Blog Posts: The Long and The Short of It

In business you must always be careful to guard against “Sacred Cows“.  I was reminded of this again quite recently in a lively discussion with a client.  I have a couple of Sacred Cows I try to avoid being enslaved by.  One is: “Facebook is not for B-to-B”.  Another is: “Brands should not outsource Social Engagement”.  In general, these are helpful guides but I am careful to not let them blind me.

A third is: “Blog posts should not be longer than 350 words.”

As part of this discussion I was introduced to this important blog post – which, importantly, is quite long.  In it, Marcus @thesaleslion Sheridan makes a very strong and refreshing case for long-form blog posts and more substantive content.  Our discussion was around my assertion that blog posts be capped at 350 words at most.  I’m excited by the idea that Social content develops more depth, particularly as Content Marketing becomes the new black.  However, I am doubtful about the sustainability of this in the corporate environment and keen to try and stay realistic.

Marcus makes very strong arguments about lengthy content, and these stuck out for me in particular:

• Need to differentiate yourself with depth in a soon-to-be very crowded market of high-volume, low-quality marketing content
• Advantages to SEO of a great word count
• Greater ROI on the costs of content production
• Longer content shelf life according to the dynamics of The Long Tail
  
• Longer, more substantive content encourages more Social shares

With all that said, there is a strong case for pragmatism.  For instance, Marcus does make it clear that: “The truth is both styles of communication can work. Seth Godin averages about 200 words a post and Social Media Examiner is typically in the 1500 words range, but both sites are wildly successful models for content production.”

I think I will try to stay open minded on this point.  Logically I totally agree with Marcus and all the points he, and my client, made.  However, I think there are a couple of caveats when consulting clients:

1. First and foremost, it is sometimes hard to encourage businesspeople to take out more time in their busy day for business blogging.  Pitching a maximum of 350 words makes it far more likely and practical that they might achieve it.
2. I do maintain that many people do much of their Social browsing on the move and so the even more condensed screen form factor means a long post is in effect *even* longer.  The “quick skim” remains the most likely reading style and therefore 35 words built around a list of some kind is still for me the most effective way to get a point across.
3. If you have enough material for a long, 1,000+ word post, consider whether it is in fact something else?  A White Paper?  An eBook or a By-line article for a magazine you can wrap a shorter blog post around when you come to merchandise it.
4. If you are going to invest several hours in a piece of writing, I feel you should make that time count.  Consider “gating” this piece of content and asking for contact details in exchange for it so you can pass them on to Sales as a lead.  This is of course, in B2B, the greatest form of Lead Generation ROI.
5. Part of the business of a 350 word limit is to keep you conscious of not “going beyond the fold”, i.e. making the reader scroll too far.  Consider – if you’ve more than a 1,000 word potential point to make, making that point in a series.  You might this way keep the reader coming back for more.
6. Is your blog a “roll” or is does it render only the first paragraph of your post?  If the latter you are far more at liberty to have longer posts as each post in effect is a micro-site.  If the former, there could be disadvantages to having one long pece of content greeting the new visitor.
7. Finally, a 350 word limit imposes its own discipline.  Business blogging is not about beautiful writing, it’s about good thinking and sound advice for the most part.  A 35o word maximum, like Twitter, enforces its own brevity.  Getting to the point is a kindness to your reader!

Having said all of that, this post – like many of my posts – is well over 500 words!  So let the content be your guide – and do as I say not as I do!  I would just say this: always ask yourself – are you writing more than 350 words because you can or because you need to?

Picture Credit: Website Magazine

The Difference Between Content Marketing and Marketing Content

Did you know that 57 per cent of the buying process is now complete before the buyer engages the vendor in the process.  That’s almost two thirds over.

That rather arresting statistic is from an important study commissioned by Google and conducted and written up by CEB – a “Member-based Advisory Service” – entitled the “The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing“.

Content marketing is the new black.  Right now, the web is peppered with material on how good content marketing should be done…and here is some more I’m afraid.  But I did want to capture an important breakthrough I have made in the way I think about Content Marketing and how I approach what has become a very important topic in the world of Corporate Communications.

If your contribution and influence on the process begins 57 per cent of the way through, you have very little say on the direction it is taking.  The buyer has most likely already decided on what the problem is and what solution they are looking for.  The only thing left to discuss is price.  From a negotiation and competition point of view, that is not a strong position at all.

As Scott Gillum says in this article about the study in Fortune Magazine: “[Buyers] are engaging peers in social media to learn more about their needs, potential solutions and providers. And they are reading, listening to and watching free digital content that is available to them at the click of a mouse. No longer is the sales force the sole source or gatekeeper of information.”

So unless you are involved in producing some of this content, you are left out of the discussion altogether.  And this content cannot be the same old content either, it has to Resonate with your audience.  On that topic, this blog post by @Copyblogger about content that resonates “like a tuning fork” is very useful indeed.

This is where my brainwave arrived, such as it is.  You see, traditionally Marketing Content sought to answer the question “which product should I buy?”  But really effective Content Marketing should seek to answer the question “how do I solve my business problems?”  By helping the buyer reach a conclusion about how to solve the business problem in question, you make it more likely that they consider you as part of that solution.  As Brian Solis says in his book Engage:  “people don’t turn to social media to hear from brands…they are seeking answers and direction, not a sales pitch.”

In today’s SEO and Socially driven web, the buyer has control of the information they read and no longer depends on vendors’ sales people for that information.  In this environment, if you are going to contribute to that journey and have influence on it, you must do so on the buyer’s terms, not your’s.  This is what should drive the creativity behind Content development, and not the different ways  in which you can position your value proposition and your products differentiated features.

This useful (albeit vintage) schematic from Content Marketing Today is helpful in understanding that process, and starts with that simple yet often forgotten starting point: “Understand the customer”.