Long-Term Content vs Short-Term Content

Long-Term content vs short-Term content. How to create a long-Term content marketing strategy?

Creating a long-term content strategy is essential for your business. It helps you to focus on the big picture, and don’t get trapped in the endless hustle of creating social media short-term content. Having long-term content such as blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channel gives you more freedom, more flexibility and the possibility to content with your audience on a deeper level.

Social media platforms change so fast. You cannot really predict how the algorithm will behave in the future and for how long these platforms will exist. Moreover, you don’t own these platforms. They can definitely give you some exposure and can help you to get discovered by people who probably won’t be able to find you otherwise.

But if you don’t create long-term content you lose a chance to get ranked in search, build deeper and more meaningful relationships with your audience, drive traffic to your website, build your brand authority and get more leads for your business. Content marketing is a long-term game, it’s a marathon, but not a sprint. Usually, it takes time, patience, effort, and persistence to get the results you want from the long-term content you create. It takes anywhere from six months to a year to start seeing results.

The long-term content you create doesn’t have an end date, unlike paid ads and short-term social media content. While it does take a lot of time to create it, you need to always have a big picture in your mind. Long-term content will always have a higher return on investment (ROI) than any social media content you will create.

Long-term content will last for years and it can be repurposed and adapted to all your social media platforms effortlessly. Can you imagine the time and effort it will save for you in the future?

What is a long-term content

When I speak about long-term content, what do I mean by that?

Long articles, blogs on your website
Digital products like workbooks, e-books, paper books, how-to manuals
Long and extensive case studies
Podcast episodes
Long YouTube videos

Creating long-term content usually means creating more extended, in-depth content rather than just creating social media posts or short videos. It takes more time, and more research to produce. The goal of long-term content isn’t to bring you and your business immediate results, but rather to build long, lasting, trustworthy relationships with both your potential and existing clients.

It helps you to start building brand awareness, and your audience in a more sustainable way. For your long-content strategy to be successful you need to be committed, consistent, and create specific goals. What would you like to achieve with your long-content strategy? It can be building brand awareness, and trust, positing yourself as an expert, building a loyal audience of true fans, getting more leads or driving website traffic.

In addition to this, a long-term content marketing strategy can help to grow your business in a more sustainable way. It will allow you to connect with your audience in a deeper and more authentic way.

I believe that every small business owner, and creative, should be creating long-term content. Yes, it might take time, commitment, and effort, but remember that building a sustainable business takes time. Long-term content can help you to start building a foundation and long-term results for your business.

Sharing free information and adding value to your audience is essential. Don’t be afraid to give away too much free information. Be generous, add value, and care genuinely about your audience when you create your long-term content pieces.

For your content strategy to work, you need to be both creating long-term and short-term content with a focus on long content-term content.

Short-term content advantages and disadvantages

A long-term content strategy should include both long-term and short-term content, but the emphasis should always be on long-term content. What are the main advantages of short-term content?

Short content is easier to consume and digest by your audience.

People can consume your social media content faster and take immediate action. But remember that it’s you who should guide them and encourage them to take action.

It can help you to grow and get more exposure faster.

Being present on social media and creating consistent content can help you and your brand to get discovered by people who won’t be able to find out about your otherwise.

Short-term content allows you to experiment and create content with less commitment.

Short-term content allows you to create various types of content like videos, posts, stories, pins, and carousels, which give you an opportunity to appeal to different people. As we’re all different and prefer to consume different types of content. Your goal is to try creating different types of content, to experiment to see what works for you, and what you enjoy creating.

Short-term content can help you to find your voice and your unique style.

Quality content is always better than quantity. But by creating a lot of different content you can try different things, have more freedom, discover yourself and your core values, create your unique value proposition, find your voice, build your self-confidence, and courage and learn.

It will help you to build your courage, consistency and confidence.

The more content you create the more confidence you will become. You need always focus on taking action, even if you don’t know what your niche is, or how you would like to show yourself in the world. The action of confidence comes first and self-confidence comes after.

The more you wait, the more uncertainty you want to have, and the more lost you feel. Waiting makes you lose momentum and makes you doubt yourself. You will figure out everything through a creative process, you just need to start. I started to find more clarity the day I started to take action and show up even though I felt lost.

Short-term content is faster to create

It does take less time sometimes to produce short-term content. Although, not always, you still need to write posts, have photos, and videos prepared, have the topic, and idea, and have a script ready. I would recommend having all these things ready in advance before you start creating the actual content.

Take advantage of video content

Video content is very powerful and keeps getting more and more popular every single day. People tend to share more video content. So you don’t want to miss the possibilities it gives. If you don’t create any video content yet, it might be a good time to start creating it now.

Short-term content builds a faster conversion.

There will be always people who consume your content fast and will take the action immediately. And short-term content can allow you to take advantage of that.

Short-term content allows you to build a momentum

It allows you to build momentum and connect with your audience on a personal level. You can create more raw content, show your personality and connect with your audience instantly.

Despite all these advantages, there are still some disadvantages of short-term content. It can be quite limiting. As most social media platforms have a limit for the number of characters. Often you cannot write a post with more than 2000 characters. It can be hard to express your ideas and say everything you want with these limited resources.

Short-term content has fewer SEO opportunities. Unlike the blog on your website or YouTube video, or even Pinterest which work more like search engines and give you an opportunity to drive organic traffic to your website and get ranked on Google. Best-performing content on Google tends to be long-term content.

As short-term content is faster and easier to create it makes social media space quite crowded and filled with low-quality information. People tend to scroll endlessly through social media platforms mindlessly without taking any action. They come to these platforms mostly for entertainment. That’s why you need to be mindful of how you create your short-term content strategy. Only 20% of all information you share there should be expert information, and the other 80% should be personal or entertainment content.

You don’t own social media platforms and cannot predict how the algorithm will behave and change in the future. Which makes it hard to create long-term goals for your business. It takes your power in some way and makes you rely on platforms you cannot control.

Creating endless short-term content is a hustle. You risk burnout very fast if you keep pressuring yourself to post every single day. In fact, you don’t need to post every single day for your brand and business to be successful.

Your content strategy should always be a mix of both short-term and long-term content.

Advantages and disadvantages of long-term content

Long-term content is recommended more for SEO purposes. It allows you to rank organically and sustainably in search, even if you don’t post consistently. A piece of content you published one year ago can still be found, and discovered by your audience.

Long-form content allows you and your brand to showcase your expertise, become a thought leader in your field, and offer value to your readers. A long-term content strategy can help you to form a deeper bond with your audience. It gives you a recognizable, authentic voice and earns you loyalty, brand awareness and trust which helps to expand and grow your audience. So what are the main benefits of a long-content strategy?

It performs better in the search

Google prefers long-term content which allows your blog or podcast to get discovered on Google. Optimizing your content for SEO allows you to improve both content performance and SEO rankings at the same time. It allows your website to get discovered on the search and drive organic high-quality traffic to your website.

SEO optimization includes keyword research, backlinks optimization, relevant meta description of your content piece and the number of links to other websites and resources you have. If your content is valuable and helps your reader they tend to spend more time on your website and return to it.

Long-term content allows using resources and time more efficiently

Creating long-term content does take more time and effort. But at the same time, you’re working for long-term results. Your long-term content will keep bringing your traffic and results in a long run. You won’t spend thousands of dollars on ads, but instead, market your brand and business with free valuable content. And in the long run, it will save you a lot of time. The growth of your business and brand will be more suitable and you won’t need to hustle to create endless short-term content.

It allows you to dive deeper into the topic

Long-term content gives you the possibility to speak about the topic in more depth and to share valuable links, and resources, which makes it more trustworthy.

There is no limit in terms of the quantity of information you can share when it comes to long-term content. You can dive deep into the topic you speak about, and share valuable resources, and websites. It will make the content piece more valuable, and trustworthy, and connect you to your audience on a more deep and more authentic level. Social media platforms rarely allow you to really dive deep into the topic because usually, the numbers of characters you can use in your posts are limited.

You won’t get instant gratification by creating long-term content. But your goal is to deliver long-term value that your audience can come back to and rely on consistently. You’re creating valuable information that will be relevant and searchable for months and years to come.

It builds your credibility your authority and your reputation

When you create in-depth, valuable long-term content you establish your brand’s authority and build a strong personal brand. When your audience gets tonnes of free value from your content, they start to trust you more and will be more willing to become a part of your tribe and buy from you in the future.

There are very few people who are ready to buy when they don’t know you. And giving away valuable information for free can help you to start building trust, momentum and authority.

Even if not everyone will buy from you, your goal is to help as many people as possible, make their lives easier, and solve their problems. Always focus on giving away value first and money will come. The money you make isn’t the reflection of your worth, but the reflection of the value you share with this world.

It’s easy to repurpose

The goal isn’t always working harder. We already have so much on our plate as business owners, and creating content can feel like hard work, a drudgery, but it shouldn’t be this way.

Another huge advantage of long-term content is that it can be adapted and repurposed for many different social media platforms.

One long blog article can be recreated for posts, carousels, videos, pins, and stories or even become a foundation of your digital product. You will save a lot of time repurposing your long-term content. There will be no need to come up with a brand new idea when you would like to post something on social media.

Your content marketing strategy will be more sustainable, more effective and less time-consuming. As a business owner, you have so much to do: client work, administrative tasks, content creation, searching for new clients and so much more. So you need to be mindful of how you use your time and be strategic about it. Not every one of us has a budget and the possibility to hire somebody to help us.

Long-term content promotes itself

Long-term content promotes itself. When you create in-depth, well-researched and high-quality content you have more chances to get discovered by your audience and build trust and genuine relationships with your audience.

It will allow you to build your authority over time and make sure that people come back regularly and gain value from your long-term content. In a sense, it makes your long-term content timeless. It will keep building steady and long-term rankings in search and will keep bringing you leads and building relationships with your audience when you sleep.

Adding as much free value to your audience as possible is the most effective way to build your audience’s trust, and grow your personal brand.

Long-term content drives traffic to your website

Having some sort of valuable information is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. Because when people search for information on Google usually they search for a solution to their problems or an answer to a specific question they have.

So if you struggle to drive any traffic to your website whatsoever, it might be a good idea to start creating helpful blog articles, and podcasts on your website to help you to start driving the traffic. Your website has more chances to get discovered on Google and get ranked in search if you have some useful information.

You can promote your website’s content on all your social media platforms. You can also use Pinterest to share your blog articles. Pinterest is a very powerful platform because it works like a search engine, and gives you an opportunity to include links to your website and your blogs.

Long-term content builds your audience and leads

Building your audience can be hard. Your goal isn’t to build a huge audience of random people and appeal to everybody. If you try to speak to everybody and do manage to build a huge audience, the risk is that it will be not your people and it won’t be an engaged audience.

Instead, you want to build an audience of people who are genuinely interested in your content and your offer. The audience that will engage with your content actively when it comes out.

Long-term content is very powerful in helping you do this. Your audience will be high-quality, engaged, and interested and will listen to what you have to say. It will be your target audience.

And if your content adds a lot of value if it’s helpful and helps your audience to solve some problem, they will be more likely to join your email list, and to buy from you.

Some disadvantages of creating long-term content include longer time creation, commitment, and doing more research to create. But remember that it’s a long-term commitment. You need to be organised, set goals and show up regularly.

Short-term vs long-term content. Is the one is better than the other one?

I believe that for creating an effective content marketing strategy you need to be both creating long-term and short-term content. If you plan to grow your business and personal brand in a long run, you need always focus on creating long-term content first, rather than hustle every single day to produce social media posts.

It does take time to find your voice and to start building the confidence and courage to put yourself out there. It takes commitment, discipline, and focus to be able to produce long-term content pieces, but always focus on the big picture and that remember that you’re building a strong foundation for your business.

A mix of long- and short-form content is always a better choice for your long-term content strategy. You can create at the same time:

Long blog posts
Podcast episodes
Long YouTube videos
E-books, how-to manuals or any other digital products
Paper books or published articles
Extensive case studies
Social media posts, stories, carousels, pins
Short Tik Tok videos, YouTube shorts, IG reels and so on

How to create a long-term content marketing strategy?

You need to create a step-by-step plan for your content marketing strategy to be effective and bring you and your business the results you want.

Set goals

What would you like to achieve with both your short-term and long-term content? It can be getting more clients, getting more leads, building brand awareness, building a loyal online community, building brand authority, recognition and trust, growing your email list, getting your audience to buy your digital products or course, or leading them through your sales funnel and make them take action.

Take some time to set your goals, think about them, write everything down and create a plan.

Identify your target audience

You cannot create relatable and effective content if you don’t know who your target audience is. It’s an important step that you need to work on for both your business and personal brand. It will help you to provide relevant information and connect with your audience.

So who is your buyer persona? What problems do they have? What keeps them awake at night? What lifestyle do they have? What challenges do they have to face in their daily lives? What makes them take action?

You can make marketing research and think about whom would you like to help with your products and service. What problems can you help them to solve?

Provide valuable, and relevant information and deep insights

Once you know who you speak to it’s so much easier to create and share relevant information. Always keep in mind your ideal client when you create a piece of content. You need to both speak about things that you care about, but at the same time keep in mind your audience’s struggles.

Most information can be found on the internet these days, so don’t be afraid to express your point of view, use your voice, and add your personal spin to everything you create. It’s always YOU who will distinguish you from other people, your unique voice and point of view. Maybe not everybody will like it and accept it, but you don’t need to please and appeal to everybody.

Do a research

Make keyword research, and create effective titles and descriptions for your content pieces. Are there any gaps that you fill in with your content? Or maybe you can add your unique perspective on some subject?

I hope that by now you know your target audience. Think about what the buyer’s journey will look like. What your sales funnel will look like? What you would like your website visitors t do on your website? What action to take?

Decide what type of content you would like to create

What are you good at? What do you enjoy creating? Are you good at writing? Or maybe creating videos or podcasts?

You can try creating different types of content when you start. It will help you to find out what you enjoy and what works for your business and personal brand. Before you try, you don’t know. You can try creating digital products like e-books, how-to manuals, and courses, writing blogs, making speaking videos, or podcast episodes. Embark on your creative journey to find out what works for you.

Be organized, create a plan and schedule all content in advance

Being organized will help you to be less overwhelmed and do more in less time and make sure that you don’t forget anything. Of course, you can still be spontaneous, and create content with momentum. Although it’s a bad idea to wait for inspiration or wait until you will feel like posting something. If you do it, you will never start to show up. Having a plan will always help to make sure that you show up consistently without overthinking.

Once you know your audience and what you would like to create it’s time to create your content calendar. I use project management tools like Trello and Asana, but feel free to try different tools and choose the one that works for you.

Brainstorm topics that can be useful to your audience, make keyword research and create topic categories relevant to your brand and niche. You can create either a month or year content calendar.

Scheduling your content in advance will help you to be consistent and predictable for your audience. You won’t need to think when it comes to sharing content, but just sit down and create it and publish it. Creating it at the moment without planning is rarely a good idea. As your mind will start to create all sorts of unhelpful thoughts to prevent you from sharing it and stay silent. If you’re a more spontaneous person, you can mix both spontaneous and planned content. But never underestimate the power of planning.

Measure and track content performance

It’s important to measure how your content performs. It will help you to understand what worked, and what didn’t and improve your content over time. You cannot just hope that it will work, and keep creating irrelevant content, content that doesn’t bring any results for your business.

There are different metrics you can use to measure your content performance, such as:

Conversation – does your audience take action you want them to take after consuming your content? It can be booking a call, downloading a free product, joining your email list, or working with you.
Engagement – does your audience engage with your content? Do they leave comments, share the content, or like it?
Lead generation – do people join your email list?
Organic search – does your content searchable on Google? Does your content drive organic traffic to your website?

Experiment and keep going

Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things. There is no right or wrong way of creating content. Different content works differently for every single person out there. And what works for somebody might not work for you. It’s especially important if you just starting out and don’t know your niche, your audience or what you even would like to offer. You can still start creating content and figure out all these things on your way.

We’re all multi-passionate human beings, so don’t try to put yourself in the box and limit yourself, experiment instead. Being on your creative journey, you will build courage, and confidence, learn more about your audience and learn what content works and why. You will uncover your unique personality, and your value proposition, and create your unique content style. You will learn to be consistent and show up even if you don’t feel like it.

Final thoughts

Content marketing without a strategy behind it is useless. For creating an effective content marketing strategy for your business you need create both short-term and long term content with always focusing on a long-term. Creating a long-term content strategy will give you a sense of direction and will help you business and personal brand to grow in a sustainable way.

Long-term content will save your time, help to grow your business and brand awareness in the long turn,and build a loyal audience of your true fans.

Set goals, create content calendar, identify your target audience, provide value, be organized and show up consistently for your audience. Measure your content, experiment, try new things, and keep going and you have no other choice but to succeed.