Producing high-quality content to attract and engage your audience is the best, most authentic way to nurture the relationship.
Depending on your goals, you might produce e-books, white papers, articles and infographics—each of which serves a particular purpose. But no matter what type of content you produce, you might be overlooking a valuable component of the marketing mix: micro-content.
This bite-size content can be distributed through a variety of platforms to help extend your content’s reach in an efficient way. As consumer attention spans shrink, micro-content is a powerful way to connect with your audience.
Consumer attention spans have decreased significantly over the last decade. The average consumer attention span today is 8 seconds. (Source: Marketplace.org)
What exactly is micro-content? Think of it as a tiny appetizer: small items extracted from larger content to entice viewers. These can be single images, mini data visualizations, tips, factoids, illustrations, mini graphics, etc., shared across all owned properties (social accounts, blogs, newsletters and more).
Micro-content examples from Column Five—shareable graphics and quotes published on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.
Although it is small, this content can be very effective. Here are 4 ways micro-content helps your brand.
1) It is the easiest way to engage. Consumers are so overloaded that even a meaty white paper or infographic may seem too daunting for their full attention. Micro-content is a great way to lower the barrier to entry, spoon-feeding your audience valuable information in its most condensed form. Whether it’s a compelling stat from an article or a powerful quote, these pieces add another layer to your story and entice an audience to explore it more fully.
An interesting stat from a blog post compels readers to check out the full post.
2) It increases shareability. Micro-content is primed for sharing on social platforms. Whereas many social users may not want to share lengthy white papers, they are much more likely to tweet interesting statistics or intriguing quotes. This is a great way to expand your existing content’s social reach.
A single quote from a piece of content can be tweeted, extending the reach to viewers’ social platforms.
3) You get more value. Creating a steady stream of content is challenging enough. Micro-content is efficient and economical because it can come from existing pieces of content, so you can create multiple pieces with minimal effort. Breaking up an existing infographic into mini graphics or sharing a relevant data visualization via Instagram is a great way to extend the life of your content.
Micro-content is easy to produce from any existing content.
4) It’s easy to tailor for audiences. Because micro-content is easy to produce, it’s easy to tailor for specific audiences. Whereas a comprehensive study may seem too dense to market to a variety of audiences, using tailored micro-content helps provide points of entry for different demographics.
HubSpot uses a relevant stat to encourage viewers to participate in a survey.
No matter what your content mix, considering ways to incorporate micro-content will help you build a more robust content catalog and diversify how it reaches your audience.
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