Why You Should Create Long Form Content in 2021
If you’ve been in business for not even a month, you’ve probably already heard of long-form content. Even if you’ve never created long-form content, chances are you’ve at least digested it. (In fact, you are right now with this blog post.) You’ve also likely heard some mixed things about creating it as a marketing strategy for your business. Some say it’s worth the time, others disagree.
Some people say it’s worth it for SEO purposes-- stuffing a bunch of keywords into some fluff so you can rank higher on Google, and others believe it’s a great tactic of actually engaging with and building a reputation and relationship with your audience.
Of course, we believe the latter… Maybe even a little of both? While it’s a must to make sure your SEO is optimized to help your website traffic and search engine rankings, it’s equally or more important that the content is actually providing value and that your audience will take something away from it.
So, why should you create long-form content in 2021? And what does that word “long-form” really mean?
What is Long-Form Content?
If you want to get technical on the word count, there isn’t really a set-in-stone number that would be the defining factor of being able to call something “long-form”. With that said, long-form content is usually a minimum of around 1,000-2,000 words. It dives deeper into topics and provides more value and insight versus a short-form piece of content, which is generally around 500-800 words and geared to serving as a quick read.
Long-form content isn’t only written content. It can also refer to longer videos and podcasts, papers, and ebooks. However, our focus in this post is blog content.
LONG-FORM BLOG POSTS EXAMPLES
A few popular types of long-form blog posts that we’ve created tons of times and found success with are:
How-to posts
Tutorials
Listicles
Ultimate guides
Why Should You Create Long-Form Content in 2021?
Let’s clear the air by first saying that not every blog post you write needs to be 3,000 words in order to be effective. We still put out shorter-form content, and we’ve found success in a healthy mix. We like providing those quick answers to our audience’s burning questions, and we also love giving as much value and information as we can in a longer-form post (while still making it readable, of course, as we explain in this post breaking down the anatomy of a perfect blog post.)
By often publishing long-form works, you also become known for being a reliable source of trusted information for your audience. They’re more likely to come back and look to you first for help with their problems. You’re able to build know/like/trust with your people.
WHY MOST AUDIENCES PREFER LONG-FORM CONTENT
The number one purpose of your content should always be to serve your audience, and most people love long-form content and prefer it because of the depth and detail that it goes into. It addresses a topic in full, answers questions that people may not have even thought of, engages with them, and guides people through their issue. It’s meant to be read instead of just skimmed through.
Long-form content also brings up relevant angles to the topic. Instead of answering one question to a problem and then leaving the reader to then search for the next question, it aims to answer them all in one place. It’s the difference between providing someone a snack versus a full course meal. Which one will satisfy their hunger?
For example, let’s say the topic of your post is about why small businesses should be using Instagram. Not only will you give those reasons why, but you could also touch on relevant points, like:
Content ideas
What not to do
How to use Stories or Reels
Account optimization
Algorithm facts
Best practices for writing captions
High-performing post examples
SEO BENEFITS OF LONG-FORM CONTENT
An added bonus is that long-form content is a way to increase the time a visitor spends on your website. More time equals more engagement, more shares, possibly more conversions and leads. Longer posts also give you more opportunity to include keywords that will increase your search engine ranking, as well as more chances to add links to other related content, affiliate links, and call-to-actions.
How to Create Long-Form Content
So now that you know exactly what counts as long-form content, how do you write it? Here are 5 simple steps to making sure the posts you’re putting out are valuable, comprehensive, and optimized!
GET CLEAR ON YOUR GOALS & AUDIENCE
Know who you’re writing to and what you want to help them with in your post. What will the end goal be? To help them bake a delicious cake? To become more knowledgeable about a topic? To reframe their mindset about something? Understanding who your audience is will also ensure you’re writing about things that they would find relevant, useful, and interesting. Folks that visit your blog for interior design tips likely don’t need to know nor care about your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.
For us, we know that we’re writing this post for people who don’t know what long-form content is or have heard of it but don’t understand its importance/aren’t utilizing it in their marketing. This also tells us the type of post we should write, which is more of an informational guide versus a tutorial or a listicle.
CREATE AN OUTLINE
You need a clear and structured outline to not only make sure your post is comprehensive and easy to follow but also to make writing easier for you. We’d venture to guess you’ve had to write a research paper in school and have probably at least learned how to create an outline. Those tips are still useful today when creating content.
Start bulleting things you want to write about in your post, and then further bulleting specific details about each section. Here’s what an outline could look like for our example above about using Instagram as a small business:
1. Introduction to Instagram
Why small businesses should use Instagram
Conversion benefits
Traffic benefits
Engagement benefits
2. How to optimize your account
Profile photo tips
Bio tips
Highlights tips
3. Features you should use
How to use Reels
How to use Stories
How to use IGTV
4. Optimizing your content
Best practices for writing captions
Types of posts that perform well
Examples of those posts
5. What not to do
Things that work against the algorithm
Not including CTAs in posts
Not engaging with your audience
6. Conclusion with CTA
By writing an outline this way, you already know what your headings, subheadings, and paragraphs will be about. It’s addressing the focus topic first (why small businesses should use Instagram), and then diving into the supporting information. Be sure your post is organized in a way that makes sense and that’s easy for readers to follow. The post should flow seamlessly and have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
WRITE YOUR POST
This part should be fairly easy since you’ve created an organized outline, you understand how it should flow, and you know what each section should be about. All you have to do is expand upon the bullet points you’ve listed in your outline. Don’t be too worried about making it perfectly formatted during the first draft. You can (and should) go back and revise afterwards to catch any typos or grammatical errors, ensure it flows nicely, include any inbound or outbound links, etc.
FORMAT AND OPTIMIZE
The key to long-form content is making sure it’s easily readable. Add images where applicable to help provide a visual aid and break up the text, make sure you have clear headings and subheadings and that your paragraphs aren’t too long or contain filler words or sentences. This helps make your content more skimmable if a reader wants to find a specific section or get an idea of your post as a whole before reading.
This is also the time to make sure you’re using keywords to improve your rankings. If you blog on Wordpress, a super popular plugin to help with SEO is Yoast. Google also has its own tool called Google Keyword Planner, which will show you what keywords are most popular within a certain topic. There are tons of free tools out there to help you optimize your post, or you can outsource an SEO expert to do this work for you.
DON’T FORGET YOUR CTAS
There should be plenty of places on your blog post for people to check out other things you offer, whether it’s a freebie, resource, to follow you on social, or a paid offer. We usually always have banners displayed at the end of our blog posts, in the sidebar, a button to follow us on Instagram, and an inline form to grab a freebie (depending on if the specific post relates to the freebie).
To make sure you’re including the appropriate CTAs, be sure to grab our Opt-in Marketing Bundle from The Creative Shop Co-op! It includes 3 of each— mid-blog graphics, post-blog graphics, and sidebar graphics. All you have to do is one-click download to your Canva account and customize to match your branding and messaging!
By becoming a member of The Co-op for only $47/month, you’ll lock instant access to all templates, plus monthly strategy calls, a private podcast, a members-only community, and monthly strategy-based bonuses!
PUBLISH, PROMOTE, AND UPDATE
All that’s left to do is publish your post, promote it, and then update it over time to keep it relevant. We always share new posts on Instagram Stories with a swipe-up link, in our Facebook group, and on Pinterest. We also include posts in a monthly roundup of stuff we’ve created that we send to our email list.
As time goes on and things change, it’s important to revisit your post to make sure the information is still relevant and nothing is outdated. For example, if you have a post that includes a specific year in the title, be sure to add a date on your calendar to update it for the years to come so that it continues to be relevant. This is another reason why evergreen content is so popular amongst long-form content because it’s always relevant no matter when someone reads it. (We have a post coming soon about that!)
So, now you know what long-form content is, why you should create it in 2021, and how to do so. It can be such an awesome double whammy to improve your SEO and web traffic while simultaneously building brand authority, engaging with your audience, and providing genuine value and insight to keep them coming back. For more assistance with content creation, be sure to check out our new releases coming soon to The Creative Shop Co-op!
