Optimal content length is something which has always been hotly debated among online marketers.
Although there are no concrete rules regarding length, there are general guidelines you can use to inform your content creation efforts and ensure you strike the right balance on each platform you use.
Blog Posts
There are many contradicting schools of thought when it comes to the optimal length of blogs and articles. Although traditionally considered examples of ‘long-form’ online content, recent research from blog publishing platform Medium has found that blog visitors tend to lose interest after just 7 minutes of reading. So, if you want your guests to read your blog right to the end (including the all-important call-to-action you should be including with each post), it seems shorter is generally sweeter in the online world.
Of course, if you include photos, videos and other visual elements within your resort’s blog this could influence the amount of time visitors spend on a post, but keeping the 7 minute mark in mind serves as a useful guideline.
Breaking your content up using headings, subheadings and bullet points helps make it more attractive, while the paragraphs themselves should be kept concise and easy to scan.
On Facebook, image-based posts generate the most engagement, but when you want to post text, what’s the ideal length to aim for?
A study conducted by BlitzLocal which analysed 120 million Facebook impressions found that shorter posts, ideally between 100 and 119 characters, far out-performed longer posts when it came to generating and maintaining audience engagement.
Videos
Research from video marketing specialists Wistia has revealed that an impressive 85% of people will complete a video that’s just 30 seconds or less long, but these numbers decline steadily as the length of the video increases. YouTube owners Google, meanwhile, have reported that the ideal length for a video is somewhere between 3 and 3.5 minutes if you want high engagement rates.
As with most other forms of content online, it seems that adopting the mantra “shorter is better” will stand you in good stead when you’re creating video content to add to your resort’s social media or website pages.
Although this industry research serves as a helpful guide, don’t forget the content you produce should be as long as required to achieve the goal of the piece – there’s no point padding out blog posts with unnecessary sentences but equally, you shouldn’t leave important info out of video to keep it within Google’s recommended 3- 3.5 minutes. Length aside, the best thing you can do for your marketing campaign is create high quality, compelling content that resonates with your particular audience.
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