“If you aren’t having fun creating content, you’re doing it wrong.”
~ Ann Handley
I think I’m probably in the minority as a business coach who doesn’t push my clients to spend time hustling on social media. Not because I don’t value social media, I certainly do but because I value something else more.
As someone who, as a little girl, wanted to be an award winning novelist when I grew up and who has a, not so small, obsession with books, using my love of words and writing to grow my business has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my business journey.
In fact I started my “business” journey as a personal development blogger and managed to build a solid and loyal audience before I ever sold a thing. Which meant when I finally did start selling my life coaching services, it wasn’t to crickets. It was to a group of people who had been following my journey since 2011 when I decided to ditch convention and change my entire life (for the better).
After transitioning to Business Coaching back in 2017, I needed to start my whole audience from scratch (minus a few people who followed me over from my life coaching business). I knew that content was going to be a key way to do this but the internet felt like a different place. In 2011, my personal development blog had grown quickly and organically, with little effort from me but starting a new blog in 2017 felt more daunting. The internet felt more crowded and noisy but despite that, after a stuttering start, I ploughed on. By 2019 I had a solid content marketing system in place and was publishing and repurposing content on a weekly basis.
Now, my content is one of the primary ways I connect with my audience. Nearly everyone who hires me or attends one of my workshops will tell me that they’ve read my content and it played a part in them wanting to work with me. I now have a bank of over 230 long form articles. It’s worth noting that by “long form” I typically mean 1000 words plus, which means well over 230,000 words written to date. One day I hope to turn some of those words into a book!
This bank of content has proved to be invaluable to me and is why I often encourage my clients to take a similar approach. Now if you are reading this and the thought of regularly writing 1000+ words fills you with dread, then this might not be the approach for you. But if you are a fellow wordsmith and love the idea of using your writing habit to grow your business, read on for 10 reasons I favour long form content over social media.
1. You can go deep and give more value
As someone who likes to go deep into things, going deep in my content suits me well and it has the added bonus of allowing me to give more value in my marketing. If you think about it, the amount of value you can provide in a short social media post is always going to be far less than in a longer, more in depth piece of content. And the more value a reader gets, the more likely they are to consider investing in your services.
2. You can better demonstrate your expertise
The more strategy, advice and insight I can share with my readers about the struggles they face in business, the better able I am to demonstrate my expertise. The impact of this is that it cultivates trust that I have the expertise and knowledge to support my audience to get where they are trying to get to.
3. It’s a great way to share your point of view
A lot of people think that the only place to share their point of view is in the copy on their website, but I’ve built a thriving business with old and outdated web copy on my website but with new, fresh content regularly going up on my blog.
It’s in my content that I really do share my point of view on business growth, I tell people what I really think, even (and especially) if it means going against the mainstream view.
Doing this allows my right-fit clients to buy into my approach and also repels those people who aren’t a fit. Which is great because I am definitely NOT the right business coach for everyone.
4. People take their time over it
Consider for a moment how you digest content. If you are anything like me, when on a platform like Instagram, I would guess that you spend much of your time scrolling. Why? Because that’s how the platform is designed. Social media platforms are not designed for going deep, they’re designed to keep you hooked on scrolling and if you have ever got into a downward scrolling spin, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
When we digest long form content, it’s usually on a blog or in a newsletter or on a platform like Medium or Substack, all of which are designed for deeper engagement with the content. A platform like Medium for example is actually designed to minimise distractions. I know when I open up Medium or read a blog on someone’s website, I’m going to take more time over it than I would if it were a reel or post on Instagram.
5. People find it when they are searching for it
When you write longer pieces of content in the form of a blog or article, there exists the possibility that people will find it while they search online for related information and advice. This means that when someone comes across your content, they are wanting to access content just like it, rather than simply seeing your content in a social media feed, regardless. of it’s relevance.
It goes without saying that if people have an issue that they are searching online for guidance on, that they are more likely to really engage with the content they find and even invest in services associated with that content to alleviate the problem they have.
That’s definitely been the case for my clients — I have had several clients apply for coaching because they’ve come across one of my articles and then gone on to read more of my blog posts or join my list. By contrast, I almost never have people hire me because they found me on social media.
6. You own the content
When you write for your own blog or newsletter, you control the content and the audience is your audience. No external provider can come and close your website down. When you put all of your content on social media, you can lose it overnight. if Meta, for example, decides to close down or freeze your account. I’ve seen it happen and as you can imagine, getting access to someone in an organisation like Meta to help restore your account is just about impossible.
I’ve also known people whose businesses were reliant on a flow of clients that was coming from social media and then the algorithm changed and suddenly their reach plummeted and their sales dried up. I’m not usually one for fear mongering but when you put all of your intellectual property on social media, I really do think you are taking a risk.
7. It suits my personality
As a highly sensitive introvert who doesn’t like spending too much time on social media, long form reading and writing is my preference. I think it’s fair to say that many of my clients are similar. If I prefer to read more high value and informative articles outside of social media, then I’m prepared to bet that many of my ideal clients feel the same.
Plus the idea of making reels and short pithy posts for social media just doesn’t inspire me. Having said that I am hoping to branch into video later this year!
8. I can do it less often
Most of the people I know who are killing it on Instagram (and I do know a few who are) are creating reels 2–3 times a week, that includes planning the reel, recording the reel, possibly editing or redoing the reel to get it right and then publishing the reel — 2 to 3 times a week. That feels exhausting to me.
With longer form content, like for a blog or newsletter, people don’t expect to receive fresh content every day or every few days, they expect to receive it every 1–2 weeks, which means as a content creator, I don’t have to work on content every day. I have Mondays blocked off for my content and I put out a new newsletter (which I later repurpose into articles and social media posts) every few weeks, which feels super manageable considering my busy schedule.
9. It’s easier to make a long piece of content short
The other reason I love long form content is because it’s far easier to take a longer piece of content and chop it down to shorter pieces than it is to start with a short piece made for social and then try to turn it into a longer piece.
All of my long form content ends up on social media, but it’s not created for social media. It starts life as a newsletter and then later gets repurposed into a Medium article, a blog, a text post on LinkedIn, a text post on Facebook and then maybe at some point it might make its way to a carousel post on Instagram. From one long form piece of writing, I can get many more other pieces out of it.
10. When you go deep in your content, you can repurpose it for bigger things
It’s not just easier to go from long form to shorter content, it’s also much easier to go from a longer form piece of content into something even bigger like a workshop. Many of the paid workshops I’ve run or free workshops I’ve done for other people’s audiences started life as a newsletter. Because I really explore ideas in depth in my writing, I often have the basis for a 60–90 minute workshop already done.
As I write, there are even more benefits to long form content popping into my head but this piece, at over 1700 words, is already probably long enough!