If long-form content is fueling your blog and website, micro content should be fueling your social media channels. Everyone’s touting the “long game” with content marketing since longer posts get more Google juice, or shares, or clicks.

But trust me, micro content still has its place. Why?

You have about 8 seconds to capture my attention. That’s about one second less than you get with a goldfish.

Scary thought, right?

This is where micro content still comes into play.

What Is Micro Content?

Micro content is exactly what it sounds like: short bursts of content, short-form content, memes, visuals, and the bite-sized content that’s best suited for social media.

This type of content should be considered as mobile trends increase, too.

Google just made an announcement about ranking websites based on their mobile responsiveness starting April 21st. And as more and more people access your website or social media content by phone, you’ll need more micro content to capture their attention.

Think about it: Would you rather read a short sentence or two on mobile, or a full on 1500-word post from your favorite author?

Examples of micro content:

o Headlines

o Memes

o Videos (short, think Vine)

o Visuals

o Short text (able to be skimmed)

o Twitter Cards

Even if long-form content can keep traffic on your site for longer periods of time, you need some sort of micro content to quickly capture their attention and get them there.

How To Use Micro Content With Your Social Media Strategy

Use these 10 tips to drive traffic from your social media sites to your OWNED assets (ex: your blog or website):

1) Make it micro content that lasts: Use themes. For instance, on the B Squared Media Facebook Page, users know that every Monday we’re going to have a Monday Marketing Tip that has the same visual layout, but with a new tip:

2) Create a Pinterest-specific image for your blog post and pin it to a board that houses all of your blog articles on Pinterest. You can use the popular site, Canva to do this.

3) Similarly, use a plugin to make all images on your blog pin-worthy (we use J Query Pin It Button For Images plugin). Once installed, a ‘Pin It’ button appears on blog images when they’re hovered over with the mouse … see below:

4) Another plugin we like to use on our blog is Inline Tweet Sharer, which allows you to create memorable micro content – like a quote – for your readers to share on Twitter.

5) Create a meme for Instagram to show, not tell, your followers about your latest blog post (just don’t forget to change the link in your bio!).

6) Upload a quick video to Facebook telling Fans about your latest e-course or website offering. Stats are showing videos on Facebook are HUGE!

7) Use Buzzsumo to make your headlines sassy, noticeable, and clickable. Sometimes the headline is the only shot you’ve got!

8) If you distribute your blog posts through email marketing, make it easy on your readers and ask them to share the new post with a click of a button (link). We use Click to Tweet to accomplish this each week.

9) Many socially savvy peeps use Scoop.it or Paper.li to curate batches of mirco content and share it with their communities.

10) Incorporate SMS into your marketing strategy.

Even your long-form content (like this blog post) should use short-form tactics, like:

o Sub headers

o Bullet points

o Numbered lists, and

o On-point visuals

These help break up the text and make your posts more readable and ready to be scanned by readers instead of read in its entirety.

Bonus: Just because you’re using micro content with a small area of real estate does NOT mean you’ll want to forget your all-important call to action (CTA).

Every piece of content no matter how big or small needs to use your online media as way to drive suspects to prospects for your business. So make sure you ASK!

Long-Form Content Still Matters Most

You shouldn’t be investing all of your time in micro content!

We know that attention spans are short, and we know that short-form content is only meant to capture attention until the user hits one of our owned assets, like our website or blog.

I hate to see brands spending so much time on creating memes and then having no real place for inquisitive website visitors to find out more about what the company does, or how they’re innovating in their space.

Those memes, vine videos, and tweets should lead to something bigger – like an in-depth content hub where readers can turn into prospects, leads, and hopefully customers.

Micro-content just isn’t going to do that.

So use it wisely, create it quickly, and get it to do its job, which is to get interested parties interested in hearing more about YOU.

Did I leave out any micro content examples? Let us know in the comments section below!

See you in the social sphere!