Currently, content marketing is in a state of surplus: the audience is offered so much branded content that it leads to a decrease in the impact of interaction with it.
The Beckon report, based on the analysis of marketing costs totalling more than $16,000,000, is not at all pleasing and says that “brands may be surprised to learn that despite the growth in the volume of branded content creation, which reaches up to 300% per year, the involvement of consumers in the interaction with it does not change at all.
A lot of money is invested in the creation of such material, but it is impossible to achieve more active involvement of consumers”.
The bitter truth is that most of the materials you create in the context of content marketing will be lost on the Internet web without any noticeable effect.
The Content Council, a marketing web resource, reports that funding for content marketing will increase to 33.1% over the next two years, with the current 23.3%, making it an important channel not only for traffic generation, but also for user engagement with the brand.
What does that mean for marketers? On the one hand, brands are still competing with each other to produce more content. On the other hand, more content does not lead to better results, and poor quality content will not allow you to recoup half of your investment.
Global Content Marketing Development says, the purpose of content is shifting towards “creating experiences that people will remember.
Is it possible to create more content while achieving greater efficiency? Perhaps the key to solving this puzzle is not posting long posts on the blog and shooting long videos?
Is there a type of content that can be created without major investment, but that will have the desired impact on the audience? The correct answer is yes. This is so-called data-based micro-content.
What is data-based micro-content?
The term “microcontent” was originally used to refer to small blocks of text in the context of UX, such as headings, page titles, subheadings, e-mail subject names.
However, in a marketing context, this concept means something broader. Blogger defined micro-content as “information published in summary form”.
The Magnolia Media network contrasts micro-content with long forms of content that are still effective generators of traffic and leads, especially in social media.
Examples of micro-content are tweets, status updates, RSS feeds and even URLs. However, micro-content is not limited to a single written word format.
There is a growing number of video producers who are aware of the hidden capabilities of micro-video content.
Total: micro-content is a brief form of multimedia content produced to deliver a branded message to the audience in digital format, which is easy to understand and cite on the Internet.
The beauty of micro-content is that its small size does not affect its effect on the audience in any way.
If you look at the most vivid examples of viral marketing content, you may be surprised to learn that some of them, being just a few bytes of information, easily outperform longer forms of content in terms of effectiveness.
If you want to create memorable, quoted and high quality materials without tearing your hair and writing over 2,000 characters day after day, micro-content is what you need.
These small pieces of content will fit easily into your publication schedule, and one or more people will be able to produce them.
Although micro-content is not new to marketing, presenting statistics in this format and visualizing them is an innovation. The data appeals to a rational part of your potential customers’ consciousness, so if your micro-content is based on it, it will be easier for you to convince them of something and convert it.
I wonder how to learn how to create such content? To illustrate this, take a look at the five less studied micro-formats.
Types of micro-content based on data
Using the data in the content is like a double-edged sword. Too much of this information will make you too academic and boring, and too little will make you unreliable. However, in micro-content format, balance is much easier to achieve, so your texts will be both reader-friendly and authentic.
When marketers talk about data, it’s not just about numbers. There are two types of data that you can use in your content: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data can be descriptive or categorical.
An example is the most common color in national flags. Quantitative data are always figures. An example is the number of countries that are red in their national flags. Below are some examples of how both types of data can be used in microcontent.
Facts backed up by data
Each brand has a huge repository of unique knowledge. And this knowledge may prove to be your strongest advantage, allowing you to gain the trust of customers.
One way to demonstrate this knowledge is to squeeze it into a format that is easy to understand. And when you’ve prepared such facts, referring to specific data is a great way to make them credible and memorable.
This type of micro-content can be a summary of any larger material that will allow you to understand the topic more deeply and thoroughly. Then, these statistically supported facts will be included in the arsenal of your PR tools.
They can be used to inform, educate and entertain your target customers in the awareness stage. They will be discussed and shared with each other.
The key to the success of this type of micro-content is a combination of attractive visual elements and data pairs that can have a strong impact on the visitor.
Your images should be searchable by means of search engines. In addition to citing in social media, you can increase your chances of spreading this information online by selecting the right keywords.
Prescriptions for ready-made solutions
By default, recipes are data-based content. Using prescriptions in reasonable quantities can lead to the desired result. A successful recipe requires in-depth knowledge and experience in this area.
For example, readers who are offered a recipe for a steak will expect to be able to prepare an equally amazing meal if they follow all your recommendations. And if the dish they achieve is fully in line with their expectations, you will be trusted and respected.
Now let’s talk about recipes in the marketing context. What recipe can you give your audience so they can succeed in anything? Think of the recipe as something that will help you gain the trust of your target audience: your recipe is a piece of content in which your brand experience is presented as a blueprint for action. The main thing is to make sure that this program is working.
Venn diagrams
Venn’s charts, invented by English philosopher and logic John Wenn, are used to visualize the links between quality data. Because of their ability to present complex ideas in an accessible form, Venn diagrams are widely used on the Internet.
A great reason to use Venn diagrams in your content is when you try to demonstrate the link between parts, explain complex systems, explore different product categories, or win a dispute online.
Your marketing imagination can work wonders for these logic circuits. They can be used in a variety of different ways to demonstrate brand knowledge and experience, to inform your audience about something, or simply to entertain with such sassy content as in the example below.
They are easy to make and they can be used at such stages of marketing as the awareness and consideration stage.
Single graphs
You’ve probably heard the news about so-called big data. Yes, numbers are a powerful tool for persuasion, but marketers should use them competently and carefully. Your target audience will probably not want to read a long report full of charts and graphs.
Too much statistical information will tire them out unless, of course, they are dealing with similar data in their professional activities.
This is where the need for single charts arises. This is one of the most effective ways of applying data in micro-content format. Instead of providing your readers with all the available data, simply select one of the most relevant data sets and display it in a graphical format.