How To Avoid Making These Critical Mistakes In Long And Short Form Social Media

An influencer once asked me, Simon ‘Why Publish The Same Message, In So Many Formats, On So Many Platforms Of Social Media?’ Surely, a short video, (short form), is the hook as a question to get people to watch the longer video, (long form). Are the longer form views, not the views that count? The answer to this is not what you might think. Of course the real issue is ‘How To Avoid Making These Critical Mistakes In Long And Short Form Social Media.’

What do I mean by that?

Feature Image by Photo courtesy of Marcus Aurelius

A lot of influencers, try to offer many formats, on many platforms. They only deploy their real message, in the longer form blog or video. They use the short form as a repeat of the question, in order to pull traffic to the longer form, which it is linked to.

These influencers believe, that they will grow in multiple formats, on multiple platforms in this way. They do this in order to command more of the content consumption market, as a way to increase revenue. So when their short form vastly under performs, compared to their long form, they give up on the failing format. What they need to do is answer the question, which is, ‘How To Avoid Making These Critical Mistakes In Long And Short Form Social Media.’

Short Form Mistake By Repeating The Search Question

The client’s state of mind, will land somewhere on the urgency scale of hmmm just interested, to oh my goodness, this is an existential threat, that I must resolve immediately. So read on to see how fundamentally wrong it to make this simple mistake.

The mistake that many influencers make, is to fill the short form video or blog, with the search term question, but never answer it. This means that the whole short form is just hook. I is crazy. They use this for pulling clients into consuming the long form. But, simply packaging up and issuing your hook in a short form video or a visual picture for a blog, is not enough to engage clients. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to invest in long form consumption, particularly on busier days.

Put Yourself In The Clients’ Shoes

Imagine that you are the client, with a burning question. You go ahead and plug it into google, and find what looks like a great short form video with an enticing hook like thumbnail. When you play the video, you discover that it simply repeats your question. It is no more than a video repeating your question that you want an answer to. Their urgency is now rocketing and so is their anxiety as their time has been consumed by a dead end search result!

The Real Hook Killer is Yet To Come

Then at the end of the video, you see a link to a long form blog or video. How frustrating is that? It is the social media equivalent of being sold a short taxi ride home that then takes you to long distance slow bus. Worse is that you do not have the time or inclination to study the long form. At best you will find another short form video, and at worst you will not come back to this channel.

Personally, I see it very differently. I am simply looking to cater for the state of mind of my clients. Therefore, what I output, for ‘Build My Warrior’, in short form is the same message as in long form. Only the depth of background detail increases.

So, I answered the influencer’s question. ‘well you have to see it through the mind of the client.’ At different times of the year one client, can have different cognitive needs which manifest as different states of mind. These are driven by 2 factors. They are urgency to find an answer to their question, and the depth of interest. That variation in states of mind from my audience, drives the way that I answer the same question. It is fair to say that there will be a portion of my audience, who exhibit each of the many states, so I need to cater for all of them, I order to satisfy more of the population of the market.

Depth Of Interest Not Being Catered For

Some clients may have a need to fully understand everything. Here your long form BLOG and your long form video VLOG are key to satisfy these clients. In extreme cases of need. These clients, may even contact you to discuss further over an online call, with a carrot of paying a fee for your time and expertise.

Depth of interest, is further complicated by their range of knowledge. They could be very well versed and need some reassurance that they understand correctly, or they could have a basic level of understanding, and need a full education. You can handle this by adopting a stance of respecting the idea that some of the audience may already know. This also helps those that don’t know, not to feel like trembling beginners.

So, I start my content creation with the short form in mind, addressing the key salient points. Then I go ahead and create the long form, with all of the extra detail that drives the short form headlines. Then I come back and ensure that any new discovered and added important salient points from the long form are in fact also in the short form!

How We Learn Drives The Need For Both Blog And Video VLOG

I further cater for both of client mind states, by respecting that some are visually learning people, and some are verbally learning people.

There are actually 5 other types of learning person, but we will deal with that in a later posting.

Clients Who Learn Verbally Consume BLOGs (Posts),

Some clients with a verbal preference, just want to read the message quickly, and have their question answered in a matter of seconds. These people skim read. Therefore I place the main points in bullet form at the start of the BLOG, or I use pull quotes. See the red area in this post. Often I use both.

They are satisfied, and so are likely to come back again. Note that although I write a short and a long form BLOG, I tend to combine them into one document. Therefore, I just write one blog, with all the salient points at the start. That satisfies the client with a short form preference. If the client wants more detail, they will read on to where I have explained in more detail.

Note the definition of ‘Salient,’ definition below. This is vitally important in effective BLOG and VLOG content creation.

Clients Who Learn Visually Consume VLOGs, Videos In Short Or Long Form

Those that find their way to your short form video, are generally ‘visual people’, and want to have the answer to their question, shown to them. After searching on the world wide web for it, they want to press play and relive it in their head. They are likely to screenshot your content to keep it fresh and easily at hand. Here you have an opportunity to link in the long forms for deeper reading or viewing later! Here I often create a still image of my hook, and overlay the main bullet points, then voiceover my message. Upload, add hashtags and publish. Boom!

The Infographic Summary – How To Avoid Making These Critical Mistakes In Long And Short Form Social Media

So, to sum up, let’s put this lesson into an easy to remember infographic.

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