Are you torn between using long-form or short-form videos for your small business marketing campaign? Well, you are not alone. Despite 89% of consumers wanting to see more brand videos, there is no one-size-fits-all answer about the ideal video length.

However, this should not deter you from creating an effective video strategy. In 2023, people watched an average of 17 videos per day, highlighting the influence of video content in today’s digital landscape.

Both short-form and long-form videos offer unique advantages and come with their set of challenges. Join me as I uncover the benefits and limitations of each video format to help you make informed marketing decisions.

What are Short-Form Videos?

Short videos typically range from 30 seconds to less than 10 minutes long. They are popular on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube.

Short-form videos deliver brief yet engaging messages that quickly capture the viewer’s attention. Here are some popular types of short-form video content.

• TikTok Challenges
• Instagram Reels
• Snapchat Stories
• YouTube Shorts
• Twitter Video Ads

Benefits of Short-Form Videos

A previously cited report shows that 39% of marketers find short-form videos, ranging from 30-60 seconds long, more successful. The same study reports that 44% of customers prefer watching a short video to learn about a brand’s offerings.

So, it is evident that short-form videos have their benefits. Let’s take a closer look at some of them.

Attention-Grabbing 

Short-form videos capture attention quickly, making them ideal for the fast-scrolling nature of social media platforms. Your audience is more likely to watch them in their entirety compared to longer content.

Cost-Effective Production 

Creating short-form videos requires less time and resources compared to longer videos. As a small business owner with a limited budget, using short-form videos can be cost-effective. 

Increased Engagement

Short-form videos engage viewers due to their crisp and concise nature. This results in more likes, comments, and shares that boost your content’s visibility and increase brand awareness. 

Integrating short-form videos into your influencer marketing campaigns can further amplify your reach to new and diverse audiences. 

Highly Shareable

Short videos are highly shareable. This makes it more likely for your viewers to share them, increasing their virality. 

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

Leverage the tools and channels to predictably and profitably drive awareness, leads, sales, and referrals—EVERYTHING you need to know to become a true master of digital marketing.​ Click Here

There are multiple benefits of adding video to your website including increased engagement, improved SEO, and enhanced user experience.

Limitations of Short-Form Videos

While short-form videos offer many advantages in content marketing, they also present some challenges.

Limited Message Depth

Due to their brief duration, short-form videos may struggle to convey complex or detailed messages. Longer videos might be more suitable if you need to communicate intricate information.

Competition for Attention

Standing out on platforms flooded with short-form video content can be challenging. You must create content that stands out to avoid becoming lost in the sea of other videos.

Shorter Lifespan 

Short videos may lose their relevance with time. They can quickly get buried in users’ feeds, leading to a shorter visibility and engagement period than longer, evergreen content. 

This means you must consistently create short-form videos to maintain audience interest over time.

Limited SEO Impact

Short-form videos may be more challenging to optimize for search engines than longer, more keyword-rich content. This can affect the discoverability of your content outside the social media scene.

What are Long-Form Videos?

Long-form videos are typically longer, ranging from a few minutes to several hours. They extend beyond a few minutes to several hours, providing ample time for in-depth topic exploration and detailed content. 

These videos are particularly suitable for educational content, product demonstrations, and narrative-driven storytelling. Long-form videos are common on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Common types of long-form video content include:

• YouTube Series
• Webinars
• Educational Tutorials and Courses:
• Behind-the-Scenes Content 
• Interviews and Conversations

Advantages of Long-Form Videos

Long-form video content is the fastest-growing segment, with videos above 30 minutes experiencing tremendous growth over the years. Let’s explore some of the benefits behind this growth.

Establishes Expertise and Credibility

Long-form videos allow you to provide in-depth information about various subjects, establishing your brand as an authority. Potential customers will likely trust and rely on your insights when you consistently deliver valuable content.

Builds Strong Audience Connections 

The more your audience watches your videos, the more they become familiar with your content and brand. This consistent engagement promotes trust and loyalty, helping you create deeper connections with your audience.

Provide SEO Optimization Opportunities

Long-form videos keep your audience engaged for a longer duration than short ones. This signals search engines that your content provides value, resulting in higher rankings and increased visibility. 

Besides, these videos provide opportunities to optimize for relevant keywords. This Attrock guide offers more insights into the value of SEO for your small business. 

They Are Sustainable

Unlike short videos, well-produced and valuable long-form videos have an extended shelf life. They can continue to attract views and engagement over an extended period, contributing to a sustainable content strategy.

Instagram reels are also a part of short videos and you can get benefits from this platform by integrating it with your website. You can learn how to embed Instagram Reels on websites and get extra benefits from your Reels.

Drawbacks of Long-Form Videos

Despite their benefits, long-form videos also have certain limitations, including:

Attention Span Challenges

Between distractions, juggling tasks, and information overload, user attention span quickly diminishes. Viewers may lose interest and disengage from your long video before its conclusion.

Are You Ready to Master Social Media?

Become a Certified Social Media Specialist and learn the newest strategies (by social platform) to draw organic traffic to your social media sites.

Click here

Complex Production Process

Creating high-quality long-form videos requires more resources, including time, equipment, and skilled personnel. This can be disadvantageous, especially for small businesses with limited budgets.

Platform Limitations

Some social media platforms and video hosting sites may limit video length, making it challenging to distribute long-form video content. You may then be forced to repurpose your content to suit various platforms. 

Short-Form or Long-Form Videos: Which Are Better?

Now that you know the benefits and limitations of each format, which one should you choose? Short-form or long-form videos?

Well, it all boils down to considering several factors, such as: 

Content Objectives

What do you want to achieve from your video marketing campaign? Short-form videos are highly effective for quick brand exposure and generating buzz. Long-form videos, on the other hand, contribute to a more in-depth understanding of the brand.

Target Audience Preferences

Audiences with short attention spans likely prefer short-form videos, while long-form videos appeal to those seeking a more immersive experience.

Similarly, short-form videos may appeal more to younger audiences, while older demographics may prefer the depth of long-form content.

Platform Dynamics

Various platforms support different content formats. Short-form videos are well-suited for platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. On the other hand, platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are better for hosting longer videos.

Industry Type

Short-form videos would be ideal if your industry thrives on trends, entertainment, and quick messages. However, long-form videos are effective for industries requiring in-depth explanations or educational content.

Bottom Line 

Ultimately, choosing short-form or long-form videos depends on your business’s specific needs and goals. Since both formats have advantages and limitations, making a choice may prove difficult. 

However, it doesn’t have to be an uphill task. The key lies in recognizing when to incorporate each video format into your marketing strategy. Understanding your audience and its needs allows you to combine both formats strategically, maximizing the benefits of each. 

Continuously analyze performance metrics and adapt your video marketing strategy accordingly to ensure optimal engagement and conversion rates.

The post Navigating the Video Marketing Maze: Short-Form vs. Long-Form appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you probably remember reading at least one article saying that our attention spans are down to a “mere 8 seconds” — or “less than a goldfish”.

While it sounds catchy, it’s not that simple. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and get swept up in the clickbaity narrative, but the research on human attention spans isn’t so clear cut. 

In fact, some scientific studies seem to point in the completely opposite direction — humans have an enormous capacity for attention. 

Our Problem is Not Attention — it’s Distraction 

The core issue isn’t a lack of attention — it’s the multitude of distractions competing for our focus. The modern consumer’s attention hasn’t become scarcer, it’s just spread thinner.

The growing popularity of platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts may give the impression that our attention span is declining. But the real issue is that we’re increasingly having to navigate a sea of rapid-fire, bite-sized, infinity well content that is algorithmically engineered to hook our interest.

You’ve Been Taught SEO ALL WRONG

Become a Certified Search Marketing Specialist and Start Boosting Your Sales by Attracting and Converting Your Ideal Leads Everywhere They Are.

Click here

In this environment, the challenge for brands and marketers isn’t simply to capture attention, but to hold it — and use narratives that rise above the clamor as an antidote to distraction.

Long-form Content isn’t Going Away

There’s a wealth of evidence suggesting that long-form content is not only surviving but thriving. 

Long-form articles are one example. They typically outrank shorter counterparts and are frequently rewarded with more social shares and links. This indicates that audiences are engaging with it, valuing it, and sharing it within their networks.

Podcasts, too, are more popular than ever with Australia leading the charge, recently having overtaken the US as the world’s biggest podcast-listening nation. Lengthy, detailed discussions are in our earbuds, consumed on our commutes and during our lunch breaks. This content isn’t bite-sized — it’s substantial, and its popularity is growing.

Anecdotal evidence further demonstrates this point. Look at the typical American viewer who is perfectly capable of devouring half a season of their favorite TV show in a single day. In a way, our binge-watching culture itself dispels the myth of an 8-second attention span.

Measuring Brand Engagement in Hours, not Minutes

When it comes to brand engagement, the playing field between long-form and short-form content isn’t level. Let’s compare a 30-second TikTok with an hour-long branded podcast: 

• A branded TikTok video of 30 seconds duration, with 10,000 views, and an average video completion rate of 62% creates 52 hours of consumer engagement.
• A branded podcast of 30 minutes duration, with 1,000 listens, and an average episode completion rate of 75% creates 378 hours of consumer engagement.

So at a macro level, effectively executed long-form content will generate exponentially more engagement than short-form content (and often, it can achieve these results at a fraction of the cost).

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

Leverage the tools and channels to predictably and profitably drive awareness, leads, sales, and referrals—EVERYTHING you need to know to become a true master of digital marketing.​ Click Here

Let’s delve deeper into the data. We recently analyzed over 4.5 million consumed minutes of podcast performance data from 6 years of our client podcasts. We found that:

• The average completion rate of long-form branded podcast content was 75.54%
• The average listen duration per session was 22 minutes and 26 seconds

That’s 22 minutes of brand engagement at a time, per consumer, per listening session. It’s incredible when you compare that to producing some 20-second TikToks. And it’s much more brand depth than a 30 or 60-second ad spot on radio/TVC/pre-roll/etc.

Of course, short-form video and advertising have their place. These channels are great for generating awareness and reach, or even as a way to remind customers about your brand.

But for generating true engagement with your fans and customers, well-crafted long-form content reigns supreme.

The Secret Lies in Telling Compelling Stories

The truth is, people are capable of focusing intently on one thing for extended periods. But you have to craft something that is engaging and meaningful. 

For long-form content, great storytelling isn’t just an advantage — it’s a prerequisite.

I’ve seen first-hand that storytelling isn’t an innate skill for many brands; it’s an art that must be nurtured and developed. Creating content that not only draws in an audience, but also maintains their interest, involves understanding the audience’s wants and needs, the narrative structure, and weaving a compelling brand message into the medium.

Become a Certified Community Specialist

Learn how to develop meaningful relationships with your customers and automate the customer acquisition process.

Click here

That’s why when we work with a brand to launch and produce their podcast, we put extra effort into helping them unlock their storytelling potential. It takes time to learn how to craft narratives that don’t just sell a product or service, but instead build a meaningful connection with your customers and fans. 

When done right, great storytelling has the power to truly captivate an audience and transform brand-customer relationships. And nothing does this better than well-crafted long-form content?

The post Attention Spans are Shrinking, but Long-form Content Still Rules — What’s the Catch? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

As a marketing mogul, you’re probably no stranger to the importance of creating content that stands out and keeps your reader hooked. However, brainstorming ideas, crafting and editing content, and promoting it can be time consuming, overwhelming, and let’s face it: you’d rather outsource it or, at the very least, get some help. 

You may have heard of it (in reality, who hasn’t?), but let me reacquaint you with ChatGPT, everyone’s new favorite AI-powered content marketing assistant. 

How ChatGPT Works 

If you know me well enough (and if you’ve started to follow me on LinkedIn), you’ve seen me talk about ChatGPT like it’s Jarvis to Tony Stark—because, hey, it really is! 

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, uses machine learning algorithms to produce human-like text based on your prompts. It’s a game-changer for anyone creating some form of content. Just input a prompt and let ChatGPT work its magic! 

How to Maximize ChatGPT for Content Marketing 

But, like every other tool, not everyone fully understands or grasps exactly how to use it—which is why most of the time, a lot of business owners tend to give up and question why people rave about this tool so much. 

Well, take this as your Crash Course to ChatGPT  

6 Strategic Ways to Effectively Integrate AI Into Your Marketing Strategy: 

1. Identify Your Objectives  

Be clear about what you hope to achieve with ChatGPT – maybe you’re aiming for increased website traffic or social media engagement. 

Whatever it is, you need to be crystal clear about WHY you want to use ChatGPT in the first place. This’ll help you figure out what prompts to use and what type of content you’d like it to help you write. 

(Key term here is: help) 

2. Decide the Type of Content You Want to Create 

Whether it’s blog posts, social media captions, email newsletters, or video scripts, ChatGPT has got your back. Looking to captivate readers? ChatGPT generates brilliant ideas for engaging articles. (goodbye writer’s block) 

Need attention-grabbing captions? ChatGPT whips up creative wording that stops the scroll. (as long as you know what prompts to give it ) Eager to connect with subscribers? ChatGPT crafts persuasive subject lines and captivating content. 

Dreaming of visually stunning videos? ChatGPT can help you write scripts with compelling narratives and outlines captivating scenes. 

3. Set Up a Schedule for Using ChatGPT 

Plan how often you want to employ the tool in your workflow. Take control of your content creation process by setting up a schedule that works for you.  Determine the frequency of how often (or seldom) you plan to use it and integrate it seamlessly into your workflow. 

4. Experiment with Various Prompts & Settings  

ChatGPT is flexible and customizable, so don’t hesitate to test different prompts and see what brings the best results. I always tell my readers and clients: review, revise, and refine. This doesn’t just go for the content you actually write, but it also applies to the prompts you give ChatGPT.  

5. Monitor & Track Your Results  

Don’t just create content and hope for the best, take charge and monitor your results like a boss.  AKA – stop “winging it”. Your insights will serve as your content marketing compass to show you if the content you’re putting out there is working or not. 

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

Leverage the tools and channels to predictably and profitably drive awareness, leads, sales, and referrals—EVERYTHING you need to know to become a true master of digital marketing.​ Click Here

Utilize powerful tools like Google Analytics to track and measure the impact of your ChatGPT-assisted content. Stay informed, make data-driven decisions, and watch your success skyrocket.  

6. Integrate ChatGPT Into Your Overall Marketing Strategy

Aim to make ChatGPT a core part of your comprehensive marketing plan—aka, turn it into your very own Virtual Writing Assistant. You can still have copywriters and editors and integrate ChatGPT as one of the steps in crafting your content. 

Always remember: ChatGPT + Human Element = GOLD. 

Prompting ChatGPT the Right Way  

It gets more exciting, because here are 6 types of prompts you can use to leverage ChatGPT in your content marketing, complete with detailed prompts and breakdowns  

1. Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas 

Engage ChatGPT in a brainstorming session to come up with blog post ideas. This can save you hours of guessing what to write about next (writer’s block is a normal thing, and I totally get it. When you write for a living, your creative juices run out eventually. This is where ChatGPT can definitely help!) 

ChatGPT prompt: “Generate 10 blog post ideas about digital marketing trends in 2023.” 

2. Craft Compelling Social Media Posts 

Of course, ChatGPT can help you draft your posts. (if it can help with blog posts, why not social media captions too, right?) Some additional tips: make sure you specify what platform you’re writing it for. You can even throw in the tone of voice, as well as the word count you’re aiming for.  

ChatGPT isn’t perfect, and sometimes it won’t nail these things on the first try. This is why I highly recommend being patient and going through the iterative process to eventually nail your post. 

ChatGPT prompt: “Write a LinkedIn post introducing our new online course for small business owners. Here is landing page for the course: [Add your link here]” 

3. Develop Email Marketing Campaigns 

ChatGPT can help you develop email marketing campaigns, from creating engaging subject lines to drafting the body of the email. While the prompt below isn’t as specific as you’d like it to be, you can definitely experiment and add more details.  

And if you really want to amplify your email marketing, you can use other tools in your arsenal like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, which could help you craft catchy email subject headers to boot. 

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

Leverage the tools and channels to predictably and profitably drive awareness, leads, sales, and referrals—EVERYTHING you need to know to become a true master of digital marketing.​ Click Here

ChatGPT prompt: “Draft an email announcing a flash sale on our new product. Get details about the product here: [Add your link here]” 

4. Script Video Content 

If video content is part of your marketing strategy, ChatGPT can help write scripts or create outlines for your video content. You can also include how long your video is going to be and add an outline of what you’d like to talk about.  Again, specificity is KEY The clearer you are with your prompts, the better ChatGPT’s outputs are going to be. 

ChatGPT prompt: “Create an outline for a YouTube video on how to use our product. Here as some steps to consider: [Add your steps here]” 

5. Write Out Content for Landing Pages & Sales Pages 

You can also employ ChatGPT’s assistance to generate compelling copy for your landing pages and sales pages, improving conversion rates. 

If the product or service you’re selling deals with a lot of information (say, you’re writing a sales page for a health supplement), bear in mind that the free version of ChatGPT’s knowledge base only goes as far as September 2021. Make sure you double check the details you’re including on your landing page so that you feed readers and potential buyers accurate info! 

ChatGPT prompt: “Write a persuasive landing page copy for our new e-book. Here are the topics discussed in the ebook: [Add in details here]”

6. Churn Out Ideas for Video Scripts & Outlines 

Like I said, as creatives and marketers, we can only churn out enough ideas for content—and that includes video. If you’re leveraging video content in your marketing, ChatGPT can generate ideas for video scripts and outlines, saving you precious brainstorming time. 

ChatGPT prompt: “Generate 10 different ideas for a video script about the benefits of our service. Here is my website: [Add your website here]” 

These 12 ChatGPT tips are literally just the tip of the iceberg. The more you use ChatGPT, the more you’ll discover how you can leverage its power and use it to boost your content marketing strategy. 

The number 1 tip I could leave you is this: The key to unlocking ChatGPT’s full potential is by being clear and specific in your prompts. The more precise you are, the better the output! 

Ready to level up your content strategy with AI?  

Stay in the know and never miss out on the latest AI-driven tips, trends, and strategies in the world of content marketing. Join my newsletter, Dopamine Dose, and get ahead of the game with artificial intelligence. Subscribe here. 

The post 12 ChatGPT Tips to Boost Your Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

The distinction between content marketing and content strategy is subtle because the two concepts work together. Once you figure it out, you can use them as the one-two punch to help grow your brand. 

This post explains content marketing and content strategy and gives advice for using both to benefit your business.

The Difference Between Content Marketing vs. Content Strategy

Content strategy is your master plan to drive business goals with content. It focuses on the big-picture tasks that help you meet your customers’ needs and achieve your business objectives.

Content marketing is a group of tactics or activities you use to enact your content strategy. It’s the creation and distribution of content that helps your audience solve problems and lead better lives. Even though you may not actively try to sell with all content marketing, the free information you provide will eventually help you attract and convert your target audience to drive business growth.

The objectives, approaches, and outcomes differ for content strategy vs. content marketing. 

Objectives

Content strategy seeks to document the role content will play in your business goals. It gives content marketing efforts direction, cohesion, and meaning. 

Content marketing revolves around creating brand awareness, generating leads, and capturing demand by transforming ideas into content assets and sharing them.

Approaches

Content marketing assembles your marketing resources to create and distribute content assets across relevant channels to build a brand’s presence. It also includes measuring data to alter content campaigns where necessary.

Content strategists determine the content marketing tactics will be most meaningful for your business objectives. They handle all the backend of content from pre-production (like research, content audit, and content guidelines) to production (like content creation, distribution processes, and tools) and post-production (promotion, evaluation, and analysis).

Outcomes

Content marketing leads to increased brand traffic, authority, trust, lead generation, conversion, and loyalty.

Content strategy produces content marketing systems that position a brand as the solution to customers’ needs.

How Content Strategy and Content Marketing Intersect

Despite being different, content strategy and content marketing work together. They are two sides of the same coin.

Strategy is the Foundation for Marketing Practices

Content strategy helps you decide why and how you want to create content. So, content marketing success depends on your strategy.

Content marketing is the process of putting your content strategy to work. It’s creating, distributing, and measuring the success of the content according to the content strategy. So, your content marketing efforts rely on your content strategy to achieve your business goals.

Neither Can Stand Alone

As marketing expert Amanda Milligan said, “Don’t try marketing without strategy; don’t bother strategizing without marketing.” What’s the point in making plans if you don’t implement them? And how can you succeed with your marketing efforts if you don’t have a plan? Strategy and implementation go hand in hand.

After Strategy, Marketing Begins

If content marketing is the act of preparing a meal, the content strategy would be all the decisions you make before the actual cooking. What are you going to cook? What ingredients will you use? Where will you cook it, and how will you serve it?

Once you determine what to do, when, where, and how to do it during content strategy, you can bring the vision to life in the form of content.

Benefits of Content Strategy

Content strategy is critical because it lays out your content game plan. Without strategy, you’re wasting time and effort producing content and hoping it works. So, it’s almost an accident if your content works well for your brand without strategy. Here are some other benefits of content strategy.

Creates a Unified Brand Voice

Your brand voice must be consistent across all your marketing channels if you want your brand to stand out in a crowded market. A good content strategy will make sure of it.

Studying your brand story, personality, and style guide will help you define a consistent voice for your content marketing team, so your brand doesn’t sound too inconsistent on any content channel.

Increases Efficiency

A documented strategy streamlines your content operations to keep you from wasting time and resources figuring things out. That’s because it puts systems in place to guide your production and distribution, allowing you to complete tasks faster and within budget.

Content marketing has so many moving parts that leaving anything to chance is a mistake. Your content strategy should state what the content is (title and format), who’s responsible for what, where to store your content, and where to publish it.

Maps a Clear Path to Success

A good content strategy defines what you’re trying to achieve and the metrics to track to measure success. When this is clear, you can prioritize your activities accordingly. And you can measure what’s working and what’s not to keep your content relevant to your audience and helpful to your business goals.

Establishes Content Intent

Creating content will waste your time and resources if you don’t have a purpose that ties it to your business goals. Each content asset should take a prospect further down your marketing funnel. Anything short of that is creating content for content’s sake, and the best you can get out of it will be vanity metrics that don’t help your business. Establishing a purpose for your content is the essence of content strategy.

Benefits of Content Marketing

Your customers don’t know when they see your content strategy in action, but they see your content marketing. It answers their questions and makes them consider doing business with you. Here are some other benefits of content marketing.

Drives Engagement

Customers engage with content they find valuable. The more content you share, the better your chances of keeping them on your platforms long enough to like, comment, and share your content with friends.

Increases Brand Awareness

By distributing valuable content, you’re making it easier for your target audience to find your brand and buy from you. Without brand awareness, people can’t even consider your products or services.

Builds a Relationship with Your Audience

If the information you share helps your audience live better, they’ll naturally grow fond of and want to continue using your brand. And because your value systems will shine through, the content you share and help you build stronger relationships with the right customers. As your relationship develops, these people will become advocates for your brand and recommend it to others.

Instills Credibility

Consumers and search engines will grow to trust you when your content demonstrates your thought leadership, expertise, and authority. Backlinks and mentions from other brands will also serve as a vote of confidence for your brand. Credibility attracts more positive attention to your brand.

Leads to Customer Acquisition

Turning your content marketing beneficiaries into customers is the goal. When they see how much value you’re giving away for free, they can only imagine how helpful you will be when they pay for your products or services. This value will increase their chances of becoming your customers.

If you don’t know where to start, look at the latest trends in content marketing and see if any are a good fit for your business.

Best Practices for Implementing Content Marketing and Content Strategy

There’s no one way to create and implement content strategy or marketing. Strategy depends on your business and its goals. Content marketing depends on your audience’s needs and your creativity. While there’s no one approach to either, there are best practices for each.

Gather Audience Information

Content-market fit is when your content satisfies or exceeds your audience’s needs. Every business wants this, but those who achieve it do so only because they know their audience well enough to tailor their content to their specific situations.

To create valuable content, you need to know the people you serve by:

• Demographics (age, education level, gender identity, education level, etc.)
• Psychographics (interests, beliefs, values, etc.)
• Goals and pain points
• Where they gather online
• What they’re trying to do when they go online (also known as search intent)

The more information you have, the better your ability to create an ideal profile or buyer persona to guide your marketing efforts. You really can’t know too much about your ideal audience.

To gather the most accurate audience data:

• Identify the people who need your products and services.
• Survey your current customers.
• Review your competitors’ clients.
• Use online data tools like Facebook audience insights or SEMRush.

Approaching every piece of content strategy or marketing effort with a clear picture of your ideal buyer in mind will help you tailor your content to their specific needs.

Set Clear Goals

Setting clear content goals helps you define what success means for your content marketing efforts. Apart from allowing you to align your actions toward success, setting clear goals also lets you measure the effects of your efforts.

Are You Ready to Master Social Media?

Become a Certified Social Media Specialist and learn the newest strategies (by social platform) to draw organic traffic to your social media sites.

Click here

For example, if you want to drive traffic to your website to increase brand awareness, analyzing the difference in your weekly or monthly website visits and what posts are bringing in the most traffic will help you measure the impact of your efforts. You can do more of what works.

Setting clear goals for your content marketing will enhance your goals for individual content assets. 

To set clear, more achievable content goals:

• Understand the overall goals of the business and the part content can play in reaching them.
• Audit your content activities to understand how far you are from achieving those goals.
• Identify the resources you need to achieve those content goals.
• Put numbers and timeframes to your goals (e.g., increasing website traffic by 25% in the next year).

Develop Processes

Content marketing requires a sense of organization. Keyword research, content creation, and distribution are just a few of the routine tasks. You’ll need to create workflows to coordinate the many moving parts if you don’t want things to fall through the cracks.

Content calendars help marketers of all experience levels to coordinate their content operations. Creating one will make you more productive and efficient. If you’re looking for a place to start, there are a host of online tools to help, ranging from Google Sheets, where you build your own calendar, to Coschedule, where you use a template.

Create a content calendar by:

• Listing your content ideas
• Determining the content formats
• Documenting your publishing and distribution frequency to schedule the ideas

Create Quality Content

Quality content is your ticket to a successful content marketing campaign. Your audience is busy, so they’ll be more impatient with wishy-washy content. They won’t stick around long enough to buy from you or exchange their contact information if your content doesn’t draw them in.

To create content that resonates with your audience:

• Focus on Originality. Most of the content online is a bunch of recycled information. Original content approaches the topic in new and unique ways. Your content will stand out by researching an issue in your industry, sharing your personal experiences, or adding fresh insight to what exists.
• Repurpose Existing Content. Repurposing helps you maximize the value of the content you already created. For example, you can turn audio or video content into a blog post, social media posts, or an infographic. Repurposing helps your content work for you on multiple platforms.
• Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC). User-generated content is gathering customers’ feedback and reviews and sharing them with your audience. UGC resonates because other customers often regard the opinions of their peers above brand messages.
• Utilize Data and Analytics. Data helps you analyze audience behavior to better understand the type of content they want and need, how they want it, and when. Use analytics to inform your content decisions from strategy to post-publication. 
• Be Flexible. Working with content means being ready to adjust your plans as often as necessary. Audiences and their needs change, so you must be ready to pivot with them.

Content Marketing vs. Content Strategy

Content Marketing and Content Strategy are connected, but they aren’t the same. You need content strategy as the blueprint to serve your customers and content marketing to execute your strategy. Using both well will help you build a well-oiled content engine that will serve your audience and your business now and for years to come.

The post Content Marketing vs. Content Strategy: What’s the Difference? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Creating niche content is something all brands should do in order to catch their audience at various stages of their buying cycles.

Content diversifies your rankings, builds your brand’s recognizability, and helps create more conversion funnels throughout the site.

But there’s one huge problem with publishing new content on your site: Time.

Few brands can afford writing teams, and relying on freelancers brings in new risks like inconsistency in voice and lower quality.

How to teach your in-house writers to create more content faster and more productively?

Here are a few tips:

Stop Agonizing About Word Count

Somehow “long-form” content became the best content creation tactic at some point. Just about any content strategy started evolving around “the more words the better”, and writers became stressed with producing 4000-word articles.

This slows down the process a lot.

Are You Ready to Master Social Media?

Become a Certified Social Media Specialist and learn the newest strategies (by social platform) to draw organic traffic to your social media sites.

Click here

Don’t get me wrong, some content topics do require lots of words to cover. But these are very few topics.

When you need to address a popular question on your site, get to the point quickly. If you think about it, people looking for answers online, don’t need your long intros and definitions. They need an answer.

Stop demanding long-form articles from your team. All you need is to ensure your content serves the user right. Encourage your team to search for every search query they are tasked to target, and read a few high-ranking articles. Chances are, those articles will be very well-focused to provide value right away.

Word count is not one of SEO priorities, as confirmed by Google. How well your content addresses the readers’ needs is.

Make Good Use of Artificial Intelligence

I don’t recommend using ChatGPT (or similar AI-driven tools) to write content for you. While the AI-generated content may sound fine and even be useful, it lacks voice and expertise. It is also detectable.

And yet, AI tools can greatly improve the productivity of your writing team if they:

• Prompt a tool to create an outline for your future article
• Ask it to create takeaways for your written articles
• Prompt it to suggest popular questions to cover
• Ask it to write an introduction or a summary to your article
• Prompt it to suggest related keywords or concepts to cover, 
• Ask it to proofread your article and suggest improvements,
• Prompt the tool to optimize your content for search engines, 
• Ask it to compare your article to high-ranking competitors, 
• Prompt it to suggest related Q&A, etc.

There are also lots of interesting integrations for ChatGPT that will be helpful for writers. For example, Text Optimizer generates semantically-optimized answer to any question you type:

Steal Your Competitors’ Ideas

Looking at what your competitors are doing is a great way to understand what’s working. Like I suggested earlier, make sure you or your team actually searches for your target keywords and read some of the content that’s ranking on top of Google. 

This will give you an idea of what your content should look like and how to make more productive and focused decisions when writing yours. WebCEO allows you to analyze your competitors’ content and creates a detailed keyword map informing you where your article is probably missing. This makes your team’s job much as easier as they write and optimize their articles:

Based on your blogging platform, there may be more ways to ensure your content is as well optimized as your competitors’.

Share A Commentary

Don’t believe the myth that you can’t cite articles published elsewhere. Nothing can be further from the truth. Just keep in mind that if you reference an article, you need to accompany it with your own opinion or commentary.

Example: Forbes writes an interesting article related to the uptick in millennials in your industry. You copy and paste a large statistical finding and explanation from the article into a blog post. 

This content takes up the majority of space you would normally fill yourself. Essential to the success of the article, however, is that you then write your opinion regarding the information that you referenced. Tell us why you think the article is correct, incorrect, or perhaps reference your own statistic as a comparison.

Create Seasonal Content

The yearly calendar provides ample opportunities for seasonal content creation inspiration. Between the numerous holidays, people celebrate and the seasons themselves, you can easily increase sales using creative content marketing.

Are You Ready to Master Social Media?

Become a Certified Social Media Specialist and learn the newest strategies (by social platform) to draw organic traffic to your social media sites.

Click here

For example:

• Focus content on the holiday spirit
• Tie holidays back to your products, services, or markets
• Cover local holiday events

Try putting together pieces focused on these calendar-related areas:

The change of seasons – Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall

Popular Holidays

• New Year’s Day (January 1)
• Valentine’s Day (February 14)
• Daylight Savings Time Starts (March 13)
• April Fool’s Day (April 1)
• Mother’s Day (Second Sunday in May)
• Father’s Day (Second to last Sunday in June)
• American Independence Day (July 4)
• Women’s Equality Day (August 26)
• Labor Day (First Monday in September)
• Halloween (October 31)
• Thanksgiving (Last Thursday in November)
• Winter holiday round-up (Last week in November)

Wacky Holidays

• Trivia Day (January 4)
• Send a Card to a Friend Day (February 7)
• Old Stuff Day (March 2)
• International Moment of Laughter Day (April 14)
• National Chicken Dance Day (May 14)
• World Environment Day (June 5)
• Embrace Your Geekiness Day (July 13)
• International Left-handers Day (August 13)
• National Good Neighbor Day (September 28)
• World Vegetarian Day (October 1)
• World Kindness Day (November 13)
• National Cookie Day (December 4)

The following year, make sure to look back at your past seasonal content and update it for the next upcoming season. It’s not about always creating new content, it is also surfacing your old content. This saves lots of time!

To make this tactic even more productive, use one of the WordPress calendars to easier plan your seasonal content. Some of the WordPress alternatives have editorial calendars built-in.

Content creation requires a lot of time and effort but the more you experiment with topics, the faster you produce successful content. This skill won’t come quickly. Steal the above ideas to create content quicker!

The post Time-Saving Effective Content Creation Tips appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

A simple, 2-hour-per-month content marketing framework for the content beginner. 

Content marketing is vital in developing your audience’s “know, like and trust” factor. It can overcome objections before they happen, increase the perceived value of your offers, and increase customer lifetime. This simple framework will teach you how to create compelling content and repurpose it for multiple platforms in about 2-hours per month. 

Core & Hygiene Content 

There are two categories of content that every business needs in their content marketing strategy. Core Content and Hygiene Content. 

Core Content is the core of your marketing efforts. It should deliver incredible value and include an opt-in. Creating Core Content is resource intensive, so how do you fill in the gaps in your content calendar? Hygiene Content. 

Hygiene Content serves the vital purpose of staying present and relevant to your audience. If Core Content is your 6-month intensive dental cleaning, Hygiene Content is brushing your teeth daily. Creating one type won’t guarantee dental (or content) disaster but combining both is ideal.

Core Content = Quality

Hygiene Content = Quantity

Hygiene Content allows you to create the quantity of content you need to be present and relevant in the highly competitive content marketing world without draining your resources or becoming a full-time content marketer. 

Core Content

It’s the most important content you create and is directly related to your customers’ biggest problems and how you solve them. To create Core Content, choose 2-5 core topics or categories. These should be the topics most important to your customer and directly related to your solution. Let’s look at an example. 

Tim’s Tax Team is a small business accounting firm specializing in tax filing and corporate tax breaks. Their customers’ biggest challenges are meeting corporate tax requirements, proper record keeping, and audits. 

Tim’s Tax Team Core Content Topics

1. Tax Filing 
2. Audits 
3. Corporate Bookkeeping
4. Corporate Tax Breaks

Tim’s Tax Team Core Content Examples

• How to save money on your corporate tax filing 
• How to become audit-proof
• Why your bookkeeping could cost you thousands of dollars in penalties (and how to prevent it)
• The five most missed corporate tax breaks

Want to get certified in Content Marketing?

Leverage the tools and channels to predictably and profitably drive awareness, leads, sales, and referrals—EVERYTHING you need to know to become a true master of digital marketing.​ Click Here

Hygiene Content

Hygiene Content is the in-between content that keeps your brand in the hearts and minds of your customers without taking hours to create. It provides value and entertainment but doesn’t have the same depth as your core content. 

Hygiene Content topics are relevant to your customer but don’t necessarily have to be related to the problem you solve or your offers. To create Hygiene Content, identify 3-5 topics relevant to your ideal customer or related to your industry. Let’s look at Tim’s Tax Team again.

Tim’s Tax Team works primarily with local brick-and-mortar restaurants and retail businesses. Their clients are between the ages of 45-60, family-oriented and spend their weekends barbequing and watching the local football team. They aren’t tech-savvy and rely heavily on their accountants and bookkeepers to provide technical recommendations.

Tim’s Tax Team Hygiene Topics 

1. Football
2. Software & Technical Recommendations
3. Restaurant Finance & Tax Considerations
4. Retail Business Finance & Tax Considerations
5. How to use your business to build a family legacy 

Hygiene Content Examples

• Football and Finance: How to build a rock-solid business financial foundation with football strategy.
• The best accounting software for small restaurants 
• The biggest money mistakes restaurants make 
• Inventory & Taxes: How retail businesses can save money with better inventory management 
• Family business finances: three steps to creating generational wealth with your small business

Case Studies 

Let’s look at a few REAL examples. 

HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform for businesses that have growing teams with growing needs and can no longer manage multiple platforms. Their customers typically have marketing, sales, operations, and service departments that are rapidly growing and collaborating and need effective strategies and tools. 

HubSpot’s Core Content Topics  

• Marketing Strategy
• Sales Processes and Systems
• Customer Services

HubSpot Core Content Examples

• How Golden Bees became more customer-centric thanks to HubSpot
• How to Create a Sales Plan: Template + Examples
• How to Create an Effective Customer Journey Map [Examples + Template]

HubSpot Hygiene Content Topics

HubSpot understands that its customers are interested in many sub-topics related to its Core Content Topics. They want to learn about the latest social media strategies, website development tips, benchmark data and industry metrics. HubSpot combines corporate humor and educational content on the sub-topics relevant to the everyday lives of their consumers–anyone working in marketing, sales, or service,  

• Social media tips and tactics
• Relatable office moments and experiences
• Email humor
• Website sub-topics

HubSpot Hygiene Content Examples

• 43 of the Best Email Sign-offs That Put ‘Best’ and ‘Thanks’ to Shame
• 130 Instagram Influencers You Need To Know About in 2022
• How Much Does a Domain Name Cost?

TurboTax 

TurboTax is an Online Accounting Software with a primary market of individuals and entrepreneurs with simple accounting needs who don’t want to hire an accountant but don’t want to miss out on deductions, incentives, or tax breaks. 

TurboTax Core Content Topics

TurboTax’s Core Content Topics are directly related to solving the most common taxes and accounting problems their customers face with actionable tips and opt-ins. 

• Tax Basics
• Credits & Deductions
• Income & Investments

TurboTax Core Content Examples 

• Will I Get a Tax Refund This Year? What To Expect for Tax Refunds in 2022
• Freelance Taxes in Canada: 9 Things You Need to Know
• Guidelines for Reporting Self-Employment Income

TurboTax Hygiene Topics   

TurboTax’s Hygiene Content Topics provide quick tips and information on tax filing and investing sub-topics.

• New Tax Credits 
• Medical & Disability Tax Considerations
• Organizing Financial & Tax Documents
• Spending & Saving Tips 

TurboTax Hygiene Content Examples

• Back to School? It’s not just for the kids!
• What is a Bear Market and What Does it Mean to You?
• 7 Smart Ways to Spend Your Tax Refund

DigitalMarketer

As the premier online community for digital marketing professionals, DigitalMarketer provides educational resources, certifications and coaching programs for digital marketing professionals, businesses, and agencies. 

DigitalMarketer’s Core Content Topics

Marketing is rapidly changing, and finding up-to-date credible information, tools, and strategies is challenging. DigitalMarketer’s solution is to provide a one-stop shop for marketing certifications and programs that help marketing professionals stay ahead. 

• The Marketing Professional 
• Effective Marketing Strategy 

DigitalMarketer Core Content Examples 

• What is a T-Shaped Marketer
• Build Loyalty, Leads, & Sales In Your Community Using The Customer Value Journey
• Why People Don’t Respect Marketers & How To Elevate The Marketing Profession

DigitalMarketer Hygiene Content Topics

Marketing has many sub-topics and platforms, so DigitalMarketer provides relevant information and resources pertinent to their consumers’ everyday lives–anyone working in marketing.

• Email
• Social Media
• Websites
• Content & Copywriting 
• Driving Traffic
• Increasing Conversions

DigitalMarketer Hygiene Content Examples 

• 3 Simple TikTok Tips to Grow Your Business
• Choosing Music for your Brand
• 8 Tips For Writing Effective Email Subject Lines 
• 4 Types Of Offers That Can Instantly Increase Revenue

The Content Workflow

Now that you understand the two types of content and have identified your Core and Hygiene Content Topics, it’s time to create a sustainable content marketing workflow. With this simple workflow, you’ll create one long-form piece of Core Content and splinter it into up to 30+ pieces for greater reach instead of making all your content from scratch. 

The Workflow

1. Create Long-Form Core Content 
2. Splinter 
3. Fill in gaps with Hygiene Content
4. Repurpose

Step 1. Create Long-Form Core Content

Long-form content can come in many forms, including written, video and audio. Choose the format that works best for you to start this process. 

If you love writing, write a blog post. 

If you love talking, record audio or video.

If you don’t like any of that, invite a friend over and have them ask you questions while you record the audio or video. 

Step 2. Splinter

Content Splintering is taking the parts of your long-form content to make more content for multiple platforms. You can splinter your long-form content into podcasts, YouTube videos, emails, blog posts, and social media posts.

If you are starting with long-form video or audio content, you’ll need an application that transcribes your video or audio. The program I love is Descript which transcribes your video and audio content, and as you edit the transcription, it automatically edits the video and audio. 

Splintering Formats

You can splinter your long-form content into various formats, including audiograms, short videos like TikTok’s or Reels, and social media graphics and captions. Here are a few of the most common splinter formats.

• Long YouTube Video
• Short YouTube Video 
• Short TikTok’s and Reels
• Podcast Episodes
• Audiograms
• Blog Posts
• Emails
• Quick Tip Social Media Posts
• Quote Social Media Posts
• Reminder Social Media Posts
• Stats & Data Social Media Posts
• Content Announcements
• Summary Posts

You don’t need to be a video editor, audio expert, or writer to create great content. Practice is the fastest way to get better. Quantity, consistency, and speed are the most important things when building your content marketing engine. 

You don’t need expensive applications, fancy cameras, or high-tech equipment to create great content. Great tech can turn good content into great content, but no amount of tech can turn bad content into good content. Focus on the quality of your message and information. Your iPhone and a simple video or audio editing software like Descript or Garage Band are enough to get you started.

Workflow Example: Long-Form Video Splintering

1. Record a long-form (10-30 min) video. You can edit or leave the video as is and post it on YouTube. 
2. Identify 2-3 of the main points in the video and make mid-sized (3-10 min) YouTube videos. 
3. Identify any soundbites, tips or quotes in the video and create short YouTube videos, TikTok’s, or Instagram Reels (5 sec – 3 min). 
4. Transcribe the video and edit the transcription into a blog post with headlines and an opt-in. 
5. Identify the main points from the blog post and create content emails. Add the emails to your automated nurture campaign and send them to your existing list.  
6. Identify the best quotes from the transcription and create social media posts with the quote in the graphic or caption.
7. Identify the top tips or hacks from the transcription to create social media posts with the tips or hacks as a carousel or in the caption. 
8. Identify reminders you can share with your audience based on the tips or actions your long-form content highlights to create social media posts.   
9. Identify any statistics, metrics, or data relevant to the content to create social media posts. 

Workflow Example: Long-Form Audio

1. Record a long-form (10-30 min) audio clip. Edit or leave it as is and publish it as a podcast episode. 
2. Identify any soundbites in the audio and create audiograms. Post them as short YouTube videos, TikTok’s, or Instagram Reels (5 sec – 3 min). 
3. Transcribe the audio and edit the transcription into a blog post with headlines and an opt-in. 
4. Identify the main points from the blog post and create content emails. Add the emails to your automated nurture campaign and send them to your existing list.  
5. Identify the best quotes from the transcription and create social media posts with the quote in the graphic or caption.
6. Identify the top tips or hacks from the transcription to create social media posts with the tips or hacks as a carousel or in the caption. 
7. Identify reminders you can share with your audience based on the tips or actions your long-form content highlights to create social media posts.   
8. Identify any statistics, metrics, or data relevant to the content to create social media posts. 

Workflow Example: Long-Form Written 

1. Write a Blog Post.
2. Identify 1-3 main points and create content emails to add to your automated nurture campaign and send to your existing list.  
3. Create an announcement email that teases the long-form content and drives subscribers to watch, read or listen. 
4. Identify the best quotes from the blog post and create social media posts with the quote in the graphic or caption.
5. Identify the top tips or hacks from the blog post to create social media posts with the tips or hacks as a carousel or in the caption. 
6. Identify reminders you can share with your audience based on the tips or actions your long-form content highlights to create social media posts.   
7. Identify any statistics, metrics, or data relevant to the content to create social media posts. 

Step 3. Fill in gaps with Hygiene Content 

No matter how incredible you are at splintering your core content, there will still be a few gaps in your content calendar. You can fill those gaps with Hygiene Content. 

For the content beginner, you can write a few extra social media posts or record short videos or audio clips on your Hygiene Content Topics to fill in the gaps. For seasoned professionals, create long-form Hygiene Content and splinter it using the same workflow as your Core Content.

Repurposing Content

Just because your content has been posted doesn’t mean you can’t use it again. You must consistently remind your audience who you are and the value you provide. Don’t be afraid of being repetitive because consistency in messaging is vital when building trust with your audience. Repurpose existing content to give your older content new life and build trust with your audience.

Ways To Repurpose Existing Content

1. Updating
2. Headline Swapping
3. Format Switching
4. Copy & Paste

Updating

Content Updating is taking existing content and updating it to be relevant and current. This can be as simple as changing the design, updating the year, or adding items to a list. 

Here’s an example:

1. Write a Blog Post
2. Wait for 90-days to 1 year
3. Update the post with relevant examples
4. Change the dates
5. Improve the design
6. Add any information needed to make the post more current.

Headline Swapping

Headline Swapping is reusing existing content with a fresh new headline. 

Here’s an example:

1. Write a social media post
2. Wait 90-days to 1 year 
3. Repost with a new headline in the graphic and caption.

Format Switching

Format Switching is when you repurpose an existing piece of content in a new format. You can switch a long-form blog post into a checklist, change a carousel social media post into a PDF download and turn an email into a short YouTube video. Format switching is a great way to take your splintered content and get even more use. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Write a Checklist LinkedIn Post
2. Wait for 90-days to 1 year.  
3. Switch that LinkedIn post into a short video clip and repost it to LinkedIn.

Copy & Paste

Copy & Paste is when you reuse existing content without changing it. This is standard practice on social media, where creators will repost their best-performing existing content without changing it after 90-days.  

Here’s how it works:

1. Create a social media post.
2. Wait for 90-days to 1 year.
3. Copy & paste the social media post without making changes and repost it.

2-Hours Per Month

Creating content shouldn’t be your full-time job unless you are a content creator. By following this framework, you can create your core content, splinter it, and fill in the gaps with Hygiene Content in about 2-hours per month. 

Here’s how:

1. Time Limit

Most people waste hours trying to create the perfect piece of long-form core content and never end up posting or splintering it. Instead of letting perfectionism hold you back, set a time and only give yourself 1-hour each month to create your core content. That’s it, and whatever you make in that hour is posted. Get in the reps first; you’ll nail the process over time. 

2. Focus Time

Distractions are a content creator’s worst enemy. Your phone notifications start blasting, and the creativity is gone. Block off two hours each month for content creation with no distractions, and you’ll be amazed at how much you accomplish. 

3. Templates

One of the easiest ways to streamline this process is to use templates. Here are a few of my favorite templates that make this process a breeze. It’s as simple as doing it once and optimizing the template as you go. 

Video speaking points template

Video thumbnail

Video captions

Blog post templates

Podcast description template

Email templates

Social media graphic templates

4. Workflows and SOPs

Like any business operation, a checklist or standard operating procedure (SOP) will improve efficiency and quality control. Write out your step-by-step process as a checklist or SOP. It will save you time, energy, and a lot of frustration if you do it from the start. You can even use the example workflows from this article to get started! 

With a consistent flow of valuable content delivered to your audience, you will develop trust, position your brand as an authority, and remain present and relevant in your customers’ lives. Leverage the power of content marketing with this simple framework to attract, engage and retain your ideal customers. 

The post 2-Hour-Per-Month Content Marketing Framework appeared first on DigitalMarketer.