase engagement. Also, creating suspense—such as teasing a product launch and following up with more details later—can keep your audience eagerly anticipating more. Highlighting key features and benefits of products in short videos or articles is another effective way to generate buzz and engage your audience.
Statistically Speaking…
According to Wired, it was found that “On platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels use videos that are often less than 30 seconds in length,” and “50 percent of TikTok users say videos longer than 60 seconds are ‘stressful’.” This statistic is incredible insightful to deciding whether or not short form content is appropriate for the type of content that you put out for your audience. It’s also important to judge your audience in order to see what kind of content they would prefer.
Overall, there are great benefits to using both long form and short form content. It’s important to weigh which type of content would benefit you and engage your audience more. This, in turn, allows your audience to see the content that is important and interesting to them. For most companies, it would most likely be in favor of them to generate a mix of long form and short form content, in order to maximize the marketing efforts that are put out. When utilizing either type of content, as long as you understand what your audience would want, from there your content will be able to thrive.
Influencer marketing has evolved from a niche strategy to a mainstream approach for brands looking to amplify their reach, engage with target audiences and drive results. Here’s how you can utilize building an effective influencer program.
Define Your Objectives
Before you dive into an influencer program, it’s crucial to establish clear objectives for your program. Are you aiming to boost brand awareness, drive sales or enhance engagement? By setting specific, measurable goals, you can tailor your influencer program to meet these objectives.
Identify Your Ideal Influencers
Finding the right influencers is key to the success of your program. Look beyond follower counts and focus on finding influencers who align with your brand values and resonate with your target audience. Consider factors such as engagement rates, types of content they post and how often they post. Micro-influencers, with their highly engaged audiences, can often provide more significant impact than those with massive followings.
Build Authentic Relationships
Influencer marketing succeeds on authenticity. Aim to build genuine relationships with influencers. Engage with them on social media, collaborate on projects and provide value beyond just monetary compensation. An authentic partnership can lead to more compelling and more credible social media posts.
Collaboration Guidelines
To ensure a smooth collaboration, establish clear guidelines for influencers. Outline your brand’s expectations, campaign goals, key messaging and content requirements. Provide influencers with the creative freedom to craft their content in a way that feels natural to their audience while aligning with your brand’s voice.
Track Results
Tracking and analyzing the performance of your influencer program is essential for continuous improvement. Use metrics such as engagement rates to gauge the effectiveness of each influencer partnership. Leverage these insights to refine your strategy and optimize campaigns.
By defining clear objectives, choosing the right influencers, fostering authentic relationships and continuously optimizing your approach, you can unlock the full potential of influencer marketing.
As the landscape of influencer marketing continues to evolve, staying adaptable and responsive to insights will ensure your program drives meaningful results.
Sonnhalter is excited to announce the release of our Birmingham Insider’s Guide! This new resource is your key to exploring the Iron City, filled with restaurants and fun activities.
Discover Birmingham’s diverse dining scene, featuring restaurants led by James Beard award-winning chefs, and immerse yourself in the city’s renowned music culture. Whether you’re hitting the golf courses or exploring local museums, our guide highlights everything you need to make the most of your trip.
Did you know that National Tradesman Day is every third Friday in September? Here’s the back story on how it became a nationally recognized holiday.
This holiday was founded in 2011 by Irwin Tool, a company that specializes in selling high quality tools. It was created in an effort to recognize and celebrate those in the trades. Every day, the hard work and importance of tradespeople goes overlooked and underappreciated. If we didn’t have plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs and carpenters, making our lives easier, our society wouldn’t function as smoothly or efficiently
So next time your sink gets clogged, or your power goes out, be sure to generously thank those who are getting you out of that problem and wish them a happy holiday this September 20.
Following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
Let’s say your company just went through the rigorous process of crafting the perfect mission and vision statements (or a combo of both which is perfectly acceptable). Or it could be your values, purpose, manifesto, or any other term that describes why you exist, what drives you, what differentiates you, or what you aim to achieve in the long term.
Now what?
Those words are often then posted on walls, websites, and communicated to employees to help remind them why they are here and where the company is headed. Then the dust settles. Has anything changed over the next few months or a year? Sadly, at times nothing meaningful has changed.
Lack of change often comes down to these reasons:
CEO and the leadership team are not leading the way. Yes, everyone in the company is responsible, but you can’t expect a bottom-up approach to have change take hold. Leadership must empower the team and lead by example.
Lack of a robust activation plan. Communicating the statements is not a plan. Just like your brand, every element of the company from manufacturing to marketing, sales, operations, and service must look at their actions and make necessary changes to align with the statements.
Having a short-term view. Change does not come fast and if it means true change, it may not be easy. The actions must be consistent and continuously applied. Your statements and the behaviors expected from them are at the root of your company’s culture and that takes patience to evolve.
A tale of two companies
A classic example of where words didn’t mean anything was the resulting debacle from a company which had values of “Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence” and further stated their mission as, “We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves….We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here.” That was Enron. Founded in 1985 and went into bankruptcy in 2001.
Alternatively, Patagonia which updated their core values in 2022 on the eve of their 50th anniversary is guided by the values of Quality, Integrity, Environmentalism, Justice, and Not being bound by convention. These are just the titles that are followed by more detailed explanations for each value (https://www.patagonia.com/core-values/)
When it’s time to update your values, mission, and vision statement, be prepared for the hard work that comes afterwards. You may end up doing more harm than good if they are simply words that makes everyone feel good in the short run. The power of these statements resides in their continual and steadfast application. Do what you say.
