As a small business professional my focus is always on supporting other small businesses and in helping them to do well. Part of the success of a small business is in attracting consistent potential customers and in promptly turning these potential customers into paying customers. There are of course many ways to reach and convert potential customers into paying customers. One way is by means of frequent bursts of micro-content.
What is Micro-content?
It’s small bite sized pieces of information. It’s short form content, which often includes a visual, an image, an audio or infographic etc with a single message or idea. It’s focused and compact. Think horoscopes!
Did you know the average adult attention span is between 2.8 & 8 seconds. I think you’ll agree not a whole lot of time to get your message across. But it’s enough to post, tweet and share bite sized bursts of information across chosen platforms that will offer a taste of a longer article or biz offer you have on your website or blog.
With the evolution of the internet has come a wealth of daily noise and a continual stream of information. This means you have to come up with more and more creative ways to plough through the noise and reach your customers. They in turn have to chose you above your competitors.
So if we consider:
- the attention span adults have is short
- the human brain processes images & pictures 60,000 times faster than text
- images posted on social media receive a much higher engagement than text messages alone
In fact articles with images get 94% more total views than text images alone, so it’s pretty straight forward to understand we should be using snap size content.
I’m not saying to write short and brief all the time. Keep your articles and posts on your blog or website normal length, but utilise the power of micro-content to your advantage – use it as leverage.
Why use Micro-content?
Because it’s effective for driving traffic to your website or blog, where potential customers can then read your full content. Furthermore posting micro-content allows you to send your content directly to where your customers are – on social media. Most people now have at least one, or even several social media accounts across a multitude of platforms.
Active Social User Stats
- Facebook has 968 million daily active users
- Twitter has 316 million monthly active users
- Google+ has 300 million active users overall
- Pinterest has 8.2 million active users
- Instagram has 300 million active users overall
(stats taken from a variety of sources 2015)
Platforms For Micro-content
- Google+
Types of Micro-content
- Quotes (well known from prominent individuals)
- Headlines
- Videos
- Audios
- Cartoons
- Short text
- Industry & Expert snippets and quotes
- Statistics
- Picture with a short text message
- Image with a URL to your blog post
You’re looking to create a story in a snippet using a short caption, audio, video, infographic etc. It’s about creating interest, providing a flavour for the fuller article or offer that can be found on your site. Think of it like this, long term content is the fuel that drives your blog or website, micro-content is the fuel that drives your social media channels, which all lead back to your blog or website. Got it?
Using micro-content will help build your brand and reach potentially huge numbers of new customers. So be sure when using micro-content you understand the optimal image size for social platforms.
Please note the above images are for reference purposes only
These are the only three image dimensions you should need to create optimum snap size micro-content to feed your social platforms.
Use micro-content as part of your marketing budget to keep your business in front of your customers and prospects, using it to build credibility and support your branding efforts. Use it frequently and diversify your types of micro-content to add value and maintain the interest of your audience. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action in your micro-content.
Enjoy creating your graphic and audio snippets. And have a great week ahead.
To Your Continued Business Success. Kazi Quinton from the Small Business Guide Centre
For IT Services in Stevenage visit Wire It Free Stevenage