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Thought leadership white papers, research reports, surveys and other long-form copy were for years the mainstay of firms’ content marketing efforts. But with humans’ attention span apparently cratering, is shorter, faster-to-read, easily digestible content the way forward?
While waiting to recover after donating blood the other evening, I got talking to a fellow donor who mentioned humans now have shorter attention spans than goldfish.
I looked it up (after first getting distracted by the sports results).
The claim seems to originate from a 2015 Microsoft study. It found people’s average attention span dropped from 12 seconds at the turn of the millennium to eight seconds – below even the nine seconds attributed to goldfish.
The exact concentration time has been disputed. What does seem clear is that attention spans have been shrinking over the last couple of decades. Our increasingly digitalised world cops the blame, with Northeastern University professor Art Kramer noting that the plethora of ready distractions allows us to quickly shift our attention from one task to something else.
All of which would suggest that in an attention constrained world, marketers would be better off dispensing with long-form content and concentrating their efforts on short content snippets.
Content length and marketing performance are correlated
The evidence indicates something else though.
The latest annual Content Marketing Institute B2B Content Marketing report found marketers primarily use short articles and posts, followed by videos. Only half use e-books/white papers and around a third create research reports.
Yet respondents’ e-books/white papers and research reports were the joint-third most effective types of content, after videos and case studies/customer stories.
Orbit Media’s Annual Blogger Survey reported similar results. Just a tenth of respondents write 2000 to 3000 word blogs on a regular basis, and 3% write 3000+ word blogs. Yet bloggers who write longer posts of 2000+ words tend to get better results. They perform better in search and, by having more space to delve into ideas and provide true thought leadership, create more value and reader engagement.
That message appears to be getting through. Research from global creator agency Billion Dollar Boy found long-form content – be it in video, podcast or written form – is seeing a resurgence: over two-thirds (68%) of marketers increased production of it in the previous 12 months, while 70% plan to do so over the next year.
Embrace long-form and short-form content
Indeed, digital media guru Gary Vaynerchuk contended on a recent Ryan Holiday podcast that attention spans aren’t shrinking. Distribution has allowed for the contrary, he said, giving merit to both short- and long-form content in a way traditional media consumption didn’t.
“I think they [information consumers] have optionality on short-form consumption that didn’t exist prior,” he said. “But, in fact, I’ll argue the counter: people are binge-watching eight hours of a Netflix, YouTube show. Some of my vlogs can run very long. I actually think we have more optionality.”
So while there are a lot of ways to provide value in short skits and moments, they are not profound philosophical ideas, which take time to think through and need long-form embodiment, he contended.
“Just because attention might be moving somewhere, doesn’t mean the old medium is gone. The question becomes are you capable of producing within that environment?”
Content impact depends on message and delivery
Length is less important than the way the content message is delivered. As ever, reader engagement comes down to having an interesting topic discussed in a well-written way and presented appealingly.
That means focusing on a single, useful suggestion or idea (the central message, or what advertising legend David Ogilvy called “the Big Idea”), and conveying it clearly.
Employing lots of white space and dynamic graphics can also help with readability.
Once you have what one of my clients calls the “hero” piece – a white paper, survey, research report, etc. – you can repurpose it into multiple pieces of spin-off content in different formats to address specific elements or questions, such as a blog, vlog, podcast or infographic. Those will then appeal to people’s different consumption preferences and maximise the content’s impact.
Ultimately, clients and prospects still want knowledge and insights. Just deliver them the right way.