Online businesses and creators are constantly trying to seek the attention of the viewers and make an impact on the audience. Short messages and posts may get you quick clicks, but they rarely make a lasting impression.
This is where long form content comes in use; it not only helps you to engage your readers but also helps brands rank higher on search engines and drive meaningful conversions. In this blog, you will learn about what long form content is, how to create long form content, and some examples of long form content. We will also have a look at the differences between short-form content and long-form content, and which is better.
Long Form Content: Meaning
Long form content includes articles, blogs, or any piece of content that is more than 1200 words. The actual meaning of long-form content varies person to person. Some people think that the content should be more than 800 words to be called long form content, while others believe that it should be more than 1800 words.
In today’s era, the attention spans of people are shrinking, and therefore, many people think that it is better to create short-form content. But in reality, short-form content does not help you in building domain authority or leaving a lasting impact on people’s minds, which long form content like blogs or articles can.
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How To Create Long Form Content?
Creating long-form content involves focus, dedication, and critical thinking. You need to conduct proper research before actually writing any content. Sometimes long form content is gated, which means that the reader has to submit his/her personal information to be able to read it. Your content should be worthy of it. Make sure that you keep in mind the following points while creating any long-form content.
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Goals and Audience
There can be two goals of any content you create: either to provide value to the audience or to meet business goals. If your goal is to provide value to the audience, then think about how you can help your readers, provide insightful information, and answer their queries. This will help you to decide the content length.
If your aim is to meet business goals, then you have to understand that it is not possible to write any content that meets every single marketing strategy, so you must choose a few that go well with your topic and audience. You need to be clear who your audience is and what they want. You are not writing just for the sake of writing. You are writing to reach a specific audience and rank on search engines.
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Focus Topic
Focus Topic tells what the content is about. To choose the right focus topic, you must consider your organisation’s industry, niche, and personality. Select a topic that relates to your organisation. Make sure that your focus topic is such that you get enough content to reach your desired word count, but don’t exaggerate it so much that it turns out to look like a novel. For example, if you are a bakery owner, then you can write about:
- The ingredients used
- The history of bread
- The baking process, etc.
Researching your Focus Topic
After you’ve decided on your focus topic and you know about your audience, it’s time you start researching. Start by finding out what your competitors have covered and, most importantly, what your audience needs. Try to figure out what questions would come to your audience’s mind and how you can answer them with your content.
The process of creating long-form content involves choosing the right topic, knowing your audience, and optimizing your content. You can create long form content for marketing, building reputation, and SEO purposes.
Writing Long Form Content
You can start writing your content once you’ve completed your research and decided on your focus topic. Go through your research and find out the best way in which you can organize your content, keeping in mind the reader’s point of view.
Structuring your content correctly is the most important step while writing any long form content. Always start with explaining the topic you’ve chosen, followed by why it’s valuable, how it works, etc.
Optimizing
You have to make sure that you use Search engine optimization techniques to get your content ranked. You must check for high-volume and low competition keywords and include them in your content to improve search visibility and increase the chances of your content reaching a wider audience.
Search Engine Optimzation is an important factor when talking about long-form content, as it helps to drive more traffic and get a better ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). You can also add internal and external links. Internal linking is done to redirect users to more of your content, whereas external linking is done to give references and improve credibility.
Why Does Long Form Content Work?
Long form content works because it gives readers real value. Long form content often provides information or knowledge related to a particular topic, which helps readers to clear their doubts and queries. It even helps in building trust and authority. If you provide well-researched and authentic information, users start trusting you, which results in them spending more time on your articles.
From the above image, it is clear that long form content gets more engagement time due to the detailed and structured information that long-form content, like an article or a blog, has. Even if we talk about backlinks and social shares (people sharing content), it is noticed that long form content (typically more than 7000 words) gets approximately 3x more backlinks and shares because they are more complete and accurate as compared to short-form content. Long form articles, which are over 3000 words, often receive 24% more shares and comparatively more backlinks as compared to articles of 900-1200 words.
Which Is Better: Short-Form Or Long Form Content?
Short-form content is a type of content that is short in length. It can be something in written format, like social media posts, emails, or in video format, like an advertisement or promotional video, like an Instagram Reel. But the length of the content remains short. Mostly, short-form content is under 1000 words, and short videos are the ones under 60 seconds. The main goal of short-term content is to get a message quickly. A short-form content can be anything like a social media post, email, infographic, news article, short blog, LinkedIn post, etc. Let’s have a look at the main reasons why short- and long form content is used.
| SHORT-FORM CONTENT | LONG FORM CONTENT |
| It is best for quick updates, announcements, social media posts, and news bites | It is better for building authority, improving SEO rankings, and educating readers |
What Are The Examples Of Long Form Content?
Long form content includes long blog posts, articles, case studies, webinars, podcasts, and every piece of content that exceeds the word count of 1200 words.
- Blog Posts or Articles: Long blog posts or articles of more than 1200 words are a type of long form content that helps in driving traffic to the website.
- Case Studies: Case studies are the real-world examples that show strategies, results, and lessons learnt, which help readers to get a real-world idea about the situation, leading to better decision-making.
- Research Papers: Research papers are another type of long form content which have original data, statistics, and analysis based on the surveys or research conducted.
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Long Form Content FAQs
Q1. What is long-form content?
Ans: Long-form content is any piece of content that is detailed, informational, and at least more than 1200 words.
Q2. Why is long-form content better for SEO?
Ans: Long-form content is better for SEO because search engines prefer in-depth, detailed, and informational articles, as they answer more user queries. Long-form content gets more backlinks, which also results in improved SEO rankings.
Q3. Is short-form content better or long-form content?
Ans: It depends on the type of content you create and the platform you use. Short-form content is best for social media posts, product announcements, or news bites, whereas long-form content is best for building trust and authority, ranking, and providing information to users.
Q4. How can I start writing long-form content?
Ans: First of all, understand your audience. Then start by choosing the right topic based on your organisation and the type of audience you have. Start writing, optimize your content for SEO, and make sure to maintain a flow throughout your content.
