13 reasons to create ‘long form’ content for your business world
Over the calendar year, my writing ebbs and flows.
I focus on other things, or I get distracted. So, around September, I force a kind of "berserk" writing period, and do around thirty days of ~3000 words per day.
I wake up, get myself caffeinated, and hole up in my lair.
The sprint helps get my mind right again.
And also ‘build out’ new parts of the Creator Club world.
Whether that’s a book, a course, or in this case, a new article vault to bring a bunch more value to the Creator Club website.
Anyway, one thing that happens if you do this is it ‘forces’ a shift to long form content. You can’t do this exercise with Tik Tok or Instagram reels, or Pinterest posts. You have to come up with an idea, and write it as an article, or record it as film or audio. Which opens up the age-old debate of long form vs. short form for content marketing for business.
Or long form vs. 'pop-corn' platforms.
And it's an important debate.
And maybe something you’ve thought about yourself with your marketing.
Because as a creator, you now have endless options and access. You can tweet, post, write, record and film yourself silly. So it's important to be clear on where to focus your energy.
In my humble opinion, long form will always dominate short-form popcorn platforms over time.
Even though short form platforms attract much more attention from the masses.
There are many reasons for my contrarian views.
Here are thirteen of them, that are worth considering as you build out your own business world:
REASON 1 - With most short form platforms, you don’t ‘own’ diddly. You don’t own your audience. You are “borrowing” the data from Meta, or Google et cetera. That’s generous of the platform hosts… but, technically means you don’t own your business if that is your only platform (!). That’s right. If you don’t own direct access to your audience or market (the core of your business,) then you don’t own the business.
REASON 2 - Short form platforms are at risk. First is the risk of having your account hacked, or taken down (this happened to my Facebook circa 2020, and I’ve seen it happen to many others for no reason. Yes, it can happen to you). Then there's the risk of ‘pollution.’ Bots, attention seeking false information, bandwagon effect now makes up the core of the content.
REASON 3 - Short form metrics are becoming ‘false’. Now, this is tough to prove, but it’s certainly been my experience - to keep the masses addicted to the platforms, they reward users with false metrics. Try this experiment: put out a few videos - wait for one to go semi viral. Now look at the accounts that engaged. Many will be bots. I’m not big on social media, but the other day I put one video out, in an hour or so it had over 40k views, and hundreds of shares out of the blue. Most were not real people.
REASON 4 - Long form content is the only way to have a body of work. Recently I printed out Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays. Over 300 pages of work, and it’s as if he wrote it yesterday. This is the same for any book, or even long form video or audio. You can publish the audios to a podcast, then you can also store the files in an archive, have them on a USB. You can “hold” your timeless body of work.
REASON 5 - Long form is the fastest way to build your voice. If you focus on one idea for a period of time, or recording a series of videos or podcasts, you can figure out what you want to say. This is very tough on social media. There’s so much information, that your mind is pounded by everyone else's voice.
REASON 6 - Long form helps you to build your world. To steal from literature, J.R.R Tolkien was a master world builder. But a lot of people don’t realise the extent of what he did. Over his career he ‘constructed’ the grammar and vocabulary of at least fifteen languages and dialects. This isn't possible on twitter. Sure world building is possible on popcorn platforms, but it’s hard to get the detail to go deep.
REASON 7 - You can relax and think for yourself. Everyone knows the story of Joe Rogan selling the rights to his podcast to Spotify. The deal was worth around $110M. One of the things about Rogan’s work was that he had these in-depth, relaxed conversations with people. On longer form platforms, you don’t need to chase attention every single moment. You can relax, and let the full character play out. Podcasts are great for this, but so are books or articles.
REASON 8 - Long form content marketing can become short form. What do I mean by this? If you write a book, you can take sections of the book, and bring them over to short form. It may not be what the platforms were designed for, but it can work. Now, the other way can work to develop ideas, but it's totally different.
REASON 9 - Short form is great for documenting the journey. But what is the journey? What is the bigger thing that you are creating? Speaking gigs? Workshops? Events? What is the journey that you want to document? That will probably be something long form. One of the best people I’ve seen at this is Austin Kleon, who is also known as the writer who draws. He writes books, but uses twitter and insta to ‘document’ his work. His audience gets to come along with him for the journey.
REASON 10 - Your long form content can intertwine with your program modules or structure. This is something I do a lot in Creator Club. Example: next month we're doing a topic on delivery and innovation, with a particular focus on communication. We are running a challenge on communication, and today I’m writing this article on long form content. It's all related. This is because my mind is focused on the work that we are doing with business owners, which allows me to create long form content around this.
REASON 11 - You can sell your long form content. I came across someone on Instagram a little while back, and they posted a lot of health advice. But they also with-held some content, and the message was, "Join my Patreon (a pay wall), and you’ll get access to all my posts." But the posts weren’t anything longer, they were just more short form content. Personally I think this is garbage. When we pay to go to a concert, or go out for a meal, or even buy an album, we are paying do go ‘deeper’ with the creator. We naturally expect longer form content. And conversely, if you create longer form content, people will buy it. We have business owners in Creator Club who are bringing in thousands each month selling ebooks and courses.
REASON 12 - You stand out. Have a look around your industry right now. How many people in your market are on Instagram? Now, how many people are creating long form, high-value content over time? The pool gets a lot smaller, quickly. The thing is, most people who start up a business want to get their ‘marketing’ going as fast as possible. They don't have patience. So, they start creating content where they focus most of their own attention - social media. The problem is, this can lend itself to copy and paste content, or ‘safe’ content that isn’t saying much. If you bring in long form content, you can go much, much deeper, and build a body of work that nobody else has in your field.
REASON 13 - You have a talking point. A few years back I put out an eBook on health and training. It was around one hundred pages long, and went into various “pillars” of health - or, my views on health at the time. After I put it out, I had a bunch of people email me. One guy even took me out to breakfast, and brought along a printed version of this eBook, so he could talk through it all. It’s the same with a book. If you put a book together and have it published, you’ve got something to hold. You can do speaking events, or podcast interviews around the book.
Now, before the insta-growth gurus start yelling at me…
None of this is to take away from short form content marketing.
I mentioned Tolkien earlier - he pounded out tens of thousands of pages if you stacked up all his work. The epitome of long form. But he surely would have had a minion helping him run an insta account so he could troll C.S. Lewis.
And in fact, long form can be cut to short form very easily.
Or, short form could be used for a different reason altogether...
And more:
My guess is the social media popcorn platforms will hang around: Mind control is in full swing and the thirst for quick hits of dopamine is at all time highs.
But it's all something to think about anyway.
Both to secure your business, and build your work.
How ‘zero value’ content can help you grow your business
This article will either divide, or unite.
Hopefully, the latter.
How often have you been told to give more ‘value’ in your marketing as a coach or creative business owner?
More tips, more education?
That all you have to do is speak to the pain points, and offer a solution, and people will hurl credit cards, wads of cash and email addresses at you?
A lot of you I bet.
If you don’t give enough value, people won’t watch, right?
This is a super common idea marketers and business coaches will tell you.
“If you just give more value, then people will buy eventually.”
“Go deep on education, help people more.”
So you create another ‘tips’ video to help people learn.
But after doing this, you’ve probably seen three problems:
1. We have well and truly passed through the Information Age. I remember when I was growing up, the challenge was getting the info. The screeching dial-up internet was just coming in. The encyclopaedia Britannica was barely available on a CD. Information was king. But now, information is everywhere. We’ve moved beyond. In fact, the supreme guru himself Tony Robbins calls this now the “entertainment age”.
2. People who constantly suckle free information have a lot of free time, and often, are demonstrating that they don’t value paying for powerful work. I know this is contentious. People will be yelling that free information triggers “reciprocity.” But in the land of TMI (too much information) that starts to lose it’s impact… The irony that this is a free article is also not lost on yours truly.
3. A lot of the educational content out there gets super boring. When you start to notice this, you really notice it. It’s like the matrix, and all of a sudden you can see boring content everywhere around you, belting you over the head with education and virtuosity.
The way the free ‘value’ content idea is supposed to work is you put out the free stuff, people comment how helpful it is, they give you this emoji 🙌🏻, they save it. Then some time in the future they work with you.
But…
What really happens most of the time is they file it away as they make their way to the couch, where they sit down (and pay) to binge watching season after season of Ozarks.
Or scroll through videos of cars or random cats.
Which brings them zero ‘value’, whatsoever.
Now, I get it - “it’s different for us”, because we are coaches, or creatives, and we should be the one to elevate people’s thinking, and bring them new tips, and ideas…
Where the Ozarks show is just a drug family making their way through life trying to survive the Mexican cartel.
Yes, and…
To educate or help people, first they have to be engaged.
Or - any content that we do, educational, or otherwise, can’t be boring!
This means story, entertainment, or at a minimum, some personality. This is the stuff that makes Breaking Bad, Ozarks, and the Kardashians so engaging (and obscenely profitable).
It’s also what makes a great coach or service provider.
Now I’m not saying ‘don’t deliver any value’ or ‘never teach’ in your marketing. This article has loads of value in it. But, if we go back in time and realise that the best teachers, educators, and coaches from the beginning of time, have also been entertainers.
EXAMPLE:
A little while back I hired an online coach to write a strength training program. It cost a little more than $1000 Australian, and went for twelve weeks.
Here’s a summary of his marketing “strategy”:
He told the story of past training (semi-professional athlete in three sports) on podcasts
Every second day or so he uploads a 60 second clip of his training to instagram
He shares some opinion / attitude in his content about the fitness world
There are zero how-to tips.
Zero educational pieces of content.
Zero three step guides.
So why did it work?
Through demonstration, the guy helped me to create a vision of what the future could look like with his program. Turns out he’s a similar age to me, and a similar height, so I could “see” myself starting to learn from him and putting it into practice.
Ultimately, when he opened up the offer, I emailed him right away and transferred the cash.
Educational value still has it’s place
I’ve had a lot of different teachers in my life.
There are two that come to mind right now.
In uni, there was one guy who was this big lumbering American dude. Probably 6’5”. He taught mechanics of solids, and he was very serious.
The other teacher was from high school. He was the art teacher, and he would tell stories, let us put on the music we wanted, and take us on field trips out to his studio.
Anyway, one day at uni, I was in the mechanics class in the front row.
I literally fell asleep.
I’m not sure why, but partly because this guy was like listening to a broken record. After a while he called my name out with a question in front of the whole class to try and teach me a lesson. But in hindsight, I think he needed the lesson.
Anyway, the point of all of this:
Straight education isn’t helpful.
And in fact, a lot of times it sends us to sleep.
The art teacher on the other hand was super engaging, we learned a lot, and I remember him clearly.
The art teacher still educated us, even though he was entertaining.
And this is the goal.
Education is helpful will help position you as an authority. But giving away more free info or free downloads isn’t going to necessarily get more peeps buying your stuff.
Wrap any ‘value’ around your engaging world
Say you are a health coach. How could you bring in this “zero value” concept to create more engagement?
Well let’s say you’re talking about how important sleep is.
Sure, we don’t get “enough” sleep.
We all know it’s important…
But how could you jazz it up?
Well, you could tell us a story about a time when you didn’t get any sleep for three days, and what happened when you went to work? Or you could interview someone you know who’s an athlete, and listen to their story around sleep.
Both of these help you build your world.
They introduce story, or introduce us to your “allies” in your world, or other people you interact with.
So basically what we come to is this - Any time we talk about something educational in our emails, delivery, or social media, we can ask “How can I make this engaging?”
“How can I wrap my ‘world’ around this in a way that’s interesting?”
If you wouldn’t find it fun and engaging, the audience probably won’t either.
Remember the strength coach I told you about?
You could argue there was some education in him demonstrating the movements. But it was wrapped in entertainment.
The captions are interesting. He’s wearing quirky clothes. The music is interesting. He’s filled the clip with his “world” so you go deeper with him, and get to know him more.
And you’ll have ways to do this as well.
Where you film your content
How you speak and stories you tell
How you dress and bring out your character
And more.
All of this stuff helps to build your world, and creates more engaging content that takes people deeper, without adding more education.
But it makes the education that you do bring more interesting.
“Content, I am not interested in that at all. I don't give a damn what the film is about. I am more interested in how to handle the material so as to create an emotion in the audience. I find too many people are interested in the content. If you were painting a still life of some apples on a plate, it's like you'd be worrying whether the apples were sweet or sour. Who cares?” ― Alfred Hitchcock
In our world, content still matters (we aren’t purely in film), but creating an emotion, or ‘wrapping’ the content in our world to help tell the story is critical.
Creating “zero value” content
Sometimes an exercise I like to do with new business owners is have them create some zero value content.
It sounds crazy at first.
Literally an email, or social media post with no value in it.
Basically, this is an opinion, a story, or some vision that builds the world and character of the business, but without ‘teaching’ anything.
Pointless noise?
Well, if all you did was zero value content, then it might be. But zero value content does three things specifically:
1. It helps us see we don’t need to be virtuous all the time. That content can ‘stir’ and cause emotion without having to position as the enlightened teacher. And, when we do that, we actually have more fun and build a better relationship.
2. It teaches us how to build a relationship with our audience. You might tell a joke. You might share a little story. You might talk about something that you learned - not to teach - but just to share. This builds resonance, or relationship.
3. It helps you to not “care” as much. Rather than needing to get perfect engagement or feedback from the market every time, zero value content helps you to loosen up and get more creative.
Now - this is a skill.
We’ve got to practice it.
You can study film, TV, talk show radio - there are a ton of ways to learn how to improve on this. Personally, whenever I watch a movie that’s engaging, or whenever I hear something that shocks people, or raises curiosity, I take note.
How did that work?
Why did it catch people’s attention?
Usually it’s not because of information or ‘value’, but because of story or the way it was said or phrased. That’s all helpful for learning. Once you practice with some zero value posts for a while, you’ll learn how to bring more entertainment into your stuff.
One time I watched a TED talk by a guy and he was speaking about how our brains kind of sync up when we tell a story.
His name is Uri Hassan, and the talk was called “Your brain on communication”.
So if you stand up and tell a story, and I listen, the brain wave pattern from your brain, will literally sync in with my brain.
It’s like you “give” me your vision from the story.
Whatever emotion the storyteller has, is the emotion that the listeners will get.
Anyway, since then, I thought about how people like to have fun in life. I mean emotionally, they like things that keep them on their seat.
People like fun stories.
I always thought that you want to have fun when you create content, or write things, because people can feel it.
People can feel whatever you are feeling.
That’s why in a lot of the great movies, the actors “embody” the characters. For example, Denzel Washington in Training Day - he ad-libbed a lot of the dialogue. They got guys from gangs to come into the movie and play the role of extras, and Denzel would “feel” the emotions of being on the streets and in gangs. Then he spoke from that place.
So when you watch the movie it feels so heavy - he put himself in a heavy position, and you’re feeling what he felt.
Heath Ledger the same in The Dark Knight. He studied the character from Clockwork Orange, and really embodied the “feeling” of the Joker. So that when he speaks, and cackles with that laugh, you feel it.
So if you aren’t having fun when you write things, the reader isn’t going to have fun either.
They’re going to be bored out of their minds - that’s what is happening with most of the content out there for coaches and creative business owners.
At the end of the day, if you have a little bit of fun, you’re already way ahead. You’ll have much more resonance with people, they’ll get your personality, and will be able to dive deeper into your work.