Why Long-Form Content Remains a Pillar for Successful Marketing Strategies

As a result of dwindling attention spans, most marketing departments prioritize short-form content to best reach customers amidst the noise in their inboxes and social media feeds. But counterintuitively, the best strategies still set a foundation for success through long-form, not short-form, content.

By Jared Frank | 11 min read

As marketers are well aware by now, smartphone apps are places where we need to put our stakes in the ground. The phone is where our customers’ eyeballs are, thus the phone is where we need to commit to delivering our messages. This idea is certainly not groundbreaking.

But has the collective mindset swung too far towards short content for evanescent mobile environments? How do we create short-form content that’s actually good? And what should actually come first – the chicken or the egg?

The answers to these questions all start with the same idea – good short-form content starts with good long-form content.

Key Takeaways

Practical benefits of long-form content include search engine optimization, evergreen value, and relationship building with customers and prospects rather than overtly selling to them.

The most important measures of success are conversion rates. Once visitors finish consuming your content, do they take the action you want them to take? If not, why not?

Short-form content is naturally embedded in your long-form content. So marketers can organically create a highly efficient process for creating email and social copy by putting time into long-form content first.

Why Long-Form Content Works

In this era dominated by short, ephemeral content – such as TikTok Videos, or Instagram Stories/Reels, or YouTube Shorts – it’s long-form content that remains the keystone of a successful content marketing strategy. Short-term content works in spheres where senses of urgency heighten with shorten attention spans. But for many industries and business categories, customers are not making FOMO buying decisions. They require and actively seek out the educational value of long-form content to make purchases with confidence.

In-depth articles, comprehensive guides, and long-form podcasts or videos provide customers with valuable insights and establish authority in your company’s domain. And they are EASIER to create (if you care about making good content).

It was Mark Twain who once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” Good writers know it takes more effort and more drafts and more discipline to write with an economy of words.

You can certainly start with shorter content and create it quickly. It’s just not likely to be very good. And furthermore, it’s going to be very difficult to turn short-form into long-form content. It’s easier and more effective to cut out high-quality bites from existing long-form content than it is to graft bites together.

The bottom line is marketers need both long-form and short-form content. One is not more or less superior than the other. But it is advisable to prioritize long-form content first when concepting your content strategy.

In addition to a better engineered creation process, here are some other practical benefits of long-form content:

SEO Benefits

Publishing long-form content is a low hanging fruit to improve your visibility on search engines. Search engines prioritize high-quality, in-depth content because they aim to provide users with the most comprehensive answers to their questions. This approach makes it more likely that your content will rank higher in search results, helping you get discovered by the right audience.

Long-form content also allows you to target multiple keywords and search queries within a single piece. By answering multiple questions in one piece, your content is more likely to appear in a variety of search results. This versatility improves your exposure and helps you connect with a wider swath of prospective buyers searching for solutions that your business can provide.

Additionally, long-form content encourages readers to spend more time on your website. Search engines track how long visitors stay on your page, and a longer “dwell time” signals to them that your content is valuable and engaging. As a result, your site becomes more trusted in the eyes of search engines, and over time, this trust boosts your overall ranking. Lastly, long-form content often attracts more backlinks, which is another trust indicator search engines use to determine your site’s credibility and authority.

Evergreen Value

Another big advantage of long-form content is that it stays relevant. Unlike social media posts that disappear from people’s feeds after a day or two, evergreen content remains useful over time because it focuses on topics that people consistently search for. A detailed article or guide can bring in new readers for months or even years after it is published.

Evergreen content generates these consistent views over time without the need for frequent updates. This steady flow of traffic helps build brand awareness and trust as more people discover your business through your content. It’s like planting a tree – the initial effort takes time, but once it’s rooted, it grows and bears fruit for years with minimal maintenance.

Additionally, long-form evergreen content serves as a foundation for other marketing efforts. You can repurpose it into smaller pieces, such as social media posts, email newsletters, or infographics, keeping your marketing strategy fresh while saving time. The lasting relevance of evergreen content also means it can support new campaigns or product launches, giving you a consistent source of material to share with your audience. This ability to keep working for your business long after publication makes long-form content a smart, long-term investment.

An Excuse to Get in Touch

Long-form content gives marketers something valuable to promote across marketing channels. You can share it on social media, feature it in your email newsletter, or even create paid ad campaigns around it.

Beyond promotion, long-form content provides you with a natural way to reconnect with your customers. For example, if you’ve published a helpful ebook, it gives you a reason to send an email letting your audience know about this new resource. Framing it as something that solves a problem or answers a common question makes it feel like a service, not a sales pitch. These natural touchpoints created by long-form content maintain and strengthen healthy relationships with your customers. Even if they are not ready to make another purchase, long-form content subtly encourages customers to return when they need your help.

Types of Long-Form Content

Generally speaking, long-form content is any piece that is longer and more in-depth than your typical blog post or social media update. We’re talking articles, guides, podcasts, etc. – anything over 1,000 words (sometimes much longer) packed with valuable information your readers will appreciate. Think of long-form content like a detailed explanation of the value you offer and how your services solve specific customer problems, rather than a quick ad for your business. Long-form content is also not limited to the written word. Audio and video formats continue to emerge as accessible, viable mediums for businesses of all sizes.

Here are some long-form content ideas for your business:

How-To Guides: Share your expertise by teaching your audience how to do something related to your business.
Case Studies: Showcase how your product or service helped a real customer solve a problem.
Ebooks or White Papers: Go deep into a specific topic or trend in your industry.
Interviews or Q&A: Have a conversation with an expert or a satisfied customer and share it in a detailed format, including on videos and podcasts.

How to Measure Success of Long-Form Content

Measuring the success of long-form content is essential to understanding its impact on your business. One of the most straightforward metrics to track is page views – the number of times a visitor landed on your long-form content page. Free tools like Google Analytics show you how many people are reading your content, whether it’s drawing in new visitors, and where those visitors are coming from. This information helps uncover what copy, creative, and traffic sources are filling the top of the funnel.

A word of caution – I consider page views to be a “hero” metric – fun to trumpet to your boss as a success, but not worth a damn on its own. You must go deeper. Yes, it matters if prospective customers walk through your front door, but what matters most is what they do once inside. Are they bouncing right away? Or are they actually reading the content? It’s critical to track dwell time (the time spent on the page) as well as retention (are they consuming the entire piece). Additional engagement metrics to monitor include social shares and comments.

In the end, the most important measure of success are conversion rates. Once visitors finish consuming your long-form content, what do they do next? Do they click to more pages on your site to continue learning about your company and offering? Do they go directly from your content to a purchase? If the content is part of a gated strategy, do they provide their personal information and convert to a lead in your CRM?

All long-form content should have a call-to-action. Whatever it is that you want the reader to do after finishing your content, are they doing it? If they are, your content served its purpose. If they are not, it’s time to figure out why not.

A Checklist for Long-Form Content

Before you start writing, take a moment to plan. Ask yourself:

Audience: Who am I writing for? Existing customers? People who have never heard of my business?
Localization: Am I writing for an audience in a specific geography or cultural context? What are the unique needs, preferences, values, and customs of my intended audience?
Goals: What do I want the reader to do after reading? Sign up for my email list? Visit my store? Make a purchase?
Topic: What topics are my best-fit customers and prospects searching for? What common questions are my sales reps currently fielding? (Focus on one big idea per piece of content. If you try to cover too much, you might overwhelm your readers.)
Writer: Do I have an in-house contributor with the bandwidth to write the content? Or do I need to hire a freelancer?
Design: Is the content aesthetically pleasing? Is it consistent with our company’s brand experience elsewhere? Is it easy to consume – clear headings, bullet points, images, etc.? Do I need to hire a freelance designer?
Promotion: How will I get the intended audience to read this content?
Gated/Ungated: Am I creating this content to be a lead generation magnet? Do I need to create a landing page? Or am I offering this content with no strings attached?

Making Long-Form Content Work on Social Media

Social media thrives on short, engaging formats. So how is long-form content beneficial to your social strategy? Well, naturally embedded in your long-form content is a high-volume of bite-sized clips – e.g. key takeaways, quotes, statistics, helpful tips and other listicle possibilities. So you don’t need to create anything new. The short-form is born organically out of the source material’s length, all while driving traffic back to your website and creating a sense of community around your content.

Gary Vee is famous for his reverse pyramid model, in which one long piece becomes 30 or more pieces of easily digestible micro content. This strategy is how you win with content, and it all originates with an original long-form content source.

Long-Term Content Drives Your Business Forward

Long-form content is a powerful tool for building your brand, engaging your audience, and driving meaningful business results. By taking the time to create detailed, thoughtful content, you establish your business as a trusted authority in your field and provide your audience with value that they can’t easily find elsewhere. For small businesses, this is particularly important because it helps you stand out in a crowded digital landscape where trust and expertise are often deciding factors for customers.

Moreover, long-form content has a unique ability to grow your business over time. Unlike shorter, time-sensitive posts, well-crafted long-form pieces continue to attract traffic, generate leads, and nurture customer relationships long after they’re published. Think of it as an investment that keeps paying dividends. From boosting your SEO rankings to fostering stronger connections with your audience, long-form content provides consistent value that aligns with your business goals. When approached strategically, it even serves as the foundation for other marketing initiatives, allowing you to repurpose ideas into other channels and campaigns.

Success doesn’t happen overnight. Creating impactful content requires time, effort, and a deep understanding of your audience. Start by building your foundation with long-form content that showcases your expertise. Then drive your business forward.

Do you need help implementing an impactful content strategy for your business? Let’s chat.
Write to Jared at [email protected].

Disclosure: ChatGPT helped ideate the first draft of this article. The author revised subsequent drafts and contributed original copy to better reflect the intended message and voice.

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