Think Long-Form B2B Content is Boring Your Audience? Think Again.

by MGB2B

long-form b2b contentSmartphones have beat out both tablets and desktop as the #1 way people access and engage with content on the web. So that means people are looking for shorter, bite-sized content only, right? Not necessarily. A recent study from Pew Research Center on journalism and media revealed that people are taking the extra time to read longer stories on their smartphones, making long-form B2B content a great way to reach your target audience.

While shorter articles averaging about 500 words do generate more traffic from smartphone users overall, the report indicated that readers are engaging for twice as long with articles of 1,000 words or more, at a ratio of over two minutes to 57 seconds.

Time of day also has a significant impact on the amount of time users spend engaging with content. The study found that users on their mobile devices in the late night and early morning hours spent more time reading content, and in both cases, spent over a minute longer engaging with long-form content than with shorter stories.

A third factor impacting engagement with long-form content is how readers arrive at a story. The report confirmed that the most time spent engaging with an article occurred when the reader followed an internal link from the same website versus from an external website or a social media platform. Yet, social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram facilitate the most traffic overall.

With this in mind, here are 3 tips for increasing engagement with your B2B long-form content:

  1. Aim for the word count sweet spot. For both readability and SEO, the word count sweet spot for blog posts is around 1,000-2,500 words. And now that you know that people are indeed interested in reading long-form B2B content, you can invest more time in creating longer, richer posts. Tip: Remember, the longer your content, the more opportunities there are to lose focus, so create an outline first.
  2. Promote your content at the right times. In the early morning hours as people are checking news updates at breakfast or on the train to work, and in the evenings when they are unwinding, are good times to get content out there. Make sure you are coordinating your content with your email marketing and social media strategies so your freshest content is reaching your audience front-and-center. Tip: Don’t be afraid to test out different days and times when publishing content and reaching out to your audience to maximize your reach.
  3. Help your audience discover your content. Once on your website, readers are engaging for longer periods of time with the content they find there. Getting them to your website is the first challenge, but once you’ve got them hooked, keep your audience engaged by linking to other content on your website or offering links to related posts at the end of your blogs. Readers interested in long-form content will likely welcome the chance to explore a topic further, so give them what they want!
  4. BONUS: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. All of these tips are for naught if you are driving your audience to a mobile unfriendly website. Not only will they quickly lose interest in pinching and resizing your site on their smartphone screens, but you will also suffer in your Google ranking (read more here).

With smartphones overtaking tablets and desktop as the preferred devices for accessing content online, it’s time to give your audience what they want: long-form B2B content. For help creating high-quality content and getting it to the right people, at the right time, drop us a line!

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