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Content is the foundation of your marketing strategy. It’s essential for conveying value, generating leads, and eliciting engagement with your brand.

But the way we do content today is changing. For a long time, the answer has been long-form content. It provides more space for delivering value, and it’s great for SEO too. But short-form content is on the rise, and with good reason. Here are just some of the reasons to make shorter content part of your marketing strategy today.

Short-Form Content Is Easy to Share

Short-form content is often more shareable. It stands out from long content because it promises value with a smaller time investment. That’s appealing to readers.

People like to share content that provides value to their friends and acquaintances. Even something as simple as a funny image can get plenty of shares.

Short content that is enjoyable, valuable, and only requires a few minutes to read is exactly the sort of thing readers will want to share.

Remember, not all content is about SEO. Often, the aim is to generate more engagement and social shares. Both of these help with SEO in the long-term, of course.

But if you want to build your audience, generate more engagement, and boost your shares, short-form content might be the best way to focus your time.

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Short-Form Content Can Still Deliver Value

It’s true that a lot of high-ranking content is long-form content, but the fact is that length is not the issue here. The main issue is that longer content tends to be more valuable.

But being shorter doesn’t mean your content can’t still provide value. It just means that you need to get more creative with how you deliver it.

Check out the profitable businesses for sale on Exchange and you’ll find dozens of examples of brands that use short-form content that delivers value as the mainstay of their content strategy. Brands such as Joliegirl, who offer titles like “#HairGoals : How to Maintain Virgin Hair Perfection” in barely 600 words. It’s short, sweet, and the reader still receives value.

Be concise with your content and creative with its execution. Cut waffle and superfluous information, and strive to deliver value in every word. You might often find yourself cutting vast swathes of copy or video to get to the core of your content. It might be painful, but it pays dividends for your business.

woman working on computer on train creating short-form content

Short-Form Content Is Quicker to Create

One of the best things about short-form content is that it typically takes a lot less time to create. You know what a time-investment creating content can be. Creating a 4,000-word blog post can take days when you add up the time it takes to research, create, edit, and post it. A 500-word post, however, can be created in hours.

There’s one big problem with blogging: Maintaining consistency. As a growing business, you might simply not have the time to create long-form content on a regular basis. But a short post once a week? That’s a lot more doable.

This has a knock-on benefit. As well as helping you to be more consistent, it lets you tackle more topics in your blogs. You can create content that spans a wide variety of subjects, making it more interesting for your readers through a diverse content output.

You might want to share a quick tip or some industry news that your readers would find useful. In this case, it’s simply not worth creating a novel-length post about the topic. You could post it on social media, but your blog is your hub and it allows you to go more in-depth on a topic, even if that’s just creating a few hundred words.

Because shorter content takes less time to create, you could also schedule it more effectively. For example, you could create an editorial calendar for the months ahead, then create four posts at the start of the month and schedule in one a week. Then you can forget about your blogging for the rest of the month.

This also has a powerful benefit: It gets you into the habit of creating content. Posting to your blog becomes a part of your day. It never feels like you are constantly struggling on one post, and you get the satisfaction of publishing fresh content regularly.

woman sharing short-form content from iphone

Short-Form Content Is Engaging for Mobile Users

The world is increasingly going mobile. More and more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices, and this is an area where long-form content can suffer.

It’s entirely possible to read a 5,000-word blog on a mobile phone. But the way people use their mobiles means it is not always ideal. People might be reading on the train to work, on their lunch break, or while having a quick coffee. It’s easy to put off reading a long post in favor of a piece of content you know you’ll finish quickly.

There is more content than ever to consume, and more is created all the time. We have to be picky with what we read, so naturally short-form content can be more appealing.

People are impatient. They want value from your content, and they want it fast. They might scan the content for the good bits rather than delving in a long post to read all the details.

You might create posts that are more image-heavy or video-heavy. Infographics don’t pack in much actual content, but they are incredibly popular. These types of content provide a lot of value in a short amount of time.

There is a need out there for short content—and you can fill it.

Short-form content will only continue to soar. With such an array of benefits that save you time and generate engagement, it’s a format that you need in your strategy today.

victoria green freelance writerVictoria Greene is an ecommerce marketing expert and freelance writer who loves taking an in-depth approach to creating SEO-friendly content. You can read more of her work at her blog Victoria Ecommerce and can be reached at hello@victoriaecommerce.com