Siddharth Rajsekar is the founder of the Internet Lifestyle Hub, one of the world’s largest communities for coaches, trainers, teachers, and experts with 11,000+ members. As a leading digital coach, Siddharth has developed the Freedom Business Model to help people take their expertise online and build a super-profitable digital coaching business, without an office or employees.
It is not news that video and voice are completely taking over how content and information is shared. Most people are not reading and writing anymore. In fact, education was one such sector that was completely dependent on traditional methods, but now with the onset of the pandemic, this too has changed. So what is the future of content marketing, videos or voice? In my opinion, voice holds the future of quality content marketing. Let me explain why and give you a comparison between long-form, short-form video and voice content.
The core aim of content creation and social media is visibility, traction and grabbing the attention of your target audience. Attaining all three is very difficult. The main problem being; an abundant ocean of content, supply is much more than the demand, this leads to content being lost in the crowd. Statistically, the amount of content uploaded per day on the internet is so much more than what a person can consume in their entire lifetime. The content creators who have managed to crack the trick of keeping people hooked have successfully increased audience attention spans, these are the ones who have the highest influence and are then considered influencers. That being said, the masses are currently captivated by short-form videos, like Insta Reels, TikTok videos and more.
Short-Form Video and Voice Content (30 secs to 1 min-content)
PROS
- Short-form videos have a mass appeal and therefore are a quicker path to trending
- Short-form content is very good at the number of games, getting many views, downloads, shares and likes in a short span of time is this mediums’ USP
- It is also comparatively easier to become an influencer with short-form content rather than long-form.
- However, are these short-form videos actually adding any value to the consumer or is it mindless content consumption?
CONS
- Much like Netflix’s documentary, ‘The Social Dilemma’, all social media platforms keep feeding unintelligent content to their users but in a way that keeps them hooked, the user cannot differentiate between real and reel life. It works great for content creators but can backfire in the long run.
- Your content will tend to get lost in the feed
- You are catering to a completely distracted mind, which means, as a content creator you are not achieving your core aim, that is, improving your audience’s attention span towards your content.
- Affects the user’s psyche and hypnotises them. People who are well aware of this dilemma can save themselves by consciously cutting off but what about the people who are completely unaware of how harmful short-form content is? Metaphorically, what eating fast food every day would do to your system, is similar to what short form does to your brain.
Long-Form Video and Voice Content
PROS
- Long-form content is wholesome, compared to short-form
- It is more value-adding for the audience and for the creator
- Audiences have a better attention span
- The audience is seriously imbibing your content
- The audience is more likely to become customers
- Long-form content helps people cut through the noise of short-form
- Short-form content is certainly lost in the feed but long-form content is easier to search and retain, for example;
- Youtube videos live on and can be rediscovered or go viral later, thus creating a buzz way after they have been uploaded
- Sustainable and have a lot more visual impact
When a content creator is looking at making long-form content, every piece of the content should create an impactful journey for the consumer. Long-form content also has its own set of cons, apart from the one where people have evolved to a reduced attention span.
CONS
- Long-form content creators have to invest a lot of time in research.
- The pre, during and post-production for long-form content is time-consuming.
- Lesser audience engagement (likes, downloads, shares, views) compared to short-form.
- Huge competition for long-form as many players in the market can make a creator feel outranked.
- If the creator is making content for Youtube, they will have to keep creating new content in order to raise the
- Youtube ranking and even if a ranking on Youtube is secured, the trending topics keep changing and the numbers go for the trend.
My advice to long-form creators, first spend time building your long-form paid content, then make it public/free, and lastly, make the short-form content, which should aim at attracting people to your long-form paid content. When it comes to my videos and podcasts, I prefer long-form content over short-form content any day.
Moving onto Voice as a medium for the future content marketers.
CONS
- Unlike videos, there is no instant feel-good factor
- Podcasters have no way of understanding how many people have interacted with podcasts except the number of downloads
- People respond to videos more than audio. In my case, since I ask for feedback, my listeners respond to my podcasts.
- One would have to really get into an oratory flow as talking for 18-20 minutes continuously, along with keeping the listener engaged, is a skill honed after much practice.
- Podcasters need to be spontaneous in the flow and converse as if they’re talking to a friend, however, at the same time, the content should also have structure.
- The creator should be an expert at the subject they are planning to cover.
I’m a proud podcaster and voice mediums have really helped me grow my business. Let us dive into the advantages that a creator has with voice mediums.
PROS
- Voice mediums can help you build your business drastically, hence apps like Clubhouse are doing so well globally and have been adopted by many as soon as they launched. This is also the reason why the radio is not dead yet. I have obtained serious business leads just through my podcasts.
- There is a huge market for podcasts, even if one has 1000 downloads a day, that is 35,000 a month, making the podcaster fall into the top 5% category.
- The creator can dive into the details with voice, unlike videos, where it is mainly about attention-grabbing.
- Videos always have distractions. For example, on Youtube, the suggestive videos on the sides are a distraction whereas, with voice, there are fewer distractions and mostly no advertisements.
- Voice is a single sensory medium compared to video, which is a dual one. This also allows one to multi-task and still listen to something that increases their knowledge.
Podcasts always add a unique flavour to your content and I choose to create 80% content on voice and the rest 20% only for videos. In my opinion, voice is the credible future.