Long form vs. Short form? Which one is best for your small business?

The age-old question of long-form vs. short-form content. While each has its own advantages and disadvantages, I hope to help you pick which will be best for you and your brand.

First, however, we must identify your goals, the type of demographic you want to reach, and the correct platform.

If you are selling life insurance, your target audience is most likely above the age of 40. I’m not quite sure how many 40-year-olds are on TikTok, but I'm sure it's not a lot. In that case, you would be better off advertising on LinkedIn or Facebook.

If you are selling a cool gadget like self-dimming LEDs, the older demographic on Facebook and LinkedIn will barely even know what LEDs are (no shade to the older generation). So, an advertisement on TikTok or Instagram would be a safer bet.

So the first step in figuring out what works for you is identifying who is actually likely to buy what you are selling. Once you have figured that out, we can move on to the next step: finding out which form of content suits your brand.

Let’s start with long-form content. This type of content allows you to dive deep into your product and is more likely to drive traffic to your brand, as someone who watches a 20-minute video will most likely be very invested in the product. However, it takes longer to make to ensure the same quality as short-form videos and usually isn’t viewed by people with lower attention spans. This means only people who are really invested in your product will drive traffic. It is why most tech reviews are long-form, as there is too much to cover to be able to put it in a short-form video, so only those who really want to know will view the video. If you have an extremely niche product, long-form videos might be the way to go.

Now, let’s get into short-form content. Short-form content has been around for ages, from the funny skits back in the Vine days to the versatile content on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and even Pinterest. This content is very bite-sized and easy to consume. In the age of short attention spans, this is a great plus. It gets the information out there as quickly as possible and usually reaches more people. Whereas it may take months for a long-form video to reach 1 million views, some short-form videos explode overnight and reach tens of millions of views.

This, however, also has its own disadvantages.

Someone who is mindlessly scrolling through TikTok is way less likely to actually engage with your brand. Your videos may just get lost in the pool of other videos on the platform. This can basically render the amount of views you get irrelevant.

In conclusion, both forms of content have their pros and cons and will require a lot of trial and error to see which works best for you. But that’s where we come in. Here at Amadòs Strategies, we can provide you with our extensive knowledge on which form of content is best for your brand engagement. If you are interested in boosting your engagement, make sure to get in contact with us.

This is Eric, signing off.