Introduction
Yesterday, our post on “The Truth About Writing Comprehensive Online Content”, is juxtaposed today with another post on “Why do we all love short-form online content?”. Short-form online content is the craze of this century.
Don’t believe me? In this post, we will look at some companies making millions of dollars from short-from content, and how you as a content creator can benefit too. Short-form online content can be in the form of videos, text, images, carousels, etc.
The Benefits of short form online content
Writing short-form online content has innumerable benefits for online content creators and the internet ecosystem, such as:
Easier to distribute with little or no editing required
Short-form online content is easier to distribute in almost all online platforms, and people find it easier to share with their friends without being a nuisance to others.
People on Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn, etcetera, can share short-form content, such as a quote or meme because probably it is easy to read and understand.
As a writer yourself, you may not need to edit short-form content at all before posting. Making the writing process very effortless and enjoyable, as you try to squeeze juice into a tiny form.
Easier to write than long-form detailed content
Short-form content can be easier to write in as little as a few seconds or minutes if you know what you want to write or share with your audience.
Honestly, some information or ideas don’t require lots of planning or writing, and these ideas may come in flashes of thought that can be written and shared instantly with your audience online.
Requires less reading time by an audience
Audiences of this century are inundated with information from every corner of their environment. At home, there is the TV, the Radio, and the Smartphone. At work, there are co-workers, telephones, computers, and tasks to be completed. Outside, there are cars, motorcycles, bicycles, people, billboards, street vendors, animals, and friends all vying for our attention.
There is not much time to sleep or rest. Therefore, short-form online content is beneficial in an attention-deficient world. Many readers will appreciate the succinct short-form content to a longer, detailed one.
Posts can be frequent
As you take less time off your readers with your short-form online content, you may post frequently into their inboxes or social media pages without being a bother at all.
Many people will always be ready and happy to receive your short content notification as they are on the go. Long and detailed content created for audiences may be posted frequently if it is split up into smaller chunks. This can make readers and search engines happier.
Focus on one single tiny idea per post
May reputable top websites like Forbes or Inc, ask writers to target about 800 to 900 words on average per post and this is to force writers to stick to one or only a few ideas per post.
Too many ideas in a single post can distract readers in the busy world we live in today. Why not make your topic speak to a single idea or maybe two and allow your content to address just that one thing?
Values of short-form online content
An online business with a massive mailing list or followers can gain massive to their site by offering short-form content through their email marketing, blog posts, or social media content (video, images, carousel, or text). Therefore, for short-form online content to be successful, it must at the minimum offer these two values:
Short-form content must be insightful and thought-provoking
Short-form online content must strike the core of the readers and get into their conscious minds. It must ignite a sensation in their emotions and logic, such as long-form detailed content may not. It must propel them to action (if that is what you desire) to modify their thinking, feeling, or behaviour.
Making people happy, helping them make decisions, challenging their assumptions about life, and altering their existence are some possible outcomes of insightful and thought-providing short content.
Short-form content must solve simple problems
There isn’t enough time or space to write endlessly if the problem is simple to be solved. If it can be said simply enough with 500 words, why write 5,000-word content for your readers? If it can be demonstrated with a 2 minutes video, why record an hour-long video?
Simple problems that short-form online content can solve are marriage and relationship tips, loneliness, motivation, job advice, and even funny content to make people laugh.
The Winners of short form content
Some successful businesses that make millions of dollars and provide employment to thousands of people are in the short-form online content industry (relatively). Some that come to mind are:
Forbes & Huffington Post – accepts short-form content of about 800 to 900 words on average.
Twitter – The Twitter character limit for a single tweet is 280 characters (in 2023). This limit includes all text, symbols, links, and spaces. Perhaps this may change in the future.
Blinkist – features text & audio explainers of key ideas from nonfiction. It takes just 15 minutes to read or listen to the key insights from bestselling nonfiction books.
Summly – Summly redefines news for the mobile world with algorithmically generated summaries from thousands of sources.
TikTok – a platform for millions of personalized short video content for the world.
Readers to Note: Individual content creators are also benefiting financially from short-form content creation across all platforms. You can find examples on YouTube, Medium, Quora, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Conclusion
I remember with clarity that there is a communication theory that sort of sums up the relevance of the short-form content strategy. This theory is called “single bullet theory” or “magic bullet theory”. The theory claims “media messages are powerful and can shape people’s opinions and behaviour because the media messages go directly into their minds as a bullet shot from a gun”. You can read more about this theory at your own time on the internet.
Short-form content is the new long-form content, but it works perfectly for certain topical niches such as humor and entertainment, tips and advice, reviews, and ratings. Even if you are in other niches, you can try to incorporate short-form online content into your content marketing strategy and see the magic unfold.